A study showing that UK university degrees sometimes fail to give people better skills than school-leavers in other countries will provide an ¡°inspiring source for future analysis¡±, according to a senior figure at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Andreas Schleicher, the OECD¡¯s deputy director for education and skills, spoke at a press briefing on the organisation¡¯s first survey of adult skills.

The audit tested the literacy, numeracy, problem-solving and other key skills of more than 150,000 people aged 16 to 65 across 24 countries.

The study - which includes measurements of the skills of university graduates in different nations - follows in the footsteps of the OECD¡¯s Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), which measures the performance of school pupils.

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Known as the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (Piaac), the new OECD survey could ¡°maybe one day become something like a Pisa for adults¡±, Mr Schleicher told reporters in London on 7 October.

England and Northern Ireland (referred to as the UK in the study) fare poorly, ranking 13th in literacy and 16th in numeracy, while Japan comes top in both.

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However, the UK scores much better on criteria measuring whether people use their skills at work - suggesting that it is able to extract maximum value from a limited skills base.

Degree comparability questioned

In comments that may worry some universities, Mr Schleicher said that the Piaac shows that ¡°more education doesn¡¯t automatically translate into better skills, better jobs, better lives¡±.

He highlighted one of his presentation slides, which he said showed that Japanese school-leavers do as well as UK university graduates in terms of literacy and numeracy.

He said that such results would be ¡°a very inspiring source for future analysis¡±, showing that having a university degree is one thing, ¡°but what¡¯s really important is where you got it and how you got it¡±.

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Japanese and Dutch 25-34-year-old high school graduates ¡°easily outperform Italian or Spanish university graduates of the same age¡±, the report says.

¡°Skills and qualifications are two different things. We¡¯ve got to put more emphasis on the skills people actually have,¡± Mr Schleicher added.

Asked by Times ÖйúAƬ to expand on his comments, he said that until now there had been an assumption that if someone held a qualification such as a PhD, then they had achieved a certain skills level no matter where they had earned their degree.

¡°But actually what we now can see is that the value of that degree, in terms of literacy and number skills at least, varies a lot across countries,¡± Mr Schleicher said.

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He added: ¡°A lot of universities will say [they are] not teaching literacy and numeracy skills: [they are] teaching a lot of other very specific skills that we haven¡¯t measured. That¡¯s true.

¡°But at the same time you would expect¡­a correlation between your generic capacity to manage, access and integrate information and those kind of specific skills.¡±

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john.morgan@tsleducation.com