This book represents a systematic review of the documented impacts of programs aimed at fostering socio-emotional skills in developed and developing countries. It uses a life-cycle approach to organize the findings from rigorous evaluations of more than 80 programs. This includes programs for toddlers and young children before primary school, programs for students enrolled in formal education, and programs targeted at the out-of-school population. The book develops a conceptual framework that helps to identify the program characteristics and participants’ profiles associated with a range of program outcomes. These include health-related, behavioral, academic or cognitive, and economic-related outcomes. The review finds that few of the programs studied focus exclusively on the development of socio-emotional skills. In fact, most efforts to develop socio-emotional skills are embedded within innovative education and training curricula, as well as pedagogical and classroom practices. Evidence shows that programs are particularly effective when targeted to highly vulnerable populations and, in particular, to young children. Overall, findings indicate that high-quality programs for young children tend to foster cognitive abilities in the short run and to impact socio-emotional skills over the long run. Programs for students enrolled in formal education (primary and secondary levels) show positive and significant impacts on the outcomes reviewed. The most successful of these programs are implemented school-wide and follow the SAFE approach: that is, they are appropriately sequenced, active, focused, and explicit. Finally, the review finds that programs for out-of-school children and youth are usually designed as a means of achieving immediate labor market outcomes (e.g., job-placement, formal employment, and higher wages). While some of these programs show positive and statistically significant impacts on socio-emotional skills, the impacts tend to be small.

This open access volume critically reviews a diverse body of scholarship and practice that informs the conceptualization, curriculum, teaching and measurement of life skills in education settings around the world. It discusses life skills as they are implemented in schools and non-formal education, providing both qualitative and quantitative evidence of when, with whom, and how life skills do or do not impact young women’s and men’s lives in various contexts. Specifically, it examines the nature and importance of life skills, and how they are taught. It looks at the synergies and differences between life skills educational programmes and the way in which they promote social and emotional learning, vocational/employment education, and health and sexuality education. Finally, it explores how life skills may be better incorporated into education and how such education can address structures and relations of power to help youth achieve desired future outcomes, and goals set out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Life skills education has gained considerable attention by education policymakers, researchers and educators as being the sine qua non for later achievements in life. It is nearly ubiquitous in global and national education policies, including the SDGs, because life skills are regarded as essential for a diverse set of purposes: reducing poverty, achieving gender equality, promoting economic growth, addressing climate change, fostering peace and global citizenship, and creating sustainable and healthy communities. Yet, to achieve these broad goals, questions persist as to which life skills are important, who needs to learn them, how they can be taught, and how they are best measured. This book addresses these questions.

While the Philippines has achieved remarkable progress in raising the education level of its labor force, the standard proxy for educational attainment—years of formal schooling—is increasingly inadequate as a measure of workforce skills. About one-third of employers report being unable to fill vacancies due to lack of applicants with the requisite skills. Most of these “missing skills†? are socioemotional skills,†? also known as “non-cognitive skills†?, “soft skills†? or “behavioral skills.†? Emerging international evidence suggests that socioemotional skills are increasingly crucial to the types of jobs being created by the global economy. The following study presents new evidence from employer and household surveys on the role of socioemotional skills in the Philippine labor market. The analysis reveals that: • Two-thirds of employers report difficulty in finding workers with adequate work ethics or appropriate interpersonal and communications skills. Firm-based training increasingly focuses on socioemotional skills. • The more educated and employed workers tend to score higher on measures of grit, decision-making, agreeableness, and extroversion. • Socioemotional skills are associated with an increase in average daily earnings, in particular for women, young workers, less-educated workers, and those employed in the service sector. • Higher levels of socioemotional skills are also correlated with a greater probability of being employed, having completed secondary education, and pursuing tertiary education. Studies suggest that primary school is the optimal age for shaping socioemotional skills, but the Philippines’ elementary education curriculum devotes limited resources to their development. Schools continue to be judged solely by students’ performance in cognitive achievement tests, but not on soft-skills competencies, and teachers are not appropriately trained to foster the development of them. Finally, interventions targeting workers entering the labor force can also effectively bolster their socioemotional skills, complementing effects to improve labor-market information and vocational counseling.

