The results of the first OECD Survey of Adult Skills just confirmed a trivial fact: the more and the longer you invest in education, the better trained your population is.
Italy, Spain, France and Ireland occupy the lowest ranking positions of the survey in reading and basic numeracy. Is that surprising?
A year ago, the European Commission published a report entitled Mind the Gap — education inequality across EU regions. One map – page 82 – showed that the countries that have most suffered from the financial crisis – Italy, Spain, France and Ireland — are also the ones with the lowest percentage of adults with upper secondary education.