International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work: Bridging Academic and Vocational Learning (Editorial Advisory Board: Unesco-Unevoc Handbooks and Book Series)(6 volume set)

International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: UNESCO-UNEVOC Handbooks ...

Author: Rupert Maclean | Springer Dordrecht

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International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: UNESCO-UNEVOC Handbooks and Book series Editor-in-Chief: Dr Rupert Maclean, UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Bonn, Germany

Associate Editors: Professor Felix Rauner, TVET Research Group, University of Bremen, Germany Professor Karen Evans, Institute of Education, University of London, United Kingdom

Editorial Advisory Board: Dr David Atchoarena, UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning, Paris, France Dr András Benedek, Ministry of Employment and Labour, Budapest, Hungary Dr Paul Benteler, Stahlwerke Bremen, Germany Ms Diane Booker, TAFESA, Adelaide, Australia Mr John Budu-Smith, formerly Ministry of Education, Accra, Ghana Professor Michel Carton, NORRAG c/o Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland Dr Chris Chinien, Workforce Development Consulting, Montreal, Canada Dr Claudio De Moura Castro, Faculade Pitágoras, Belo Horizonte, Brazil Dr Wendy Duncan, Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines Dr Michael Frearson, SQW Consulting, Cambridge, United Kingdom Dr Lavinia Gasperini, Natural Resources Management and Environment Department, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, Italy Dr Philipp Grollmann, Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BiBB), Bonn, Germany Dr Peter Grootings, European Training Foundation, Turin, Italy Professor W. Norton Grubb, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, United States of America Dr Dennis R. Herschbach, Faculty of Education Policy and Leadership, University of Maryland, College Park, United States of America Dr Oriol Homs, Centre for European Investigation and Research in the Mediterranean Region, Barcelona, Spain Professor Phillip Hughes, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia Professor Moo-Sub Kang, Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training, Seoul, Republic of Korea Dr Bonaventure W. Kerre, School of Education, Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya Dr Günter Klein, German Aerospace Centre, Bonn, Germany Dr Wilfried Kruse, Sozialforschungsstelle Dortmund, Dortmund Technical University, Germany Professor Jon Lauglo, Department of Educational Research, Faculty of Education, University of Oslo, Norway Dr Alexander Leibovich, Institute for Vocational Education and Training Development, Moscow, Russian Federation Professor Robert Lerman, Urban Institute, Washington, United States of America Mr Joshua Mallet, Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver, Canada Ms Naing Yee Mar, UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Bonn, Germany Professor Munther Wassef Masri, National Centre for Human Resources Development, Amman, Jordan Dr Phillip McKenzie, Australian Council for Educational Research, Melbourne, Australia Dr Theo Raubsaet, Centre for Work, Training and Social Policy, Nijmegen, Netherlands Mr Trevor Riordan, International Labour Organization, Bangkok, Thailand Professor Barry Sheehan, Melbourne University, Australia Dr Madhu Singh, UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, Hamburg, Germany Dr Manfred Tessaring, European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, Thessaloniki, Greece Dr Jandhyala Tilak, National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi, India Dr Pedro Daniel Weinberg, formerly Inter-American Centre for Knowledge Development in Vocational Training (ILO/CINTERFOR), Montevideo, Uruguay Professor Adrian Ziderman, Bar-llan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

UNESCO-UNEVOC Head of Publications: Alix Wurdak

Rupert Maclean · David Wilson Editors Chris Chinien Associate Editor

International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work Bridging Academic and Vocational Learning

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Editors Dr Rupert Maclean UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Education Hermann-Ehlers-Str. 10 53113 Bonn Germany [email protected]

Professor David Wilson University of Toronto Canada

Associate Editor Dr Chris Chinien Workforce Development Consulting Montreal Canada

ISBN: 978-1-4020-5280-4

e-ISBN: 978-1-4020-5281-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008930131 c Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 springer.com

Dedication to David N. Wilson

This International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work is dedicated to Professor David N. Wilson. David Wilson contributed significantly to the development of this handbook, from the planning stages and the process of identifying contributors, through to the assembly of completed chapters into a prototype. It is very unfortunate that David did not live long enough to see the final product of his hard and cherished labour. However, he will be remembered for his leadership role and the important intellectual guidance he provided to this project. David Wilson was an outstanding teacher and a world-class scholar in the field of development education. He has trained and mentored many graduate students who are playing key leadership roles in development education throughout the world, be they policy-makers, researchers or practitioners. As a researcher, David has contributed substantially to furthering our understanding of the field of comparative education and of development education, particularly as it relates to education for the world of work. His prolific scholarly contribution is a legacy left behind as a testimony of his commitment and dedication to his profession and to the advancement of knowledge and of humanity. David was firmly committed throughout his life to international development and, as such, was very keen to use education as leverage to improve human conditions with regard to poverty alleviation, improved equity and justice, especially in developing countries. Those who have worked with David over the years will unanimously agree that he was not only a good collaborator, but also a good friend. David will be missed a great deal, but his memory and sphere of influence will live on through his students and through the legacy of his extensive range of scholarly works.

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Preface

The idea of developing and publishing an ‘International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work: Bridging Academic and Vocational Learning’ goes back to discussions between myself and David Wilson as early as 2001.1 We commenced work immediately; nevertheless, it has taken some seven years to bring the Handbook to full fruition. Readers will not be surprised by the time it has taken to complete this project, since this has been a mammoth, complex undertaking, involving some 218 authors, 197 chapters and a manuscript of 1.2 million words, which is now published in six volumes. This Handbook is the first of its kind, bringing together leading educational researchers, policy-makers and practitioners from all parts of the world; and from developed and developing countries. At every stage the aim has been to develop chapters of the highest quality. Thus, the matter of quality assurance has been at the forefront of our minds throughout the project. I hope that all who read this Handbook will agree that the considerable time and effort involved has been more than worth the trouble. In 1991, the World Bank published a policy paper written by John Middleton, Adrian Ziderman and Arvil Van Adams. This was widely interpreted (and also widely misinterpreted) to say that school-based technical education was not a sound investment. The consequences wrought by this policy paper had a strong impact on TVET, earning the authors a reputation going well beyond their intentions. In a gesture to redress this involuntary milestone, we invited one of these authors. Arvil Van Adams, to write a prologue to this International Handbook on a subject of his own choosing. He decided to discuss the non-governmental delivery of TVET in Sub-Saharan Africa. On behalf of the editors, I wish to acknowledge the contributions of the many individuals who have worked so hard through all the different stages to bring this Handbook to successful completion. Thanks are conveyed to all the authors for their commitment to this project and for their well-conceived, scholarly contributions. Recognition is also due to the section editors for helping to co-ordinate the work of the authors and, most importantly, for their efforts to ensure content validity and the high quality of chapters. Secretarial and editorial work by staff in the UNESCO–UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education, in Bonn, Germany, under the able vii

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leadership of the Head of Publications, Ms Natalia Matveeva, with assistance from Joachim Lapp, was also an essential contribution to the successful completion of this Handbook. Ms Matveeva’s work was subsequently taken over and brought to a successful conclusion by Ms Alix Wurdak. Special thanks are due to Associate Editor Professor Chris Chinien, who agreed at short notice to become a joint editor of the Handbook, and so enabled its successful completion after the untimely death of General Co-editor, David Wilson, in October 2006. In addition to being a Section Editor and the author of several chapters in the handbook, Chris made a substantial contribution to finalizing the content and structure of the whole Handbook, especially with regard to quality assurance. Special thanks also to John Fox for desk editing the entire manuscript so professionally, thoroughly and in a timely way. Finally, we would like to thank Harmen van Paradijs and Marianna Pascale of the publishers Springer for the considerable care with which they have assisted and guided this project throughout the lengthy period of gestation. UNESCO-UNEVOC, Bonn Germany

Rupert Maclean

Note 1. This Handbook is part of the larger ‘UNESCO-UNEVOC International Library of Technical and Vocational Education and Training’, which consists of two Handbooks, a book series and various other publications. Full details are provided on the following pages.

UNESCO-UNEVOC International Library of Technical and Vocational Education and Training International Library of Technical and Vocational Education and Training

Work is a major feature in most people’s lives. Not only does it provide them with the means to meet basic needs, such as food, clothing and shelter, but also the type of work undertaken by individuals and groups has a major impact on their self-identity, social status and standard of living. Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is concerned with the acquisition of knowledge and skills for the world of work to increase opportunities for productive work, sustainable livelihoods, personal empowerment and socio-economic development. The UNEVOC International Library of Technical and Vocational Education and Training is a series of publications that provide comprehensive information about many cutting-edge aspects of TVET. The Library showcases best practices and innovative approaches to skills development for employability and seeks to create an effective bridge between research, policy and practice. It is an on-going project and publications prepared as part of the Library complement each other. Elements of the Library are:

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UNESCO-UNEVOC International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work: Bridging Academic and Vocational Learning; International Handbook of Technical and Vocational Education and Training Research; UNESCO-UNEVOC Book Series ‘Technical and Vocational Education and Training: Issues, Concerns and Prospects’; UNESCO-UNEVOC Discussion Papers; UNESCO-UNEVOC Annotated Bibliographies of Technical and Vocational Education and Training; UNESCO-UNEVOC Case Studies of Technical and Vocational Education and Training in Selected Countries.

Most of these publications are published by Springer Science and Business Media, and some others by UNESCO-UNEVOC itself. The audience for the publications in the Library includes policy-makers, practitioners, administrators, planners, researchers, teachers, teacher educators and students, as well as colleagues in other fields interested in learning about education for the world of work and TVET in developed and developing countries, countries in transition and countries in postconflict situations. ix

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International Library of Technical and Vocational Education and Training

UNESCO-UNEVOC International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work: Bridging Academic and Vocational Learning General Editors: Rupert Maclean and David N. Wilson Associate Editor: Chris Chinien Springer — (2009) English The UNESCO-UNEVOC International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work is the first reference tool of its kind. It provides a comprehensive coverage of cutting-edge developments in research, policy and practice in TVET within a single source and aims to assist those involved in TVET at any level in making informed decisions and to further advance and improve the field. The six volumes and nearly 200 chapters of the Handbook cover such topics as: TVET policy and reform; financing TVET systems; TVET teacher education; assessment in TVET; TVET research and curriculum development; participation in formal TVET programmes; regional TVET profiles; information and communication technologies in TVET; TVET for youth and in ageing societies; TVET in informal economies and in countries in post-conflict situations. Some 220 TVET experts explore the prospects and challenges in each of these areas from diverse perspectives. The authors are from developing and developed countries, UN agencies, universities, national and international research centres, leading training institutions, national and international statistical offices and ministries of education. Order the International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work: Bridging Academic and Vocational Learning from: http://www.springer.com/ education

UNESCO-UNEVOC Book Series ‘Technical and Vocational Education and Training: Issues, Concerns and Prospects’ Series Editor: Rupert Maclean Publisher: Springer English While the International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work provides a survey of the field, the Book Series explores selected aspects of TVET in depth and focuses on topics that require a more detailed analysis. The series closely follows new developments and innovations in TVET and showcases these. It presents best and innovative practices, explores controversial issues and uses case studies as examples. Topics covered in the Book Series include: the vocationalization of secondary education; international perspectives on teachers and learners in TVET; TVET for sustainable development; TVET in the informal sector; the transformation of TVET


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in transition economies; how changing work situations form personal identities; understanding learning for and throughout working life; TVET as a factor of lifelong learning; vocational content in mass higher education; self-directed learning in TVET; modern apprenticeships and qualifications research. Titles published to date (as of February 2009) are:

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Vocationalisation of Secondary Education Revisited, by Jon Lauglo and Rupert Maclean (eds.), 2005. Meeting Basic Learning Needs in the Informal Sector: Integrating Education and Training for Decent Work, Empowerment and Citizenship, by Madhu Singh (ed.), 2005. Training for Work in the Informal Micro-enterprise Sector: Fresh Evidence from Sub-Sahara Africa, by Hans Christian Haan, 2006. The Transformation of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in the Baltic States: Survey of Reforms and Developments, by Frank Bünning, 2006. Work, Subjectivity and Learning: Understanding Learning through Working Life, by Stephen Billett, Tara Fenwick and Margaret Somerville (eds.), 2006 Identities at Work, by Alan Brown, Simone Kirpal and Felix Rauner (eds.), 2007. International Perspectives on Teachers and Trainers in Technical and Vocational Education, by Philipp Grollmann and Felix Rauner (eds.), 2007. Work, Learning and Sustainable Development, by John Fien, Rupert Maclean and Man-Gon Park (eds.), 2009. Rethinking Work and Learning: Adult and Vocational Education for Social Sustainability, by Peter Willis, Stephen McKenzie und Roger Harris (eds.), 2009. Technology and Vocational Education for Sustainable Development: Empowering Individuals for the Future, by Margarita Pavlova, 2009.

Order publications in the UNEVOC Book Series ‘Technical and Vocational Education and Training: Issues, Concerns and Prospects’ from: http://www.springer.com/ series/6969

Handbook of Technical and Vocational Education and Training Research Editors: Felix Rauner and Rupert Maclean Springer — (2008) English Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) research has become a recognized and well-defined area of interdisciplinary research. This is the first handbook of its kind that specifically concentrates on research and research methods in TVET. The book’s sections focus on particular aspects of the field, starting with a presentation of the genesis of TVET research. They further feature research in relation to policy, planning and practice. Various areas of TVET research are covered, including on the vocational disciplines and on TVET systems. Case studies illustrate

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different approaches to TVET research, and the final section of the book presents research methods, including interview and observation methods, as well as of experimentation and development. This handbook provides a comprehensive coverage of TVET research in an international context, and, with special focus on research and research methods, it is a cutting-edge resource and reference. Order the Handbook of Technical and Vocational Education and Training Research from: http://www.springer.com/education

UNESCO-UNEVOC Annotated Bibliographies of Technical and Vocational Education and Training Editor: Natalia Matveeva Published by UNESCO-UNEVOC English The UNESCO-UNEVOC Annotated Bibliographies of Technical and Vocational Education and Training are a series of literature reviews on key issues in TVET that provide information about the latest developments, current innovations and best practices. The Bibliographies reflect the range of currently available literature, such as articles, books, government reports, documents of UN agencies and donor communities, research theses and other sources available on the Internet. They provide bibliographical aid to policy makers, researchers and practitioners in TVET. Titles published to date in print and electronic format:

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TVET for Sustainable Development, 2004. Women and TVET, 2004. Youth Unemployment: Meeting the Needs of Youth, 2004. Exploitative Work: Child Labour, 2004. Occupational Health and Safety, 2004.

Access or order the UNEVOC Annotated Bibliographies of Technical and Vocational Education and Training free of charge from: http://www.unevoc.unesco.org/ publications

UNESCO-UNEVOC Discussion Papers Editors: Rupert Maclean and Natalia Matveeva Published by UNESCO-UNEVOC English (some titles are available in other languages) The Discussion Papers facilitate the dissemination of crucial research and innovative ideas in technical and vocational education and training (TVET). They are shorter documents that aim to stimulate debate about TVET issues and promote the field. The topics covered in the Discussion Papers range from orienting TVET


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for sustainable development to establishing national qualifications systems and analysing statistical data on access to formal TVET worldwide. Most of these Discussion Papers are published by UNESCO-UNEVOC in collaboration with partner institutions. Titles published to date in print and/or electronic format include:

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Orienting TVET for Sustainable Development, 2006. The Development of a National System of Vocational Qualifications (in cooperation with the Scottish Qualifications Authority), 2006. The 6Es Plus Education Makes Seven: Why Is Education Central to the Youth Employment Summit (YES) Campaign?, 2006. Research for TVET Policy Development, by Jon Lauglo (in co-operation with InWEnt — Capacity Building International), 2006. The Bologna Declaration and Emerging Models of TVET Teacher Training in Germany, by Frank Bünning and Alison Shilela (in co-operation with InWEnt — Capacity Building International), 2006. Participation in Formal TVET Programmes Worldwide: An Initial Statistical Study (in co-operation with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics), 2006. Approaches to Action Learning in Technical and Vocational Education and Training, by Frank Bünning (in co-operation with InWEnt — Capacity Building International), 2007. Education for Livelihoods and Civic Participation in Post-conflict Countries: Conceptualizing a Holistic Approach to TVET Planning and Programming in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2007. Why Do German Companies Invest in Apprenticeships? by Klaus Schaack, 2008. The Changing Status of Vocational Higher Education in Contemporary Japan and South Korea, by Roger Goodman, Sachi Hatakenaka and Terri Kim, 2009. Why Is Skills Development for Work/Employability Essential if EFA and the Dakar Framework for Action Are to Be Achieved? (in press).

Access or order UNEVOC Discussion Papers free of charge from: http://www.unevoc. unesco.org/publications

UNESCO-UNEVOC Case Studies of TVET in Selected Countries Editor: Efison Munjanganja Published by UNESCO-UNEVOC English The Case Studies of TVET in Selected Countries provide in-depth information on issues of specific importance in the TVET systems of selected countries and regions. An initial collection of case studies from Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia is in preparation.

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Revitalizing a Technical Training Institute in Kenya. A Case Study of Kaiboi Technical Training Institute, Eldoret, Kenya, by John W. Simiyu, 2009.

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Access or order UNEVOC Case Studies free of charge from: http://www.unevoc. unesco.org/publications

Other UNESCO-UNEVOC Publications In addition to the publications that form the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Library of Technical and Vocational Education and Training, UNESCOUNEVOC also publishes stand-alone publications both on its own behalf and jointly with other organizations. These include newsletter, books, reports and brochures on key TVET issues.

Newsletter (Bulletin/Forum) Editors: Maja Zarini and Natalia Matveeva The UNESCO-UNEVOC Bulletin is the newsletter of the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre. It informs TVET experts about the activities of UNESCOUNEVOC, UNEVOC Network members and other agencies engaged in TVET. It is the only international newsletter that brings together the major international agencies involved in TVET in order to report on their activities. The Bulletin contains a supplement called UNEVOC Forum. The Forum is distributed with the Bulletin, but is also available separately and on the web. Researchers, policy-makers and practitioners from around the world are invited to contribute their views in the form of a long article on a key issue, concern or proposal regarding TVET. Both the Bulletin and Forum are available in print as well as in digital format and are distributed to about 2,600 individual/institutional recipients. The UNESCO-UNEVOC Bulletin and the UNEVOC Forum are published several times each year. Both are published in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Access or order the Bulletin and Forum free of charge from: http://www.unevoc. unesco.org/bulletin

Learning To Do: Values for Learning and Working Together in a Globalized World UNESCO-APNIEVE Sourcebook No. 3 for Trainers, Teachers and Students in the Area of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (UNESCO-UNEVOC and UNESCO-APNIEVE) Editors: Lourdes R. Quisumbing and Joy de Leo Chinese, English This book examines values education in the workplace. It is comprised of modules related to core values that are crucial for personal development. Integrated into TVET, these values can prepare workers and citizens with the knowledge, values,


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attitudes, behaviours and skills they need to be able to participate fully in their economy and work—effectively and responsibly in a globalized world. This Sourcebook is conceived as a teacher’s manual. It follows the steps of a holistic teaching/learning cycle and contains lesson plans that can be adapted by TVET educators to be integrated into their own training packages, lessons and resource materials. Shortly after the English version of the Sourcebook appeared in 2005, it was translated and published in Chinese. Access or order the Sourcebook free of charge at: http://www.unevoc.unesco.org/ publications

Agencies for International Cooperation in Technical and Vocational Education and Training: A Guide to Sources of Information Published by UNESCO-UNEVOC English This Donor Agencies Guide has been conceived for key personnel engaged in the development of projects and programmes. The guide provides an overview of sources of Official Development Assistance by the twenty-two Member States of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Its focus is on technical and vocational education and training. The Guide includes information on:

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Current trends in international co-operation policies; Potential donors and their policies; Donors’ requirements concerning project definition, project and budget management, assessment and evaluation techniques, and reporting procedures.

Access or order one of the most frequently requested titles free of charge from: http://www.unevoc.unesco.org/publications

Motivating for Skills Development: A Campaign Package English, French, Portuguese and Creole (DVD with sound track) English (booklets with texts, illustrations and transcript of sound tracks) The aim of the ‘Skills Development Package for Learning and Working’ developed by UNESCO-UNEVOC is to help facilitate the organization and implementation of awareness and motivation campaigns for marginalized groups in least-developed countries. The idea behind the Package is to offer a platform and produce an environment that would motivate people living in adverse economic conditions to enrol in TVET courses and take up self-employment activities in order to improve their economic situation.

