An economic organisation like the OECD is concerned about productivity stagnation. That makes sense. But a new working paper I discovered via Dirk Van Damme exposes another sore point that we rarely see at the centre of economics discussions: the state of our education system and, even more so, our human capital. While this may give some readers of this blog the creeps, read on.

What turns out? Almost one-sixth of the productivity slowdown in OECD countries since 2005 is due to the downturn in human capital growth. And that has less to do with how many years people go to school, and everything to do with how much they still learn at school. The decline in PISA scores – the international tests for 15-year-olds – is downright worrying, not just in Flanders or the Netherlands. Since 2009, those scores have been systematically falling in many countries, even before coronavirus threw a spanner in the works. The new generation of employees starts with weaker basic skills, putting the brakes on the entire economy.

The paper’s authors, Dan Andrews, Balázs Égert, and Christine de la Maisonneuve, tackle the problem seriously. The authors discuss how different educational policy choices may contribute to declining student performance. For example, their analysis shows that weaker teachers are associated with lower PISA scores as assessed by school leaders. In contrast, students who had access to, for example, high-quality preschool education tend to perform better later in life. Grouping students based on their level between different classes within a school, for example, strong and weaker students separately, also seems to have more negative effects. On the other hand, support for homework at school is positively correlated with student performance. These policy differences help explain why some countries experience more decline than others.

However, the researchers also see another possible structural culprit: the rapid rise of smartphones and social media in the lives of young people. These technologies have distracted our children in the classroom and made them sleep worse, move less, and even become more anxious. Girls in particular seem to be extra vulnerable to this. While schools struggled to deal with this, the quality of education quietly declined. I should note here that this describes a correlation and that my English-language blog is full of studies in both directions.

Fortunately, according to the authors, there is hope. Education policy does make a difference. Children who attended preschool for longer, had better-supported teachers, or learned how to use the internet responsibly at school scored better. The potential of policy measures is real: in some countries, simple reforms could quickly yield 10 to 15 PISA points, and that translates into higher productivity in the long term.

The lesson of this report? Anyone who thinks economic growth is about gadgets, infrastructure or tax cuts is missing something fundamental: people must do it. If we undermine their learning from an early age by confusing screen time with learning time, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Technology doesn’t have to be the enemy, but education needs to take back control of the classroom.

So no, this is not a plea against digitalisation, something I already read over the weekend when discussing research that shows that digital tools *can* hinder learning (not necessarily). It is a plea for sensible policies. Invest in the quality of education, support teachers, protect young people from excessive screen use, and above all, realise that every PISA point counts for tomorrow’s economy, but by extension for everyone who is part of that economy.

You can download and read the entire report here.