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THE CHALLENGE OF COMPETENCE
AND COMPETITIVENESS
IN MODERN CONTINUOUS EDUCATION1
K. Schoemann
Basic competences like literacy are a fundamental part of a basic education. Even in modern industrialized societies there are still large numbers of persons who do not reach sufficiently high competence levels particularly at older ages. Sufficient resources need to be put to the issue despite restrictions on national budgets. It is a shared responsibility of the state and individuals.
Key words: basic competences, life courses, age cohorts, inequality.
Introduction. As early as 1997 on the occasion of the UNESCO world conference CONFINTEA in Hamburg the term basic education was defined. Following the proceedings a basic education for all means all people irrespective of their age should have the possibility as individual or in community to develop their potential. Basic education is not only a right, but also a duty and a responsibility towards others and society as a whole. In this paper we apply and then discuss an even more narrow concept of basic education, which is the perspective of basic competences as they are conceived of and measured at the individual and societal level in recent years.
The first round of surveys and results based on the OECD-study Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) demonstrated that competence differences between countries on the mean level as well as in the spread of reading and numeracy competences within the same country are very substantial. This applies to countries from Europe as well as countries from the Americas and Asia, In contrast to the wide spread opinion that the countries mainly from the OECD member states and with fairly high economic development have managed to eradicate illiteracy, these surveys and testing of basic competences like literacy and numeracy show relatively high shares of illiterate persons within those countries (OECD 2013).
In our paper we focus on persons with low reading skills as these are the focus of many approaches to inclusive societies, ranging from the UN literacy decade (UNESCO 1999) to many similar efforts in form of national campaigns. The comparison of average literacy scores (OECD 2013 p.70) across participating countries with an OECD-average of 273 points shows minimum to maximum score differences of 46 points ranging from Italy (250) to Japan with 296. Top performers in Europe are Finland (288) and the Netherlands (284), whereas England/N.Ireland (272), Denmark (271), Germany (270) and Austria (269) are below the average.
This paper argues that there is still a long way to go and a need for a renewed emphasis on basic literacy and numeracy even in the high developed countries in order to reach the goal of inclusive societies and to approach the goal of access to a basic education and building on basic competences like sufficient reading competence to participate in society.
1 We would like to acknowledge the support of the German Ministry of Education and Research as part of the project EU-Alpha and Competences in later life projects.
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Literacy measured across countries with PIAAC Data. With respect to ethical and humanistic fundamentals we consider it of utmost importance to focus again even on the narrow set of competences like reading and numeracy as the basis for development or the sustainability of a person’s health, well-being, labour market potential as well as active involvement in society. These basic competences are also the foundation for many current and future employee’s personality development, not to mention the need for these basic competences to preserve one’s own health and autonomy in older ages.
Only within the OECD (2013) countries, the average score point gap comparing the best to lowest reading skills within a country 10% (25%) of adults shows a spread of best to lowest reading skills within a country of 116 (60) score points. The difference in the 25% top versus bottom percentiles is more pronounced in Germany (65), England/N.Ireland (66) as well as in France (65). Similarly the spread between the 10% best and lowest reading skills in these three countries is 122 and 124 respectively. The difference of about 50 points corresponds to one proficiency level across all participating countries. This empirical pattern necessitates some explanation about such country differences as well as how to explain which factors contribute to the phenomenon of country differences in average scores or the differences in the spread of scores across the a country’s population between the ages of 16 and 65.
The contribution of macro-level impacts can be seen in figure one (attached). Although we found no correlation of most expenditure measures of primary, secondary or tertiary education on the national average of literacy scores measured as percentage of gross national product. We were able to show the correlation of changes in the absolute levels of expenditure on the secondary level over the last ten years to average literacy scores. This demonstrates that even in these high developed modern societies there is a direct link mainly between cuts in educational expenditures on the secondary level and a society’s level of literacy achievement.
Literacy measured within countries. On the individual level the focus on literacy has mostly been associated in combination with social integration policies and in industrialized countries largely with a focus for example on language acquisition of migrants. The evidence based on large-scale assessment studies of a representative kind is scarce. Concerning evaluations of programs or campaigns for basic competencies or literacy there are hardly any studies that relate program activities to literacy outcomes in form of representative surveys.
In the analysis within a single country another line of argument on the institutional of analysis stresses the importance of market like organization of the skill or basic competence field similar to the field of adult education in more general terms. Some authors claim to have identified in various sectors of the education system a “marketization and re-commodification of education” (Leutze et al. 2007 p.6) as well as trend of “policies promoting liberalization and deregulation that lead to the establishment of a market in the field of education” (p.10). Consequently these authors indicate a change in the role of the state towards a regulatory body, defining and setting market conditions rather than to be the main provider of education. Although in the previous section we were able to demonstrate the impact of macro-level expenditure on literacy outcomes we would like to highlight
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in this section the importance of distributional factors within a country. As an example case we choose Germany to illustrate the different probabilities for specific groups in a society to belong to the low literacy achievers (compare Schoemann et al 2015). According to the OECD PIAAC definition this would include persons who reach only below level 1 or level 1 of literacy of the five proficiency levels for literacy (Rammstedt et al. 2013).
