The 2023 edition of Education at a Glance from the OECD has recently been published with a focus on vocational and technical education. For the convenience of subscribers, a copy is attached. A quote from the editorial gives a taste of the material to be found in this valuable publication:

Vocational education and training (VET) is vital. It offers an alternative to academic education, equips learners with practiceoriented and employability skills, eases the school-to-work transition, and meets economies’ demand for skilled workers.

We are delighted to announce that Catherine Lido, Deputy Director of PASCAL in Europe, has been promoted to a chair in Psychology and Adult Learning at the University of Glasgow. This is a thoroughly deserved recognition for Catherine’s excellent contributions over the years, not least her work in the field of learning cities for PASCAL.

Everybody wants to do something. Op-Ed pieces arrive daily, written by young and old alike, people who are world-famous and people you never heard of, embracing the pandemic for the opportunity it provides to bring about radical change. I have not made a list, but I would bet that most put global climate change and social justice as the most urgent priorities, ahead of the resolution of local crises in Africa or the Middle East with the potential to cause a world war. Some of us are more concerned to prevent bad things from happening – power grabs by authoritarians would be the top of my list, followed by another round of austerity cuts to education and health  – rather than to make good things happen; perhaps I can be forgiven, being an historian.

Many are writing about what-comes-after, the post-pandemic era.  Josef Konvitz has completed a two-part essay, “Don’t Waste a Crisis”, for the French Fondation pour l’innovation politique, or FONDAPOL. This final version, which includes the first part on infrastructure and education,  focuses on cross-border risks and concludes with proposals for how Europe can reinforce its cohesion through the single market and at the same time, intervene more broadly in a globalised world.  If you think that globalisation is a bad thing, his essay suggests that regulation, European-style, uses globalisation to make the world safer. 

We are very pleased to report that the city of Pécs, Hungary, is now formally a member of PASCAL’s Learning Cities Networks (LCN). It is one of the cities that we have worked with closely over a number of years, as is evident in the profile of Pécs written by Balazs Nemeth.