OECD’s Anja Meierkord: “Foundational skills matter for democracy and social cohesion”
With a third of adults having low literacy and numeracy skills, how can we build a society of engaged people? OECD’s Anja Meierkord discusses the PIAAC results and how European countries are tackling growing skill gaps.
By Sara Pasino, ELM Magazine
When Anja Meierkord, analyst at the OECD’s Directorate for Education and Skills, first received the results of the 2023 Survey of Adults Skills (PIAAC), she could hardly believe what she was seeing.
“Instinctively, we thought there must have been a mistake, so we went back through the data to make sure it was reliable,” she tells ELM Magazine. The second check confirmed a surprising and worrying reality: foundational skills had declined in many countries over the past decade.