| THE
jobs
gap between well-educated young people and those who left school early has
continued to widen during the crisis. A good education is the best insurance
against a lack of work experience, according to the latest edition of the OECD’s
annual Education at a Glance.
Unemployment rates are nearly three times higher among people without an
upper secondary education (13% on average across OECD countries) than among
those who have a tertiary education (5%). Between 2008 and 2011, the
unemployment rate for the poorly-educated rose by around 4 percentage points,
while it increased by only 1.5 percentage points for the highly
educated.
“Leaving school with good qualifications is more essential than ever,”
said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “Countries must focus efforts on
helping young people, especially the less well-educated who are most at risk of
being trapped in a low skills, low wage future. Priorities include reducing
school dropout rates and investing in skills-oriented education that integrates
the worlds of learning and work.
Though the focus should remain on quality of spending, Governments must
ensure that investment in education does not fall as a result of the
crisis.”
This
year’s report finds new evidence of the value of vocational qualifications as a
pathway to employment: countries with a higher than average (32%) share of
vocational graduates, such as Austria, Germany, Luxembourg and Switzerland, saw
unemployment rise much less or even fall among 25-34 year-olds than their peers
with general upper secondary qualifications.
The
crisis has also widened the earnings gap: the average difference in earnings
from employment between the low educated and the highly educated has risen from
75% across OECD countries in 2008 to 90% in 2011. On average, the relative
earnings of tertiary-educated adults are over 1.5 times that of adults with
upper secondary education. People with upper secondary education earn 25% more
than their peers who left school early.
One
outcome of the crisis has been a rise in the number of young people staying on
at school, as their job prospects declined. Since 2008, the percentage of 15-29
year-olds who continued in education increased by an average of 1.5 percentage
points among OECD countries.
But
the crisis has halted the long-term trend of rising investment in education.
Public spending on educational institutions between 2009 and 2010 as a
percentage of GDP fell by 1% on average across the OECD area.
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