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…

This report contains more than 20 structural indicators on education policies in four areas: early childhood education and care (ECEC), achievement in basic skills, early leaving from education and training (ELET) and higher education. The Eurydice project on Structural Indicators for Monitoring Education and Training Systems in Europe provides…

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…

Education is a foundational driver of development, and fundamental to achieving self-reliance. When children and youth build skills they can use for work and school, they can pursue more hopeful and prosperous futures for themselves, their families, their communities, and their countries. USAID works in more than 50 nations to promote education…

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…

This report contains more than 35 key structural indicators on education policies in six areas: early childhood education and care (ECEC), achievement in basic skills, early leaving from education and training (ELET), higher education, graduate employability and learning mobility. This 2020 report contains the updated indicators for the 2019/20…

This report contains more than 35 structural indicators on education policies in six areas: early childhood education and care (ECEC), achievement in basic skills, early leaving from education and training (ELET), higher education, graduate employability and learning mobility. It is an update of the report Structural indicators for Monitoring…

This document contains data tables with more than 35 structural indicators on education policies in six areas: early childhood education and care (ECEC), achievement in basic skills, early leaving from education and training (ELET), higher education, graduate employability and learning mobility. It is an update of the report Structural indicators…

Objectives: Working under the constraints of external accountability policy, public school principals are faced with challenges in prioritizing educational goals. Using the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) data sets, this study examined the nature and sources of changes in principals' educational goal priorities in the era of accountability,…

This document 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 graduate employability. It is an update of the report Structural indicators for Monitoring Education and…

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…

In the United States, adult and workforce education (AE) seems to be located, simultaneously, both everywhere and nowhere in particular. Ongoing shifts in national economic demands and changes in requirements for training and education have brought learning in the adult years into the federal public policy arena. Sometimes referred to as lifelong…

The nation's PK-12 education ecosystem is poised to embrace programs intended to enhance soft skills. Soft skills are generally defined by exclusion as personal qualities other than the formal knowledge transmitted by schools that affect student adjustment, i.e., the effort that students put into their work and their social skills. Such soft…

The purpose of combined authorities, driven by government, is economic growth and public sector reform. Economic growth requires improved productivity. The main obstacle, it is claimed, is a "skills deficit," which schools need to address. In this article the evidence for this claim is examined. The real problem, it is argued, is a…