By Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills
The first quarter of the 21st century has felt like a time machine set to “fast forward.” Pandemics, geopolitical shocks, aging societies, climate stress, and dizzying waves of technological change have not only redrawn the map of our economies – they’ve shrunk the time we have to adapt to it. What used to take a generation to transform now happens in five years.
In this world, learning can no longer be confined to childhood. Lifelong learning isn’t a slogan anymore; it’s the survival skill of our age. Yet here’s the paradox: the same forces that make learning more essential have also widened the cracks in who gets access to it. The ladder of opportunity, for too many, still has missing rungs.
Background still matters – more than it should
The OECD’s Skills Outlook 2025 drives home a hard truth: talent may be evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. The circumstances of your birth – your parents’ education, your postal code, your gender – still shape whether you’ll master the literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills that power modern economies.
Schools can be great equalisers, but they can also be amplifiers of inequality. The literacy gap between children with and without tertiary-educated parents often narrows during compulsory schooling, yet other divides grow wider. Boys still tend to outscore girls in numeracy; girls still lead in literacy. Those gaps harden into study choices, career paths, and paychecks.
And once formal schooling ends, the equity curve often bends the wrong way again. Adults from more advantaged backgrounds go on to earn more credentials and get more chances to reskill.
Learning disparities
For socio-economic background, the divide is about duration: how long people can afford to keep studying. More than half of adults whose parents had high-status jobs complete a bachelor’s degree, compared to fewer than one in four from lower-status families.
For gender, it’s about direction: what people study. Women now outpace men in overall tertiary completion, yet they remain underrepresented in STEM fields, which are often reshaping our economies.
And in adult life, the imbalance grows sharper. Over 60% of tertiary-educated adults participate in non-formal learning; for those without an upper secondary qualification, it’s under 20%. The cruel irony: those who most need upskilling are the least likely to receive it.
Not all learning is created equal
It’s not just about how much people learn – it’s what they learn, and in what context.
A factory worker may be trained to follow a machine protocol; a project manager might learn data analysis or leadership. Both are learning, but only one is unlocking doors to future opportunity.
That divide is what policymakers need to close: moving from training that maintains jobs to learning that multiplies them.
Turning constraints into catalysts
Public investment is a powerful tool – countries that spend more per student tend to see smaller socio-economic gaps in literacy and numeracy. But let’s be clear: money alone doesn’t move the needle. Governance, allocation, and family support make the difference between a system that closes gaps and one that subsidises privilege.
Without smart targeting, new resources too often get captured by those already ahead. Spending more is easy; spending well is hard. The real game-changers are investments that start early and stay inclusive:
- High-quality early childhood education, where every child – regardless of family income – develops the social, emotional, and cognitive foundations to thrive.
- Targeted support later in schooling, to ensure students from disadvantaged backgrounds don’t fall through the cracks before they ever reach higher education.
Finland and Sweden are examples of how universal preschool access and strong quality standards can flatten socio-economic gradients in school readiness. The UK’s Sure Start Children’s Centres have shown how connecting education, health, and family services under one roof can change life trajectories.
At the other end of the pipeline, Spain’s PROA+ programme and Ireland’s Higher Education Access Route show that well-designed pathways can help students from lower-income families not just reach higher education but succeed in it.
Looking ahead
Skills disparities are not written into our DNA; they’re the result of policy decisions. It is up to policymakers to build systems that recognise and reward talent wherever it’s found. In a world that prizes adaptability, creativity, and collaboration, the real question is not whether we can afford to invest in skills – it’s whether we can afford not to. The societies that close learning gaps will be the ones that unlock innovation, drive inclusion, and fuel sustainable growth.
