1. VET promotion: An Oecd perspective
Montse Gomendio
Deputy Director, Education and Skills
Head, OECD Centre for Skills

2. Key reports: Lessons on effective VET systems
Over the last 10 years, the OECD has committed significant resource to how VET can be delivered effectively, efficiently and equitably both in school and in the workplace.
Upper-secondary level
Post-secondary level

3. Understanding work-based learning better
Work-based learning and productivity
Recognising skills acquired through work-based learning
Costs and benefits of apprenticeships
Work-based learning and school-to-work transition for at-risk youth
Currently completing a three year study on work-based learning – which is essential to effective practice.
Visit the website.
Work-based learning: incentives and implementation
Career guidance and employer engagement

4. Youths not in employment nor in education or training (NEET)
Many young people are having difficulties transitioning from education into employment even if they have graduated from university.
Youths not in employment nor in education or training (NEET)
Percentage of the population years old not in employment nor in education or training, 2015 or latest year available
This work has been driven by member countries concerned over: persistently high levels of youth unemployment; fracturing school-to-work transitions; growing mismatches between skills supply and labour market demand.
Young people across the OECD are leaving schooling with more highly qualified and with more years of education to their names than any previous generation, and yet they are struggling to find their way in the labour market.
It is no accident that countries with strong VET systems also experience low levels of youth unemployment.
Source: OECD (2017), Education database: Transition from school to work : Percentage of year-olds in education/not in education, by educational attainment, work status and gender

5. Career aspirations in PISA
PISA asks young people what they are interested in pursuing.
Overwhelmingly, the jobs they choose are old-fashioned – jobs from the twentieth, even nineteenth-century – and jobs which require university education.
Top 10 career expectations of 15 year olds. PISA 2015 data.

6. Career aspirations of young people: unrealistic, poorly informed and socially conditioned
In one recent British study, the career aspirations of 11,000 teenagers were mapped against projected demand for new and replacement jobs in the labour market. Disaggregated against 25 occupational areas, the comparision shows that they have nothing in common.
A snapshot from the UK: the career aspirations of 11,000 teenagers mapped against projected labour market demand (Mann et al Nothing in Common. London: UKCES and Education and Employers)

7. Excellent careers guidance is deeply enriched by employer engagement, but it is rare across the OECD
A growing research literature has highlighted the attributes of effective practice in careers guidance.
Guidance counsellors should be well-trained and impartial; guidance should be integrated into school-wide approaches; and informed by labour market intelligence. It should begin early and focus around key decision points in approaches which are personalised that reflect that needs are likely to greatest among those who are most disadvantaged.
And essentially – career guidance must be fully enriched by engagement with employers through careers events, internships, job shadowing.
This first-hand experiences give young people informed, trusted insight into the labour market.
It is especially important for VET careers – which are too often ignored and when they are thought of, subject to stereotypical thinking.

8. The changing relationship between education and employment
Policy paper due to be published December 2017: Career guidance and employer engagement
Begins from the premise: young people have never entered the labour market more highly qualified, but face (often growing) difficulties in securing sustained employment.
The labour market is changing – it is becoming more flexible, polarised, dynamic, complex – and educational institutions need to respond.
What do we tell young people as they seek to prepare themselves for the working world?
Next month, we plan to publish a new policy paper setting out why careers guidance is more important than ever before.

9. What do we tell young people?
That their engagement with the labour market whilst in education matters
That they should engage employer a lot, critically and from a young age
That they should seek out authentic and varied, new and useful experiences
That schools should help them draw connections with their education
The message for schools and young people is clear.
PISA tells us that too many teenagers are expected to make life changings decisions in the absence of reliable information.
As the structural change widens the gap between education and employment, we urgently need to close it again.

10. Thank you