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The backbone of the Skills Development Package for Learning and Working is a set of DVDs. These are complemented by a series of documents that support the material that can be viewed on the DVDs. The Package is in itself not a tool for skills development, but rather an ‘eye opener’ and ‘discussion starter’. It is anticipated that targeted groups will be encouraged to engage in tasks similar to those shown in the DVDs. Order the Package free of charge from: http://www.unevoc.unesco.org/publications

TVET Teacher Education on the Threshold of Internationalisation (UNESCO-UNEVOC and InWEnt) Editors: Frank Bünning and Zhi-Qun Zhao English This book has been written as an outcome of the conference ‘Development and Implementation of a Master Degree Standard for Teacher and Trainer Education in TVET in East and South-East Asia’, which took place at the University of Tianjin, China, in December 2005. The conference represents an outcome of the close co-operation between InWEnt – Capacity Building International of Germany, the Ministry of Education (MoE), Beijing, China and UNESCO-UNEVOC, and it set a precedent for the further development of master degree programmes in TVET. This conference summary will be of service to both researchers and policymakers involved in teacher and trainer education in TVET in East and South-East Asia, as well as for the broader context of joint initiatives in the area concerned. Access or order free of charge from: http://www.unevoc.unesco.org/ publications

Special Issue of PROSPECTS, Quarterly Review of Comparative Education (UNESCO-UNEVOC and UNESCO-IBE) Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish Rupert Maclean, Director of the UNEVOC Centre, was Guest Editor of the September 2005 issue of the IBE journal PROSPECTS. This issue focuses on the topic of ‘Orientating Technical and Vocational Education for Sustainable Development’ and contains eleven contributions dealing with its various aspects of this theme. Order the Prospects from: http://www.springer.com/education

Vocationalisation of Secondary Education: The Come-Back? Article, published in Education Today newsletter, UNESCO


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In 2005, UNESCO-UNEVOC made contributions to a major article (4 page-spread) in the issue of Education Today, the newsletter of UNESCO’s Education Sector, on ‘vocationalisation of secondary education’. Access or order a reprint of the article free of charge from: http://www.unevoc.unesco. org/publications

Meeting Reports UNESCO-UNEVOC publishes final reports of all the meetings it organizes on its own behalf or in collaboration with other partner organizations. Copies of the reports are usually sent to all meeting participants and to specifically interested parties. Access or order the UNEVOC meeting reports free of charge from: http://www. unevoc. unesco.org/ publications

Information on UNESCO-UNEVOC To inform its public about the main areas of work of UNESCO-UNEVOC and of activities undertaken during each year/biennium, UNESCO-UNEVOC regularly updates and publishes the following materials:

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Mission statement UNEVOC in Brief (brochure) Flyers on areas of work Annual/biennial reports

Access or order these materials free of charge from: http://www.unevoc.unesco.org/ publications For more information about the UNESCO-UNEVOC Publications Programme please consult our website at http://www.unevoc.unesco.org/publications or send your request to: UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training UN Campus Hermann-Ehlers-Str. 10 53113 Bonn Germany Tel.: +49 228 8150 100 Fax: +49 228 8150 199 [email protected] <www.unevoc.unesco.org>


Contents

List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxix List of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xlvii Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Foreword:

TVET for the Sustainability of Human Kind . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lxxiii Rupert Maclean and David N. Wilson Prologue: Skills Development in the Informal Sector of Sub-Saharan Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cxiii Arvil V. Adams VOLUME 1 Part I Overview 1 The Pedagogical Roots of Technical Learning and Thinking . . . . Ron Hansen

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2 A Conceptual Framework for Technical and Vocational Education and Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Jay W. Rojewski 3 Towards Achieving TVET for All: The Role of the UNESCOUNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Astrid Hollander and Naing Yee Mar 4 TVET Glossary: Some Key Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Jeanne MacKenzie and Rose-Anne Polvere xix

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Contents

Part II The Changing Context of Work and Education Section 1 Changing Workplace Requirements: Implication for Education Margarita Pavlova and L. Efison Munjanganja I.1 Overview: Changing Economic Environment and Workplace Requirements: Implications for Re-Engineering TVET for Prosperity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 France Boutin, Chris Chinien, Lars Moratis and Peter van Baalen I.2 The Right to a New Utopia: Adult Learning and the Changing World of Work in an Era of Global Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Budd L. Hall I.3 Decent Work for All: From ILO Initiative to a Global Goal . . . . 111 Peter Poschen I.4 Redefining Gender Roles in the Workforce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Karen F. Zuga I.5 Anticipation of Skill Requirements: European Activities and Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Manfred Tessaring I.6 Redefining the Status of Occupations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Walter R. Heinz I.7 Changing Work, Work Practice: Consequences for Vocational Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Stephen Billett I.8 Traditional and Transitional TVET Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Poonam Agrawal I.9 Partnering to Meet the Needs of a Changing Workplace . . . . . . . 203 LuAnn Hiniker and Robert A. Putnam I.10 Bridging the Learning Divide: A Study into Adult Learning and Peer Mediation in the Workplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 David Johnson Section 2 Education and Training in Informal Economies Madhu Singh

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II.1 Overview: Education and Training in the Informal Sector . . . . . 235 Madhu Singh II.2 Tinkering with the Tinker: Meeting Training Needs in the Informal Sector of Chad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Joshua A. Muskin II.3 The Traditional Informal Apprenticeship System of West Africa as Preparation for Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 William Ahadzie II.4 Initiatives to Link TVET to Self-Employment in Ghana . . . . . . . 277 Robert Palmer II.5 Criteria for Training Policy in the Informal Sector: Demands and Challenges in Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 Enrique Pieck II.6 Informal Learning at Work: The Case of Working Children in Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 Laila Iskandar II.7 Informal Learning and Work: From Genealogy and Definitions to Contemporary Methods and Findings . . . . . . . . . . 319 Peter H. Sawchuk II.8 New Learning Spaces in TVET: The Contribution of Social Partnerships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333 Terri Seddon, Kathleen Fennessy and Kathleen Ferguson II.9 Social and Cultural Aspects of Informal Sector Learning: Meeting the Goals of EFA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 Madhu Singh VOLUME 2

Part III

Education for the World of Work: National and Regional Perspectives

Section 3 Reforming National Systems of Vocational Education and Training David Atchoarena and Peter Grootings

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III.1 Overview: Changing National VET Systems through Reforms . 365 David Atchoarena and Peter Grootings III.2 Latin America’s Efforts in the Vocational Training of Young People from Poor Backgrounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 Claudia Jacinto III.3 Accountability and Career Technical Education (CTE) Policy: A Brief Review of Six States of the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 Joshua D. Hawley and Alexandra de Montrichard III.4 The Regional Perspective of Vocational Education and Training 411 Mike Coles and Tom Leney III.5 Vocational Education, Training Reform and Regional Integration in the Middle East . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 Munther Wassef Masri III.6 The Influence of Qualifications Frameworks on the Infrastructure of VET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 Mike Coles and Patrick Werquin III.7 Reforming Skills Development, Transforming the Nation: South African Vocational Education and Training Reforms, 1994–2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453 Simon McGrath III.8 Reform of Vocational Education in the Russian Federation . . . . 469 Olga Oleynikova and Anna Muravyeva III.9 Vocational Education in the Netherlands: In Search of a New Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483 Jan Geurts and Frans Meijers III.10 Facilitating Policy-Learning: Active Learning and the Reform of Education Systems in Transition Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499 Peter Grootings

Section 4

National Initiatives for Reengineering Education for the New Economy Joshua D. Hawley

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IV.1 Overview: Regional Reviews of TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515 Joshua D. Hawley IV.2 To Vocationalize or Not to Vocationalize? Perspectives on Current Trends and Issues on TVET in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531 Moses O. Oketch IV.3 TVET in the Asian Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects . . . 547 P.P.G. Lionel Siriwardene and Muhammad Ashraf Qureshi IV.4 Transforming TVET Systems with the CPSC in the Asia and Pacific Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 565 Man-Gon Park IV.5 European Action Programmes for Lifelong Learning . . . . . . . . . 583 Johanna Lasonen IV.6 VET in the Baltic States: Analysis of Commonalities and Differences of Reforms in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania . . . . . . 597 Frank Bünning and Berit Graubner IV.7 Education and Training Needs of Rural Communities: A Situational Analysis of Selected Villages in Fourteen Provinces of Fiji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609 Paula Cavu, Isimeli W. Tagicakiverata, Seveci Naisilisili and Viliame Rabici IV.8 Social Partnership in Vocational Education and Training in Lithuania: Challenges and Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 619 Lina Kaminskien˙e IV.9 Integrating Education and Work: The Status of Vocational Education in Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 637 Luc´ılia Regina Machado and Carlos Roberto Jamil Cury IV.10 China’s Higher Technical and Vocational Education: Development and Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 649 Jing Mi and Aihua Wu IV.11 The Adoption and Adaptation of the Work-Team Concept in Urban Thai Workplaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659 Chitrlada Burapharat

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IV.12 Globalization of the Labour Culture in the Republic of Korea: What ‘Tripartite Relations’ Mean for Workers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 673 Phoebe Moore IV.13 Involvement of Labour-Market Partners in TVET in the Russian Federation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 689 Olga Oleynikova IV.14 Strengthening TVET to Achieve Lifelong Learning for All: Historical Snapshots and Recent Initiatives in Myanmar . . . . . . 703 Naing Yee Mar IV.15 Technical and Vocational Education and Training and Rural Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 721 Lavinia Gasperini IV.16 An International TVET Programme Development by the International Baccalaureate Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 735 Monique Conn IV.17 A Profile of TVET in the Asia and Pacific Region: A Survey of Progress, Innovations and Promising Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 749 Chris Chinien, Elspeth McOmish, Mohan Perera and Alex Chinien

Section 5

Learning for Employment and Citizenship in Post-conflict Countries David Johnson and Lyle Kane

V.1 Overview: Vocational Education, Social Participation and Livelihoods in Post-Conflict Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 767 David Johnson and Lyle Kane V.2 From Assessment to Planning: Hope for TVET in Uganda . . . . . 775 Bilal Barakat, Lyle Kane and Alex Inglis V.3 Linking TVET to Economic Opportunities in Post-Conflict Liberia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 787 Lyle Kane V.4 Deepening the Divide: The Differential Impact of Protracted Conflict on TVET Versus Academic Education in Palestine . . . . 799 Bilal Barakat

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V.5 Co-ordinated Programming for Skills Development and Livelihoods in Post-Conflict Societies: What Promise Does TVET Hold for Southern Sudan? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 813 Zuki Karpinska V.6 Vocational Training in Post-War Sierra Leone and Liberia . . . . 827 Andrew Benson Greene Jr. V.7 TVET and Community Re-Integration: Exploring the Connections in Sierra Leone’s DDR Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 835 Julia Paulson V.8 TVET, Women and Conflict: Palestinians in the Lebanese Civil War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 849 Rachel Yarrow VOLUME 3 Part IV The Management of TVET Systems

Section 6 Policy and Management of TVET Systems Rupert Maclean and Chris Chinien VI.1 Overview: Navigating the Policy Landscape: Education, Training and Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 869 Dennis R. Herschbach VI.2 Research for TVET Policy Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 891 Jon Lauglo VI.3 The Reform and Governance of Public TVET Institutions: Comparative Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 905 Keith Holmes VI.4 National Versus Regional Policy Dimensions of TVET . . . . . . . . 921 Peter Noonan VI.5 Planning for Education and Work: Alternatives and Issues . . . . 939 Dennis R. Herschbach VI.6 South African Technikons and Policy Contestation over Academic Drift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 961 Andre Kraak

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VI.7 New Policy Actions and Government Roles: China’s Reconstruction of TVET Systems Since the 1980s . . . . . . . . . . . . 977 Deyu Sun, Jingwen Lu and Jun Li VI.8 Some Generic Issues in TVET Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 989 George Preddey VI.9 An Overview of Contemporary TVET Management Practice . 1003 George Preddey Section 7 The Economics and Financing of TVET David Atchoarena VII.1 Overview: Issues and Options in Financing Technical and Vocational Education and Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1029 David Atchoarena VII.2 Education, Skills, Sustainability and Growth: Complex Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1037 Kenneth King VII.3 Financing Mechanisms and Instruments: A Conceptual and Operational Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1051 Richard Walther VII.4 Financing Training Through Payroll Levies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1075 Adrian Ziderman VII.5 Financing Vocational Education and Training in South Africa 1091 Martin Gustafsson and Pundy Pillay VII.6 Voucher-Financed Training for Small Businesses . . . . . . . . . . . . 1107 Félix Mitnik VII.7 Employers’ Participation in Training Finance: An Example from Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1123 Candido Alberto Gomes VII.8 Funding Lifelong Learning from a Life-Course Perspective . . . 1137 Barry J. Hake VII.9 Economic Perspectives on Technical and Vocational Education and Training in Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1155 Gerald Burke and Christopher Selby Smith

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Part V Teacher Education for Vocational Education and Training

Section 8 The TVET Profession Stephen Billett VIII.1 Overview: The Technical and Vocational Education and Training Profession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1175 Stephen Billett VIII.2 Professionalization of VET Teachers and Lecturers and Practices in TVET Institutions in an International Perspective 1185 Philip Grollmann VIII.3 Teachers, Instructors and Trainers: An Australian Focus . . . . . 1203 Erica Smith VIII.4 TVET Teacher-Training Requirements in the Russian Federation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1219 Vasiliy P. Kosyrev, Petr F. Kubrushko and Andrei N. Kouznetsov VIII.5 TVET Teachers and Their Professionalization in China: A Problem Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1229 Zhiqun Zhao and Lianwei Lu VIII.6 The Development of Training Modules for Instructors . . . . . . . 1243 Fred Beven VIII.7 Literacy and Learning: Are TVET Professionals Facilitators of Learning or Deliverers of Knowledge and Skills? . . . . . . . . . . 1259 Jean Searle VIII.8 Vocational Education in the Private Sector in Brazil . . . . . . . . . 1271 Elenice Monteiro Leite, Marinilzes Moradillo Mello and Nacim Walter Chieco VIII.9 TVET and Teacher-Training Curricula: A Developed National Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1285 Vasiliy P. Kosyrev, Petr F. Kubrushko and Andrei N. Kouznetsov

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VIII.10 Vocational Qualifications: The Role of Trade Unions as Negotiation Fora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1293 Antônio Almerico Biondi Lima and Fernando Augusto Moreira Lopes VIII.11 Vocational Education and Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1307 Gaudêncio Frigotto, Maria Ciavatta and Marise N. Ramos VIII.12 A Technical and Vocational Teacher-Training Curriculum . . . . 1319 Bonaventure W. Kerre VIII.13 Transforming Teachers’ Practice Through Action Learning . . 1333 Stephen Billett VIII.14 Professional Learning and TVET: Challenges and Perspectives for Teachers and Instructors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1351 Christian Harteis VIII.15 Industrial Attachments for Instructors in TVET Delivery . . . . 1367 Sarojni Choy and Sandra Haukka VIII.16 I Hate Left-Handers or Occupational Health and Safety Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1383 Richard Gagnon VIII.17 The Bologna Declaration and Emerging Models of TVET Teacher Training in Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1393 Frank Bünning and Alison Shilela VIII.18 Standards for Occupation-Directed Professional Development of TVET Personnel in Developing Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1407 Peter Gerds VIII.19 Curriculum Research and Design as a Subject of TVET Teacher Training: Practice and Experiences from Two International Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1423 Joachim Dittrich VOLUME 4

Part VI

Education for Work: Research, Curriculum Development and Delivery

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Section 9 Research and Innovation Felix Rauner IX.1 Overview: TVET Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1443 Felix Rauner IX.2 Methods of TVET Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1461 Felix Rauner IX.3 TVET Research as an Aid to Improved Policy and Performance in TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1469 Christopher Selby Smith IX.4 Repositioning the Role of Research in the Innovation of TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1483 Anneke Westerhuis IX.5 TVET Research as a Dimension of Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1495 Klaus Ruth IX.6 Modellversuchsforschung: Pilot Project Research in Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1505 Peter Dehnbostel IX.7 TVET and R&D Evaluation: The Potential for Optimizing TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1521 Ludger Deitmer and Lars Heinemann IX.8 TVET Research Organizations and Scientific Communities: Challenges to the Institutionalization of TVET Research . . . . . 1535 Wolfgang Wittig, Uwe Lauterbach and Philip Grollmann IX.9 Qualifications Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1553 Felix Rauner IX.10 Measuring Educational Quality in TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1563 Robert D. Renaud Section 10 Curriculum Development and Delivery Felix Rauner X.1 Overview: TVET Curriculum Development and Delivery . . . . 1579 Felix Rauner

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X.2 The Mutual Shaping of Work, Vocational Competence and Work-Process Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1593 Nicholas Boreham and Martin Fischer X.3 Situated Learning and Cognitive Apprenticeship . . . . . . . . . . . . 1611 Michael Gessler X.4 Curriculum Approaches and Participative Curriculum Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1627 Georg Spöttl X.5 The Deskilling and Upskilling Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1639 Ulrich Heisig X.6 The Pedagogy of Apprenticeship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1653 Uwe Lauterbach X.7 Approaches to Designing TVET Curricula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1669 Richard Huisinga X.8 Collaborative Work-Related Learning and TechnologyEnhanced Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1687 Alan Brown, Jenny Bimrose and Sally-Anne Barnes X.9 Action-Based TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1699 Hans-Dieter Höpfner X.10 Vocational Learning: Contributions of Workplaces and Educational Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1711 Stephen Billett X.11 Work-Based Learning: An English Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1725 James Avis X.12 Language Mastery Development within TVET for Professional Mobility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1739 Andrei N. Kouznetsov X.13 Why do German Companies Invest in Apprenticeship? . . . . . . 1747 Klaus Schaack X.14 Workplace Learning: Metacognitive Strategies for Learning in the Knowledge Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1763 Hugh Munby, Nancy L. Hutchinson and Peter Chin

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X.15 Literacy, Design and Technology: New Contexts for Learning and Skills Development in South Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1777 David Johnson X.16 The Education Gospel and Vocationalism in an International Perspective: The Promises and the Limits of Formal Schooling 1791 W. Norton Grubb and Marvin Lazerson X.17 The Vocationalization of Secondary Education: The Relationships between Vocational and Technology Education . 1805 Margarita Pavlova X.18 Valuing Experience as well as Knowledge in Schools . . . . . . . . . 1823 Ron Hansen Section 11 Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Vocational Education and Training Maja Zarini, Tapio Varis and Naing Yee Mar XI.1 Overview: The Growing Role of ICTs in Education and Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1835 Maja Zarini, David N. Wilson, Naing Yee Mar and Tapio Varis XI.2 The Pedagogical Framework for On-Line Learning . . . . . . . . . . 1847 Shyamal Majumdar XI.3 A Short Method for Building Web-Based Teaching and Learning Systems: the CPSC Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1863 Myong Hee Kim and Man-Gon Park XI.4 ICT Application in TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1879 Boris Kotsik, Natalia Tokareva, France Boutin and Chris Chinien XI.5 Technology and Leadership in the Fourth Wave of Environmental Changes with Ubiquitous Technology . . . . . . . . 1895 Man-Gon Park XI.6 Knowledge Workforce Development for ComputerSupported Collaborative Work Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1911 Man-Gon Park and Myong Hee Kim XI.7 The Role of ICTs and TVET in Rural Development and Poverty Alleviation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1923 Chiranjib Kumar Basu and Shyamal Majumdar

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XI.8 Switched on: International Approaches to Skills Development through ICTs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1935 Maja Zarini XI.9 VOCED: The International Research Database on Vocational Education and Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1947 Miriam Saunders and Radhika Naidu XI.10 What are the Limits of ICTs and Media in the Delivery of TVET? An Australian Focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1959 Peter Kearns XI.11 Education System Profile: South Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1971 Tracey Wallace XI.12 Integrating TVET with Open and Distance Learning: Taking Skills Training to the Doorstep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1989 Vinay Swarup Mehrotra and Avant Kumar Sacheti XI.13 Distance Education: The State of the Art in Career and Technical Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2003 Christopher J. Zirkle VOLUME 5

Part VII

Learning for Life and Work: Bridging Academic and Vocational Education

Section 12 Participation in Formal Programmes of Learning and Skills Development Rupert Maclean and Hendrik van der Pol XII.1 Overview: Participation in Formal Programmes of Learning and Skills Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2025 Natalia Matveeva and Joachim Lapp XII.2 Access to TVET for All: An Essential Basis for Education for All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2039 Phillip Hughes XII.3 The Challenges of TVET Global Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2053 Manuel Cardoso

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XII.4 Making Global Classifications of Types and Levels of TVET . . 2067 Andy Green, Moses O. Oketch and John Preston XII.5 Trends and Issues in TVET across the Globe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2081 Moses O. Oketch, Andy Green and John Preston XII.6 Statistical Overview of TVET across Educational Levels . . . . . 2095 Manuel Cardoso XII.7 The Ethics of TVET Policy and Practice: Issues of Access and Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2163 Richard G. Bagnall XII.8 Special Needs Education and TVET: The Perspective from the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2177 Michael W. Harvey Section 13 Education for the Changing Demands of Youth Employment Karen Plane XIII.1 Overview: TVET for Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2197 Karen Plane XIII.2 Skills Shortages, Over-Education and Unemployed Youth: An International Dilemma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2211 Kenneth Gray and Sang Hoon Bae XIII.3 New Directions for High-School Career and Technical Education in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2229 Richard L. Lynch XIII.4 Occupations in Demand/Youth Employment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2247 Antoaneta Voikova XIII.5 Pathways and Transitions from School to Work: Australian Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2263 Annette Gough XIII.6 School/Workplace Partnerships: A Case Study of Four Vocational Studies Programmes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2279 Marcelle Hardy and Louise Ménard XIII.7 Vocationalized Secondary Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2295 Jon Lauglo

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XIII.8 Vocational Guidance and Career Counselling in the European Union: Origins and Recent Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2313 Frederic J. Company XIII.9 ‘White-Collar’ Work or a ‘Technical’ Career? The Ambitions of Fiji Final-Year School Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2329 Pam Nilan, Paula Cavu, Isimeli W. Tagicakiverata and Emily Hazelman XIII.10 14–16 Year Olds Taking Vocational Courses in English Colleges: A Dumping Ground for the Disengaged or a Real Alternative? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2343 Norman Lucas XIII.11 Reconciling the Competing Policy Platforms in TVET? Promulgating ‘the 6Es Plus Education’ for Youth through Social Partnerships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2357 Karen Plane Section 14 The Skills Debate in an Ageing Society Tom Karmel and Rupert Maclean XIV.1 Overview: TVET in an Ageing Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2375 Tom Karmel and Rupert Maclean XIV.2 Policy Framework on the Retraining for Reskilling of Older Workers through Specialized TVET Programmes . . . . . . . . . . . 2385 Theodora Josue Tesoro Gayondato and Myong Hee Kim XIV.3 Reskilling for All? The Changing Role of TVET in the Ageing Societies of Developing Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2401 Margarita Pavlova and Rupert Maclean XIV.4 The Changing Context of TVET for the Workforce in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2417 Jagmohan Singh Rajput XIV.5 The Reform of the TVET System in the Republic of Korea for an Ageing Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2431 Hong-Geun Chang XIV.6 Will We Run Out of Young Men? Implications of the Ageing of the Population for the Trades in Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2445 Tom Karmel and Koon Ong

