For companies offering training, mathematical competency ranks high among expected prerequisites of trainability together with other basic competencies and working attitudes, and it also represents an important criterion when selecting candidates (van Buer and Fehring 2013).
Until now, less was known about the development of mathematical skills for those individuals who could not find a training place and who had left general school with low basic competencies, e.g., in mathematics.
In other words, both groups were homogeneous with respect to their basic competencies (Fig. 4).
In addition, learners with higher prior knowledge, basic competencies and general cognitive abilities typically score better (Lehmann and Seeber 2007; Schumann and Eberle 2014; Seeber et al. 2015; Spoden et al. 2015; Winther 2010).
Employer surveys, moreover, show that graduates lack basic competencies that a liberal arts education provides.
While each institution has developed its own curriculum, the basic competencies each seeks to impart are the same.
The approach, which runs under the multi-pronged Intel Learn programme, focuses on basic competencies, such as word processing, graphics, the internet and multimedia.
With the results we hope to be able to answer the following research questions: Firstly, how closely are adult basic competencies related to educational attainment across countries?
We treated 'unspecified' and missing orientation as non-vocational, i.e. merged it with the general category, based on the theoretical argument that vocational programs will put less emphasis on the development of basic competencies.
Are the competencies of individuals who have achieved 'comparable' levels of education also comparable, adjusting for factors related to the acquisition of formal education and basic competencies?