Based on logistic regressions we found that for 10 year age groups or respective groups of birth cohorts, older age groups have lower literacy levels than younger age groups. If we interpret this effect of age groups in terms of birth cohorts that received different length of full-time education or compulsory schooling this cross-section age group or birth cohort effect does not allow us to conclude on an actual individual literacy decline. To differentiate such age and cohort effects in an adequate fashion we would need to follow the same individual over time.
This leads to the question whether full-time education and/or adult education are major contributors to the “risk” of belonging to the low literacy group. Higher levels of full-time education show the expected effect that having reached a higher level of education guards better against low literacy achievements. Schooling below or only on the level of compulsory schooling is a major risk to be in the low literacy group at the time of the survey around the year 2012. This is additional evidence for the “long-term” effects of schooling on competencies also in later life.
An interesting finding shows that the labor market is sufficiently accessible for persons with low literacy levels. Employment status does make a significant difference to the basic literacy level of a person. On the other hand, this also means that being in employment does not make an additional positive contribution to literacy. This data therefore suggest that having a job does also not necessarily mean that persons train sufficiently to raise them beyond the minimum literacy threshold in highly industrialized and advanced economies. Probably also trade unions or workers’ associations have lost focus of these target groups in the last few years.
An important message for lifelong learning or informal learning might arise from the finding that reading a home already at moderate frequencies (more than once a month/week) shows significant effects and lowers the risk to belong to the low literacy group. Reading on the job contributes additionally to lower risks of low reading competence with smaller effect sizes and in some instances lower significance levels. Participation in adult education or job training during the last 12 months has an additional effect in Germany on the literacy level. Self-assessed health is used as a control for underlying structural effects.
To be born in another country than Germany did not show lower literacy levels. This is to some extent surprising, but might simply mean that there is a large diversity among those persons born in another country ranging from those achieving high levels of literacy competence versus those with very low levels of reading competence. Additionally, not being tested in one’s mother tongue shows the higher probability to perform on a lower level in “acquired or second language” literacy.
In an extension of the PIAAC basic competence measurements so far only in the fast aging society of Germany the same literacy and numeracy tests have been applied to a sample of the population aged 66-80 years of age (Friebe et al.
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2014). It is particularly important to compare literacy outcomes of older cohorts, especially the birth cohorts born before and during the second world war to see how they perform with respect to basic literacy. In a similar analysis to identify persons with the highest risk of being with low literacy we can show that older cohorts achieve on average significantly lower literacy and numeracy. Even if we cannot speak of a decline in literacy due to not having longitudinal data at hand, we are able to demonstrate that older cohorts suffer particular disadvantages which might endanger their full participation in economic and social activities in modern societies.
Conclusion. Due to the finding that substantial numbers of people in the most highly industrialized countries have reading proficiency which is significantly below the average within a country or below the OECD average level, we deem it necessary to focus on these persons as a specific target group in line with the UNESCO recommendations. Such an emphasis is very much in line with theories about education policies and welfare state arrangements. The combined impact of neglecting basic competencies and basic education as well as welfare state policies for persons with low achievements in reading among adults and older persons is likely to endanger the social fabric of modern societies.
Self-determination and reaching autonomy or remaining autonomous in older age are basic values of societies. Basic literacy seems to be a frequently forgotten dimension as a dimension of the broader right to basic education discussion. It is too early to assess whether the increased marketization of education which takes several forms plays a contributing role. The requirements of competences not only in basic literacy and numeracy are increasing, but also in other fields of competences like problem solving or cross-cultural competences to mention a few.
Due to efforts of the OECD and the many countries carrying out basic competence surveys it is possible to use macro and micro data to study literacy. Our results show that education expenditure across countries and adult education participation as well as practicing reading at home and at work has a positive impact on literacy levels. In regard to the view that welfare policies might need a substantial overhaul to address the different target groups (Armingeon and Bonoli 2006; Rovny 2014) we find evidence that low literacy appears to be a “crosscutting” concern for several target groups of other welfare policies. For example, the accumulation of low achievement in full-time schooling, little reading at home or at work and low adult education participation are all correlates of low literacy. They might interact in specific ways to then lead to the effect that more persons belonging to older age groups eventually perform on low literacy levels.
The simple macro analysis of secondary education expenditure and the change of it over the last ten years suggested an effect of spending on secondary education on average national literacy scores. Even if large budgets devoted to education are surely not the complete answer to the question of why still so many low literacy achievers can be found in modern societies, it is, however, making an impact in the medium to long run. At times of economic crises it is, therefore, particularly important to continue the support of literacy programs and basic competences as preconditions and major element of a basic education for all.
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