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XIV.7 The Ageing Labour Force and the Retraining of Workers in the Republic of Korea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2457 Jihee Choi XIV.8 Technical Entrepreneurship Development for the Aged . . . . . . 2469 Man-Gon Park and Suresh Kumar Dhameja XIV.9 The Ageing TVET Workforce in Australia: Issues and Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2487 Hugh Guthrie and Phil Loveder XIV.10 Working and Lifelong Learning among Older Workers (45+) in Japan: Implications for TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2499 Toshio Ohsako VOLUME 6

Part VIII Lifelong Learning for Livelihoods and Citizenship

Section 15 Adult, Continuing and Lifelong Learning Chris Chinien and Madhu Singh XV.1 Overview: Adult Education for the Sustainability of Human Kind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2521 Chris Chinien and Madhu Singh XV.2 The Emergence of ‘Workforce Development’: Definition, Conceptual Boundaries and Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2537 Ronald L. Jacobs and Joshua D. Hawley XV.3 The Challenge for ESD in TVET: Developing Core Sustainable Development Competencies and Collaborative Social Partnerships for Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2553 Chris Chinien, France Boutin and Karen Plane XV.4 Key Competencies: Overall Goals for Competence Development: An International and Interdisciplinary Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2571 Dominique Simone Rychen XV.5 Education and Training in the Context of Poverty Reduction . 2585 Bernd Overwien

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XV.6 Recognition, Validation and Accreditation of Non-Formal and Informal Learning and Experience: Results of an International Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2597 Madhu Singh XV.7 Self-Directed Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2615 Stephen D. Brookfield XV.8 New Learning Strategies and Learning Cultures in Companies 2629 Peter Dehnbostel XV.9 PLAR, Training and Efficient Labour Markets: The Canadian Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2647 Bill Empey and Christine Newton XV.10 Transformative Learning Theory and TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2661 Karen Magro XV.11 The Implications of Cognitive Style to Adult Distance Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2679 Cindy Marie Isaak-Ploegman and Chris Chinien XV.12 Competency, Meaningful Learning and Learning Styles in TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2697 Richard Gagnon XV.13 Workplace Essential Skills in Policy and Practice: A Canadian Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2713 Erik de Vries XV.14 Adult Numeracy for Work and Life: Curriculum and Teaching Implications of Recent Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2731 Gail FitzSimons and Diana Coben XV.15 An Innovative System of Vocational Training in the German IT Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2747 Rita Meyer Part IX Assessment of Skills and Competencies Section 16 Recognition, Certification, Accreditation and Quality Assurance in TVET Karina Veal XVI.1 Overview: Competencies, Qualifications and Recognition . . . . 2763 Karina Veal

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xxxvii

XVI.2 The Certification of Competencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2777 Danielle Colardyn XVI.3 Modularization and Modular Delivery of TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . 2793 John Stanwick XVI.4 Diverse Approaches to the Recognition of Competencies . . . . . 2811 Danielle Colardyn XVI.5 How Do We Measure Up? Benchmarking the WorldSkills Competition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2827 David Hoey XVI.6 Validation of Educational Programmes: Comparing Models and Best Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2841 Grazia Scoppio XVI.7 Regional Accreditation and Certification of TVET Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2853 Ligaya Valmonte and Man-Gon Park XVI.8 National Qualifications Frameworks: An Analytical Overview 2867 Michael F.D. Young XVI. 9 Developing a National System of Vocational Qualifications . . . 2881 John Hart XVI.10 National Qualifications Frameworks in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2899 Bonaventure W. Kerre and Astrid Hollander XVI.11 Implementing National Qualifications Frameworks: Problems and Possibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2917 Michael F.D. Young XVI.12 Labour Mobility and Mutual Recognition of Skills and Qualifications: The European Union and Australia/ New Zealand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2935 Chandra Shah and Michael Long XVI.13 Quality Assurance in TVET in Romania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2953 Magdalena Balica Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2971 Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3003


List of Figures

Introduction Technical and vocational students as a share of total secondary enrolments, 1998 and 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lxxxiv Prologue Conceptual framework: informal employment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cxvii Prologue Enterprises are active trainers world-wide (as a percentage of total training) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cxxiv 1 Alternate philosophies for TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2 Visual representation of the conceptual framework for TVET . 25 I.1.1 The NCC competitiveness pyramid. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 I.3.1 The four elements of decent work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 I.5.1 Estimated time lags(a ) between new skill requirements and job market entry of the first cohorts with the new skill profiles (a) dependent on national institutional, legal, formal, etc., factors. 148 II.6.1 The design of CID’s non-formal ‘schools’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 II.6.2 Waste Recycle Facilities Manshiet Nasser-el Mokatam . . . . . . . 315 II.7.1 Learning in working life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 III.7.1 Visualizing the Human Resources Development Strategy . . . . . 461 III.9.1 From training factory to career centre: two main dimensions for re-design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 IV.2.1 Informal sector employment as a share of non-agricultural employment, selected African countries (1990s) . . . . . . . . . . . . 542 IV.4.1 Population growth rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569 IV.4.2 Comparative population growth in more- and less-developed countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568 IV.4.3 Population density in the Asia and Pacific Region . . . . . . . . . . . 569 IV.4.4 Growth of the ageing population (60 years and above) . . . . . . . 570 IV.4.5 The number of people living on less than $1 per day, 1990, 1996 and 2001 (millions) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 572 IV.4.6 Components of the CPSC web-based teaching/learning system (WB TLS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579 IV.7.1 Comparative levels of education (by gender) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615 IV.7.2 Factors that determine training choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 616 IV.8.1 Models of interaction of vocational activity with education systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621 xxxix

xl

IV.8.2 IV.8.3 IV.10.1 IV.10.2 IV.10.3 IV.10.4 IV.10.5 IV.11.1 IV.12.1 IV.12.2 IV.14.1 IV.17.1 IV.17.2 IV.17.3 IV.17.4 IV.17.5 IV.17.6 IV.17.7 IV.17.8 V.1.1 VI.7.1 VII.3.1 VII.3.2 VII.3.3 VII.6.1 VII.6.2 VII.8.1 VIII.2.1 VIII.2.2 VIII.2.3

List of Figures

Model of the social partnership for developing vocational and vocational training standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The organizational model for final qualification examinations . A diagram of the Chinese vocational education system . . . . . . . New student enrolments in technical and vocational education in 1998 and 2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Total student enrolment in technical and vocational education in 1998 and 2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Numbers of technical and vocational education colleges from 1998 to 2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Structures of technical and vocational education providers in 2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The team as a bridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Three phases for the creation of a new labour-management culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Composition of the future-oriented labour/management community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Drop-out rates in primary schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The planning and management of TVET in the Asia and Pacific Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The involvement of developed, developing and least-developed countries of the Asia and Pacific Region in TVET . . . . . . . . . . . Countries in the Asia and Pacific Region with various national development plans for TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An overview of the provision of TVET for All for designated groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The availability of TVET courses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mode of TVET delivery using ICTs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New competencies acquired through TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Measuring TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A conceptual model of the field of TVET and conflict studies . Trend of enrolments and entrants in vocational secondary schools (1995–2004) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Common characteristics of the European vocational training systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Common characteristics of the African vocational training systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Common and specific characteristics of the systems . . . . . . . . . Coefficient of diversification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Utilization of opportunities for diversification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A model of lifelong learning with a ‘learning gap’ . . . . . . . . . . Dominant TVET teachers’ formal qualifications . . . . . . . . . . . . Mapping development perspectives for vocational schools and colleges for some European countries and regions . . . . . . . . . . . Direction of individual strategies of vocational teachers . . . . . .

625 627 650 651 652 652 652 662 674 676 709 750 751 752 755 760 761 762 763 770 979 1064 1065 1073 1115 1116 1141 1188 1192 1197

List of Figures

VIII.5.1 VIII.5.2 VIII.12.1 VIII.12.2 VIII.16.1

VIII.17.1 VIII.17.2 VIII.17.3 VIII.17.4 VIII.18.1 VIII.18.2

VIII.18.3 VIII.18.4 VIII.18.5 VIII.18.6 VIII.18.7 VIII.19.1 IX.4.1 IX.6.1 IX.7.1 IX.9.1

IX.9.2 X.1.1 X.2.1 X.9.1 X.9.2 X.9.3 X.9.4 X.12.1

xli

Types of TVET teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teacher education systems in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An integrated school curriculum for the twenty-first century . . The technical and vocational education and training cluster in Kenya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The characteristics inherent in organized work in democratic societies, showing the inevitable tensions that develop between them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The consecutive model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The top-up model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The blended model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Magdeburg model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Qualification levels for TVET-teachers/trainers . . . . . . . . . . . . . The complete system: thirty-six national TVET teacher-qualification standards by combining nine core fields of activities and four TVET teacher-qualification levels . . . . . . An example: the core field ‘assessment’ with its specific standards on the four TVET teacher-qualification levels . . . . . . Flexible and coherent career pathways within the Ethiopian standard-based national TVET teacher-training system . . . . . . Pathway I: coherent and full academic programme . . . . . . . . . . Pathway II: coherent academic four semester programme, combined with in-service-teacher-training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pathway III: short-time-programme, combined with in-service teacher training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The four learning areas, from novice to expert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interfaces between the traditional knowledge and innovation chains (after Bruijn & Westerhuis, 2004, p. 7) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The cyclical process of scientific monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Evaluation cycle of an actor-oriented programme evaluation . . The interaction of education and training, work and the object of work in analytic and design-oriented perspective as a topic of research and teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Action-oriented professional interviews carried out in teams . . Knowledge and know-how in the tense relationship between education and qualification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Work-process knowledge of a German skilled worker . . . . . . . Interdependence of competence for action, structures for action and execution of action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The cycle of self-reliant/action-based learning and working . . . Different learning and work assignments require different stages of self-reliant learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A new didactic approach for TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The seven-element model for the selection of languageteaching contents for TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1232 1234 1321 1322

1384 1399 1399 1400 1401 1414

1415 1416 1417 1418 1419 1420 1429 1484 1513 1529

1556 1559 1581 1599 1700 1702 1706 1708 1743

xlii

X.17.1 XI.1.1

XI.2.1 XI.2.2 XI.2.3 XI.2.4 XI.2.5 XI.2.6 XI.3.1 XI.3.2 XI.3.3 XI.3.4 XI.3.5 XI.3.6 XI.3.7 XI.3.8 XI.3.9 XI.3.10 XI.3.11 XI.3.12 XI.5.1 XI.5.2 XI.5.3 XI.5.4 XI.5.5 XI.5.6 XI.5.7 XI.5.8 XI.5.9 XI.6.1 XI.6.2 XI.6.3 XI.6.4 XI.6.5 XI.6.6 XI.9.1 XI.9.2 XI.11.1 XI.11.2

List of Figures

A model of ‘working technologically’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The number of pupils per computer and the number of pupils per computer with an Internet connection in European secondary education (ISCED 2 and 3), 2001 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . One-to-one or one-to-many relational . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Many-to-many . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Technology, learning objectives and instructional models in three generations of distance education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . On-line learning based on objectivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . On-line learning based on constructivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Learning components based on the proposed eclectic model . . Basic components of an e-teaching and learning system . . . . . . The various components of the CPSC WTLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sample page in the CPSC WTLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Registration form and log-in/log-out buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Outline of a theme paper presentation with VOD . . . . . . . . . . . Lecture screen and video screeen of a VOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The use of the e-board for questions and answers . . . . . . . . . . . An e-board for assignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Multiple-choice type questions used in an on-line examination Students’ general information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Score management: tasks, projects, examination . . . . . . . . . . . . Creating multiple-choice type questions for on-line examination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The concept of ubiquitous computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Electronic cyberspace and smart real space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Components of a ubiquitous home environment . . . . . . . . . . . . Components of a ubiquitous living room . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Components of a ubiquitous classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MIT’s Oxygen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . TRON architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The u-Korea project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The 8-3-9 strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Components of collaborative work environments . . . . . . . . . . . Workplace trends according to Bill Gates (2005) . . . . . . . . . . . . Digital work style according to Bill Gates (2005) . . . . . . . . . . . E-commerce model with multilateral work environments . . . . . The model of knowledge workforce development . . . . . . . . . . . Model with knowledge workforce development for CSCW . . . The VOCED home page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A sample record resulting from a VOCED search . . . . . . . . . . . Percentage distribution of learners in the education system . . . Inequities among the provinces of South Africa in the percentage of schools with computers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1816

1840 1849 1849 1850 1851 1852 1855 1865 1866 1866 1867 1868 1869 1869 1870 1870 1871 1871 1872 1897 1898 1899 1900 1900 1902 1904 1905 1905 1913 1914 1914 1918 1919 1920 1947 1953 1974 1981

List of Figures

XII.3.1 XII.6.1 XII.6.2 XII.6.3 XII.6.4 XII.6.5 XII.6.6 XII.6.7 XII.6.8 XII.6.9

XII.6.10 XII.6.11 XII.6.12 XII.6.13 XII.6.14

XII.6.15

XIII.2.1 XIII.2.2 XIII.4.1 XIII.4.2 XIII.4.3 XIII.4.4

XIII.5.1 XIII.6.1 XIV.1.1

xliii

ISCED mapping diagram showing levels and destinations, and UOE’s modified version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Regional averages for vocational gross enrolment ratios at ISCED 2, 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Regional averages for VGERs at ISCED 3, 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . Distributions of vocational gross enrolment ratios at ISCED 3, 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Regional averages for VGERs at ISCED 4, 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . Distributions of vocational gross enrolment ratios at ISCED 4, 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Regional averages for gross enrolment ratios at ISCED 5B programmes, 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Distributions of gross enrolment ratios at ISCED 5B programmes, 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Regional averages for percentages of technical/vocational enrolment in secondary, 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Percentages of technical/vocational enrolment in secondary by GDP per capita (logarithm), 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Percentages of technical/vocational enrolment in upper secondary by GDP per capita (logarithm), 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . Percentages of technical/vocational enrolment in secondary, by overall secondary gross enrolment ratio, 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Percentages of technical/vocational enrolment in upper secondary, by upper secondary gross enrolment ratio, 2002 . . . Percentage of technical/vocational enrolment in upper secondary, by its gender parity index, 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Percentage of technical/vocational enrolment in upper secondary education, by its transformed gender parity index, 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gender parity index for the percentage of technical/vocational, by the gender parity index for the total gross enrolment ratio, upper secondary education, 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The technical workforce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The source of individual labour-market advantage . . . . . . . . . . . Enrolment in secondary general and secondary vocational schools, 2004/2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Percentage of an age cohort enrolled in vocational schools . . . The youth unemployment rate in Bulgaria, 2001–2004 . . . . . . . Public expenditure on measures designed for young people (as a percentage of total expenditures on active labour-market policies) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Participation rates of full-time students aged 17 years . . . . . . . Typology of work experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Population pyramids: age and sex distribution, 2000 and 2050

2061 2104 2105 2106 2107 2108 2109 2110 2112

2113 2114 2115 2116 2119

2120

2121 2212 2221 2250 2251 2258

2258 2265 2281 2376

xliv

XIV.2.1 XIV.2.2 XIV.2.3 XIV.2.4 XIV.2.5 XIV.2.6 XIV.2.7 XIV.2.8 XIV.2.9 XIV.2.10 XIV.2.11 XIV.2.12 XIV.3.1 XIV.3.2 XIV.3.3 XIV.3.4 XIV.3.5 XIV.3.6 XIV.5.1 XIV.5.2 XIV.5.3

XIV.5.4 XIV.5.5 XIV.6.1 XIV.6.2 XIV.6.3 XIV.6.4 XIV.6.5 XIV.6.6 XIV.6.7 XIV.6.8 XIV.6.9

List of Figures

The world’s ageing population . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rate of increase in the share of the population aged 60 and above . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Growth of the older population in developed and developing countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Model of enabling agents for transformation of the older person through retraining and reskilling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Congruence model for retraining older workers . . . . . . . . . . . . . Essential qualities of a change leader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sectors for policy formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Proposed policy framework—global change leadership . . . . . . Key sector relationships for older worker retraining . . . . . . . . . Relationships between key sectors in older worker retraining . Proposed policy framework: local TVET application . . . . . . . . Global/national/local relationships and the older worker . . . . . Median age by region, 1999–2050 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Projection for the population distributions for China . . . . . . . . . Projection for the population distributions for India . . . . . . . . . Comparison between and Canada and China by sex and age for 2000, 2025 and 2050 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The structure of a human activity system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The structure of learning activity for the elderly person . . . . . . Basic structure of the vocational competency development system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scheme of lifelong vocational competency development . . . . . International comparison of participation in vocational competency development programmes among adults (aged 25–64) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vocational competency development participation by company size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vocational training participation rate by gender and age . . . . . . Commencements by age and sex, 2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Apprenticeship and traineeship commencement rates for the trades (proportion of age cohort) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Apprenticeship and traineeship cancellation rates for the trades (as a proportion of commencements) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Five-year net attrition rates for the trades (per cent of employment) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Impact of demographics on the supply of tradesmen . . . . . . . . . Age distribution of people in the trades, various years . . . . . . . Projections of employment in the trades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comparison of the average supply scenario and the base demand scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comparison of the worst supply scenario and the base demand scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2386 2387 2388 2390 2390 2391 2393 2395 2396 2396 2397 2397 2402 2403 2404 2405 2410 2411 2432 2433

2436 2437 2437 2446 2448 2448 2449 2450 2451 2452 2453 2454

List of Figures

XIV.7.1 XIV.8.1 XIV.8.2 XIV.9.1 XV.2.1 XV.3.1 XV.4.1 XV.8.1 XV.8.2 XV.11.1 XV.11.2

XV.12.1 XV.12.2 XV.12.3 XV.12.4

XV.13.1 XV.13.2 XV.15.1 XV.15.2 XVI.3.1 XVI.5.1 XVI.5.2 XVI.5.3 XVI.5.4 XVI.5.5 XVI.5.6 XVI.6.1 XVI.10.1 XVI.10.2

xlv

Changes in age structure of the Korean population, 1960–2050 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Science and technology entrepreneurs’ parks: the mechanism for industry and TVET institute linkage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Science and technology entrepreneurs’ parks: functions and activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Age profiles of TAFE teachers in 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Workforce development framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Capacity-building for sustainable development and learning communities in VET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DeSeCo’s overarching conceptual framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Organizational typology of company-based learning . . . . . . . . . Kinds of learning and knowledge in companies . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dick and Carey’s model of instructional design for practitioners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Final model to bridge the gap of differential learning gain across cognitive style in the context of adult distance education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Certain characteristics associated with Kolb’s learning styles . Teaching contents favoured by students of all learning styles and their typical behaviour during a lecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teaching contents favoured by students of all learning styles and their typical behaviour during a role play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teacher and learner assist each other in their personal and professional development when the teacher takes into account their respective learning style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sample from an essential skills profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Example of authentic workplace materials (AWMs) . . . . . . . . . Regulations on advanced vocational training in ICTs . . . . . . . . The work processes typical of security management . . . . . . . . . Approaches to modularization across various countries . . . . . . Pie chart of visitors’ age profile at WorldSkills 2005 in Finland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Form for subjective marking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Raw results from four different competitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marks on a common axis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marks adjusted by standard deviation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marks adjusted for 400–600 range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Type of questions used in the AMSC validation questionnaire . Namibia: qualifications of the NQF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mauritius: qualifications of the NQF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2459 2481 2481 2490 2545 2566 2574 2638 2640 2687

2688 2703 2708 2709

2711 2721 2722 2751 2752 2797 2830 2834 2835 2836 2836 2837 2846 2909 2910


List of Tables

Introduction Prologue Prologue 1 2 3

4 I.3.1 I.5.1 I.10.1 II.2.1 II.2.2 II.3.1 II.7.1

II.7.2 III.3.1 III.3.2 III.3.3 III.3.4

Desirable worker attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xcix Persons employed in the informal sector: selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (latest available year) . . . cxviii Share of youth in Ghana (15–30 age group) who have gone through an apprenticeship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cxxvii Issues to consider when developing the curriculum component of a conceptual framework in TVET . . . . . . . . 29 Contemporary approaches to teaching and learning in TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Illustration of components and contents of a conceptual framework for TVET from past, current and future perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Possible components in TVET programmes based on conceptual framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Summary of suggested decent work indicators . . . . . . . . . 113 National skill requirement forecasting and early recognition activities, as of 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 A summary of the research questions and techniques for data collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Education and training of entrepreneurs and apprentices . 250 Basic professional skills, knowledge and attitudes for participation in the informal sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 Duration of apprenticeship in Ghana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 Livingstone’s agency and knowledge structure dimensions of learning model (from Livingstone, 2005, p. 981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 Eraut’s typology of informal learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 Basic information on state education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398 School information on career technical education in six states (number of schools) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398 Student information on career technical education in six states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 Basic information on career technical education . . . . . . . . 401 xlvii

xlviii

III.3.5 III.3.6 III.4.1 III.7.1 III.9.1 III.9.2 IV.2.1 IV.2.2 IV.2.3 IV.4.1 IV.4.2 IV.4.3 IV.4.4 IV.7.1 IV.7.2 IV.7.3 IV.7.4 IV.14.1 IV.14.2

