Education Policy Outlook 2025: nurturing lifelong learners

Source: OECD – oecd.org
Publication date: 28 November 2025
Official link: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/education-policy-outlook-2025_c3f402ba-en.html

The report presents a comparative overview of education policies in 35 systems to support lifelong learning in a context marked by digital transformation, population ageing and growing inequalities. The OECD introduces the “will–skills–means” model to describe what people need to become lifelong learners: motivation and well-being (will), basic and digital skills (skills), and resources, opportunities and flexible learning pathways (means).

The document identifies four critical moments in life — early childhood, adolescence, mid-working life and the approach to retirement — where targeted policies can have lasting effects on people’s ability to keep learning. The central message is that, despite many formal commitments, effective access to continuous learning opportunities remains unequal and often fragmented, and requires greater coherence of education policies across the life course.