How do skills develop? Cognitive neuroscience offers some insights

By Helen Abadzi, Senior Education Specialist, Global Partnership for Education

Developing countries want their citizens to acquire and use complex skills, but there is much debate over the best ways to achieve this (as the 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report will examine). Yet specific answers do exist, and they come from cognitive science. People everywhere learn, think and make decisions using the same general cognitive rules, which outline what the average human mind can and cannot do.

Short-term memory, or working memory, holds the information that you are currently thinking of.  According to some studies, it can retain only about seven items of information for only about 12 seconds. If we take too long to read, by the end of a sentence we have forgotten the beginning. So fluency is essential, whether it be in reading, writing, calculating, using a cell phone, checking electric circuits or throwing ingredients into a pot.  And we must do these low-level tasks automatically, without thinking much, otherwise our working memory gets flooded and we cannot continue.

How does fluency arise?  Our mind is set up to combine easily two items or movements.  With practice, those chunks then get combined with two others and become one bigger chunk.  With more practice, that bigger chunk gets combined with others.

But many schools in developing countries cannot give students the explicit instruction and practice needed to build long, automated chains of skills. Students often leave their mother tongue behind in grade 1 to learn reading through official languages with complex spelling systems, such as English, French, Spanish or Portuguese. Schools may waste 70% of instructional time in absenteeism and the rest in blackboard copying, since there are often few textbooks.

Teachers may interact with only the few who can keep up, while the rest stay illiterate and drop out. Even those better students (and it takes a genius to learn under these circumstances) may read only 80 words per minute in grade 10, compared with 250 for a child the same age in a developed country. At that speed, it may take five minutes just to get to the end of a page, by which time you have forgotten the beginning.

Can the ‘German model’ bridge the skills gap elsewhere?

By Léna Krichewsky, research officer, Education for All Global Monitoring Report

What do all those experts and politicians mean when they point to the “German model” as a kind of magic recipe to solve the problem of youth unemployment by improving the skills of the young? The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, announced a few days ago that he intended to rapidly increase the number of apprentices, showing that in his eyes this is one of the major lessons to be learnt from Germany.

The burning question, however – which we will explore in the forthcoming 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, on youth, skills and work – is whether a system like Germany’s can work as well in other countries.

How does the German model work? From the learner’s perspective, apprenticeship in Germany is a “dual system” in which a balanced curriculum of structured training within a company is accompanied by part-time classroom tuition in vocational and general subjects. Apprenticeships are open to all students who have completed lower secondary education (age 15) and last from two to three and a half years.

Apprentices are considered as employees and are paid by the training company. They can choose from among about 350 occupations, reaching from hairdressing and car repair to insurance and financial services. Because apprenticeships are such a good route into skilled jobs, many students who have completed upper secondary school also start an apprenticeship, even if they have the credentials to enter university. (The German education and research ministry has put online a brochure explaining the system.)

Regulation and partnership are the two principles that make the system so successful. Representatives of the federal state, the individual states, employers and employees work together by consensus to develop curricula, provide training, and carry out assessment, certification and quality assurance.

Help us picture the future!

We’re running an artwork contest for young people on the theme of youth, skills and work – the focus of our forthcoming 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report. The winner’s work will be used in the report.

The contest is open to those aged 18 to 24, and the deadline is 1 April 2012. The first prize is a trip to Paris to participate in an event publicizing the artwork and meet with the GMR team. Full details on our web site.

The artwork should illustrate ideas linked to youth, education, skills and the world of work. Are young people leaving school with the skills they need to survive and thrive in society? How can we make sure that all young people – especially those who face disadvantages – get a chance to learn job skills?

Feel free to be inspired by these questions and our Youth, Skills, Work blog, where young people are debating these issues.

Be creative and express yourself in our artwork contest!

Youth jobs crisis pushes EU to address ‘skills mismatch’

Hard on the heels of Davos, where the “skills gap” was the subject of several sessions, the European summit on Monday showed that high unemployment is concentrating EU leaders’ minds on improving training for young people – the focus of our forthcoming 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report.

