Changes in labor markets have changed theskill demands of many jobs.Work environments now may often betechnology rich.Problems are frequently ill-defined andpeople work in teams.Often, multi-disciplinary teams to dealwith them.We're moving away from narrow occupationaltitle definitions toward identifyingourselves as possessingparticular skills, and those skills may berequired across a variety of occupationalactivities.The job person or person environment fitapproach thatwas first well described by Frank Parsonsin early 1900'sstill to a large degree has sway, but thefocus now is more explicitly on theskills and characteristics that an individualbrings to thework, rather than on the occupationaltitle or label.If we focus on the desired outcomes ofparticular work roles andthe environment in which these are playedout, we see very readilythat the implementation of our skillsdepends on our 21st century context,its people and its technologies.It's not sufficient to learn academic,technical or vocational skillsthat assume that all resources andtechnologies are known and constant.We're living in a dynamic and atechnologically complex world, whereit's not possible for any one person tomanage complex tasks alone.Historically, education has respondedtoand has underpinned different types ofsocieties.In the developed nations, the expansion ofeducation has been stronglyassociated from the move from agrarian toindustrial to information economies.It has been fueled and has fueled the riseof wealth throughindustrialization and in the 19th centuryled to the education of the masses.Policies of mass education have typicallybeenadopted by countries as theyindustrialize.As more of the technologically advancednations shifttheir economy from industrial toinformation- based knowledge economiesa number of different systems have emerged

across the world.Agrarian area in economies still exist butin reducing numbers.Industrial economies are being replaced,but are still essential.Information-based economies are increasingand we're beginning to findcombinations of these economic foundationsin many developing countries.The shift from agrarian to industrial massproductionrequired a specific set of skills both atthelevel of the floor worker and the factorysupervisor,the shift changed the way people lived andworked.It changed the way the people thought andthe kinds of tools they used for work.The new skills and ways of thinking,living, and working,once recognized, demanded new forms ofeducation systems to provide them.Similarly as the products and thetechnology todevelop them become more digitized anotherset ofmanagement and production skills willfocus on increaseddigital literacy and numeracy and new waysof thinking.These increasingly will be identified asessential.And pressure on education systems to teachthese new skills will intensify.Our lives are already being altered as aresultof the shift from industrial toinformation-based economy.The ways we work are changing.The ways we think are shifting and thetools we use in our employment arealmost unrecognizable in comparison tothose that existed 50 years ago.We can anticipate even more of a shift inanother 20 plus years.As global economies move to the trade andinformation and communication,the demands for teaching new skills willrequire an educational transformationof a similar dimension to that whichaccompaniedthe shift from an agrarian to anindustrial era.Children who start school today will leaveschool or university, and enter adramatically different society to thatwhichexists at the beginning of theireducation.

Somehow, their education needs to evolvewith themand the society they are being preparedfor.We are preparing many students for jobsthat don't yet exist.With the emergence of a technology-basedinformationage the role of information in society haschanged.and with it the structure of the workforce.Skilled labor is still very important, buta new set of occupations has emerged.Many occupations that depended upon thedirectives of labor have disappeared.New occupations that depend uponinformation skills have been created.Just as in an industrial economy dependedon occupations that produced, distributedand consumed products.An information age and a knowledge economydemand occupations thatare based on the production, distributionand consumption of information.Education faces a new challenge, toprovide the populacewith information skills needed in aninformation society.Education systems must adjust, emphasizinginformation and technological skillsrather than or in addition to productionbased ones.Those without the skills to act asinformation producers, distributors and orconsumers, will be disadvantaged,even if they're related commodity skillsare still in demand.Access to management and advisory roleshas become dependent on informationskills.The ability to learn, collaborate andsolve problemsin a digital informationenvironment has become crucial.A study by Autor, Levy and Murnaneillustrated substantial shifts in thestructure of thework force in the United States from 1960throughto this century they showed how non-routinecognitive task needs were steadilyincreasing both at an individualand a group level while rule basedactivities were in the decline.Presumably as more computerization tookover automated tasks.Note the decline in non-routine manualtask input here, however,because we find a really interesting

movement in this overthe next decade, the first decade in the21st century.More recent studies such as that byJaimovich and Siuhave both supported and clarified thistrend.As we see the need for non-routine tasksstill increasingboth in the cognitive and the manualdomains.Similarly, we see, at a global level, thesame trajectoryin the increase in demand for non-rulebased activity.As can be seen from these globalemployment trends, from the InternationalLabor Organizationwhat these studies have in common istheir depiction of increase in demand fornon-routineactivity, although that early work ofAutor andcolleagues showed increasing demand forcognitive over manual.We see with these latest studies and at aglobal level it's the non-rule basedactivity which overpowers the distinctionbetween the cognitive and the manual.While the nature of education and it'srole are changing there hasalso been a need to re-think the wayeducation is measured and monitored.The Organization for Economic Cooperationand Development, theOECD, has led the way in this regard.It now examines educational yield in termsof the skills that thestudents acquire, rather than the numberof years of formal education completed.It does this through it's Programmeof International Student Assessment, thePISA project.It has it done it through it'sinternational adult literacy surveys andis planningto do it through a new programfor the international assessment of adultcompetencies.And it plans an assessment of highereducation learning outcomes as well.In 2015, it plans to change the formatof student assessment to includecollaborative problem solving.The changes that Patrick has describedalso highlight how the meaningof capital has changed in the current ageof information and knowledge economies.Power and influence in the industrial agerested on the control of capital.

This provided a straight forward method ofcalculating the valueof a company, country, or a social unit,using physical assets.Now, in an information agehuman capital is regarded as a means ofestimating value.This is due to the perception that capitalconsists ofassets yielding income and other usefuloutputs over extended periods.According to this view, expenditure oneducationand health represent investment in humancapitalbecause they raise earnings, improvehealth, andadd to a person's quality of life.Investment in education pays dividendsbecause it generates productivity gains.Initially human capital was measured interms of years of formal educationcompleted because there were no comparablemetrics of the quality of educationaloutcomes.Now the OECD's international measures,like many governments, monitorfactors such as literacy and numeracy asmeasures of human capital.That original measure of human capital,formal education completed hasbeen replaced by an individuals level ofliteracy and their capacity toaccess, process, evaluate and useinformation and to solve problems.Changing education systems andcurriculum to meet thedemands of an information and knowledgeeconomy is not enough.Workers also learn and are trained on thejobregardless of the prerequisite level ofeducation or skills requiredfor any specific employment.Workers are typically not fully job readyat the endof their formal education, whether it beschool or university.Workers often receive additional trainingto be able to perform their jobsvia formal and informal training programswhenthey are already part of the workforce.Learning has become a lifelong process.In a knowledge economy, this is an effectin the shift ofthe way we learn, the way we think, theway we work.Increased emphasis on technology in thehome and

the workplace accelerates the need forthese new skills.According to the Nobel Prize winner GaryBeckerwho won the prize in 1993, newtechnologicaladvancements are of little value incountries whohave few skilled workers who can use them.Economic growth depends upon the synergybetween new knowledge and human capital.Therefore, countries that have achievedsubstantial economicgrowth are those in which large increasesin the provision of education and traininghave been accompanied by advances inknowledge.The information-based role of educationand in developing the21st century skills, in an information orknowledge economyhas become indisputable.