Every year, the World Bank’s World Development Report (WDR) features a topic of central importance to global development. The 2018 WDR—LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise—is the first ever devoted entirely to education. And the time is right: education has long been critical to human welfare, but it is even more so in a time of rapid economic and social change. The best way to equip children and youth for the future is to make their learning the center of all efforts to promote education. The 2018 WDR explores four main themes: First, education’s promise: education is a powerful instrument for eradicating poverty and promoting shared prosperity, but fulfilling its potential requires better policies—both within and outside the education system. Second, the need to shine a light on learning: despite gains in access to education, recent learning assessments reveal that many young people around the world, especially those who are poor or marginalized, are leaving school unequipped with even the foundational skills they need for life. At the same time, internationally comparable learning assessments show that skills in many middle-income countries lag far behind what those countries aspire to. And too often these shortcomings are hidden—so as a first step to tackling this learning crisis, it is essential to shine a light on it by assessing student learning better. Third, how to make schools work for all learners: research on areas such as brain science, pedagogical innovations, and school management has identified interventions that promote learning by ensuring that learners are prepared, teachers are both skilled and motivated, and other inputs support the teacher-learner relationship. Fourth, how to make systems work for learning: achieving learning throughout an education system requires more than just scaling up effective interventions. Countries must also overcome technical and political barriers by deploying salient metrics for mobilizing actors and tracking progress, building coalitions for learning, and taking an adaptive approach to reform.

Chaque annee, le Rapport sur le developpement dans le monde de la Banque mondiale met en vedette un sujet d'importance capitale pour le developpement mondial. Le Rapport sur le developpement dans le monde 2018 - APPRENDRE pour realiser la promesse de l'education - est le premier consacre integralement a l'education. Et le moment s'y prete particulierement : l'education a toujours ete essentielle au bien-etre de l'etre humain, mais elle l'est plus encore en cette periode de rapides mutations economiques et sociales. Le meilleur moyen de preparer les enfants et les jeunes a l'avenir est de placer l'apprentissage au centre de toutes les interventions de promotion de l'education. Le Rapport sur le developpement dans le monde 2018 aborde quatre themes majeurs :La promesse de l'education. L'education est un levier important pour eradiquer la pauvrete et promouvoir une prosperite partagee. Mais pour qu'elle puisse realiser ce potentiel, il faut ameliorer les politiques - a l'interieur comme en dehors du systeme educatif.La necessite de mettre l'apprentissage en lumiere. En depit des progres accomplis en matiere d'acces a l'education, les recentes evaluations des acquis scolaires revelent que de nombreux jeunes a travers le monde, particulierement ceux qui sont issus des couches pauvres ou marginalisees de la population, quittent l'ecole sans avoir acquis ne seraient-ce que les competences necessaires a la vie. En meme temps, des evaluationsscolaires comparables sur le plan international montrent que les competences disponibles dans de nombreux pays a revenu intermediaire sont nettement inferieures a ce que ces pays ambitionnent. Et trop souvent, ces lacunes sont cachees - par consequent, pour faire face a la crise de l'apprentissage, il est crucial de commencer par la mettre en lumiere en ameliorant l'evaluation des acquis des eleves.Comment mettre l'ecole au service de l'ensemble des apprenants ? Les travaux de recherche sur le cerveau, l'innovation pedagogique et la gestion des etablissements scolaires, entre autres, ont identifie des interventions qui favorisent l'apprentissage en faisant en sorte que les apprenants soient mieux prepares, que les enseignants soient a la fois competents et motives, et que d'autres moyens soient mis en oeuvre pour soutenir larelation entre l'enseignant et l'apprenant.Comment faire en sorte que le systeme favorise l'apprentissage ? Pour realiser les objectifs d'apprentissage a travers le systeme educatif dans son ensemble, il ne suffit pas de transposer a plus grande echelle les interventions efficaces. Les pays doivent aussi surmonter des obstacles techniques et politiques en ayant recours a des outils de mesure et indicateurs suffisamment parlants pour mobiliser les acteurs concernes etsuivre les progres, en formant des coalitions au service de l'apprentissage et en adoptant une approche de reforme evolutive.

This publication addresses the pressing issues of vocational teacher education (VTE), focusing on institutional, organizational and governance aspects. Firstly, it summarizes the results of the four-year Erasmus+ capacity-building project "New Mechanisms of Partnership-based Governance and Standardization of Vocational Teacher Education in Ukraine" (PAGOSTE), funded by the European Education and Culture Executive Agency. The project's focus has been governance in VTE in Ukraine. Secondly, it goes beyond the narrow project context and explores challenges as well as good practices in VTE systems of other countries in and outside of Europe. Therefore, contributions from England, New Zealand, Australia, Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland complement the Ukrainian context and provide readers with a more comprehensive understanding of VTE systems.