Youth unemployment, which is high right across Europe, last week in Spain reached 51.4% among those aged 16 to 24. In Greece the figure is 46.6% and in Portugal it is 30.7%.

While the eurozone crisis dominated headlines about the EU summit, leaders made a point of identifying the “skills mismatch” as one of their top priorities as they battle youth unemployment.

At the same time, Germany’s success in using apprenticeships and other vocational training to boost workers’ skills and economic growth – and lower unemployment – is receiving increasing attention from elsewhere in Europe.

In their statement after the summit, EU leaders listed “Stimulating employment, especially for young people” as their no. 1 priority, underlining that “This means taking concrete actions to overcome ‘the skills mismatch’.” Member states “need to develop and implement comprehensive initiatives on employment, education and skills,” the statement added.

BRIEFLY: Gordon Brown calls for new global education fund

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown, a co-convenor of the High Level Panel on Education, released a report this week calling for the establishment of an independent global fund for education, to raise the $16 billion needed each year to reach the goal of universal primary education by 2015. “Despite the known impact that it can have on pulling individuals, families and nations out of poverty, education remains low on the international agenda,” a statement by the panel said, “making the promise made to millions of the world’s children increasingly likely to be broken.” The Brown report, titled Delivering on the promise, building opportunity: The case for a Global Fund for Education, relies on many of the findings of the 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report. It calls for a new fund that “builds on the considerable achievements” of the Education for All Fast Track Initiative (recently renamed the Global Partnership for Education), which it nevertheless says “has not been successful in galvanising new funding.”

‘The future we want’ post-2015: Sustainable development goals

By Pauline Rose, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report

In his speech to the General Assembly this week, the United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, presented his action agenda for the next five years. His speech highlighted many important priorities both in the final push to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, and to promote sustainable development goals beyond 2015.

Education features in three important ways in his speech:

• As an area where progress has been made on the MDGs: “We have seen dramatic progress in a short time: More effective disease control. More children in primary education. Significant reductions in global poverty.”
• As one of priorities leading up to 2015: “We are also preparing to empower future generations by offering quality, relevant and universal education to meet the challenges of the 21st century.”
• As an area that deserves attention beyond 2015: ‘We will deepen our youth focus and develop an action plan across the full range of UN programmes, including employment, entrepreneurship, political participation, human rights, education and reproductive health.”

The secretary-general’s speech called for forging a consensus on a new generation of sustainable development goals after 2015, building on the Millennium Development Goals. As I noted in my new year’s blog, education needs to maintain a central position in the global development architecture beyond 2015.  Equitable learning supports sustainable development in a variety of ways. It improves health and livelihoods, empowers women and other vulnerable groups, promotes democracy, boosts economic growth and reduces poverty, and helps to lock in these gains for generations to come. Evidence presented in future Global Monitoring Reports will need to support policymakers in making the case for education as agreement is sought over the coming two years on post-2015 development goals.

Photo: Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, presenting his action plan for the next five years to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. (Photo: Mark Garten/UN)

Follow Pauline Rose on Twitter: @Pauline_RoseGMR

At Davos, the ‘skills gap’ is on the guest list

As the world’s movers and shakers head to Davos, Switzerland, this week for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, the International Labour Organization has issued a gloomy report on employment – just in time to focus minds at Davos even more sharply on the global jobs crisis.

“The jobs crisis continues unabated, with one in three workers worldwide – or an estimated 1.1 billion people – either unemployed or living in poverty,” said Juan Samovia, the ILO’s director-general.

The annual ILO publication highlights the fact that globally, young people are nearly three times as likely as adults to be unemployed. The global youth unemployment rate, at 12.7 per cent, remains a full percentage point above the pre-crisis level. Of those aged 15-24, 74.8 million were unemployed in 2011, an increase of more than 4 million since 2007.

In the forthcoming 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, on youth, skills and work, we will explore a key element of youth unemployment: the mismatch between what education systems teach and the skills that employers want.

