Summary of the main findings and policy implications arising from the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation on Systemic Innovation in Vocational Education and Training.

1. Systemic Innovation in
Vocational Education and
Training
Francesc Pedró
14 October 2009
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)

3. What counts as innovation?
• Innovation?
“the implementation of a new or significantly improved
product (good or service), or process, a new
marketing method, or a new organisational method
in business practices, workplace organisation or
external relations” (Oslo Manual, OECD/Eurostat)
• Innovation in education?
Change that adds value:
performance, process or perceived satisfaction
• Systemic Innovation?
How a system manages innovation holistically:
Inspires, funds, monitors, assesses, and scales it up

4. Innovation is always relative
• To context
• To stakeholder

5. Overview
• Objectives
– Investigate how systems go about innovation in VET
– Processes and stakeholders relationships
– KM perspective
• Methodology
– Desk research, questionnaire plus 14 case studies
• Countries
– Australia, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Mexico, and
Switzerland
• Outputs
– Country reports: www.oecd.org/edu/systemicinnovation/vet
– Full report: Working Out Change

6. Main Findings
• Drivers
• Pumps
• Enablers/Barriers
• Specific barriers in VET
• Conclusions/policy implications

7. Drivers
• Economic
– Development of new skills
– Efficiency
• Social
– Equity
– Inclusion
• Political
• Technological

8. Pumps
• Vision
• Networks
• Technology

9. The emergence of an innovative
education industry?
Growth of patent applications: Worldwide new education technologies (1990-2006)
Education technologies by year - Main Countries Japan, 2006,
(MA(3) - Patent Families only) 358.6666667
USA, 2003, 274.6666667
EU27, 2006,
177.3333333
China, 2006, 43
Korea, 2002,
36.33333333
USA Japan EU27 Korea China

10. Pumps
• Vision
• Networks
• Technology
• Research

11. Educational research and development
Total expenditure as % of GDP Share of total public research
(country average in recent years) expenditures (2008) on
9 9
8 8
7 7
6 6
5 5
4 4
3 3
2 2
1 1
0 0
Education Health Education Health

12. Enablers / Barriers
• Leadership
• Consensus building
• Research evidence
• Brokerage: generation and dissemination
of knowledge

13. Specific barriers
• Competing policy agendas
• Accountability mechanisms and public
policy agendas:
– Restricted risk management
– Short-term planning
• Innovation fatigue

14. Conclusions Policy implications
 Systemic innovation as  SI VET as guiding
useful analytical principle for innovation
framework policy
– Targeted strategy to
induce system-wide
change
 Establish a formalised
 Need for formalised knowledge base
knowledge base
– Monitoring and evaluation
– Losing innovation
opportunities – Support link between systems
research and innovation
– Evidence-informed dialogue
with stakeholders

15. Who counts in innovation?

16. Thank you!
More information:
www.oecd.org/edu/systemicinnovation
Francesc.PEDRO@OECD.org