IV.14.3 IV.14.4 VI.3.1 VI.4.1 VI.4.2 VI.6.1 VI.7.1 VI.8.1

VII.1.1 VII.3.1 VII.3.2

List of Tables

Core indicators and sub-indicators: career and technical education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 Achievement of core indicators by state (2003–2004) . . . . 406 Policy levers and the open method of co-ordination (OMC) 415 The National Qualifications Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 Remarks concerning the effectiveness and efficiency of the qualifications structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485 Implementation of strong learning environments . . . . . . . . 493 The features of TVET in selected African countries . . . . . 536 Percentage of TVE enrolments in secondary technical and vocational education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538 Percentage of technical and vocational education expenditures in total education expenditures . . . . . . . . . . . . 543 Population, population density and population growth rate: selected Asian countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567 Percentage of the older population by region in 2000, 2015 and 2030 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569 Number of Internet users in CPSC member countries . . . . 572 CPSC-RING for technology transfer, education and training services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577 Training needs choices by province (female) . . . . . . . . . . . 614 Training needs choices by province (male) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614 The number of participants by gender and age groups . . . . 615 Total participants by educational level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615 Intake by type of course in the government technical institutes (GTIs) in 2003/2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 713 Teaching staff and students in the government technical institutes (GTIs) and government technical colleges (GTCs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 713 Teaching staff and student relationship in the State agricultural institutes (SAIs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 714 Skills training in TVET institutions under various government ministries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 715 FET transformations in South Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 911 TVET students 1995 to 2004, Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 934 Annual hours by sex, 1995 to 2004, Australia . . . . . . . . . . 935 Enrolments in higher education, 1993–2003 . . . . . . . . . . . 962 China’s vocational education system, 2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . 979 Differences between governance and management roles for autonomous TVET institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 993 Advantages and limitations of using payroll taxes to finance TVET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1032 Overall data for the four European countries . . . . . . . . . . . 1053 Overall data for the four African countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1054

List of Tables

VII.3.3 VII.3.4 VII.4.1 VII.4.2 VII.4.3 VII.5.1 VII.5.2 VII.6.1 VII.6.2 VII.7.1 VII.7.2 VII.9.1

VIII.2.1 VIII.2.2 VIII.5.1 VIII.6.1 VIII.6.2 VIII.8.1 VIII.9.1 VIII.12.1 VIII.12.2 VIII.12.3 VIII.12.4 VIII.12.5 VIII.13.1 VIII.13.2 VIII.13.3 VIII.15.1 VIII.18.1

xlix

Major categories of activity financed by particular financing sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The modes of intervention by public authorities, companies and individuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mechanisms for encouraging enterprise training: strengths and weaknesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Payroll levies: advantages and limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . Issues in levy scheme design and implementation . . . . . . . Public spending on education and training, 2005 . . . . . . . Public FET in colleges and in schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Number of vouchers placed by the programme . . . . . . . . . Composition of the demand for vouchers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FEMC sources of funding by unit, 2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FEMC average annual expenditure per student and tuition by unit, 2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overview of expenditure and participation in education and training, Australia, 2003 (approximate figures) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ideal types of the conceptualization of vocational education core tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A comparison of professionalization levels of vocational teaching profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DACUM-chart on China’s TVET teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comparative table of generic employability skills by country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Employability skills framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The TVET market in Brazil: 1999–2000: estimate of schools, students and budget of the main agencies . . . . . . . Comparison of Russian and American credit hours in TVET teacher training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Course descriptions in each option at the Department of Technology Education at Moi University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M.Phil. degree in technology education course design . . . Core, required and elective courses for an M.Phil. degree in technology education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. Phil. degree in technology education course design . . . Elective courses for the D.Phil. degree in technology education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Perceptions of the utility of action learning . . . . . . . . . . . . Conditions that make action learning successful . . . . . . . . Conditions that inhibit action learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key barriers to maintaining vocational competence through ‘return to industry’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The nine core fields of TVET teaching activities assigned to the four levels of qualification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1067 1069 1085 1087 1088 1092 1099 1112 1114 1131 1132

1157 1195 1198 1239 1250 1251 1274 1286 1326 1327 1328 1330 1331 1343 1344 1344 1376 1421

l

IX.1.1 IX.5.1 IX.8.1 IX.9.1 X.1.1 X.2.1 X.3.1 X.3.2 X.3.3 X.4.1 X.9.1 X.9.2 XI.1.1 XI.2.1 XI.2.2 XI.3.1 XI.5.1 XI.5.2 XI.6.1 XI.6.2 XI.6.3 XI.7.1

XI.7.2 XI.12.1 XII.3.1

XII.3.2 XII.6.1 XII.6.2

List of Tables

Twelve vocational disciplines as defined in the international framework curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1447 Structures of TVET in Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1501 Grouping of TVET research associations into research strands and disciplinary frameworks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1536 The six dimensions of practical knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1554 On the structuration of vocational curricula . . . . . . . . . . . . 1582 An example of a ‘Lernfeld’ for the industrial electronics mechanic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1606 Situated cognition and situated learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1612 Cognitivism and social constructivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1616 Cognitive apprenticeship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1620 Levels of vocational educational scientific research . . . . . 1635 Overview of the components of action competence . . . . . . 1701 Comparison of teacher-centred teaching and trainee-centred teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1705 The new schooling paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1837 Characteristics of Web-based training types . . . . . . . . . . . . 1859 Desirable shifts required in various pedagogical dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1860 Main software tools used in the implementation of the e-teaching and learning system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1873 Trends in computing systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1897 Eight new services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1906 The traits of a twenty-first century knowledge-based economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1912 Deficiencies in the Gosplan workforce planning exercise and the lessons to be learned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1916 The roles that the New Zealand Government should assume 1917 Income/poverty in selected regions in the world, 1981–2001: the percentage of people living on less than US$1/day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1924 Some initiatives in applying ICTs to rural development . . 1930 Some typical courses provided by open and distance learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1998 An overview of different conceptions of ‘formal’, ‘non-formal’ and ‘informal’, as applied to education and learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2055 Definitions of programme orientations according to ISCED and the UIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2057 TVET provision by level and ISCED 5B programmes (number and percentage of countries) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2096 Index of diversification of TVET programmes, by region (number of countries) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2098

List of Tables

XII.6.3 XII.6.4 XII.6.5 XII.6.6 XII.6.7

XII.6.8 XII.6.9 XII.6.10 XII.7.1 XII.8.1 XII.8.2 XII.8.3 XIII.2.1 XIII.2.2 XIII.2.3 XIII.4.1 XIII.4.2 XIII.5.1 XIII.9.1 XIII.9.2 XIII.9.3 XIII.9.4 XIII.9.5 XIII.9.6 XIII.9.7 XIII.9.8 XIII.9.9

li

Typology of TVET provision, by region (number of countries) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vocational enrolment at ISCED 4 by vocational enrolment at ISCED 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vocational enrolment at ISCED 5 following vocational enrolment at ISCED 3 and 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Highest vocational gross enrolment ratios at ISCED 2, 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comparison of vocational gross enrolment ratios and percentages of technical/vocational enrolment for selected countries, 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Presence of vocation and 5B enrolments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Secondary education, ISCED 2 and 3: vocational enrolments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Post-secondary education: non-tertiary vocational enrolments: tertiary 5B enrolments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matrix of key aspects of TVET of ethical concern . . . . . . Career and technical education legislation . . . . . . . . . . . . . Special education legislation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Other significant federal legislation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . University enrolment as a percent of the age cohort: 1950 and 1993 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Occupational groups ranked by earnings and net opportunities (projected through 2006) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Job shortages for each educational category in small- and medium-sized businesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Strengths and weaknesses of the State enrolment plan in Bulgaria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unemployment in SEE compared with the EU average . . Apparent retention rates of full-time secondary students in Australia, from Year 7/8 to Year 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Form Six enrolments by race, 2003–2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Form Seven enrolments by race, 2003–2004 . . . . . . . . . . . TVET enrolments by number of schools and gender 2003–2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FIT franchise TVET enrolments 2003–2004 . . . . . . . . . . . Parents’ occupations (coded), expressed as a percentage . Student career ambitions (coded), expressed as a percentage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Favourite and least-favourite subjects by school, n = 1012 Ranking of factors influencing personal career choice, n = 1012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Responses to ‘Have you ever met anyone with that job?’, expressed as a percentage, n = 1012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2099 2101 2102 2104

2111 2126 2131 2143 2168 2179 2180 2181 2215 2219 2220 2252 2257 2266 2330 2330 2331 2331 2335 2335 2336 2337 2337

lii

XIII.9.10

XIV.2.1 XIV.3.1 XIV.5.1 XIV.5.2

XIV.5.3 XIV.6.1

XIV.7.1 XIV.7.2 XIV.7.3 XIV.7.4 XIV.7.5 XIV.7.6 XIV.8.1 XV.1.1 XV.3.1 XV.3.2 XV.3.3 XV.3.4 XV.8.1 XV.8.2 XV.9.1 XV.9.2 XV.14.1 XVI.3.1

List of Tables

‘Family or community member’ responses to ‘What is your relationship to that person?’ expressed as a percentage, n = 827 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The four action Ps for older workers in the transformation process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Task categories and expected relationship of performance with age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Public expenditure on vocational training as a percentage of GDP in selected OECD countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Education and training expense rate to total labour cost according to the number of people employed (unit: thousand won) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Directions of vocational competency system reform . . . . . Difference between demand and supply projections for the trades, 2040 (+ indicates potential surplus; − potential shortage), per ’000 persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The year of reaching critical shares of the population aged over 65, selected countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Changes in the dependency ratios and median ages, 1970–2050 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trends in the labour-force participation rates by age groups 50 years and older, by gender (%) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Differences in the level of basic skills by age, gender, educational attainment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Labour-market status of older people in Korea, 2000 (%) Participation in continuous education and training (CET), by age, gender and educational attainment . . . . . . . . . . . . . The aged population in Asia and the Pacific countries, 2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Workers aged 25 to 54 years taking employment-related training, 1994–1995 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conceptual framework for sustainable development skills Breakdown of KSAs identified for environment, society and economy before the validation process . . . . . . . . . . . . Breakdown of KSAs identified for environment, society and economy after the validation process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Broadly transferable sustainable development competency profile for the workforce (SDCP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Work-related learning models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comparison of traditional and new learning cultures . . . . Similarities and differences in PLAR among jurisdictions in Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2002 Red-Seal statistics for plumbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adult numeracy learning in Domains One and Two . . . . . Comparisons of approaches to modularization across six countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2337 2392 2409 2434

2435 2439

2454 2458 2460 2461 2462 2463 2465 2473 2528 2554 2555 2556 2557 2632 2643 2652 2656 2734 2798

List of Tables

XVI.5.1 XVI.5.2 XVI.5.3 XVI.5.4 XVI.6.1 XVI.6.2 XVI.6.3 XVI.7.1 XVI.7.2 XVI.7.3 XVI.10.1

liii

Technical description applying to each skill . . . . . . . . . . . . Aspects of criterion for ‘Snowman Building’ . . . . . . . . . . Proposed objective marking for Criterion A . . . . . . . . . . . . Criterion F broken down into aspects of criterion . . . . . . . Sample, returns and response rate for AMSC validation study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sample, returns and response rate for PLQ validation study Sample, returns and response rate for OPME validation . . The APACC scoring level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Distribution of points in the seven-point criteria . . . . . . . . The APACC accreditation levels and status awarded . . . . The national qualifications framework in South Africa . . .

2832 2833 2833 2834 2847 2849 2850 2861 2861 2862 2909


Contributors

Arvil Van Adams World Bank, Washington, United States of America. Poonam Agrawal PSS Central Institute of Vocational Education, Bhopal, India. William Ahadzie Centre for Social Policy Studies, University of Ghana, Accra. David Atchoarena UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning, Paris, France. James Avis School of Education and Professional Development, University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom. Peter van Baalen Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands. Sang Hoon Bae College of Education, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, United States of America. Richard G. Bagnall Department of Educational Policy and Administration, Hong Kong Institute of Education, China. Magdalena Balica Institute of Educational Sciences, Bucharest, Romania. Bilal Barakat Department of Education, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Sally-Anne Barnes Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom. lv

lvi

Contributors

Chiranjib Kumar Basu FAITH Healthcare Private Limited, New Delhi, India. Fred Beven School of Education and Professional Studies, Faculty of Education, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Stephen Billett School of Education and Professional Studies, Faculty of Education, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Jenny Bimrose Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom. Nicholas Boreham Institute of Education, University of Stirling, United Kingdom. France Boutin Département de linguistique et de didactique des langues, Université du Québec a` Montréal, Canada. Stephen D. Brookfield School of Education, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, United States of America. Alan Brown Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom. Frank Bünning Department of Vocational Education and Human Resources Development, Otto von Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany. Chitrlada Burapharat College of Arts, Media and Technology, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. Gerald Burke Centre for the Economics of Education and Training, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Manuel Cardoso UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Montreal, Canada. Paula Cavu Learning Centre, Fiji Institute of Technology, Fiji. Hong-Geun Chang Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training, Seoul, Republic of Korea. Nacim Walter Chieco National Industrial Training Service, Brasilia, Brazil.

Contributors

lvii

Peter Chin Faculty of Education, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. Alex Chinien Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. Chris Chinien Workforce Development Consulting, Montreal, Canada. Jihee Choi Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training, Seoul, Republic of Korea. Sarojni Choy School of Learning and Professional Studies, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Maria Ciavatta Fluminense Federal University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Diana Coben Department of Education and Professional Studies, King’s College, University of London, United Kingdom. Danielle Colardyn International Expert on Comparative Education and Training Policies, Paris, France. Mike Coles Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, London, United Kingdom. Frederic J. Company Blanquerna Faculty of Psychology, Educational Sciences and Sport, Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain. Monique Conn International Baccalaureate Organization, Geneva, Switzerland. Carlos Roberto Jamil Cury Department of Education, Pontifical Catholic University of the State of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Peter Dehnbostel Helmut Schmidt University – University of the Federal Armed Forces, Hamburg, Germany. Ludger Deitmer Institute Technology and Education, University of Bremen, Germany. Suresh Kumar Dhameja Colombo Plan Staff College for Technician Education, Manila, Philippines.

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Contributors

Joachim Dittrich Institute Technology and Education, University of Bremen, Germany. Bill Empey Prism Economics and Analysis, Toronto, Canada. Kathleen Fennessy Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Kathleen Ferguson Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Martin Fischer Institute Technology and Education, University of Bremen, Germany. Gail FitzSimons Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Gaudêncio Frigotto University of the State of Rio de Janeiro and Fluminense Federal University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Richard Gagnon Faculté des sciences de l’éducation, Université Laval, Quebec City, Canada. Lavinia Gasperini Natural Resources Management and Environment Department, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, Italy. Theodora Josue Tesoro Gayondato Colombo Plan Staff College for Technician Education, Manila, Philippines. Peter Gerds Institute Technology and Education, University of Bremen, Germany. Michael Gessler Institute Technology and Education, University of Bremen, Germany. Jan Geurts Chair Pedagogics of Professional Development, The Hague Technical University, Netherlands. Candido Alberto Gomes Chair on Youth, Education and Society, Brasilia Catholic University, Brazil. Annette Gough School of Education, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Berit Graubner Freelance Slavist and Anglicist, Stuttgart, Germany.

Contributors

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Kenneth Gray College of Education, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, United States of America. Andy Green Institute of Education, University of London, United Kingdom. Andrew Benson Greene Jr. International Education and Resource Network, Freetown, Sierra Leone. Philip Grollmann Institute Technology and Education, University of Bremen, Germany. Peter Grootings European Training Foundation, Turin, Italy. W. Norton Grubb Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, United States of America. Martin Gustafsson Research Triangle Institute International, Pretoria, South Africa. Hugh Guthrie National Centre for Vocational Education Research, Adelaide, Australia. Barry J. Hake Centre for Learning in Organisations, School of Education, Leiden University, Netherlands. Budd L. Hall Office of Community-Based Research, University of Victoria, Canada. Ron Hansen Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. Marcelle Hardy Education Department, Université du Québec a` Montréal, Canada. John Hart Scottish Qualifications Authority, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Christian Harteis Institute for Educational Science, Regensburg University, Germany. Michael W. Harvey Special Education Department, Teachers College, Ball State University, Muncie, United States of America. Sandra Haukka Centre for Learning Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.

lx

Contributors

Joshua D. Hawley College of Education and Human Ecology, Ohio State University, Columbus, United States of America. Emily Hazelman Learning Centre, Fiji Institute of Technology, Fiji. Lars Heinemann Institute Technology and Education, University of Bremen, Germany. Walter R. Heinz Graduate School of Social Sciences, University of Bremen, Germany. Ulrich Heisig Institute Labour and Economy, University of Bremen, Germany. Dennis R. Herschbach Faculty of Education Policy and Leadership, University of Maryland, College Park, United States of America. LuAnn Hiniker University of Minnesota Extension Service, Rochester, United States of America. David Hoey WorldSkills International, Haarlem, Netherlands. Astrid Hollander UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Bonn, Germany. Keith Holmes Sussex School of Education, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom. Hans-Dieter Höpfner Büro für Organisationsentwicklung und Berufsbildung, Berlin, Germany. Phillip Hughes Centre for UNESCO, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Richard Huisinga Department of Education and Psychology, University of Siegen, Germany. Nancy L. Hutchinson Faculty of Education, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. Alex Inglis Department of Education, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Cindy Marie Isaak-Ploegman Learning Assistance Centre, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. Laila Iskandar Community and Institutional Development, Cairo, Egypt.

Contributors

lxi

Claudia Jacinto UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Ronald L. Jacobs Center on Education and Training for Employment, Ohio State University, Columbus, United States of America. David Johnson Department of Education, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Lina Kaminskien˙e International Relations Department, Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Crafts, Kaunas, Lithuania. Lyle Kane Department of Education, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Tom Karmel National Centre for Vocational Education Research, Adelaide, Australia. Zuki Karpinska Department of Education, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Peter Kearns Global Learning Services, Canberra, Australia. Bonaventure W. Kerre School of Education, Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya. Myong Hee Kim Colombo Plan Staff College for Technician Education, Manila, Philippines. Kenneth King Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Vasiliy P. Kosyrev College of Engineering Pedagogics, Moscow State University of Agricultural Engineering, Russian Federation. Boris Kotsik UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education, Moscow, Russian Federation. Andrei N. Kouznetsov Foreign Languages Department, Moscow State University of Agricultural Engineering, Russian Federation. Andre Kraak Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa. Petr F. Kubrushko Moscow State University of Agricultural Engineering, Russian Federation.

lxii

Contributors

Joachim Lapp UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Bonn, Germany. Johanna Lasonen Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Jon Lauglo Department of Educational Research, Faculty of Education, University of Oslo, Norway. Uwe Lauterbach Centre for Planning and Financing in Education, German Institute for International Educational Research, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Marvin Lazerson University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States of America. Elenice Monteiro Leite TVET Consultant, São Paulo, Brazil. Tom Leney Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, London, United Kingdom. Jun Li Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada. Antônio Almerico Biondi Lima Ministry of Labour and Employment, Department of Qualification, Brasilia, Brazil. Michael Long Centre for the Economics of Education and Training, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Fernando Augusto Moreira Lopes International Metalworkers’ Federation, Geneva, Switzerland. Phil Loveder National Centre for Vocational Education Research, Adelaide, Australia. Jingwen Lu Huaibei Coal Industry Teachers College, China. Lianwei Lu TVET Teacher Training Center of the Province Shandong, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo, China. Norman Lucas School of Lifelong Education and International Development, Institute of Education, University of London, United Kingdom. Richard L. Lynch College of Education, University of Georgia, Athens, United States of America.

Contributors

lxiii

Luc´ılia Regina Machado UNA University Centre, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Jeanne MacKenzie National Centre for Vocational Education Research, Adelaide, Australia. Rupert Maclean UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Bonn, Germany. Karen Magro Faculty of Education, University of Winnipeg, Canada. Shyamal Majumdar Colombo Plan Staff College for Technician Education, Manila, Philippines. Naing Yee Mar UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Bonn, Germany. Munther Wassef Masri National Centre for Human Resources Development, Amman, Jordan. Natalia Matveeva UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Bonn, Germany. Simon McGrath UNESCO Centre for Comparative Education Research, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. Elspeth McOmish Formerly Section for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Education Sector, UNESCO, Paris, France. Vinay Swarup Mehrotra Pandit Sunderal Sharma Central Institute of Vocational Education, National Council of Educational Research and Training, Bhopal, India. Frans Meijers Chair Pedagogics of Professional Development, The Hague Technical University, Netherlands. Marinilzes Moradillo Mello Secretariat of Education of Guarulhos, São Paulo, Brazil. Louise Ménard Education Department, Université du Québec a` Montréal, Canada. Rita Meyer Department of Education, Helmut Schmidt University – University of the Federal Armed Forces, Hamburg, Germany.

lxiv

Contributors

Jing Mi College of Vocational and Technical Education, Tianjin University, China. Félix Mitnik Agency for the Economic Development of Córdoba, Argentina. Alexandra de Montrichard University of Massachusetts, Amherst, United States of America. Phoebe Moore European Studies Research Institute, University of Salford, Manchester, United Kingdom. Lars Moratis CSR Academy, Rotterdam, Netherlands. Hugh Munby Faculty of Education, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. L. Efison Munjanganja UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Bonn, Germany. Anna Muravyeva Centre for Vocational Education and Training Studies, Moscow, Russian Federation. Joshua A. Muskin United States Agency for International Development, Rabat, Morocco. Radhika Naidu National Centre for Vocational Education Research, Adelaide, Australia. Seveci Naisilisili Learning Centre, Fiji Institute of Technology, Fiji. Christine Newton Prism Economics and Analysis, Toronto, Canada. Pam Nilan Faculty of Education and Arts, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Newcastle, Australia. Peter Noonan Centre for the Economics of Education and Training, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Toshio Ohsako Freelance Consultant, Stockholm, Sweden. Moses O. Oketch Institute of Education, University of London, United Kingdom.

