L’Évaluation des compétences des adultes (PIAAC) a pour vocation de mettre en lumière la disponibilité de certaines de ces compétences clés dans la société ainsi que leur utilisation dans le cadre professionnel et privé. Elle examine directement la maîtrise de différentes compétences en traitement de l’information : la littératie - la capacité de comprendre et de réagir de façon appropriée aux textes écrits, la numératie - la capacité d'utiliser des concepts mathématiques, et la résolution de problème dans des environnements à forte composante technologique. 24 pays ont participé à l'enquête, dont la France.
Seuls 8% des Français se situent dans les niveaux 4 et 5 les plus élevés de compétence en littératie et 34% au niveau 3 ce qui est en dessous de la moyenne OCDE : 12% et 38%.
En numératie, 8% des Français sont au niveau les plus hauts et 29% au niveau 3 contre 12 et 34% pour la moyenne.
Le pourcentage d'adultes français obtenant de faible scores en littératie est l'une des plus importantes des pays participants : 22% contre 15% pour la moyenne OCDE. En numératie c'est la même chose : 28% contre 19%.
Par contre la France fait partie des pays où les écarts entre générations sont les plus forts.
En savoir plus : Premiers résultats de l'évaluation des compétences des adultes - OCDE, 2013

On 23-24 October, the European Commission is organising the "ESCO goes live" conference in Brussels.
Watch the LIVE webstream of the conference online now...
The conference will officially launch ESCO, the classification of European Skills/Competences, Qualifications and Occupations, and the ESCO Portal. It is the first time that ESCO will be publically accessible.
ESCO will serve as a common language facilitating cooperation and dialogue between education/training and labour market stakeholders. Operating in 25 European languages, ESCO offers an opportunity to further European cooperation in these policy areas. ESCO has been jointly created by European and national stakeholders and the European Commission. More...

Knowledge and skills have a huge impact on life chances, particularly in countries that are shifting towards a knowledge-based economy. Just in terms of income, the average hourly wage of workers with advanced literacy and cognitive skills is 60% higher than workers with low-level literacy skills. A recently released study by the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies shows how adults acquire, maintain, and lose skills over a lifetime.
The OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) surveyed about 166 000 adults in 24 countries and sub-national regions on literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving in technology rich environments. More...

By Kanika Gupta. Whose responsibility is it to fill our skills gap? Employers? Schools? Governments? The current discussion over the skills gap points fingers at all these groups. My advice to fellow peers? Bridge your own skills gap. It’s time for recent graduates to own up to the reality that a degree alone is not enough, but when paired with the right attitude and skills, they can set themselves up for success. More...

By Léo Charbonneau. I recently came across the phrase “skills shortage deniers.” I can’t find the exact reference now, but it was in an online comment to an article about the supposed skills shortage, or skills mismatch, in Canada. You’ve likely heard some of the numbers. The Conference Board of Canada claimed that Ontario alone was losing out on as much as $24.3 billion in economic activity because employers cannot find people with the skills they need. The Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters estimated that, by 2016, Canada will have 1.3 million jobs sitting vacant because there is no one with the skills to fill them. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, for its part, referred to a growing skills “crisis” and even the Prime Minister called the skills shortage one of Canada’s most pressing economic problems. More...

By Katy Meyers. The graduate school job market outlook is frightening. The top option when searching “PhD job market” online is an article titled “The Ph.D. Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists.” That’s not very optimistic, and the article argues that not only will 35% of graduate students with PhDs not get a job, but the situation is getting worse each year. Another article, “12 Reasons Not to Get a PhD,” argues that the degree takes too long, has left almost 34,000 PhDs on food stamps, and the job prospects within or outside of academia are diminishing. Read more...