This article explores how responses to a generic skills framework are materialised in Irish schools, and the main aim is to shed light on multiple dimensions of policy enactment. The Key Skills Framework (KSF) was introduced as part of a curricular reform in Irish lower secondary schools -- a reform that has met substantial resistance locally and…

This article critically reviews the World Bank's latest high-profile report on skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa. While the Report's prescriptions and recommendations are broadly in line with those of national skills development strategies elsewhere in both the developed and developing world, its overall analysis is quite limited and…

The phrase "soft skills" has been around for decades. It was coined by the U.S. military in the 1960s to refer to any skill that did not involve use of machinery. Since then, it has been used to describe the emotional aspects of human endeavors--empathy, creativity, resilience, and collaboration--in contrast to the intellectual work and…

This staff working document is intended to accompany and support the Commission proposal for a Council Recommendation Pathways to School Success, which will repeal and replace the 2011 Council Recommendation on policies to reduce early school leaving. The staff working document sets out in more detail and depth the concepts put forward in the…

How are children to prepare for an era in which work can be outsourced anywhere in the world, university graduates compete with computers and robots for jobs, and in which any number of other, unforeseeable social and economic trends may transpire? Popular discourses on educational reform talk of the need for schools and colleges to produce more…

This report contains more than 30 structural indicators on education policies in five areas: early childhood education and care (ECEC), achievement in basic skills, early leaving from education and training (ELET), higher education and digital competence. The Eurydice project on Structural Indicators for Monitoring Education and Training Systems…

Self-governance and responsibilisation are integral to Basic Key Skills Builder (BKSB) assessments and Functional Skills qualifications. However, very little is known of its neoliberalist effects and the governance practices of tutors teaching disengaged youth taking Functional Skills as part of the overall employability certificate. Adopting a…

A public education system's effectiveness should be based primarily on whether graduates have been equipped to be productive workers following program completion. Otherwise, neither the system nor the completion certificate (diploma) is worth the tax dollars spent. As Kentucky's education commissioner, the author found it woefully apparent that…

A foresight study on school education (ISCED levels 1-3) in the EU, which aimed at developing four scenarios, describing potential alternative futures of the school education in the EU by 2040, identifying the preferred scenario developments and providing recommendations on the policy measures that could be introduced, or strengthened, to help…

The overall aim of the study was to gather evidence on effective policy reforms for broad competence development in school education, including better achievement of basic skills. The six key objectives are: Objective 1: To understand the key features of policy design and implementation of reforms for broad competence development and achievement…