In advance of both the diagnostic and good practice workshops, the OECD asked participants to complete an online survey. The reasons for these surveys were twofold: first, output of the surveys would help to steer discussions in the workshops by providing insights into the level of support for possible recommendations (in the first workshop) and a prioritisation of the generic recommendations from the first workshop (in the second workshop); second, it gave participants the opportunity to provide additional information on the various topics. This annex describes the main outcomes of these surveys.
OECD Skills Strategy Flanders
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Annex B. Pre-workshop surveys outcomes
Participants
A total of 39 participants completed the survey for the diagnostic workshop, and 26 participants completed the survey for the good practice workshop. In both surveys, participants were predominantly from the government and sectoral training providers; as well as stakeholders such as employers, unions and education institutions. Advisors were unrepresented. Participants had, on average, many years of experience in the field: a large majority worked for more than 10 years in the same sector. Different age groups had relatively equal representation.
Prioritisation of priority areas
While the following ranking should not be considered an absolute measure of relevance of priorities, it does indicate the relative “popularity” of the priority areas in the two workshops. Participants were asked to rank the priorities based on how much they feel they could contribute to them, and to indicate which one they considered most important to discuss. In the first workshop, “using skills” and “learning culture” were selected most often as the highest rank, whereas in the second workshop, participants had a preference for “learning culture” and “governance” (Figure B.1). For the first workshop, a relatively large number of participants indicated that they could not contribute to the priority “finance”, and in the second workshop only a small number gave it a high rank.
Figure B.1. Rank of priority areas in both workshops
Support for recommendations
In the pre-workshop survey for the diagnostic workshop, recommendations from various other OECD Skills Strategy reports were presented and participants were asked to indicate how relevant these recommendations were for the specific challenges in Flanders, with 1 being “this is not relevant for Flanders” and 5 being “this is needed in Flanders”. The intention was to display differences in positions between different stakeholders, and although some patterns were visible, the limited number of respondents made outcomes restricted for this analysis. In the pre-workshop survey for the good practice workshop, participants were asked to prioritise the generic recommendations from the first workshop. In this section, the outcomes of these questions are presented for the five priority areas.
Developing a learning culture
As shown in panel A in Figure B.2, the recommendations presented to participants in the diagnostic workshop received strong support overall – average scores for relevance in Flanders are high. The most strongly supported recommendations were to “foster a learning culture from early on in education” and “raising awareness of adult learning”. These topics are also reflected in the generic recommendations developed in the diagnostic workshop and described in panel B of Figure B.2. In advance of the good practice workshop, participants gave the recommendations “make learning more attractive” the highest rank overall. The recommendation “flexible, tailor-made, and/or dual learning pathways” ended up in the higher ranks of many respondents, while support for the other three generic recommendation was more equally spread.
Figure B.2. Support for recommendations related to developing a learning culture
Reducing skills imbalances
For reducing skills imbalances, the overall support was strong for the recommendations shown to participants in advance of the diagnostic workshop. According to respondents, “making curriculum flexible to adapt to changing needs” was especially relevant for Flanders. For the generic recommendations that came out of the diagnostic workshop, there was more variation in outcomes by respondents. The recommendations “make companies more familiar with systems for validation of prior learning (VPL)” and “removing barriers to mobility” had a relatively low priority, while “improving the visibility of skills” and “expanding work-based learning” had a relatively high priority.
Figure B.3. Support for recommendations related to reducing skills imbalances
Strengthening skills use in workplaces
There was more variation in the support for different recommendations for skills use than in the other priority areas, as shown in panel A in Figure B.4 below. “Promoting greater competition to reward companies with high productivity” received little support, while other recommendations that focus on “social dialogue about human resource (HR) management practices” and “supporting high-performing work practices in start-ups” received more support. Two generic recommendations were developed in the diagnostic workshop that had the same priority.
Figure B.4. Support for recommendations related to strengthening skills use
Strengthening the governance of adult education
Not all recommendations related to strengthening the governance of adult education proposed before the diagnostic workshop were relevant. For example, setting up a “body dedicated to collaboration between government and stakeholders” is relatively irrelevant for Flanders according to respondents, in contrast with strong support for “having clear and shared adult learning goals and targets”. The generic recommendation with the highest priority, according to respondents, is to “build trust between institutions of work and education”.
Figure B.5. Support for recommendations related to governance of adult education
Improving the financing of adult education
For financing, most recommendations proposed to participants before the diagnostic workshop were considered relevant, especially “involving social partners in the design and implementation of financial mechanisms”. For the generic recommendations developed in the diagnostic workshop, the “repackaging of existing financial incentives” and “using financial leverage to make training more flexible” had the highest priority, according to respondents.