Contributors

lxv

Olga Oleynikova Centre for Vocational Education and Training Studies, Moscow, Russian Federation. Koon Ong National Centre for Vocational Education Research, Adelaide, Australia. Bernd Overwien Institute of Social Sciences and Historical-Political Education, Faculty of Humanities, Technical University of Berlin, Germany. Robert Palmer Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Man-Gon Park Division of Electronic, Computer and Telecommunication Engineering, College of Engineering, PuKyong National University, Busan, Republic of Korea. Julia Paulson Department of Education, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Margarita Pavlova Griffith Institute for Educational Research, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Mohan Perera Formerly Section for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Education Sector, UNESCO, Paris, France. Enrique Pieck Research Institute for the Development of Education, Ibero-American University, Mexico City, Mexico. Pundy Pillay Freelance Economist, Randburg, South Africa. Karen Plane Centre for Research in Education Equity and Work, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia. Hendrik van der Pol UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Montreal, Canada. Rose-Anne Polvere National Centre for Vocational Education Research, Adelaide, Australia. Peter Poschen Policy Integration Department, International Labour Organization, Geneva, Switzerland. George Preddey Tertiary Education Consultant, Wellington, New Zealand.

lxvi

Contributors

John Preston School of Education, University of East London, United Kingdom. Robert A. Putnam Department of Workforce Education and Development, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, United States of America. Muhammad Ashraf Qureshi TVET Consultant, Islamabad, Pakistan. Viliame Rabici Learning Centre, Fiji Institute of Technology, Fiji. Jagmohan Singh Rajput India First Foundation, New Delhi, India. Marise N. Ramos Faculty of Education, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Joaquim Venâncio Health Polytechnic School of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Felix Rauner TVET Research Group, University of Bremen, Germany. Robert D. Renaud Department of Educational Administration, Foundations and Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. Jay W. Rojewski College of Education, University of Georgia, Athens, United States of America. Klaus Ruth Institute Technology and Education, University of Bremen, Germany. Dominique Simone Rychen Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Avant Kumar Sacheti Pandit Sunderal Sharma Central Institute of Vocational Education, National Council of Educational Research and Training, Bhopal, India. Miriam Saunders National Centre for Vocational Education Research, Adelaide, Australia. Peter H. Sawchuk Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada. Klaus Schaack Capacity Building International (InWEnt), Magdeburg, Germany. Grazia Scoppio Department of National Defence, Canadian Defence Academy, Kingston, Canada.

Contributors

lxvii

Jean Searle School of Education and Professional Studies, Faculty of Education, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Terri Seddon Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Christopher Selby Smith Centre for the Economics of Education and Training, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Chandra Shah Centre for the Economics of Education and Training, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Alison Shilela Faculty of Education, Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, United Kingdom. Madhu Singh UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, Hamburg, Germany. P.P.G. Lionel Siriwardene UNESCO Consultant, Oxford, United Kingdom. Erica Smith School of Education, University of Ballarat, Australia. Georg Spöttl Institute Technology and Education, University of Bremen, Germany. John Stanwick National Centre for Vocational Education Research, Adelaide, Australia. Deyu Sun College of Educational Science, Anhui Normal University, China. Isimeli W. Tagicakiverata Learning Centre, Fiji Institute of Technology, Fiji. Manfred Tessaring European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, Thessaloniki, Greece. Natalia Tokareva UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education, Moscow, Russian Federation. Ligaya Valmonte Colombo Plan Staff College for Technician Education, Manila, Philippines. Tapio Varis Faculty of Education, University of Tampere, Finland.

lxviii

Contributors

Karina Veal UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Bonn, Germany. Antoaneta Voikova Ministry of Education and Science, Sofia, Bulgaria. Erik de Vries Human Resources and Social Development Canada, Gatineau, Canada. Tracey Wallace Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada. Richard Walther International Consultant, Saint-Rémy-Lès-Chevreuse, France. Patrick Werquin Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris, France. Anneke Westerhuis Centrum voor Innovatie van Opleidingen, ’s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. David N. Wilson Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada. Wolfgang Wittig Institute Technology and Education, University of Bremen, Germany. Aihua Wu Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Beijing, China. Rachel Yarrow Department of Education, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Michael F.D. Young Institute of Education, University of London, United Kingdom. Maja Zarini UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Bonn, Germany. Zhiqun Zhao Institute of Technology and Vocational Education, School of Education Technology, Beijing Normal University, China. Adrian Ziderman Economics Department, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Christopher J. Zirkle National Dissemination Center for Career and Technical Education, Columbus, United States of America. Karen F. Zuga, School of Teaching and Learning, College of Education, Ohio State University, Columbus, United States of America.

Foreword TVET for the Sustainability of Human Kind

The New Economy is creating new opportunities as well as new challenges and uncertainties. Although the right to well-being is entrenched in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, millions of people today are living in conditions of extreme poverty, which deny them the opportunity to exercise these fundamental rights. I would like to draw from the reflection made by the Family Care Foundation regarding what the world would look like if it were reduced to the size of a village of 100 people. According to their analysis: 80 people would live in sub-standard housing; 67 would be unable to read; 50 would be among the malnourished and one dying of starvation; 33 would be without access to a safe water supply; 39 would lack access to improved sanitation—and five would control 32% of the entire wealth. This unequal distribution of education and wealth is the root cause of many of the problems facing the world today. It is our business to remedy this situation before we come to regret not having remedied it. Education and training have a key role to play in this regard. The former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, repeatedly reminded us that education is the key to unlocking the cage of human misery; the key to delivering the potential of every human being; the key to opening up a future of freedom and hope. There is a general consensus that education can pave the way to freedom from poverty and hunger. Even primary education by itself has a number of positive effects on development: an increase in productivity in the formal and informal sectors of the economy; a positive effect on innovation in agriculture; a decrease in birth rates; and an improvement in health and nutrition— educated people are healthier because they are more likely to eat a properly balanced diet. The Bonn Declaration on Learning for Work, Citizenship and Sustainability, resulting from the UNESCO Conference ‘Learning for Work, Citizenship and Sustainability’ in October 2004, states that technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is the master key that can alleviate poverty, promote peace, conserve the environment, improve the quality of life for all and help to achieve sustainable development. Work is a major feature in most people’s lives. Not only does it provide them with the means of survival in terms of food, clothing and shelter, but the type of

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Foreword

work undertaken by individuals and groups also has a major impact on their selfidentity, social status, standard of living and quality of life. TVET is currently faced with major implications posed by the displacement of the traditionally strong focus upon so-called manual work in favour of mental work—the shift from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. The meaning and practice of work are also changing as globalized networks of production and trade spread across the globe. The boundaries between manual and mental work are fading away and becoming problematic, as many traditional forms of work, and preparation processes for learning to work, undergo change. TVET is concerned with the acquisition of knowledge and skills for the world of work to increase opportunities for productive work, sustainable livelihoods, personal empowerment and socio-economic development in knowledge economies. To increase their chances for employability, young people and adults need skills that are adaptable and relevant to the demands of today’s societies, which require individuals to possess a combination of knowledge, practical and social skills and positive attitudes and the ability to adapt to rapidly changing work environments. There is a timely need to re-examine important matters relating to the changing world of work, such as educational and training institutions, learning processes, necessary competencies and effects upon labour markets, school-to-work transition, the role of gender, matters of equality and equity, the respective roles of government, business, industry and trade unions, the dominant didactics for learning a profession, the assessment of competencies, declining birth rates and the ageing workforce, amongst many others. This is merely a brief listing of aspects that are examined and documented in this Handbook. There are great expectations that TVET can contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals relating to Education for All by overcoming the long-existing disparity between North and South, reducing poverty and promoting social inclusion. However, its widespread implementation requires considerable investments. Consequently, when planning for TVET, policy-makers and decision-makers must be able to make informed decisions that are supported by evidence-based information. There is, unfortunately, a paucity of evidence-based information about TVET. This Handbook, therefore, will start to fill that critical information gap by re-examining the world of work and its diverse aspects and documenting them in order to provide the best answers and best practices to improve TVET. It should assist those involved in TVET at any level in making informed decisions. For the first time in the history of TVET an important reference tool has been produced that provides a very comprehensive coverage of research, policy and practice within a single source. Through this seminal contribution, the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre has been successful in capturing much of the knowledge of the world’s leading experts in the field for the benefit of future generations. As the Assistant Director-General of UNESCO, I am very encouraged by this collaborative scholarly effort. It is through initiatives such as these that the status of TVET will be enhanced so that it can fully play its role as an enabling instrument for economic prosperity and social development. I commend Rupert Maclean, Director of

Foreword

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the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre, for spearheading this project which also assists UNESCO in contributing to critical reflection in education and training and to capture, preserve and share knowledge for the betterment of humankind. Assistant Director-General for Education UNESCO, Paris

Nicholas Burnett


Introduction Rupert Maclean and David N. Wilson

1 Background: The Study of Work and Occupations The interest of researchers in various academic disciplines of study, in work, occupations and employment-related areas is long standing. In the case of sociology, for example, it has existed since the beginning of the discipline’s history in the mid-nineteenth century. Emile Durkheim (1933), in his first major work entitled The Division of Labour, first published in 1893, examined the relationship between employment in modern industrial society and the creation of social order. It is both natural and logical that this should be the case, because work is a central activity in the lives of most people and all societies. However, it is only since the research undertaken at the University of Chicago, particularly by Everett Hughes and his associates from about the mid-1940s, that occupational sociology has achieved independent status as an area of study within sociology. Before this time, despite the large and often rich body of empirical studies that had been accumulated over the nineteenth century, the content of this area was decentralized amongst a wide range of subject areas within sociology, such as industrial sociology, rural sociology or demography. In the United Kingdom and continental Europe interest in sociological aspects of the world of work can be traced back over approximately two centuries, an examination of important aspects of this area being found in the writings of various social philosophers, economists, historians and (later) sociologists. In 1776, for example, the father of classical economics, Adam Smith (1937), published a book called An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of the Nations in which he explored the effect of the division of labour on the productivity of labour. As part of his analysis, Smith examined the social impact of changed production methods on various occupational groups and the broad society. Some early sociologists, such as the founding fathers of the discipline, Marx, Weber and Durkheim, examined work in a relatively broad sense, largely focusing upon a study of the labour force and alienation, which they regarded as being particularly important. Only to a limited extent did they undertake a study of any particular occupation, trade or profession. Emile Durkheim (1933), in The Division of Labour, examined and emphasized the importance of changes in the division

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of labour and the effect this would have upon the move from a state of mechanical solidarity to that of organic solidarity within a society; Karl Marx (1961, orig. 1846) stressed the fundamental importance of labour in human history and in helping to define the humanness and identity of mankind; and both he and Max Weber (1947, orig. 1922) examined the relationship between work and alienation, Marx being primarily concerned with the alienation of factory workers while Weber expanded the concept of rationalization. Weber also undertook a detailed study of particular occupations, including the political, the scientific, the professional and the Chinese literati. Some other precursors of modern sociology who showed a particular interest in the study of work and/or occupations include: Frederic Le Play (1937) who, in his mammoth six volume work entitled The European Working Classes, undertook empirical studies of the life and working conditions of various occupational groups; Charles Booth (1902) who organized investigations into the Life and Labour of the People of London; De Mann’s (1929) studies of the manual worker; and Dreyfuss’s (1938) work on the salaried employee. In the United States, the development of the sociology of occupations appears to have occurred almost as a by-product of the work of Robert Park (1925) and his associates at the University of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s. As part of their major interest in the ecological and social integration of various groups living in inner city, ghetto-type areas of Chicago (see Wirth, 1928), Park and his fellow researchers studied a variety of low status, often marginal occupations such as the hobo (Anderson, 1923), the prostitute (Donovan, 1920), the taxi-dance-hall girl (Cressy, 1932) and the professional thief (Sutherland, 1937); and generally adopted a social-psychological and social-interactionist approach to the occupation studied. They were interested in what Everett Hughes calls ‘the dirty work in society’, and the ways in which the practitioners of such work were able to overcome or control the problems and tensions associated with it. Some went beyond this narrow focus on low-status work to study various more respectable occupations whose practitioners were not concentrated in the inner city areas. Examples are the studies undertaken on sales staff in shops (Donovan, 1974a, orig. 1929) and the school-teacher (Donovan, 1974b, orig. 1938). Later studies undertaken by Mayo and Lombard (1943), and by those involved with the famous ‘Hawthorn studies’, widened existing approaches to the study of work and occupations. These studies were concerned with important aspects of industrial sociology, such as the study of work organizations, industrial relations and human relations in industry; and they adopted a psycho-sociological approach to the study of men and women working in groups. Academic interest in and research about the sociology of work and occupations waned in both Europe and North America from the late 1930s until after the Second World War. Although there are no doubt many reasons why this eclipse occurred, one could speculate that it was partly due to a reduced interest in and confidence about the value of the empirical, largely descriptive studies of occupations that had been generated; and was also due to the fact that despite the large number of studies

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accumulated, no truly satisfactory theoretical framework for the study of work and occupations had been developed. It was not until the work of Everett Hughes, a major intellectual figure at the University of Chicago whose influence was substantial from about the 1940s onwards, that a coherent sociological approach and theoretical framework within which occupational groups could be analysed was developed. This framework evolved as a result of many diverse types of work being compared in order to identify the common denominators. It was only after a plausible theoretical orientation was accomplished that occupational sociology achieved the academic status of becoming a sub-field of sociology, being taught as a separate field of study in many European and American universities. The growing importance of and interest in this area was clearly indicated when a major international journal, Sociology of Work and Occupations, specifically devoted to this area, was founded in 1974. Everett Hughes (e.g. 1937, 1949, 1952, 1958a, 1958b, 1971) is the pivotal figure in occupational sociology. Hughes states his goal as being ‘to learn about the nature of society itself from the study of occupations’, the more immediate purpose of his study being to describe and understand the behaviour of the people who are involved in different kinds of work (Soloman, 1968). Hughes’ influence on this area of study has been enormous, for apart from his own insightful and voluminous research output, virtually all of the major figures in occupational sociology, such as Oswald Hall (e.g. 1948), Howard Becker (e.g. 1952), William F. Whyte (e.g. 1943), Blanche Geer (e.g. 1966), Julian Roth (e.g. 1963) and Dan Lortie (e.g. 1975), were either students of Hughes or were clearly influenced by his ideas and theoretical approach to the study of work and occupations. Hughes and those influenced by his approach to the study of work were responsible for extending and diversifying the body of studies on occupations to include doctors, lawyers, teachers, dance musicians, white-collar workers, railroad workers, soldiers, ministers, cleaners, nurses, librarians, salesmen, boxers, ‘quacks’ and real-estate agents. As a field of study, the sociology of work and occupations may be defined as the application of the principles and concepts of sociology to a particular social phenomenon—that of occupational life and people at work. Nosow and Form (1962, p. 3) argue that, as a sub-discipline within sociology, the sociology of work and occupations is organized around five substantive themes. These are: (a) the social nature of work and related phenomena such as leisure activities; (b) the analysis of occupational structure and the causes of changes within it; (c) the study of individual occupations in terms of such matters as recruitment, training and careers; (d) the ways in which the occupational structure and individual occupations articulate with other segments of society, such as in the case of occupations and systems of social stratification; and (e) the study of a particular occupation in order to highlight a problem in the broader society, such as those who are employed in the mass media and the operation of the political structure. These five areas are, of course, not totally self-contained for there are substantial areas of overlap between them.

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Occupations may be viewed as a cluster of skills belonging to those who also perform similar roles (Nosow & Form, 1962). The thing which identifies the occupational role—and separates it from other roles—is that it is a specific activity with a market value which people are paid to perform.

2 Why Study Work and Occupations? Several interrelated reasons may be advanced to explain why the study of work and occupations warrants the serious attention of researchers, policy-makers and practitioners. Work is an important and highly pervasive activity in the lives of many people, for a substantial part of men’s and an increasing percentage of women’s lives are spent in work-related activities. In view of this, many people have an interest and curiosity about the occupational world. In addition, since work consumes so large a part of the waking hours of many people, it follows that it should be of major interest concerning our understanding of human behaviour (Pavalko, 1972). The task of the sociologist is to develop concepts and categories which will assist in an explanation of the organization of society, and the behaviour of people within it, and so the study of work and occupations is of importance if this is to be achieved. Occupations are also social roles. As such, specific occupations serve to locate their incumbents in a matrix of other social roles and link them to others through work-patterned interaction. When Hughes (1958a) refers to the ‘social drama of work’, he draws attention to the fact that, just like the playing of other social roles, work involves the process of social interaction with others. Occupations are a fundamental link between individuals and the larger society, because occupational roles are an important element of social structure and so affect one’s participation in other segments of society. A person’s occupational status is, for example, the main factor which affects his/her entry into and location within the social structure and stratification system of their society (Chinoy, 1955). It can also be demonstrated that occupational roles are a major source of personal identity, for the nature of work leaves a deep and lasting influence on the lives and personality of people. Hughes (1958a) emphasizes that the social relationships into which the practitioner’s work throws him or her has a great influence on their occupational personality; while Waller (1961, orig. 1936), in reference to the work of the professional, puts it this way: Those who follow certain occupations are continually thrown into certain kinds of social situations. These social situations call for, or are best met by, a certain kind of reaction on the part of the [worker . . .] long practice in the social techniques enjoined upon one in a profession makes these the deepest grooves, and at length they grow so deep that there is no getting out (p. 376).

Following on from this point, it may be said that occupational groups represent distinctive sub-cultures that have a variety of shared norms and values into which the individual is likely to be socialized. The occupational culture can have a substantial

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effect on the individual’s outlook and identity. Sorokin (1947), in referring to the socialization of the individual into the culture of a particular occupation, says that each occupation tends to remake its members in its own image—the longer the individual stays in the same occupation the deeper being the transformation. Thus, an individual’s occupation can be a good indication, in broad terms, of the individual’s likely social construction of reality, since a wide variety of attitudes, values and behaviour are correlated with a person’s occupation. The study of work also assists us to understand how social life is possible, because occupational differentiation and independence help to explain how order is maintained in the social structure. Work is an important basis of social cohesion and integration in society, and results in what Durkheim (1933) called organic solidarity. For all of these reasons, the study of work and occupations is an area of considerable importance which is of both theoretical and empirical interest.

3 Technical and Vocational Education and Training One important area of work and employment consists of those occupations which centre on the application of technical and vocational skills to the world of work. It is estimated that some 80% of occupations are of this type (UNESCO-UNEVOC & UNESCO-UIS, 2006). The field of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) has changed throughout history, usually in response to the demands made upon it by the societies it serves. The current term—TVET—requires both definition and differentiation from other designations. Vocational education and training are probably as old as humanity, and knowledge, skills and belief systems have been transmitted from one generation to the next since the origins of humankind. Over time, various terms have been used to describe elements of the field that are now conceived as comprising TVET. These include: apprenticeship training, vocational education, industrial arts, technical education, technical/vocational education (TVE), occupational education (OE), vocational education and training (VET), career and technical education (CTE), etc. Several of these terms are commonly used in specific geographical areas. For example, in Europe the term vocational education and training (VET) is in common usage, while in the United States the current term is career and technical education (CTE). In addition, many in the field are advocating the use of continuing vocational education and training (CVET). There are also several different dimensions that can be used to define vocational education and training—for example: its venue (company-based, apprenticeship, school-based), character (initial, continuing), etc. At the second International Congress on Technical and Vocational Education, held in the Republic of Korea in 1999, UNESCO and ILO (in consultation with their respective Member States and partner agencies) jointly agreed upon using the term technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in future in order to unite the field. There has also been discussion to add TVET to the UNESCO ‘Education for All’ (EFA) and ‘Education for Sustainable Development’ (ESD) initiatives.

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Strengthening and upgrading TVET is also regarded as important for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The definition of TVET adopted at the Korean Congress is: Those aspects of the educational process involving, in addition to general education, the study of technologies and related sciences, and the acquisition of practical skills, attitudes, understanding and knowledge relating to occupants in various sectors of economic and social life (UNESCO, 1999).

The many designations for the field are probably a by-product of practitioners’ responses to changes in demand over time for skills and technologies used in workplaces, the globalization of production, the increasing utilization of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and related matters. Similarly, changes in TVET policy and practice reflect differences in opinion among practitioners and researchers. What has not changed, and appears to be increasing, is the growing emphasis on lifelong learning—and re-learning—associated with TVET. Silvern (1968) focused upon this issue while delineating the differences between education and training. He characterized education as ‘womb to tomb, erection to resurrection’, which can be interpreted to mean lifelong and continuing. His definition of training mirrored its perception at that time as being supplemental to education and focusing upon procedural learning. Subsequently, we have witnessed a convergence between these two—previously distinct—fields. According to Finch and Crunkilton (1999, p. 14), TVET refers to education and training that prepares persons for gainful employment. TVET can take place either in formal schools (i.e. kindergarten through to grade 12 or 13), or increasingly in post-secondary community and/or technical colleges, or informally by means of training at the workplace and increasingly by distance media. Many TVET educators favour the integration of academic and technical/technological curricula. The education and training of so-called knowledge workers suggests that this integration trend will predominate in the twenty-first century. This is because learning sophisticated technological concepts requires a sound foundation in mathematics, science and communications skills, and also an understanding of technology. The study of vocational education has a long-standing history, beginning in the 1880s when urbanization, mechanization and industrialization became the major forces driving societies. By the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, nations established skill formation institutions and organizations, together with branches and sectors. Often, these institutions established close links to business and industry. Other institutions became part of the public domain. Well-developed systems of stratified skill formation developed in public institutions during the twentieth century in Europe, while in English-speaking countries connections with business and industry became stronger. The growth of industrial society, and subsequently post-industrial society, witnessed the changing role of education and training institutions. In this Handbook the overarching term TVET will be used to refer to all elements of this particular field of study and practice.

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4 The Return of TVET to the Development Agenda1 TVET has fuelled phenomenal economic growth in some countries and fallen short of expectations in others. Globalization is prompting governments to take renewed interest in this branch of education, still perceived by some as second-class. It is every politician’s nightmare: unemployed youths hanging out in the streets with little chance of finding a job or going to university. While the parents of those youths may digest their own dashed hopes for a better life, frustration can reach revolt when that bleak horizon confronts the next generation. For governments—rich or poor—the solution seems straightforward. Catch those individuals before they become alienated by teaching them skills in secondary school to carve their niche in the labour market. Of course, reality is never so simple, which partly explains why TVET does not achieve acceptance by all. Principals and teachers point to the heavy expenses required to develop curricula, train staff and equip classrooms for these specialized subjects, which generally cost three times more than academic courses. Yet, for many parents and students it remains a ‘second-class’ education. The truth is that TVET provides training but not the guarantee of a job. Even the world’s most sophisticated and expensive programme is doomed to fail if the labour market cannot absorb the students, despite their skills and expectations. This backdrop has led many experts and policy-makers to conclude that training is best left to the workplace, especially after the radical policy shift by the World Bank, which was once considered TVET’s staunchest supporter. The very first World Bank loan for education, granted in 1963, was for TVET, which accounted for about 40% of all educational loans in Sub-Saharan Africa up until the early 1980s. But in 1991, the Bank reversed gears, thanks to a policy paper, co-authored by Arvil Van Adams. Widely respected, Adams retired from the Bank in January 2008 with a single regret: people took us—the policy—too much at face value. The easy message of our policy was that TVET is not a good investment but that ignores the nuance of what we said. We argued for a shift away from heavy investment in workshops, instructor training and curriculum in order to invest resources into policy development. The point was not to do away with TVET but to reform the policy process (Adams in UNESCO, 2005, p. 2).

