Andreas Schleicher: Critical skills for the future from the OECD

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Andreas shares his insights as a leading global policy adviser on how employers can develop long-term plans to meet the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He reflects on areas for employers and learning professionals to focus on to upskill and reskill their workforces.

Key points

• Digital intensive workplaces are the new norm. They extract better value from the skills our people already have, while also helping them to build new abilities and talents through better learning. 
  
  
• Many young people aspire to jobs that will no longer exist - we need to better prepare young people for jobs and skills of the future.
  
  
• Our education models haven’t changed since the first industrial revolution, meaning the education young people get and the skills businesses need are mismatched. 
  
  
• To combat this, we need to develop a different skill profile. We need cognitive, social and emotional resources that make people fit for the future of work and life. 
  
  
• Artificial intelligence can help education. It can examine how we learn and tailor learning methods to individual needs.
  
  
• We used to learn to do the work - now learning has become our work. 

More about Andreas Schleicher 

Andreas Schleicher is Director for Education and Skills, and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris.

He has worked for over 20 years with ministers and education leaders around the world to improve quality and equity in education.

Former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that Schleicher “understands the global issues and challenges as well as or better than anyone I’ve met, and he tells me the truth” (The Atlantic, July 11). Former UK Secretary of State Michael Gove called Schleicher “the most important man in English education” – even though he is German and lives in France. 

Future Talent Conference 2021 

This talk was filmed at the virtual Future Talent Conference 2021 on Transforming Skills and Inclusion. 

Learn how to accelerate your thinking about how we can transform the capabilities in our organisations to keep pace with the speed and scale of change. 

The conference explored questions including: 

• What skills do we need to thrive?
• How can cognitive diversity support a more creative approach to inclusion?
• How has the talent landscape been transformed?

Our speakers included historian David Olusoga, Harvard Professor Francesca Gino and entrepreneur, CEO, writer and keynote speaker Margaret Heffernan. 

Watch more videos from the Future Talent Conference 2021 here. 

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