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THE SKILLS NEEDED IN THE 21ST CENTURY


NEW VISION FOR EDUCATION - UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL OF TECHNOLOGY

 * E
   Executive summary
 * 1
   The skills needed in the 21st century
 * 2
   The 21st-century skills gap

 * 3
   The potential of technology to help close the skills gap
 * 4
   System-wide priorities for stakeholders
 * A
   Appendices

1
Chapter 1


THE SKILLS NEEDED IN THE 21ST CENTURY

To thrive in today’s innovation-driven economy, workers need a different mix of
skills than in the past. In addition to foundational skills like literacy and
numeracy, they need competencies like collaboration, creativity and
problem-solving, and character qualities like persistence, curiosity and
initiative.

Changes in the labour market have heightened the need for all individuals, and
not just a few, to have these skills. In countries around the world, economies
run on creativity, innovation and collaboration. Skilled jobs are more and more
centred on solving unstructured problems and effectively analysing information.
In addition, technology is increasingly substituting for manual labour and being
infused into most aspects of life and work. Over the past 50 years, the US
economy, as just one of many developed-world examples, has witnessed a steady
decline in jobs that involve routine manual and cognitive skills, while
experiencing a corresponding increase in jobs that require non-routine
analytical and interpersonal skills (see Exhibit 1). Many forces have
contributed to these trends, including the accelerating automation and
digitization of routine work.

The shift in skill demand has exposed a problem in skill supply: more than a
third of global companies reported difficulties filling open positions in 2014,
owing to shortages of people with key skills.[1] In another example, across the
24 countries included in the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult
Competencies (PIAAC), an average of 16% of adults had a low proficiency in
literacy and an average of 19% had a low proficiency in numeracy.[2] Only an
average of 6% of adults demonstrated the highest level of proficiency in
“problem-solving in technology-rich environments.”[3]


EXHIBIT 1: THE LABOUR MARKET INCREASINGLY DEMANDS HIGHER-ORDER SKILLS


TASKS BY PERCENTILE FOR THE US ECONOMY, 1960-2009

Note: The starting point of the chart has been indexed to 1960.
Adapted from Levy, Frank and Richard J. Murnane. “Dancing with robots: Human
skills for computerized work.” Third Way NEXT. 2013. Data provided by David
Autor at MIT and updated from the original 2003 study by Autor, Levy and
Murnane.

To uncover the skills that meet the needs of a 21st-century marketplace, we
conducted a meta-analysis of research about 21st-century skills in primary and
secondary education. We distilled the research into 16 skills in three broad
categories: foundational literacies, competencies and character qualities[4]
(see Exhibit 2; see also Appendix 1 for definitions of each skill).

> Only an average of 6% of adults demonstrated the highest level of proficiency
> in “problem-solving in technology-rich environments.”

 * Foundational literacies represent how students apply core skills to everyday
   tasks. These skills serve as the base upon which students need to build more
   advanced and equally important competencies and character qualities. This
   category includes not only the globally assessed skills of literacy and
   numeracy, but also scientific literacy, ICT literacy,[5] financial literacy
   and cultural and civic literacy. Acquisition of these skills has been the
   traditional focus of education around the world. Historically, being able to
   understand written texts and quantitative relationships was sufficient for
   entry into the workforce. Now, these skills represent just the starting point
   on the path towards mastering 21st-century skills.
 * Competencies describe how students approach complex challenges. For example,
   critical thinking is the ability to identify, analyse and evaluate
   situations, ideas and information in order to formulate responses to
   problems. Creativity is the ability to imagine and devise innovative new ways
   of addressing problems, answering questions or expressing meaning through the
   application, synthesis or repurposing of knowledge. Communication and
   collaboration involve working in coordination with others to convey
   information or tackle problems. Competencies such as these are essential to
   the 21st-century workforce, where being able to critically evaluate and
   convey knowledge, as well as work well with a team, has become the norm.
 * Character qualities describe how students approach their changing
   environment. Amid rapidly changing markets, character qualities such as
   persistence and adaptability ensure greater resilience and success in the
   face of obstacles. Curiosity and initiative serve as starting points for
   discovering new concepts and ideas. Leadership and social and cultural
   awareness involve constructive interactions with others in socially,
   ethically and culturally appropriate ways.


EXHIBIT 2: STUDENTS REQUIRE 16 SKILLS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

While all 16 of these skills are important, we have observed little consistency
in their definition and measurement. This is especially true for competencies
and character qualities. The lack of comparable indicators poses a challenge for
policy-makers and educators in measuring progress globally. Another problem is
that most indicators focus on foundational literacies, while the development of
indicators measuring competencies and character qualities still remains at an
early stage. In addition, differences in scores between some competencies and
character qualities, such as creativity, initiative and leadership, are likely
influenced by cultural factors and as such may be difficult to compare. For
seven skills within competencies and character qualities we were unable to make
any comparisons due to the absence of comparable data at scale, even for the
more developed countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD). It is of crucial importance that measures for these skills
be developed and tracked in the future. (See Appendix 2 for a discussion of the
challenges of measuring performance across countries, as well as Appendix 3 for
the sources used in this report for each indicator.)

Much more needs to be done to align indicators, ensure greater global coverage
for key skills, establish clear baselines for performance integrated with
existing local assessments, standardize the definition and measurement of
higher-order skills across cultures and develop assessments directed
specifically towards competencies and character qualities.

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 1. ^ “The Talent Shortage Continues: How the Ever Changing Role of HR Can
    Bridge the Gap.” Manpower Group. 2014.
    Note: Manpower Group interviewed more than 37,000 employers in 42 countries
    in the first quarter of 2014 and found that on average 36% reported having
    difficulty filling jobs, the highest proportion in seven years.
 2. ^ “Low proficiency” corresponds to adults performing at level 1 (the lowest
    proficiency level) or below.
 3. ^ “OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey of Adult Skills.”
    Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).
    Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2013.
 4. ^ We referenced frameworks from European Skills, Competences, Qualifications
    and Occupations (ESCO), Partnership for 21st-Century Skills, enGauge,
    Brookings and Pearson.
 5. ^ ICT stands for information and communications technology.

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Chapter 2
The 21st-century skills gap


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