Driving the skills agenda: Preparing students for the future

Driving the skills agenda: Preparing students for the future is an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report, sponsored by Google. It investigates the extent to which the skills taught in education systems around the world are changing, and whether they meet the needs of employers and society more widely. To shed light on these issues, The EIU convened an advisory board meeting of education experts and conducted four global surveys of senior business executives, teachers and two groups of students, aged 11 to 17 and 18 to 25. Countries represented in the sample include Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, Ghana, India, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, the UAE, the UK and the US. Respondents to the business survey hail from 19 sectors, with professional services, manufacturing, IT, financial services and technology especially prominent in the sample.