The Skills-First Readiness and Adoption Index is the first structured, data-driven framework that measures and tracks the readiness and adoption of Skills-First practices across countries. Co-developed by the Centre for Skills-First Practices at the Singapore University of Social Sciences – Institute for Adult Learning (SUSS-IAL) and the OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, this Index provides an actionable picture of how countries are progressing toward a skills-first future.
Covering 30 countries, the Skills-First Readiness and Adoption Index captures multiple dimensions of a country’s skills ecosystem — from employer practices and policy alignment to education and training systems, as well as individual experiences — offering a comprehensive view of skills-first readiness and adoption.
It brings together three sub-indices — Skills-First Learning Ecosystem, Skills-First Talent Recognition, and Enabling Environment for Skills-First Approaches — built from 25 indicators that distil the multi-faceted concept of skills-first adoption into a single, interpretable metric. A higher score reflects greater readiness and adoption of skills-first practices. Complementing this is the Labour Market Pressure for Skills-First Approaches Index, which highlights how much a country stands to gain from strengthening its skills-first policies. A higher score signals stronger labour market pressures — and greater potential benefits from timely skills-first adoption.
You can explore the final scores for each sub-index and indicator across all participating countries on the OECD Skills-First Readiness and Adoption Index Dashboard.
If you are interested in accessing the dataset, please contact the OECD team at [email protected].
Singapore Key Insights Report
Interested to know how Singapore performed in the Skills-First Readiness and Adoption Index? This report provides a focused analysis of Singapore’s progress and opportunities in building a skills-first future. It offers detailed insights into the country’s performance across the Index’s key dimensions, highlighting strengths, areas for improvement, and pathways to accelerate skills-first adoption.
Methodology Report
Interested to know more about how the Skills-First Readiness and Adoption Index was constructed? The Methodology Report provides a detailed explanation of how the Index was developed — including the framework design, construction process, and sources of the underlying data. It also explains why the Index was created and how it can be used to guide and assess the adoption of skills-first practices across countries.
Project Team
Sri Manikantan (Ms)
Analyst, Centre for Skills-First Practices, Institute for Adult Learning
Yang Silin (Dr)
Deputy Director, Centre for Skills-First Practices, Institute for Adult Learning
Advisors
Gog Soon Joo (Dr)
Fellow, Centre for Skills-First Practices, Institute for Adult Learning
Edwin Tan (Mr)
Director, Centre for Skills-First Practices, Institute for Adult Learning
