Educational policies for adults returning to school: international comparative analysis

Abstract

The aim of this article is to compare the educational policies implemented in different countries to encourage adults with few or no qualifications to return to school. This issue is at the heart of concerns in the post-COVID 19 period, making it necessary to propose educational recovery policies tailored to a country's socio-economic needs (Mons, 2015). Building on and optimizing human capital is therefore an absolute must for nation states. We draw on the conceptual framework of lifelong learning (LLL), which considers education to be a continuous, non-immutable process that extends beyond initial schooling and encompasses the formal, non-formal and informal dimensions of learning. We analyze data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) on adult participation rates in education and training, as well as indicators relating to access, quality, relevance and financing of continuing education provision. We will identify four types of educational policy, depending on the degree of commitment of states to LLL: incentive policies, voluntarist policies, integrated policies and strategic policies.