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The digital revolution and automation are accelerating changes in the labour market and in workplace skills, changes that are further affected by fluctuations in international and regional economic cycles and employment opportunity. These factors pose a universal policy challenge for all advanced economies and governments. In the workplace, people seek to acquire contemporary and relevant skills to gain employment and retain transferable skills to maintain employment. The central purpose of this paper is to investigate how other nations or regions are dealing with these issues. What approaches are they taking to understanding the mix and dynamics of the skills attained by individuals and, more broadly, the totality of skills that in aggregate constitute a highly capable and adaptable labour force, one that supports firm viability and greater national productivity. This research has examined a range of initiatives and approaches being developed or in use in selected countries, including the United States, Singapore and New Zealand, and agencies/organisations; for example, the European Commission and the Skills for the Information Age Foundation. In doing so, it showcases the good practices used to ensure that occupational-level skills information remains current and widely accessible. [For "Identifying Work Skills: International Case Summaries. Support Document," see ED579875.]

This working paper identifies OECD countries' interests in digital innovation in education by analysing their policy papers on digital education. Many OECD countries have adopted a specific strategy on digital education, or integrated the topic in a generic strategy on digital innovation as such. The ideas that are expressed in the strategies differ greatly; some are work in progress, others contain bold envisions of the future. There is a high awareness among OECD countries of the benefits of digitalisation, and the role of government to support digital innovation in education. This paper covers and documents countries' policy focus before the 2020 coronavirus crisis.

This paper and the four commissioned works on which it is based are guided by the important question: How can we start valuing practices and outcomes of teaching and learning that are difficult to reduce to numbers? As the process of developing indicators for the Post-2015 education targets unfolds, some of the targets are at risk of being dropped on account of being 'un-measurable.' However, excluding more holistic but harder to assess educational targets will inevitably remove vital focus from some of the most important aspects of high quality education provision. Three education targets, developed by the Education for All Steering Committee (EFA-SC) and the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development of the U.N. General Assembly (OWG), are the thematic foci of this paper: (1) Relevant Learning Outcomes; (2) Knowledge, Values, Skills, and Attitudes to Establish Sustainable and Peaceful Societies; and (3) Teachers and Safe, Inclusive, and Effective Learning Environments. These three targets are at risk of being excluded from the final formulation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in response to practical concerns about the number of targets being excessive as well as concerns that targets such as these "rely too much on vague, qualitative language rather than hard, measurable, time-bound, quantitative targets." This report also highlights some of the main ideas put forward by the authors of the four commissioned papers. The annex to this document briefly describes the commissioned papers and presents the indicators proposed by the authors. [For the commissioned papers, see "Capturing Quality, Equity & Sustainability: An Actionable Vision with Powerful Indicators for a Broad and Bold Education Agenda Post-2015" (ED610009), "Goals and Indicators for Education and Development: Consolidating the Architectures" (ED609905), "Indicators for a Broad and Bold Post-2015 Agenda: A Comprehensive Approach to Educational Development" (ED609982), and "Indicators for All? Monitoring Quality and Equity for a Broad and Bold Post-2015 Global Education Agenda" (ED609988).]

The purpose of this paper is to review recent developments related to the development of indicators of educational progress in the context of the Post 2015 deliberations to generate a new international architecture for educational investment through to 2030. There have been a plethora of suggestions and several parallel consultation processes since 2012 to revise and replace the goals for education and development agreed at the World Education Forum in Dakar (UNESCO, 2000) and enshrined in the Millennium Development Goals (United Nations, 2000). This process is now converging on the two frameworks that are the subject of this analysis. Specifically, there are now seven goals that the Education for All Steering Committee has developed which were consolidated in the May 2014 Muscat Agreement (UNESCO, 2014); and the ten goals produced by the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development of the U.N. General Assembly (UN General Assembly, 2014). These goal statements overlap and are largely consistent with each other but contain some significant differences. This paper reconciles the differences and develops sets of possible indicators building on the work of the Indicators Technical Advisory Group (TAG-EFA, 2014) and the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC, 2014). The paper is organized in six parts. Part 1 analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the existing goals and targets for education and development to frame subsequent discussion in the context of the evolution of Education for All since 1990. Part 2 offers a necessary clarification of the relationship between goals and objectives, and targets and indicators. Part 3 reviews and discusses the process of developing indicators that are fit for purpose. Part 4 highlights characteristics of different types of indicator. Part 5 develops a list of preferred goal statements from the Muscat Agreement and OWG goals, links these to a discussion of existing and proposed indicators, and consolidates promising indicators that could be used to assess progress. The last part of the paper collects together forward looking conclusions that profile key issues that will shape how new indicators are devised to monitor the sustainable development goals for education.