Countries globally face a “growing mismatch” between what education provides and “what the world really needs”, according to Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Speaking on the of the new The Education World Forum Conversations podcast, Schleicher said “the kind of things that are easy to teach, easy to test, have become easy to digitise, to automate”, and these tasks are “evaporating from labour markets”.

He warned that students now graduate “having difficulties finding a good job, and at the same time employers tell you, we cannot find the people with the skills we need”.

The issue, he argued, is “not about the efficiency of systems, it’s about relevance”.

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Schleicher highlighted examples from around the world where governments are attempting to close this gap.

Singapore’s SkillsFuture approach, he said, treats individuals as lifelong owners of their learning. “People [are] becoming the owners of their learning pathways and learning in different places at different times…moving from, you know, lumpy degrees and qualification to more granular ways of recognising what people know.”

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Across the Nordic countries, he added, reforms focus on “reconfiguring space, time, people, technology, relationships in education”, particularly in the age of AI, which “pushes us to think harder about what makes us human”.

A major shift under way, Schleicher argued, is the blurring of vocational and academic routes. “You no longer have to make dichotomy choices…but it’s seamlessly possible to move into different orientations.”

In an era when “learning has become the work”, institutions face the challenge of adapting recognition systems, “moving from long degrees and qualifications to shorter micro-credentials that become stackable and transferable”.

Schleicher also linked widening social divides to educational disparities.

“Our societies, our labour markets in the past were very generous to inequalities in the skills of people. Today you can see how inequality in education translates almost immediately into economic polarisation, through social polarisation, into political polarisation.

With basic digital and civic participation now dependent on strong foundation skills, “you really need everyone”, he said.

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On artificial intelligence, Schleicher said recent OECD survey results show “AI mixes the cards in completely new ways”.

Countries such as Singapore and the UAE are “very far in terms of integration”, while others, including France and Japan, face “a really hard time with that transition”.

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AI, he stressed, is “an amazing amplifier” that can either “make education so much more inclusive” or “re-amplify polarisations”.

While AI can “super empower teachers as the most creative designers of innovative learning environments”, it can equally “disempower teachers who become slaves of scripted lesson plans”.

For students, he said, outcomes are “very mixed”, cautioning that humans are “very easily misled to trade our autonomy for convenience”.

Education, therefore, “really need[s] to help us to develop our humanity”. “If we do not regard those things with determination,” he warned, “AI could wash away the very foundations of our societies”.

Discussing the latest Education at a Glance report, Schleicher said the most striking finding was that expanding higher education has not resulted in declining returns.

Despite a “40 per cent increase in higher education participation” over the past decade, “earnings pretty well held their ground”.

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tash.mosheim@timeshighereducation.com