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Programme for International Student Assessment Veronica Boix Mansilla Andreas Schleicher © OECD 2022 Introduction Globalisation and digitalisation have connected people, cities, countries and continents in ways that vastly increase our individual and collective potential. But the same forces have also made the world more volatile, more complex, more uncertain and more ambiguous. The world is witnessing a growing disconnect between an infinite growth imperative and the finite resources and delicate ecosystems of our planet; between the financial economy and the real economy; between the wealthy and the poor; between the concept of gross domestic product and the well-being of people; between technology and social needs; and between governance and the perceived voicelessness of people. No one should hold education responsible for all of this but neither should anyone underestimate the role that people’s knowledge, skills, attitudes and values play in social and economic development and in shaping the cultural context. In today’s world, education is no longer just about teaching students something but about helping them develop a reliable compass and the tools to confidently navigate through an increasingly complex, volatile and uncertain world. Success in education today is about identity, it is about agency and it is about purpose....

  Calling for a New Approach to Building 21st Workforces: It’s About Skills Development, Not Education Attainment, Argue Experts Convened by the Forum for World Education As wealthy and developing nations alike seek to create workforces geared to 21st century opportunities and challenges, they are devoting intense effort to ensuring that students spend more years in school and earn higher-level degrees. But that emphasis may be misplaced, according to new analyses of the Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), the world’s largest skills assessment of adults, and other research. Findings from PIAAC, administered by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) suggest that educational attainment does not necessarily correlate with skills development. Instead, to provide pathways out of poverty and build competitive economies, nations must focus on instilling foundational literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills. For many students, intensive career and technical education (CTE) may provide the best hope for learning and applying 21st century skills in a constantly changing world. Those were some of the key takeaways from a recent webinar hosted by the Forum for World Education (FWE), a global nonprofit working to catalyze the transformation of education systems by creating a partnership between business and...

G20 EdWG by Andreas Schleicher

The Forum for World Education (FWE) and ETS (Educational Testing Service) have agreed to collaborate to bring ETS’s unique blend of expertise in assessment, research, and analysis to support education agencies around the world. Working with FWE, ETS will assist education ministries and their affiliated examination agencies in using advances in the learning sciences, technology, and educational measurement to make assessment more responsive to the needs of educators, students, parents and policymakers. “We are excited to be working with ETS, an organization that has invented so much of what is used around the world in assessment today. In these unprecedented times, they continue to innovate toward a future of assessments that not only measure learning, but also helps to guide and directly contribute to it,” said Cheng Davis, Secretary General of FWE. Through this collaboration, ETS and FWE will help organizations in many areas, including: moving assessments to digital delivery; establishing remote proctoring; measuring social-emotional learning; applying new and existing analysis techniques to improve the fairness and validity of tests; capitalizing on big data; helping teachers develop their formative assessment practices; and measuring learning processes and growth in student thinking. ”The pandemic has posed many challenges for education and more...