In view of the impact that the World Bank’s paper had in the following decade over policy leading to loans for TVET drying up, Arvil Van Adams was invited to write a Prologue to this International Handbook in which he reviews the non-governmental delivery of TVET in Sub-Saharan Africa.

4.1 A Time-Bomb But few appreciated the nuance of Adam’s analysis and TVET virtually disappeared from the international aid agenda. The World Bank began investing heavily in primary education at the expense of TVET, which now accounts for just 8–9% of

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educational spending. International strategies intended to reduce poverty completely ignored the need to develop skills. As Riordan of the ILO puts it: We are now seeing a skills-divide emerging with the least-developed countries falling further and further behind, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (Riordan in UNESCO, 2005, p. 2).

To this may be added ‘a time-bomb waiting to happen as hundreds of thousands more youth finish primary school and look for secondary education or work opportunities which do not always exist’ (Iwamoto in UNESCO, 2005, p. 2). In many of the least-developed countries, pupils have little chance of either pursuing their schooling or finding a job. ‘So we advocate a new vision of vocational education that focuses on practical or “life skills” integrated at the primary or secondary levels, depending upon the country’s resources’ (Iwamoto in UNESCO, 2005, p. 2).

4.2 A Growing Interest In countries rich and poor there is a growing interest in TVET. ‘Countries realize that it’s a means to jumping on the bandwagon of globalization. This is reflected by the tremendous shift of employment from the United States and Europe to India and China, where you have such highly skilled work forces. By substantially investing in TVET, these countries laid a major plank in their economic foundations’ (Perera in UNESCO, 2005, p. 2). For UNESCO, TVET goes beyond the narrow confines of economic planning. It is part of a larger vision for promoting sustainable development. Since its founding, UNESCO has been developing recommendations and organizing policy debates, while serving as a policy advisor for governments trying to reform or create vocational education systems. As UNESCO notes: In the past, there was a supply-side vision, which created serious problems for developing countries. Either they invested heavily in trying to import foreign models of higher education, which produced a surplus of white-collar expectations. Or they tried to set up highly specialized training schools, which didn’t correspond to labour needs. Today, the goal is to teach students to adapt to changing working conditions, instead of locking them into specific jobs and skills (Perera in UNESCO, 2005, p. 2).

Unfortunately, these new directions do not come with any road maps. As Fred Fluitman of the ILO says: ‘secondary education systems are pretty much the same. But every TVET programme is different and just about every government is constantly trying to tinker with it’ (UNESCO, 2005, p. 3). In short, constant innovation is a key ingredient in the reform process. If done properly, the results can be spectacular. The Republic of Korea is an example of how TVET can fuel stellar economic growth. While no model should be emulated, the Korean experience offers key lessons. First, the government took a sequenced approach to education. Money did not start flowing into TVET until the country had nearly achieved universal primary education. By design or accident, major investing began in the early 1980s,

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just as labour shortages started to pinch the economy. To make the ‘big push’ into export-oriented manufacturing, construction and service-oriented sectors, the country needed a new stream of skilled workers. At the same time, policy-makers in the Republic of Korea were beginning to be alarmed by a growing appetite for higher education. People would become ‘over-educated’, expecting white-collar jobs in an economy thirsting for new sources of skilled labour. By expanding TVET, the government planned to satisfy its forecasted labour needs while reducing pressure on universities to enrol more students. Today, in the Republic of Korea, about 40% of secondary students are enrolled in TVET. Yet, it is still perceived as a second-class education! So the government is trying to open pathways to higher education. First, TVET students are now getting a healthy dose of academic subjects so that they can apply for a place in university. In some schools, academic and vocational students share as much as 75% of a common curriculum. The government is also channelling public and private investment into new post-secondary training institutes to kill the myth that TVET is an academic ‘dead-end’. The ultimate challenge lies in keeping abreast with technological change. To keep curricula relevant, the plan is to tighten links to the private sector. For example, the Republic of Korea is now experimenting with its own version of Germany’s famous ‘dual system’, which traces its roots back to post-war reconstruction. It has opted for a ‘2+1’ programme, combining two years of classroom studies with one year of apprenticeship.

4.3 Promoting Partnerships Similar reforms are taking place in China, where a third of all secondary students are enrolled in vocational schools, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. However, it is difficult to draw parallels between the two countries. Whereas a labour shortage shaped the Republic of Korea’s policy reform, China is grappling with a labour surplus, with job creation lagging behind the growing economy. And while the Republic of Korea had the luxury of tailoring a new system to foreseen needs, China must overhaul an antiquated machine. To do so, China has found an ally in the private sector. Private companies are providing finance, materials, apprenticeships and guidance as representatives sit on school advisory boards. These partnerships reflect a key element of the Chinese vision of lifelong learning: schools will develop and broaden students’ capacities and the workplace will provide training (Hou in UNESCO, 2005, p. 3).

4.4 Open-Door Policy Ironically, the great bastion of communism may be increasingly lured to the private sector, while countries of the former USSR are not so keen to relinquish State control of their TVET systems.

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Here, the Czech Republic is doing well. This is one of the few countries where vocational education enjoys a prestigious reputation. About 75% of secondary students are enrolled in TVET, compared to 25% who attend purely academic schools. Instead of abandoning the system to market forces, the government has given greater freedom to principals and teachers to update curricula and introduce new occupational fields, as opposed to the specific skills associated with a particular job (Klenha in UNESCO, 2005, p. 3). Another major selling point is the ‘open-door’ policy to higher education. All secondary students can take the Maturita examination, which is a pre-requisite for university entrance examinations. In addition, some of the new post-secondary training institutes (set up over the past ten years) allow students to transfer directly into universities. The Russian Federation is also planning to decentralize its TVET system, permitting regional governments to administer their own programmes. But it is not an easy task. Most of the schools can barely be called educational institutions. ‘But they do keep youth off the street and provide at least one member of a family with a hot meal every day. The State’s TVET schools are one of the few remaining welfare institutions for young people and poor families’ (Grootings in UNESCO, 2005, pp. 3–4). Previously two-thirds of Russian workers were trained in elementary vocational schools and 22% of the population have a secondary vocational education, which is 1.5 times higher than those with a college education.

4.5 Finding Funds Ways are being discussed to enable TVET students to pursue higher education or training. New internship programmes might also dynamize the system. ‘The problem lies in finding the money. The private sector is too disorganized for any serious partnership [and so] the State must invest in this generation and the country’s future’ (Grootings in UNESCO, 2005, p. 3). Governments far poorer than the Russian Federation are doing just that. Botswana, Ghana and Kenya have been shouldering the burden since World Bank loans dried up in the 1990s. Instead of setting up a separate stream of specialized schools, these countries have ‘vocationalized secondary education’. While the curriculum remains academic in nature, between 15 and 30% of courses focus on practical subjects like agriculture, management and entrepreneurialism. The aim is to redress the imbalance between the aims of a purely academic secondary education and the needs of society.

4.6 Investing in Future Generations UNEVOC has published a series of reports evaluating the impact of vocationalization in Sub-Saharan Africa (Lauglo & Maclean, 2005). There has been tremendous political support for these courses in Kenya, Ghana and Botswana. Botswana, in

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particular, has made huge investments to introduce information processing and computer skills at the secondary level. Ironically, the problem may lie with the high hopes and expectations raised by these courses. Parents are rushing to enrol their children in classes that are supposed to lead to jobs. Demand is so high that it is politically impossible to contain the new curriculum to a few regions where it might be tested and refined. As a result precious resources might have been spread too thin. The bottom line is that about 80% of jobs in poorer countries require some form of vocational skills. The urgent challenge is therefore to bridge the demand for jobs with the actual needs of society. Politically, governments cannot afford not to invest in the skills of future generations.

4.7 Example: Rebuilding in the Arab States UNESCO is preparing plans to rebuild the vocational education system in Iraq once the security situation has stabilized. Close to US$3 million in extra-budgetary funds have been recently earmarked for this purpose and additional funds are promised. UNESCO is also increasingly active with TVET projects in other Arab States, which are trying to reduce their reliance on expatriate workers. For example, over the past five years, UNESCO has been assisting Libya to vocationalize its entire secondary education system and revise the curricula of post-secondary training institutes. In Bahrain, where 65–70% of secondary students are enrolled in TVET, the government has financed a UNESCO project to create a ‘centre for excellence’, providing specialized teacher-training services and lifelong-learning programmes for adults.

4.8 Global Trends in Technical and Vocational Education Globally, almost 50 million students were enrolled in technical and vocational education in 2002. Nine out of ten were enrolled at the upper secondary level, typically designed to serve youth aged 15–20 years. The global average is that one in five upper secondary students is enrolled in technical and vocational programmes. However, the enrolment rates vary widely by regions. In Europe and East Asia, including China, such programmes account for 50 and 33%, respectively, of upper secondary enrolment. In the other regions, technical and vocational enrolment is far less common. In Africa and South America, the share is less than 20%, and in North America and West Asia less than 10 and 4%, respectively (Fig. 1). Nevertheless, it should be noted that, in the last decade, secondary enrolments have skyrocketed world-wide. From 1998 to 2006 alone, the number of secondary students grew by 15%. However, this growth is largely due to increases in general secondary students. Public/private partnerships and the involvement of the corporate sector in TVETrelated programme activities mounted by UNESCO are becoming increasingly

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60 1998

55

2002

50 % of upper secondary enrolment

50

47

40 34 30 23

22 20

19

19

18 16 10

10

9 4 m

0 Africa

North America

South America

East Asia West Asia

Europe

World

Note: m = missing Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Global Education Digest, 2005. www.uls.unesco.org

Fig. 1 Technical and vocational students as a share of total secondary enrolments, 1998 and 2002

important. For example, in December 2008, UNESCO signed a four-year partnership agreement with the United Kingdom-based StratREAL Foundation2 to cooperate in the field of entrepreneurship education in the Arab States region. The objective of this partnership is to support decision-makers in the development of educational policies and programmes that integrate entrepreneurship education in the education systems of the Middle East and North Africa. The activity represents a significant and sustainable contribution to skills development for youth across the Arab States region. The StratREAL Foundation provided extra-budgetary funds to UNESCO. The activity is being managed by the UNESCO-UNEVOC, which developed the proposal and submitted it to StratREAL through UNESCO Headquarters. Skills development for the world of work needs to be tailored to the needs of the economy and the labour market, given that the private sector is the recipient of the TVET-trained workforce.

5 A Short History of TVET To trace the origins and development of TVET is a daunting task, because one must simultaneously trace the origins and development of humanity. The approach used here is to develop cross-cutting themes. Among the themes chosen are tools,

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technology, culture change, cultural transmission, specialization and fabrication. Researching and writing history is possibly the most inexact science, because the researcher and author must largely rely upon previously published sources. The danger in reliance on such sources is that of repeating the biases of their authors, since ‘history is rarely written by the losers’. The history of TVET is difficult to trace because it has been embedded in a plethora of other histories. That is to say, until the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution, what we call TVET today was not considered very important by historians. Therefore, the researcher must cull many historical accounts in order to glean snippets of TVET history. Having said this, not everyone will share the same enthusiasm for those snippets selected and analysed here. This is because what is deemed important by one person may not necessarily be deemed important by others. With these ground rules, we can now proceed to examine the origins and development of TVET, as perceived by the editors of this Handbook.

5.1 A Historical Continuum to Explain Technological Change Alvin Toffler (1981) situated technological change on a historical continuum that is helpful in setting the context for this chapter. His three ages, or ‘waves’, began with the Agricultural Revolution, which took place from about 8000 B.C. to A.D. 1700. We ourselves suggest that Toffler should have included a hunting and gathering stage preceding his first wave. We also suggest that Toffler’s Agricultural Revolution could be divided into a subsistence phase, prior to 8000 B.C., in which families, clans and tribes consumed what they produced, a feudal phase, and then the family farm phase, which is now being displaced by the new ‘industrial’ model of an agrobusiness phase. Toffler neglected to consider that his ages/waves overlapped in time and space. The domestication of animals is also a feature of the development of agriculture to which Toffler may have not given sufficient emphasis. A report from the HapMap project, which built on the decoding of the human genome in 2003, attributed gene changes in East Asians and Europeans 6,000–7,000 years ago to the spread of agriculture to Europe from the Near East at around the same time that the shift to rice farming became widespread in China (Wade, 2006). Another useful approach to understanding the origins and development of TVET is to trace the development of tools and technologies and relate these to education. Durant (1954) has suggested that a ‘stone in the fist’ may have been the first tool. He also posited that fire led ‘to the fusing of metals, and the only real advance in technology from Cro-Magnon days to the Industrial Revolution’ (ibid., p. 96). He continued by noting: a rock—sharp at one end, round at the other to fit the palm of the hand—became for primeval man [sic] hammer, axe, chisel, scraper, knife and saw. [. . .] Gradually these specific tools were differentiated out of the one homogeneous form: holes were bored to attach a handle, teeth were inserted to make a saw, branches were tipped with the coup-de-poing [a sharp rock] to make a pick, an arrow or a spear, the rough-surfaced stone became a file; the stone in a sling became a weapon of war that would survive even classical antiquity (ibid., p. 95).

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A word about gender and gender differentiation of skills is necessary. From earliest pre-history in most cultures males dominated the hunting of game while females dominated the gathering of wild foods and garment-making. Tool-making may have been dominated by males, perhaps due to their body strength. However, in settled agriculture considerable cultivation was undertaken by females, although it is likely that agricultural implements may have been fabricated by males. Toffler’s second age/wave was the Industrial Age, which he dated from A.D. 1700 to 2000. Tjaden (1995) observed that an important characteristic of this period was the separation of goods production from consumption. Eventually, another important characteristic was the division of production into the fabrication and assembly of components, which led to the development of assembly lines. This ‘industrial model’ also influenced the structure and organization of the education system. It is important to realise that the transitions from one so-called age to another are: (a) not cut-and-dried; (b) slow rather than abrupt; and (c) neither continuous nor complete. It should be borne in mind that, according to Rifkin (1995), The End of Work may reduce demand for many occupations, but persons will continue to be needed to fabricate, maintain and repair most of the attributes of our civilization, at least for the foreseeable future. This salient fact suggests that, in the transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, education systems must make provision for the education and training of both ‘traditional’ and ‘knowledge’ workers, rather than an ‘either/or’ proposition. The abrupt termination of one type of education and its replacement is not an option; rather, a lengthy transitional phase is anticipated. Toffler’s third wave, called the Information Age, was said to have begun in the United States in the mid-1950s, when ‘white-collar and service workers outnumbered blue-collar workers’, according to Tjaden (1995). It is argued here that Toffler’s paradigm appears somewhat simplistic because what actually seems to be happening is the merger of attributes of previous ages/waves.

5.2 The Evolution of TVET Education and training began in pre-history with the transmission of knowledge and culture from one generation to the next. Culture is defined here as the beliefs, values and technologies shared by a discrete group of people. Hostetter (1974, p. 209) wrote that ‘the teaching of technology as part of man’s knowledge began when early cave man taught his son to master the skills needed for survival’. The use of tools, beginning with those made from flint, evolved as humans evolved. Recent primate research has found that tool-making exists among some primates and is transmitted to their young. In the pre-historic hunting and gathering society, skills were passed from parent to child as members of small, usually related, migratory groups. The transition from this stage to the settled cultivation of crops marks the beginnings of civilization—and with it recorded history. Tools made this transition possible and grew more diversified because of the transition. The education and training that occurred is best embodied in the Chinese proverb: ‘Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.’

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Specialization in societies and cultures most probably began during the subsistence phase of the Agricultural Revolution, when sufficient surplus food was amassed to enable some persons to ‘work’ in areas other than cultivation, hunting or gathering. The first two socio-cultural specializations were likely the clergy and teachers. Specialization probably paralleled the development of settled agriculture and settlements. Gallinelli explained that: Children learned the skills of their parents by watching carefully and imitating the process until an exact duplicate could be produced. This method of conscious-imitation was the methodology by which crafts were ‘taught’ in one way or another until well into the 1400s (1979, p. 19)

While ‘at first all of the simple tools, weapons, and religious and domestic objects were formed by the people for their own use’ (ibid.), differentiation between socalled ‘academic’ and ‘training’ teachers likely commenced with further specialization into builders, potters, leather tanners, armourers, wool, flax and cotton-spinners, tailors, etc. In some cultures separate castes developed for specific trades—e.g. in India the patel caste of leather-workers—while in what became ‘Western’ cultures separate guilds developed in the fabrication and commercial fields. Each specific group, caste, guild, etc., designated certain persons as educators/trainers, later called meister (or master) in Germany, to supervise the learning of new entrants to their field, known as apprentices. In contrast, training for the clergy mainly comprised a shaman, priest, rabbi or guru, who instructed a group of students. The former group evolved into the skilled trades, while the latter evolved into religious and, subsequently, academic groups. Gallinelli noted that: In ancient Jewish culture, the law required parents to teach boys a trade. The boys were to go to the Rabbis for religious instruction in the mornings and learn the father’s trade in the afternoon (1979, p. 20).

As tools became more complex, and the knowledge and skills to use them became more specialized, parents and/or elders were no longer able to teach their children the sum total of their knowledge. Gallinelli observed that ‘new social developments went hand in hand with new technology and people no longer had to be the jacks-ofall-trades of earlier times’ (1979, p. 19). An Asian example of these didactic changes is provided by Clark, who quoted the fifth century B.C. philosopher Lao-Tse (also known as Lao-tzu): ‘If you tell me, I will listen. If you show me, I will see. But if you let me experience, I will learn.’ And so began one of the first active learning philosophies (Clark, 1999).

Eventually, their offspring were apprenticed to craftspersons or artisans with the specialized skills and tools for particular trades. These craftspersons would impart the craft at which (usually) they were an expert in exchange for unpaid, or low-paid, work. As the system developed, apprentices began to live with the craftsperson, and received subsistence until becoming accepted as tradespersons themselves. Formal apprenticeship may have begun as early as 2000 B.C. to train scribes in Egypt.

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Subsequently, rules governing apprenticeships were included in the Code of Hammurabi in 1760 B.C. in Babylon. Barlow adds that: The rise of Athens was accompanied by an increase in the practice of trades required by the growing city. A definite occupational classification developed, regulating various workers into a caste system. The industrial workers, although free people, were generally of the second class. Yet the work of the artisan is our best evidence of Greek achievement. Throughout a long history, the craftsmen and artisans of Rome were composed of a mixture of slaves and freemen. They acquired their skill in the only way possible, that is, through family apprenticeship (1990, p. 6).

While early Christian monks also divided their days between manual labour and prayer, the early Benedictines organized this regimen into seven hours of labour and two hours of reading. Gallinelli noted that: This requirement [. . .] meant that some monks spent their labors copying manuscripts and the writing, illustrating and binding of the manuscripts led to the development of the craft of bookmaking (1979, p. 20).

Gray and Herr noted that: Owning a set of tools, which were scarce and therefore valuable, and knowing how to use them became an important alternative to agriculture or domestic service. It was during these times that the term ‘journeyman’ [sic] evolved, indicating that an individual owned a set of tools, possessed the skills to use them, and was free to ‘journey’ to various jobs (1998, p. 6).

Craftspersons ‘were eventually brought together by their common interest in a craft to form social groups—and out of these evolved the crafts guilds of the Middle Ages’ (Gallinelli, 1979, p. 19). A number of sources provide information on the nature, function and history of the guilds, such as: Guilds were associations in which, from the 12th century, people who worked in the same trade or craft joined together in a town or city. Guilds wrote their own bylaws, rules that were binding upon all members of the guild. These rules and regulations defined how things were to be made and set ‘consumer-friendly’ prices (CEDEFOP, 2004).

While Gallinelli wrote that ‘printing was not invented until the 1400s’, one may note the interesting co-incidence between: the invention of moveable metal type, jikji, in Korea in 1377, and then 78 years later by Gutenberg in Germany. [. . .] One can only wonder if the Korean invention of moveable metal type was communicated to Europe, resulting in its re-invention by Gutenberg. Such speculation is facilitated by the proximity to Korea of Kaifeng in China, which was the beginning of the Silk Road which facilitated trade with Europe (Wilson, 2003, p. 19).

Barlow observes that: The Renaissance, a period of about 250 years, began in the fourteenth century with a great revival of learning—for the few. [. . .] During the whole of this wonderful and terrifying period of contrasts and conflicts, we may find the stabilizing influence of industry, trade, and craftsmanship. Society became dependent upon the new burgher class and the arts-andcrafts guilds (1990, p. 7).

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Guilds functioned to control entry to occupations, thereby protecting the income earned by their skilled labour. Guilds [. . .] were an important part in apprenticeship as they established the quality standards for the product and practice. During the peak of the guild system, which occurred between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, the yeomen were protected by strict regulation of hours, tools, prices, and wages (Clark, 1999).

In addition: A strict hierarchy held sway throughout Europe under the guild system: apprentice, journeyman, master. The title of master was the only written evidence of competence, while ‘certificates of apprenticeship’ confirmed completion of the first stage of training; [while] the family generally paid the master a fee to cover the apprentice’s food and lodging. The apprenticeship generally lasted from two to four years, and longer in very specialised occupations (CEDEFOP, 2004).

