Andreas Schleicher

For more than twenty years, German statistician and researcher Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), has worked with education leaders worldwide to improve adult education. Among other achievements at OECD, he developed and manages the Program for International Student Assessment to create a platform where policymakers, researchers, and educators can come together across nations to innovate and transform educational policies and practices. Schleicher’s extensive publications, including the biennial OECD Skills Outlook, have made notable contributions to the field. The data he developed through OECD and UNESCO on adult learning provide some of the most authoritative and influential sources for research on lifelong learning and its impact on economic, social, and civic outcomes.

Particularly important, Schleicher led the development and implementation of the OECD Survey of Adult Skills, which assesses key skills in the adult workforce, measures their impact on individual and aggregate social and economic outcomes, and explores how to develop and deploy these skills most productively. With data from more than forty countries, the survey has transformed the understanding of how adult skills are developed and how they atrophy when not used. Governments, institutions, and NGOs in numerous countries have been influenced by this work.

Building on the survey’s findings, Schleicher spearheaded the development of the OECD and G20 Skills Strategies, which enabled governments to devise broad approaches to developing relevant skills over the life course, fostering greater participation in lifelong learning, strengthening the governance of skills systems, and leveraging skills to drive innovation and social and civic outcomes. These Skills Strategies have brought governmental and civil society stakeholders together to address and adjust national adult learning policies in numerous countries. The strategies have shaped national systems for skills recognition that go beyond an emphasis on pursuing formal degrees and qualifications to support learning through micro credentials and related mechanisms. Schleicher indelibly changed the field of adult education in shifting the focus from earning degrees and qualifications to attaining skills.

By shedding light on the impact of adult skills on the economic and social success of individuals, Schleicher has brought adult education to the center of policy attention and raised the visibility of related policy issues in the public debate. The metrics on adult skills he has published have been widely covered not only in the literature but also in the media, helping to create a sense of urgency for policy action and generating greater ownership among adult learners on what to learn, how to learn, where to learn, and when in their lives to learn.

Before joining OECD, Schleicher served as director for analysis at the International Association for Educational Achievement. He joined the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences as an international fellow in 2020. Schleicher is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Theodor Heuss prize, awarded in the name of the first president of the Federal Republic of Germany for exemplary democratic engagement. He holds an honorary professorship at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.