Patrick Werquin

Patrick Werquin is currently the Senior Economist in the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Directorate for Education, in Paris (effective 1st January 2009). Before joining CERI, he worked for 10 years in the Education and Training Policy Division at the OECD’s Directorate for Education. He has a Ph.D. in Economics and has taught Economics and Econometrics at the Université de la Méditerranée (Aix-en-Provence and Marseilles, 1986-98) and at l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS, 1986-1998). He is teaching Education at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and supervises PhD students in Morocco and Canada.

From 1992 to February 1999, Patrick Werquin was a researcher at the French Centre for Research on Education, Training and Employment (Centre d’études et de recherches sur les qualifications) of the French Ministries of Labour and Education. He has published papers and edited books on issues such as the transition from school to working life, including public intervention in the youth labour market, poverty, wage and unemployment. He was chairman of the European Research Network on Transition in Youth (TIY) from 1998 to 2001 and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal Économie et Prévision, Paris.

At the OECD, Patrick Werquin is working on the role of national qualifications systems in promoting lifelong learning, adult learning, low skilled individuals/workers, adult literacy, new competencies and assessment of adult skills, school to work transition as well as recognition of non-formal and informal learning, credit transfer, qualifications frameworks and statistical indicators for education and the labour market. He is the OECD contact person for the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) and the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL). He is involved in the preparation of the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) survey.

Werquin has contributed to the following OECD publications: the third Literacy in the Information Age (IALS) report (2000); the 2001 Education Policy Analysis (prepared for the meeting of the Education Committee at the ministerial level); the two reports of the Thematic Review of Adult Learning (Beyond Rhetoric: Adult Learning Policies and Practices, 2003; Promoting Adult Learning, 2005); the first ALL report (Learning a Living, 2005); and the International Synthesis report of the Activity on the Role of National Qualifications Systems in Promoting Lifelong Learning (Qualifications Systems: Bridges to Lifelong Learning, 2007). He is the author of the forthcoming OECD publication, Recognition of non-formal and informal learning: Islands of Good Practice (2009).

Through CERI, he is currently working on statistical indicators for education and the labour market (INES Networks) and more specifically, on adult learning and school-to-work transition. Her is also involved in the publication Education at a Glance. Werquin is working on human capital and business climate in Mediterranean MENA countries.

(see more about Patrick Werquin on the OECD website)