Apprentices were either paid nothing or a small percentage of the wage structure set by the guild. A graduated percentage payment system later developed and became enshrined in legislation. It may be noted that: The period of apprenticeship ended without a specialised examination when the apprentice was ‘discharged’. Each trade or craft had its own customs for this ‘discharge’ and for the former apprentice’s acceptance into the community of journeymen. Journeymen’s vocational qualifications were recognised in other countries. Generally without family ties, they travelled from place to place, to augment and broaden their skills by learning from masters in other countries: an early form of occupational mobility in Europe. After journeymen had acquired sufficient experience, they would apply to a guild for admission as masters (CEDEFOP, 2004). The guilds of craftsmen and small merchants in almost all medieval towns developed this training system in the 14th and 15th centuries across Europe. The Guilds lost their enormous social and economic significance with the demise of feudalism and in the period of protoindustrialisation in the early 19th century (Frommberger & Reinisch, 2002, p. 81). In the centuries that preceded the introduction of machine-made parts, craftsmanship of a high order was required to manufacture accurate, durable clocks and watches. Such local craft organizations as the Paris Guild of Clockmakers (1544) were organized to control the art of clock-making and its apprenticeship. A guild known as the Clockmakers’ Company, founded in London in 1630, is still in existence (Clark, 1999). The increasing fragmentation of both production methods and the social system led to the dwindling significance of guilds in the late 18th century. Their internal dissolution and their final abolition, sanctioned by the French Revolution, was a stimulus for new organizational and institutional concepts of vocational training. Since all intermediaries between the State and individuals had been removed, and as the traditional craft-trade training forms were not competitive, the State was itself obliged to develop and realise new concepts of vocational training (Meyser, 2002, p. 126).

The Industrial Age, defined by Toffler, transformed the fabrication of goods by craftspersons into the fabrication of components for assembly by other, less-skilled, workers. The earliest manifestation of these changes in production began in England, where the textile industry developed and displaced French and Belgian hegemony, thus marking the rise of British economic and, subsequently, military development.

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Introduction The Industrial Revolution, which began in England around 1760, completed a development whose seeds, both intellectual and tangible, had been sown in the pre-industrial era. In the face of the flourishing textile industry, the prescriptive strength of the old economic order could not resist the sudden growth of capitalism, and the importance of an apprenticeship as a prerequisite for working or managing dwindled. It is noteworthy that the Elizabethan Statute of Apprentices that dated back to 1563, which approved and sustained the seven-year training period stipulated by guild code, remained in force, at least on paper, until 1814. It was only at the culmination of industrialisation, starting in 1812, that there was parliamentary debate on the retention of the old English economic order which, in practical terms, had long since become defunct. The old, professionally oriented crafts and the country’s conservative, romantic bastion took a final stand against the representatives of liberal economic thinking (Deissinger, 2002, p. 33).

Legislation to govern apprenticeship arrangements began in the 1600s in England with ‘laws providing relief for the poor’ who ‘were given an opportunity to become apprenticed to learn a trade,’ according to Gallinelli (1979, p. 20). Increasingly, State intervention in Europe and later in North America began to encroach upon the control of the guilds. Gallinelli notes that: ‘France established a system of trade and technical schools as substitutes for the apprenticeship system.’ He also noted that the German ‘apprenticeship system was not nearly as affected as were those of England and France’, remaining ‘firmly placed within the guilds’ (p. 22). Although the guilds in France were abolished during the French Revolution in 1791, ‘modern’ vocational education and training may date from the establishment ´ of the Ecole des ponts et chaussées by Jean-Rodolphe Perronet in France in 1747. This pioneer institution was the model for The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in ´ the United States of America. After the Revolution, the Ecole polytechnique was established in 1794 and both institutions established the TVET path followed by France. There are other early institutions whose history is less well-known. One example is given by Derivianko, who traced the development of TVET in Russia, noting that ‘on 14 January 1701 [. . .] the first school of mathematics and navigation was opened in Moscow by decree of Peter the Great, the Russian tsar and reformer’ (2004, p. 159). While better known as philosophers of education, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) believed it important to learn a trade; Johann Pestalozzi (1746–1827), who has been called the ‘father of manual training’, advocated combining school with workshop learning; and Friedrich Fröbel (1782–1852) focused upon creativity and self-activity when establishing kindergartens in the 1800s. Educational reform at the turn of the twentieth century drew from the writings of Pestalozzi and Fröbel and came to be called ‘The New Education Movement’. Barlow noted that ‘it would be late in the 1880s before the idea of combining trade and academic education in the school was tried seriously’ (1990, p. 8). The study of TVET also has a long-standing history, beginning in the 1880s when urbanization, mechanization and industrialization became the major forces driving societies. Derivianko indicated that: In 1866, the Russian Technical Society was founded. [. . .] One of the departments of this society was entirely responsible for managing primary vocational education and assisted

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in opening specialist educational institutions for training master craftsmen and workers in Russia. [. . .] The Imperial Russian Technical Society developed the principles of specialist education; it also created a number of awards for technical and vocational education and mobilised public support for maintaining existing and opening new specialist educational institutions (2004, p. 160).

Victor Karlovich Della Vos (1820–1890), Director of the Imperial Technical College in Moscow, may be designated as the originator of the task analysis method for the sequentialization of working knowledge in vocational didactics, which eventually became the basis for competency-based TVET.3 Della Vos drafted the rudiments of this idea in 1868, when he decided to introduce a compulsory work placement for his engineering students to compensate for their lack of practical experience before starting studies. His system mandated that: Students had to complete six sequential courses in wood-turning, model carpentry, forging, metal-turning, mechanics and mould-making. Course sequences were based on job and task analyses from various occupational fields. This form of vocational learning gained international renown at the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna under the name ‘Russian system’ (Wiemann, 2002, pp. 141–42). Apprentices began by learning to perform and master simple tasks. In a precisely predetermined sequence, the tasks gradually became more challenging. After its presentation at the World Exhibition in Vienna in 1873, this method spread to many other European centres of education and training (CEDEFOP, 2004).

Subsequent to the transfer of Della Vos’ system to Germany, it spread to France and North America: The World Exhibitions in Philadelphia in 1876 and Paris in 1878 also gave considerable attention to vocational training and contributed to the dissemination of the production school concept and the instructional workshop method. Indeed, by 1920, specialised institutes with workshops had been founded everywhere in Europe where industrial potential was to be accompanied by such measures (Meyser, 2002, p. 130).

Field (2001, p. 109) attributes the development of programmed instruction to behaviourism, which arose from Thorndike’s doctoral research. He wrote that Thorndike’s stimulus-response model ‘followed important parallels to Pavlov’s earlier animal experiments’. He further noted that ‘it has been argued that Pavlov’s work was taken up by Victor de la Vos [. . .] who presented his ideas on task analysis as a basis for curriculum design at the Philadelphia Exposition.’ France founded new commercial and technical production schools after the loss of the war against Germany in 1870/71. By the early 20th century an extensive school-based vocational ´ training system on several levels was in place. These numbered the six Ecoles d’Arts et ´ ´ Métiers, four Ecoles Nationales Professionnelles and 70 Ecoles Pratiques (Meyser, 2002, p. 126).

Hanf describes the impact of Della Vos upon TVET, as follows: In 2003, 135 years later, several hundred courses across Europe evidently adhere to the principles expounded in 1868. Undoubtedly, the ‘training course’ is the most successful and effective learning system in the short history of industrial vocational training. Its didactic concept has merited an unprecedented dissemination across all European industrial countries (2002, p. 15).

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Della Vos’ impact was also attributed by SENAI in Brazil to the serie metódica ocupaçionais [shopwork methodical series] developed by Ricardo Mange in 1934 and adopted by the Serviço Nacional de Aprendrizagem Industrial (SENAI). SENAI has been replicated in nineteen other Latin American and two Caribbean nations since its founding in 1942. By the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, nations established skill formation institutions and organizations, together with branches and sectors. Often, these institutions established close links with business and industry. Other institutions became part of the public domain. Well-developed systems of stratified skill formation developed in public institutions during the twentieth century in Europe, while in English-speaking countries connections with business and industry became stronger. The growth of industrial society, and subsequently post-industrial society, witnessed the changing role of education and training institutions, with the establishment of national training institutions, national training boards and, later, the development of regionally responsive and flexible centres of expertise and research. Several sources provide information on the origins of the present German ‘dual system’. craft trades again became the normal models of occupational training, thanks to the Handwerkerschutzgesetz (Craft Trade Workers’ Protection Act) of 1897 and the support of policies favouring SME expansion. [. . .] In contrast to the advanced industrial nations of England and France, this mentality prevailing in Germany guaranteed the survival of the Meisterlehre (apprenticeship with a master craftsman). A second characteristic of the German [dual] system is that the institution of the Berufsschule (vocational school) has been a fixture in the vocational training landscape since the end of the 19th century. This has enriched training content but also formally dovetailed theoretical education with practice in a company. The craft trades asserted that companies were the ‘correct’ learning location for vocational training. Berufsschulen arose [. . .] in which craft trades played a leading role as the ‘model of German vocational education’, and the successful attempt to rehabilitate the German education system with the help of ‘classical German vocational training theory’. However, the dual system is not an educational theory construct. It emerged from the practical consideration that in-company vocational training needed to be complemented (Deissinger, 2002, pp. 30–31).

Elsewhere during the nineteenth century, apprentices often attended ‘continuation schools’ in the evenings or on Sundays. These repeated the curriculum taught at primary schools and imparted the theoretical knowledge needed for particular trades. By the end of the nineteenth century, these schools had developed into ‘vocational schools’. In addition to vocational education and training, students were also taught citizenship skills. Today, both elements are still part of apprenticeship: learning on the job and in vocational school. That is why it is referred to as the ‘dual system’ of training (CEDEFOP, 2004).

With the improvement of the steam engine by James Watt in Scotland in 1765, and its initial applications to the railways and textile industries, the Industrial Age began. This gave the United Kingdom the impetus to dislodge continental European domination of production and trade. The CEDEFOP study noted that:

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The guild system was abolished—along with the traditional seven-year apprenticeship. Untrained, low-paid labourers operated the machinery in the factories. For many years, the rapidly growing industries had little need for skilled workers, so young people received no training (CEDEFOP, 2004).

In England, North America, Australia and elsewhere mechanics institutes developed in the early 1800s, along with ‘charity schools’ to educate the poor. Barlow noted that ‘the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, which was founded [in 1785], had by 1821 embarked upon a full-scale educational program’ (1990, p. 10). Gallinelli observed that ‘the Boston Asylum and Farm School founded in 1814 was one of the earliest of the charity schools, and it provided education for orphaned boys.’ Instruction was also provided ‘in one of several trades’ (1979, p. 23). He further noted that: The mechanic’s institutes and lyceums provided further education for their members in both day and night school programs. Technical institutes were also established, such as the Rensselaer Institute founded in 1824 (ibid.).

Perhaps the most significant government initiative for TVET was the Morrill Act, signed by the United States President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, to establish land-grant colleges ‘to teach subjects related to agriculture and mechanic arts in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes’ (Gallinelli, 1979, p. 24). Gallinelli also noted that ‘one offshoot of the movement [in the U.S.A.] to train engineers was the development of the Manual Training Movement by John Runkle of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Calvin Woodward of Washington University’. Barlow added William Harris, Superintendent of Schools in St. Louis, Missouri, and E.E. White, President of Purdue University, to this group of educators (1990, p. 15). Gallinelli wrote that while they ‘were developing programs to train engineers’, they: discovered that the engineering students lacked rudimentary skills in the use of tools and knowledge of basic mechanics. They were impressed by the methods used by Victor Della Vos [. . .] which were demonstrated at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 (1979, p. 25).

We have observed university engineering students in Brazil being taught workshop skills by SENAI instructors in SENAI schools, which has taken this system even one step further. Barlow noted that: the first school to offer specific trade training with supplementary studies directly related to each trade was the New York Trade School, founded [. . .] in 1881. In contrast to the plan of instruction of the New York Trade School, the Hebrew Technical Institute, founded in New York City in [. . .] 1883, offered a greater range of subjects of a general nature. It may be classed more properly as a technical school rather than a trade school (1990, p. 18).

In Ontario, Canada, John Seath, who studied TVET systems in Europe and the USA and later became Superintendent of Education and developed modern technical education; and Newton Wolverton, who inaugurated the first Manual Training

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department in 1886 at Woodstock College, played a similar role to that of Runkle and Woodward. It is interesting that Woodstock College eventually became McMaster University, presaging the academic and mission drift that has been affecting TVET institutions in the late twentieth century. The respective national association(s) of manufacturers advocated on behalf of TVET from 1895 in the USA and 1897 in Canada. Both initiatives led to the promulgation of federal legislation to develop TVET. In Canada, the Technical Education Act of 1897 provided for the establishment of technical schools, or the addition of technical wings to existing high schools. Landmark legislation in the United States was the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, which stayed in force until 1963. The establishment of the Toronto Technical High School in 1891 also resulted from lobbying by the Canadian Manufacturers Association and the Dominion and Labour Council. A similar initiative in Brazil in 1942 by the Confederaça˜ o Nacional da Indústria led to the development of SENAI, initially in São Paulo, and subsequently on a national basis. Other advocates for TVET in the USA during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries included John Dewey, Charles Prosser, David Snedden (Gallinelli, 1979, p. 28), E.L. Thorndike (noted earlier) and Frederick Taylor, the ‘founding father’ of industrial management and workforce education. While these advocates disagreed about the methods and mechanisms for the promotion of TVET, they were in agreement about the value of TVET. For example, Prosser ‘believed that vocational education courses should not be taught by general educators and that vocational education should remain separate from general education’. Dewey rejected the notion that ‘what was good for industry was good for the people’. Instead, he advocated that educators should ‘use industry to make schooling more active and more meaningful to students’ and that ‘education should provide the skills and attitudes for living in an era of science and technology’ (Gallinelli, 1979, p. 28). Also, in Canada, Australia and the United States of America, the large-scale training provided for workers engaged in munitions and materials production during the First World War was followed by TVET programmes and legislation that set the stage for TVET developments in the 1920s and 1930s. These nations also developed similar relief and training programmes to alleviate the effects of the Great Depression during the 1930s. Similar war-time training initiatives took place during the Second World War, followed by the development of post-war TVET legislation and system-development in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. During World War I, a system was proposed for on-the-job training that would provide more consistent and efficient training in order to more quickly produce trained workers. In 1917, in response to the need of 450,000 new workers by the Emergency Fleet Corporation of the U.S. Shipping Board, Charles R. Allen developed a way of training shipbuilders, which involved four steps: (1) SHOW or prepare, (2) TELL or present, (3) DO or apply, and (4) CHECK or inspect. From Allen’s work and from research done by the Army during World War I several principles of training instruction were developed:

r r

Training should be done within industry by supervisors who should be trained how to teach. Training should be done in groups of nine to eleven workers.

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The job should be analysed before training. Break-in time is reduced when training is done on the job. When given personal attention in training, the worker develops a feeling of loyalty (McCord, 1976, pp. 32–36).

A great deal of training system design originated during the Second World War in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Many of the antecedents of present-day TVET systems owe their origins to this period. The post-Second World War expansion of community and technical colleges in the USA and Canada utilized wartime TVET lessons to build effective non-degree postsecondary systems. During World War II, the need for a method of fast and efficient training became urgent. Training Within Industry, an advisory service formed by the National Defense Advisory Commission, developed the systematic on-the-job training method called JIT (Job Instruction Training). There were four steps to this method:

r r r r

First, prepare the learner. Put him at ease, explain what the job is, and explain the importance of the job. Second, give a step-by-step presentation of the job. Explain the what, when, how, why and where of the job, then demonstrate them. Have the learner explain each step, then let the learner demonstrate each step. Third, do the performance tryout. Have the learner do the steps under supervision. Fourth, follow-up. Inspect the work regularly (Hardman, 1963, p. 97).

According to Hardman (1963), JIT is useful primarily in teaching manipulative skills, but could be disappointing with more complicated tasks. An advantage of JIT is its flexibility; one variation has the teacher and learner switch roles. In order to be successful JIT requires adequate supervision and uniform application throughout the plant.

5.3 Important Trends and Changes in TVET History has been defined as the extension of the past into the future. Thus, the intention of this International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work is to do precisely that. Jacques Delors wrote that ‘the concept of learning throughout life [. . .] emerges as one of the keys to the twenty-first century’. He further noted that the concept ‘goes beyond the traditional distinction between initial and continuing education [and] meets the challenges posed by a rapidly changing world’ (Delors et al., 1996, p. 22). Another recent trend is enrolment of recent university graduates at community and technical colleges, to add occupation-specific credentials to their bachelor of arts degrees which have not led to their employment. Since many of these (mainly liberal arts) graduates are choosing TVET courses in the community and technical colleges, this trend—called reverse transfer—is important and is quite likely to become even more pronounced in the years to come. One trend, noted earlier, has been the impact of academic and mission drift upon TVET. While these phenomena have probably always been operative, what seems

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to have changed during the past few decades has been the pace of these phenomena. Notably, the transformation of ninety British polytechnics into universities in 1995 is viewed as the beginning of this accelerated pace. The impact upon quality TVET has not been viewed in a favourable light. This is because when there is a change in status, prestige, funding, etc., priorities and quality also appear to change—often not for the better. The education and training of knowledge workers requires different educational policies, facilities, curricula and, above all, teachers. Teachers must be transformed from those who impart knowledge to those who facilitate learning. Curricula must be transformed from mechanisms to deliver facts into mechanisms to promote and facilitate learning and thinking. Some writers assert that a competency-based approach to curriculum development can facilitate this transformation. TVET curricula have been in transition from its Industrial Age ‘mix’ of 50% theory and 50% practical to one that is 80% theory and 20% practical, paralleling the transition from the Industrial to the Information Age. This shift from a manipulative to a cognitive focus accompanies the convergence of ‘academic’ and TVET curricula. Knowledge workers may be defined as those who use logical-abstract thinking to diagnose problems, research and apply knowledge, propose solutions, and design and implement those solutions, often as a team member. The impact of technological modernization upon many aspects of education— and particularly upon curricula—necessitates basing the education of future knowledge workers upon a firm foundation. This foundation should include provision of a sound understanding of mathematics, science, technology and communication skills. Rather than compartmentalizing knowledge, technology affects all aspects of life and necessitates a broader understanding of what technologies are, how they work, how they have been applied to real-world problems, and how they affect our lives. This technological education foundation at the elementary and secondary school levels should then be augmented with a broad-based curriculum, prior to the commencement of specialization in post-secondary education. To avoid ‘cluttering’ curricula, many education systems have adopted a cross-curricular approach to infuse common themes in as many curricular areas as possible. Moreover, specialization has increasingly differentiated upward from the second to the third level of education. A policy encouraging continuous, lifelong learning should supplement the ‘basic training’ of knowledge workers by the delivery of ‘just-in-time’ education and training when new knowledge is required at the workplace. Many assert that individuals are likely to have three or more different occupations and/or careers during their lifetime. This necessitates workers learning how to learn in order to recycle themselves when moving from one position or workplace to another. In order not to overlap or duplicate work by other authors in this Handbook, we will end our short historical examination at this point. The historical material in other chapters complements this introductory chapter and enables other contributors to bring our knowledge of the development of TVET up to the present. Originally, the direct preparation for work was the main goal of TVET and this remains prominent in many developing nations. However, with the technological

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revolutions and innovations in science and technology during the twentieth century, new domains of knowledge and new disciplines have become important at all levels of education and training. Further, the upward differentiation of TVET from the first to the second level and then to the third level of education was an important development of the twentieth century and set the stage for the twenty-first century. The current focus is increasingly upon preparing knowledge workers to meet the challenges posed during the transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, with its concomitant post-industrial human-resource requirements and the changing world of work. TVET is currently faced with the challenges posed by the displacement of the traditionally strong focus upon manual work in favour of mental work, or at least the changing mixture of competencies required in the workplace. The boundaries between manual and mental work are fading away, as many traditional forms of work and the respective preparation processes for learning to work undergo change. Key problems in the field of TVET include pathways and content leading to generic or very specific professions and jobs. The dual system in Germany, for example, is an artefact of the German Berufskultur concept, while in many other countries a culture (or approach) developed to match labour-market needs with individual education and training in a mixed model of qualifications. In addition to pathways and content in terms of generic and specific competencies, and the way these goals are being justified at local, national and international levels, new demands in terms of employability, re-training, lifelong learning, personal growth and flexibility, transferability and mobility are imminent. The terms ‘education’ and ‘training’ also require elaboration. Essentially, the goal of education is ‘to create independent problem solvers [with] sufficient depth of understanding’. In contrast, the goal of training ‘is to teach people to follow prescribed procedures and to perform in a standardized manner’ (Gray & Herr, 1998, p. 159). What appears to be taking place in the changing ‘world of work’ is a convergence between these two—formerly distinct—points of view. This convergence is important for the future of education, particularly TVET. Draxler and Haddad (2002, p. 4) observed that knowledge, ‘both basic and applied, is being generated very quickly and is growing exponentially’. They claimed that ‘more new information has been produced within the last three decades than in the last five millennia’. Their forecast was that ‘we should be poised for dramatic technological advances and breakthroughs in the macro frontiers of the universe on the one hand, and microscopic secrets of the human body on the other hand’.

6 TVET, EFA and ESD The third goal of the Education for All (EFA) Framework for Action adopted in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000 (UNESCO, 2000) stipulates that the learning needs of all youth and adults should be met through access to appropriate learning and life-skills programmes. Since this is basically what TVET does, the linkage between the two thrusts already exists, but must be strengthened and broadened in the future.

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The fourth EFA goal seeks to increase adult literacy rates by 50% by 2015. The adult and continuing education role played by TVET institutions has contributed to the improvement of literacy in the past, and should continue to do so in the future. Further, it must be recognized that ‘literacy’ itself also changes over time; and that Education for All does not necessarily mean the same education for all. The literacy requirements of both globalization and technological change necessitate enhancement of literacy education and training to keep pace with these phenomena. Fosen (2002) noted that the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre foci are quite similar to these EFA goals. Therefore, ‘potential synergies’ were suggested through integration and linkage. It was noted that the long-term UNESCO objectives established at the Seoul Congress (UNESCO, 1999) were:

r r r

To provide TVET for all; To orient TVET for sustainable development; To strengthen TVET as an integral component of lifelong learning.