That “skills gap” features in at least three sessions this week at Davos: A workshop will look at how “revitalizing education and training” and “mobilizing skills and talent” can boost the economy. An interactive session will consider whether “fostering entrepreneurial education” and “reinventing curricula” can “address supply and demand gaps in dynamic talent markets.” And an “Ideas Lab” will discuss “new creative models for job and growth creation,” starting with “addressing skill shortages and the factors that delay hiring.”

BRIEFLY: One year later, a fresh start for Arab youth?

As well as sparking a wave of change across the Arab world, the Tunisian revolution exactly a year ago turned the spotlight on the widespread youth joblessness in the region. One key ingredient of the frustration and disappointment that helped drive the popular revolt was the failure of education systems to give young people the skills they need to get good jobs. Former GMR director Kevin Watkins argued in a post on this blog in February 2011 that those failures include:

• chronic misalignment between the education system and employment markets;

• underperformance of education systems in the Middle East and North Africa;

• the crisis facing low-income households who can’t afford primary education.

The 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, to be released in September, will focus on youth, skills and work, examining ways of helping young people across the world – especially those facing disadvantage – realize their ambitions for better livelihoods and better lives. Along with economic reforms that boost growth and jobs, overhauling education is one of the greatest challenges facing the new governments in the Arab world. In the 2012 GMR, we’ll examine ways of making sure that education reforms help young people obtain the skills that the labour market wants.

These issues are currently being debated on our Youth-Skills-Work blog.

Photo: Demonstrations last month in front of the national constituent assembly in Bardo, Tunisia. (Photo: Amine Ghrabi/Flickr Creative Commons)

Haiti update: Where’s the public education system?

By Pauline Rose, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report

The second anniversary of Haiti’s devastating earthquake has drawn attention this week to the needs of the country’s young people, and efforts to give them a future. But is this another case of too little, too late?

As our earlier blog post shows, there are reasons to be optimistic for Haiti’s reconstruction, with more children in school than before the earthquake. Even so, it is unacceptable that around one-half of children are still not in school. It is not enough to remember Haiti’s children only at anniversaries of the event. Efforts need to be ongoing and long-term.

Social media has been playing an important role this week in showcasing what different organizations have achieved, as a glance at the #Haiti2Year tag on Twitter reveals. PlanUK has ensured 31,000 children have returned to school, and CAREUSA has helped rebuild 20 schools. There are many other positive examples of NGOs giving children the opportunity to go back to school.

While such efforts are welcome, they are not building the education system that Haiti sorely needs. Recognizing the importance of education for the country’s reconstruction, a report by Oxfam mentions that President Michel Martelly’s new administration announced free primary education, but this is still a long way out of reach for many of Haiti’s children.

Education rises – slowly – from Haiti’s rubble

As Haiti struggles to recover from the devastating earthquake two years ago, rebuilding education is a major priority – and a small bright light, of sorts. According to Nigel Fisher, the UN secretary-general’s Deputy Special Representative for Haiti, there are now more children in school than there were before the earthquake that struck on January 12, 2010.

Very few children in the Canaan tent city outside of Port-au-Prince will have a chance to go to school. The tent city has no school buildings of its own. (Photo: Paul Franz)

That achievement is testimony to the combined efforts of Haitians and aid agencies who realise that it is vital to make education a priority when catastrophe strikes – a fact we underlined in the 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report: The hidden crisis: Armed conflict and education.

But it is small comfort given the very low standards of education in Haiti before the quake. Only about half of children were enrolled in primary school – and of those, about three-quarters attended private schools that charge fees. Secondary school enrolment was only 4% and the country had only one state-funded university.

Many students, teachers and administrators were among the thousands who died in the quake. Much of what had existed was reduced to rubble, including an estimated 80% of schools in the quake zone and a huge swath of the country’s mostly private post-secondary sector.

Since the quake, many observers have emphasized the need to build a genuinely free, public education system that offers access to all. As Michaëlle Jean, UNESCO’s special representative for Haiti, said last year: “It is imperative to implement the National Pact for Education, which was developed by Haitian authorities in the world of education and endorsed by the President of the Republic. This plan lays the foundation for building an education system that is accessible, universal and offers quality instruction. “