How can knowledge transfer and education meet the challenges of rapid technological and demographic change? This is the focus of “EduTrack: Tracking Education Pathways and Social Policies”, a six-year, inter-disciplinary collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), the Max Planck Institute for Political and Social Science (MPIPS), led by Population Europe. The Project is funded by the Max Planck Society. (Press release)
Education plays a significant role in determining people’s career opportunities, health, crisis resilience, and even their life spans. Worryingly, however, recent reports show decreasing educational outcomes across the globe, as well as persistent educational disadvantages for marginalised groups.
In Germany, for example, the past few years have seen an alarmingly low performance of 15-year-old students in reading, math, and science. On a global level, in 2022, the World Bank said that there is a “global learning crisis” in middle- and low-income countries, and estimated that 64 of every 100 children will not have learned to read by the age of 10.
Without intervention, educational disadvantages throughout people’s lives can lead to the risk of poverty at older age, to poorer health, and to social polarisation, all of which threatens democracy.
Source: Yan Krukau / pexels
Future Skills
In EduTrack, researchers from demography, history, computer science and political science are working together to advance scientific understanding into how education and knowledge-building can mitigate persisting inequalities and increase resilience in European societies and beyond. They are working on questions related to: skill development needs for the future, different strategies for knowledge management, the outcomes of diverse educational trajectories, and implications of intergenerational and cross-cultural knowledge transfers.
The project is looking at education experiences, practices, and developments in Europe and other parts of the world, particularly Africa and Asia. To understand the policy implications and to propose ways forward, the EduTrack Policy Lab, led by Population Europe, facilitates inter- and transdisciplinary exchange between researchers and a wide network of policymakers, civil society members and private sector stakeholders.