A European Assessment of Territorial Divides in Underachievement

Addressing poor learning outcomes and accompanying underachievement became a policy priority on the European Union (EU) agenda in the 2000s. This followed the launch of the Lisbon Strategy[1] and occurred alongside the publication of the results of international large-scale assessment studies. Indeed, within academic and policy debates on learning outcomes and educational achievement, it has been noted that the shift from educational input to educational outcomes has been coupled with a proliferation of survey instruments designed to make such international assessments. This chapter sets out to explore learning outcomes by providing a quantitative and comparative assessment of educational (under)achievement of young people in Europe. We consider data from the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and the EU Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS). Although these surveys have a different focus and design, they can provide complementary information to shed light on underachievement in Europe. PIAAC is a cross-sectional, international, large-scale assessment survey aimed at assessing and comparing adult competencies in literacy and numeracy skills as well as problem-solving competence in technology-rich environments. It provides detailed information on the relationship between achievement and a range of sociodemographic characteristics. The EU-LFS is a cross-sectional, longitudinal household sample survey providing quarterly data on labour participation in European countries. In contrast to PIAAC, it allows one to systematically consider differences among sub-national territories, like regions or cities. Accordingly, we seek to explore poor learning outcomes and the consequent underachievement by looking at competence distribution and spatial variation. We pose the following questions: How do young people’s learning outcomes and, thus, underachievement differ in terms of competencies? How does underachievement vary across countries and territories, and how is it shaped over time?