Focus on older workers to close skills gap: OECD adviser

As a victim of its own success, Singapore must address its growing inter-generational skills gap by focusing more on older workers, said Mr Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

"The faster young people move forward in education, the more older workers are left behind," he said yesterday.

According to OECD data, Singapore is currently the country with the largest inter-generational skills gap, he said during a panel discussion on the evolving role of universities at The Straits Times Education Forum 2022, held in partnership with Singapore Management University (SMU).

"The labour market in Singapore is very good at extracting value from the skills of people. This is unlike other countries in Asia where there is a mismatch in skills and jobs available," noted Mr Schleicher, who is also special adviser on education policy to the secretary-general at the OECD.

This also means fewer than one in 10 workers in Singapore have better skills than what they need for their current job, he said, and there is a very thin layer of "surplus skills" as most are already in use.

"Universities basically need to pay a lot more attention to those who have already graduated - that is the only kind of pool that is still untapped," noted Mr Schleicher, if Singapore wants to see significant productivity gains.

He added that despite the SkillsFuture movement, which he described as path-breaking, many Singaporeans still value academic learning as the major route to success. But change is on the way, as more employers are able to see beyond degree qualifications and recognise value in skills and knowledge that people have, he said.

"And universities still need to get that message, and advance from lumpy and long degrees to a much more granular way of learning," he said, adding that this can be done by giving people greater ownership over learning.

SMU president Lily Kong said: "Universities are used to working with young people... but as we begin to work with adult learners, one of the things that we realised is that the traditional approach (of teaching) is just not going to work.

Hence, SMU has been exploring teaching methods such as co-creating and co-delivering content and skills with industry partners.

Increasingly, adult learners can also work on real-world projects that can fulfil both their classroom and workplace demands, she said.

"So it's not an artificial divide between the world of learning and the world of practice. The more we can develop these sorts of approaches, the more people would be willing, and see the value and relevance of continuing learning."