Helsinki [Finland],October 4: The educational level of Finnish young people of working age has fallen below the average of other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, according to a policy analysis published on Monday by the Ministry of Education and Culture.
During the last two decades, the share of highly-educated 25-34 year-olds in the whole OECD area rose from 27 percent to 48 percent. However, in Finland this figure remained relatively unchanged, rising from 39 percent to 40 percent.
In the early 2000s, Finland was among the countries with the highest share of highly-educated young people. However, in 2021, the international education level comparison was based on the renewed labor force survey for the first time, the Ministry said, and although it is now more reliable, a long-term trend of increasing numbers of responses to the Finnish labor force survey has led to an overestimation of educational levels in the country.
In the larger 25-64 group, the trend in Finland has been the same but slower. In 2011, the share of highly-educated people in this age group in Finland was 39.3 percent, while in the whole OECD this figure stood at 31.5 percent. Meanwhile, in 2021 the Finnish level was 42.3 percent, only slightly above the OECD average of 41.1 percent.
"Finland has thus moved from the top quarter of the OECD countries to the middle group of countries," the Ministry said.
According to its analysis, the employment rate of those with higher education was, on average, about ten percentage points higher than that of those who had only completed secondary education. This applied in Finland as well as in other OECD countries.
Source: Xinhua