Contrast to education poverty and competence development: a transnational analysis within the OECD countries

Abstract

This paper analyses the main dynamics of educational poverty in the OECD countries, considering the role of education for the construction of socio-cultural and professional opportunities as well as the presence of some inequalities existing in various types of adults.

Thus, the first part proceeds to the characterisation of the world education access enlargement which occurred from the second half of the Twentieth century to today, identifing, at the same time, different factors of educational inequalities associated with regional and national policies, age and gender.

The second part, considering the results of OECD-IALS, ALL and PIAAC surveys on adult competence assessment, highlights the capacity of the education systems to develop high levels of proficiency in literacy and numeracy to use in different contexts according to the age of participants, gender, educational attainment, country of birth, etc.

Finally, some relationships between socal inequality, educational poverty and education system actions are focused, analysing the data of the latest surveys on adult education and learning carried out by OECD and UNESCO.