Oecd covid survey eag indd

Participation in adult learning decreased during the first wave of the 
COVID-19 pandemic
A recent OECD brief shows that, under a certain 
number of assumptions, COVID-19 induced 
shutdowns of economic activities decreased workers’ 
participation in non-formal learning by an average 
of 18%, and in informal learning by 25%. Before the 
pandemic, workers across OECD countries spent on 
average 4.9 hours per week on informal learning 
and 0.7 hours on non-formal learning. According to 
estimates, during the pandemic, it dropped to 3.7 
hours for informal learning and 0.6 hours per week for 
non formal learning. This represents a notable amount 
of lost learning, which may not be easily recovered 
(OECD, 2021
[27]
). 
Data from the EU Labour Force Survey for European 
countries and from the Continuous Employment Survey 
for Costa Rica show a similar pattern by examining 
how the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has 
affected participation in adult learning (formal and/or 
non-formal education and training). Figure 13 shows 
that relative to the same quarter in 2019, the number of 
adults reporting they participated in formal
and/or non-formal education and training in the 
month prior to the survey decreased significantly in the 
second quarter of 2020. This is particularly evident in 
Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, 
Latvia, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and 
Switzerland, where the number of adults participating 
in formal and/or non-formal education and training 
decreased by 30% or more between the second 
quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2020, 
for both women and men (i.e. during the peak of the 
first wave of COVID-19 in Europe). Greece seems to 
be an outlier, at least when considering male adults. 
However, it is worth highlighting that participation rates 
in formal and/or non-formal education and training 
are rather low in Greece. In this case, small variations 
of the participation rates over time may have a large 
impact on the relative change over the same period 
(Figure 13). 
The results presented in Figure 13 have at least two 
important limitations. First, as observed in the European 
Union’s 
Education and Training Monitor 2018
,
the way participation in adult learning is measured 
in the EU Labour Force Survey is rather restrictive, 
as it measures the “share of population who report 
having participated in formal and/or non-formal 
learning activities during the 4 weeks prior to being 
interviewed”. This is problematic in the context of adult 
learning, which is a sporadic activity, often taken 
up once or at most twice a year for a short duration 
(European Commission, 2018
[28]
).
Second, this section reports only some preliminary 
analyses on the impact of COVID-19 on participation 
in adult learning during the first wave of the pandemic 
and they must be interpreted with care. Further 
analyses, covering a wider range of quarters, are 
needed. In fact, third and fourth quarter data suggest 
that participation rates increased again considerably 
in Latvia and Switzerland, for example. Most likely, 
the steep drop in participation observed between the 
second quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 
2020 is a consequence of the widespread lockdown 
restrictions implemented during the first wave of the 
pandemic. During this period, non-formal education 
providers needed some time to adapt to the provision 
of online-only courses.

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38
© OECD 2021
The State of Global Education: 18 Months into the Pandemic
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EU - Labour Force Survey (LFS)
Figure 13•
Relative change of participation in formal and/or non-formal education and training, by gender 
(second quarter of 2020 compared to second quarter of 2019)