Meanwhile, Atchoarena (2000) has advanced an emerging policy and research agenda that included three areas:

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The transition from school to work, including the need to make TVET institutions more responsive to the needs of the labour market. This concern motivates the global interest for apprenticeship schemes and work-experience programmes. Reforming the institutional framework to finance and govern TVET—a key principle being partnership with industry. The establishment of national training boards and of national training funds represents an important trend in this effort. Promoting competency-based training and establishing national qualification frameworks are also a significant trend in an increasing number of developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The Center for Occupational Research and Development (CORD) in the United States surveyed industries, commerce and governments in 2000 to identify desirable worker attributes for the twenty-first century. CORD’s list includes:

r r r r r r

Basic skills, including English; Planning, decision-making, critical thinking and problem-solving; Inter-personal communications skills, sensitivity to workforce diversity and cultural awareness; Ethics, management and leadership skills; Hands-on training in specific demand occupations; Computer training including Internet training.

Our own list is given in Table 1. SEAMEO (2001) identified eleven important trends and directions for TVET in its member nations, as follows:

r r

Clear national policies for TVET; The concept of lifelong learning;

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r r r r r r r r r

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Competency-based training (CBT); Development of demand-driven TVET; Flexible TVET delivery systems; Encouraging a competitive spirit among TVET providers; Strong public TVET systems; Recognition of TVET; Quality output and outcome; Research and evaluation to improve TVET; Apprenticeship systems. Table 1 Desirable worker attributes

Personal competencies

r r r

The ability to communicate effectively; Tolerance for ambiguity; Demonstrated leadership.

Technical/professional competencies

r r r r

Problem-solving; Up-to-date technical knowledge; Negotiation skills; Strategic thinking/planning. Ability.

Inter-cultural competencies

r r r

The ability to operate in other cultures; International job experience; Language capabilities.

7 Key Issues and Challenges Concerning TVET 7.1 The Image and Status of TVET TVET has consistently faced problems stemming from the negative image commonly held by students, parents and many sectors of societies. This issue is also related to the lack of student motivation to enrol in TVET programmes. These difficulties must be met with a renewed effort to raise the public perception of TVET. There are available some excellent examples of the promotion of TVET for employment. One aspect of this promotion has to do with the following issue.

7.2 After ‘Basic Education’, What? As nations implement Universal Primary Education and proceed to consolidate nine or more years of ‘basic education’, other countries have already achieved universal access to secondary education and are increasing participation in post-secondary education. This progression results in the upward differentiation of TVET from primary to secondary and secondary to post-secondary levels of their education systems. Issues of access to education and equality of treatment within education become increasingly important. An important question concerns the fact that after nations have implemented basic education they must then effectively address

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the question of student flows into ‘academic’ and/or TVET streams, which is also an access and equity issue. In nations where unemployment is endemic, TVET, particularly in areas fostering entrepreneurship and small enterprises, becomes increasingly important for the future. Tilak (2003) characterizes TVET as an ‘equity measure’ because it promotes ‘equity with a rural bias and serves the needs of relatively poor people’, as well as being an ‘antidote to urban-biased elite education’ (p. 675).

7.3 The Promotion of TVET for Girls and Women This is essentially an issue of access to TVET and, once girls and women enter TVET institutions, how they are received and accommodated. While many exemplary programmes have been developed and implemented during the past several decades, there still remains considerable work to be done. Changing the ‘macho’ image of TVET participants and workers has not been easy, but it has taken place. One of the best examples was the programme developed by the Canadian International Development Agency for SENAI in Brazil in the 1990s. The extension of TVET to occupations that are relevant to girls and women has also contributed to the increased participation of women and girls. Attracting more female instructors and administrators into TVET is going to be a major challenge in the future. However, as good as previous aid and development initiatives were, an evaluation of aid provided by DANIDA (2002) noted ‘the weak involvement of women in Danish-supported VET activities’. This suggests that these initiatives need to be increased in the future.

7.4 TVET Planning It is imperative to recognize that most UNESCO Member States are at different stages of social and economic development. This has a direct bearing upon TVET needs and training systems; therefore, each nation must plan relevant TVET institutions and programmes to meet its current and projected future needs. The length of compulsory schooling, the percentage of participation in education, the locus of TVET and many other factors reinforce the necessity to plan for the specific conditions existing in each nation. Abrahart and Verme (2001) stress that labour-market policies should ‘fit in with education priorities’ and ‘should be directed towards basic education or towards adult re-education and retraining’ (p. 127). Although there has historically been a time lag in the collection, processing and analysis of labour-market information (LMI), the rapid pace of workplace change necessitates its timely provision to TVET institutions in order to prepare workers with new skills and to re-train existing employees. Moreover, the acceleration of globalization and the outsourcing of both blue- and white-collar employment have made both human-resource planning and TVET planning more difficult.

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Several developing nations have addressed problems of youth unemployment, the vocationalization of secondary education and population growth by promoting entrepreneurship education and training. The DANIDA evaluation carried out in 2002 noted that entrepreneurship training is an important activity in private-sector development and much training is provided for this in DANIDA-supported programmes. They cite the Micro-Enterprise Development Project for the jua kali (informal) sector in Kenya, the innovative Manufacturing Advisory Centre (MAC) in South Africa, the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector in Uganda, including the introduction of entrepreneurship curricula in both schools and polytechnics, in collaboration with DANIDA and the Japan International Co-operation Agency. Similar initiatives have been undertaken in Botswana by the Department of Vocational Education in the Ministry of Education. TVET institutions should improve their capacity to make use of LMI, including market signals, indicators and intelligence, for planning and curriculum modernization. Governments should develop strategies to help TVET sectors respond effectively to labour-market needs and to deliver training programmes to respond to these needs. TVET institutions should also maintain and enhance their linkages with employers and develop capacity to gather LMI to contribute to the curriculum development process.

7.5 TVET Facilities and Equipment A perennial problem in TVET is the high cost of construction, equipment, maintenance and the provision of consumable training materials. Routine and preventive maintenance have also constituted perennial problems. These issues have implications for TVET finance, instructor training, curriculum development and the delivery of instruction. If one of these attributes is diminished, the others are affected. Many TVET systems have utilized cost-recovery, industrial levies, linkage with enterprises and employer participation mechanism to address this issue.

7.6 Workplace Health and Safety The impact of HIV/AIDS upon youth and working-age populations is a major challenge to be faced by TVET. If the very youth and workers educated and trained in TVET programmes are rendered incapable of working due to HIV/AIDS, then the investment in their future is lost. Moreover, since teachers and instructors have also suffered a high incidence of HIV/AIDS, the very educative process is in jeopardy. The lack of sustainability for both populations is poignant. The DANIDA evaluation mentioned above (2002) noted that ‘HIV/Aids awareness-raising activities have been integrated into all DANIDA-funded VET programmes’. This newest challenge has overshadowed traditional issues of workplace health and safety that have always

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concerned TVET personnel. However, all of these issues will continue to be of extreme importance in the near future.

7.7 The Organization and Administration of TVET There are many systems and variations for the organization, governance and administration of TVET. While the majority of TVET systems are public in nature, others are para-statal and still others are private. Within some governments, the locus of TVET has alternated between the ministries of education, labour and specifically TVET. Dual systems merge public and private organization, administration, finance and delivery. During the past two decades, an increasing number of national TVET systems have been re-structured under the aegis of national training boards or authorities. It is likely that this trend will continue in the future. The management of change is important to ensure that TVET systems keep pace with technological change and the needs of each nation. This is equally important in the organization and administration of TVET to prevent ossification. CINTERFOR (2000) highlighted ‘the importance of management training’ for TVET administrators. Similarly, the DANIDA (2002) evaluation noted ‘the shift in recent years in the focus of VET programmes, from technical skills to organisational and management issues.’ This will continue to be an important issue in the future.

7.8 TVET Curriculum Reform and Development In many nations TVET curricula have lost their relevance to the requirements of the labour market. In other nations, for a variety of reasons, employers prefer to employ untrained youth or ‘academic’ graduates and provide on-the-job training. One salient trend is the growing convergence between TVET and ‘academic’ curricula, resulting from technological change. In addition, the ‘traditional’ curricular balance between theory and practice has shifted in recent years. TVET curricula need to respond to these trends by enhancing the ‘foundation’ provided to students in mathematics, science, communications and an understanding of technology. Some exemplary new curricula have been developed in mechatronics, biotechnology, ICTs, robotics, rapid prototyping and similar ‘new’ fields. A related issue concerns who participates in curriculum development. If the needs of the workplace are to be met, then workplace participation in curriculum development—through advisory boards or other mechanisms—is even more relevant than in the past. Another curricular issue is the movement to competency-based curriculum development and instruction.

7.9 Teaching and Learning As TVET becomes increasingly more knowledge oriented, the role of the teachers and instructors must change from the didactic imparting of skills and knowledge to

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the facilitation of learning. This requires a quantum change on the part of TVET teachers and instructors, but is an essential step in the education and training of knowledge workers for the workplaces of the future. The changing role of TVET instructors involves ‘linking occupational related (academic) studies with technical subjects’, according to CINTERFOR (2000). The increasing use of ICT and other media also contributes to this shift in teaching and learning methodologies. Since many nations have developed dedicated institutions for training TVET and polytechnic personnel, change should also take place in these institutions in order to foster the desired teaching and learning methodologies.

7.10 TVET Teacher Education UNESCO-APEID noted that the second International Congress on TVET in Seoul (UNESCO, 1999) called for ‘a new breed of TVET teachers and a new paradigm of training them’. The round-table held by UNESCO-APEID called for ‘the development of prototype training materials that model effective and responsive content and the application of learner-centred approaches’. The Philippine Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) highlighted ‘inadequacies in knowledge, skills and industrial experience’ of TVET teachers and noted that they ‘must be able to transmit to the trainees actual occupational and practical skills which are relevant to present practices in the workplace’. Similarly, CINTERFOR (2000) noted that ‘broadening the role for instructors will require changes in the way TVET instructors are educated in teacher training courses.’ In addition to modernizing pre-service TVET teacher education, increasing attention must be devoted to the in-service education of existing TVET personnel, otherwise these desired changes may not be achieved—and so will be lost.

7.11 TVET Teachers’ Conditions of Service In some nations TVET teachers and instructors are not treated in the same manner as are ‘academic’ teachers with regard to their various conditions of service. In particular, issues of different terms for remuneration, promotion and benefits are a source of frustration. This often leads to alienation and high teacher turnover, especially when highly qualified TVET personnel can be tempted away by higher salaries in commercial enterprises.

7.12 Relationship Between TVET and Enterprises As has already been noted, employer participation in curriculum development has become increasingly important. In addition, TVET personnel need to be encouraged to participate in industrial attachments in order to both maintain viable

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relationships with employers and to enhance their knowledge and competencies. Similarly, the development of viable student attachments is increasingly important. The improvement of linkages with enterprises can be accomplished in many ways—one important mechanism being through public/private sector partnerships. The DANIDA (2002) evaluation highlighted the importance of private sector development programmes that link Danish enterprises with enterprises in partner countries in which DANIDA finances related training activities with up to 9% of the total cost of training. This new departure in bilateral development assistance might contribute much to addressing issues of industry/TVET linkages and finance in the future.

7.13 The Growing Importance of ICTs for TVET Information and communications technologies (ICTs) have become increasingly important for TVET, both in terms of content and delivery. The addition of ICTs to TVET programmes and curricula (preferably as part of a cross-curricular focus) will assist modernization of the field. The use of ICTs to deliver TVET courses, in both formal and informal settings, will assume even greater importance in the near future. The ICT contribution to the development of teaching and learning resources has been phenomenal and, if anything, is likely to continue to increase in the near future. One important example is the increasing usage of simulation software, which some claim can substitute for some of the ‘hands-on’ manipulative workshop training in TVET. Another important aspect of ICTs has been the exchange of TVET information between nations through the UNESCO-UNEVOC network, the ILO network and other multi-lateral and non-governmental networks.

7.14 TVET Finance With even traditionally well-funded TVET institutions experiencing financial difficulties, it is and will increasingly be necessary to develop additional sources of finance. The issue of public/private sector partnerships noted above is one avenue for broadening participation in TVET funding. Cost-recovery has traditionally been an available option and is becoming even more attractive in the new Information Age. Abrahart and Verme (2001) stress the importance of ‘the use of student or trainee fees for TVET’ with exemptions for unemployed and government-sponsored trainees (p. 127). They are sceptical about rate-of-return studies, noting that higher returns to general education ‘may say just as much about excessive costs and the poor structure of vocational education systems as it does about the subsequent benefits to students’. Here, they mirror our own scepticism about World Bank rate-ofreturn-based policies favouring decreased investment in TVET. The traditional ‘levy finance’ systems remain viable options. Many post-secondary TVET institutions have developed new sources of finance during the past few decades. One example is

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the national training funds referred to earlier. Part of these initiatives also involves donations of expensive and rapidly-obsolete equipment to TVET institutions by cooperating enterprises. Tilak (2003) notes that TVET is ‘necessarily expensive’ and cautions that ‘poor investments cannot yield attractive returns’.

7.15 Testing and Certification While national systems of testing and certification remain necessary and continue to require improvement, one salient impact of globalization has been the international recognition of qualifications. The establishment of national training frameworks in a large number of nations has begun the broader recognition of competencies and qualifications. The UNESCO-APEID round-table referred to earlier identified many important issues concerning the role of national occupational standards in TVET curriculum development. These issues are also of major importance in the design and development of testing and certification mechanisms and will continue to be of importance in the future. The CINTERFOR (2000) and UNESCO-UNEVOC (2001) small island States’ meetings added the issue of ‘accreditation framework(s) for national, sub-regional’ and regional recognition of TVET qualifications. This issue is related to the larger regional accreditation systems in Europe and elsewhere. Both types of regional recognition will continue to be important in the future. The impact of international student testing—the International Association for Educational Achievement (IEA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA)—while more visible upon ‘academic’ education, is also influencing TVET. Also, the desire of international/multinational employers to hire persons with recognized qualifications is affecting (and will increasingly continue to affect) hiring practices. While this is current practice at the university level, it has also become increasingly important at the technician, technologist and skilled-trades levels.

7.16 Some Other Important Issues Other related issues include the Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR) articulation between TVET and ‘academic’ institutions and programmes, ‘reverse transfer’, the enrolment of degree-holders in community and technical college technical programmes and joint degree-diploma programmes. Academic drift and mission drift concern the conversion of polytechnics and other post-secondary TVET institutions into universities. These newer trends are highly likely to increase in importance in the future. In one respect, these issues are all related to the progression to continuing and lifelong learning. These issues also relate to worker re-training, upgrading and job change. The promotion of ‘a seamless educational infrastructure in collaboration with trade unions and employers’ organizations’ is noted by ILO/CINTERFOR to be one of the major changes in TVET in the Caribbean

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(CARICOM) nations. Similarly, the TechPrep initiatives in the United States have developed a ‘seamless’ education and training infrastructure which begins in high school Grade 10 and flows through completion of community and technical college programmes.

8 Conclusion: Where Next? There is a need to re-examine the world of work, with regard to: (a) its educational and training institutions; (b) learning processes and necessary competencies; (c) its effects upon labour markets; (d) school-to-work transitions; (e) the role of gender; (f) principles of equality and equity; (g) the roles of government, business and industry; (h) the dominant didactics for learning a profession; (i) the assessment of competencies; (j) the effects of flexible pathways and curriculum systems; (k) the relationship between human capital formation and TVET systems—among other features of the field. These are some aspects of the TVET field that need to be examined and documented in order to provide the best answers and best practices to improve TVET, and bridge the gap between vocational and academic education in the twenty-first century. It is hoped that this Handbook will fulfil this role. In developing the structure and content of this Handbook, the intention of the editors has been to review developments that have occurred in the field of technical and vocational education and training that contribute to the improvement of the field. The Handbook is intended to reflect best and innovative practices concerning research, policy and practice affecting TVET and education for the world of work and, wherever possible, concrete case studies have been used as examples. The authors who have contributed to the Handbook are representative of the various regions of the world and of major international organizations involved in TVET. In addition, the editors chose to balance contributions by academic authors with those by practitioners, who have often not been able to participate in these discussions in the past. The audiences for which the Handbook is designed include policy-makers, practitioners, administrators, planners, researchers, teachers, teacher educators, students and colleagues in a range of fields who are interested in learning about TVET, in both developed and developing countries, countries in transition and countries in post-conflict situations. The editors appreciate that this has been a tall order given the enormous variations that exist worldwide in the structure and functioning of economies, systems of production and of underlying education systems. For example, one of the things that the World Bank learned in its work on TVET more than ten years ago was that OECD models introduced into Africa did not work because they were too expensive and could not link up with local labour markets (which were mostly located in the informal sector). Some studies have explored the transfer of TVET models from developed to developing nations and the difficulties encountered which hindered successful transfers. A recent World Bank study of TVET in Sub-Saharan Africa reinforces this view, and documents the central role of employer training, which is in contrast to the high

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performing Asian countries where well-managed and well-financed formal TVET institutions have on the whole been effective. In the light of such evidence, the purpose of the Handbook will be to provide information on different models of TVET that occur in different parts of the world, while not suggesting that such models are necessarily easily transferable or appropriate for countries at different levels of development and with different cultural and socio-political backgrounds.

Notes 1. The material in this section of the chapter draws upon ‘Vocational education: the come-back?’, in Education today (UNESCO, 2005) to which the authors of this chapter, and UNEVOC, made major contributions. 2. <www.stratrealfoundation.org/> 3. It could be speculated that Della Vos may have been the descendent of one of the trades/ craftspersons brought to modernize Russia in the late 1600s by Peter the Great.

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Smith, A. 1937. An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. New York, NY: Modern Library. [Originally published in 1776.] Solomon, D. 1968. Sociological perspectives on occupations. In: Becker, H.S., ed. Institutions and person. Chicago, IL: Aldine. Sorokin, P.A. 1947. Society, culture and personality: their structure and dynamics. New York, NY: Harper. South-East Asia Ministers of Education Organisation. 2001. Issues and trends for TVET in Southeast Asia. <www.voctech.org.bn> Sutherland, E.H., ed. 1937. The professional thief by a professional thief. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tilak, J.B.G. 2003. Vocational education and training in Asia. In: Keeves, J.B.; Watanabe, R., eds. International handbook of educational research in the Asia-Pacific Region, pp. 673–86. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Tjaden, G.S. 1995. Measuring the information age business. Atlanta, GA: Georgia Institute of Technology. Toffler, A.C. 1981. The third wave. New York, NY: Bantam Books. UNESCO. 1999. Lifelong learning and training: a bridge to the future—final report. Paris: UNESCO. (Final report of the second International Congress on TVET, Seoul, 1999.) UNESCO. 2000. The Dakar Framework for Action. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO. 2005. Vocational education: the come-back? Education today, April-June. UNESCO Institute for Statistics. 2005. Global education digest. Montreal, Canada: UNESCO-UIS. UNESCO-UNEVOC. 2001. Asia-Pacific Conference, Adelaide, Australia 26–28 March 2001. <www.unevoc.unesco.org> UNESCO-UNEVOC. 2005. Learning for work, citizenship and sustainability. Bonn, Germany: UNESCO-UNEVOC. (Final report of the UNESCO International Experts Meeting.) UNESCO-UNEVOC; UNESCO-UIS. 2006. Participation in formal technical and vocational education and training programmes worldwide. An initial statistical study. Bonn, Germany: UNESCO-UNEVOC; Montreal, Canada: UNESCO-UIS. United Kingdom. Department for International Development. 1996. Labour market signals and indicators. London: DfID. (DfID Education Research Paper, no. 15.) Wade, N. 2006. Still evolving, human genes tell new story. New York Times, 7 March. Waller, W. 1961. The sociology of teaching. New York, NY: Wiley. [Originally published in 1936.] Weber, M. 1947. The theory of social and economic organization. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [Originally published in 1922. Translated by A.M. Henderson and T. Parsons.] Whyte, W.F. 1943. Street corner society: the social structure of an Italian slum. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wiemann, G. 2002. Lehrgangsausbildung: a European prototype of a universal industry-based training method. In: CEDEFOP, ed. Towards a history of vocational education and training (VET) in Europe in a comparative perspective. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Wilson, D.N. 1974. Towards an anthropology of educational planning in developing nations. Educational planning, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 18–28. Wilson, D.N. 1990. The deleterious impact of premature rate-of-return studies on LDC education policies: an Indonesian case. Canadian and international education, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 32–49. Wilson, D.N. 1991. A comparative study of the transfer of the SENAI model of apprenticeship training from Brazil to other Latin American nations. In: Wilson, D.N.; de Moura Castro, C.; Oliveira, J., eds. Innovations in educational and training technologies. Turin, Italy: ILO. Wilson, D.N. 1992. An international perspective on trainer competencies, standards and certification. Toronto, Canada: Ontario Training Corporation. Wilson, D.N. 1993a. Reforming technical and technological education. The vocational aspect of education, vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 265–84. Wilson, D.N. 1993b. The effectiveness of training boards in Canada. Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Organization. (Training Policy Paper, no. 109.)

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Wilson, D.N. 1993c. The effectiveness of national training boards. Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Organization, Training Policies Branch. (Discussion Papers Series, no. 110.) [With Roy J. Adams.] Wilson, D.N. 1995. The delineation and certification of occupations in Canada. In: Oliveira, J.B., ed. Occupational standards: international perspectives. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, Center on Education and Training for Employment. Wilson, D.N. 1997a. Discussion paper on the reform of technological education. Toronto, Canada: Ontario Ministry of Education and Training. Wilson, D.N. 1997b. The German dual system of vocational education and training: a comparative study of influence upon educational policy and practice in other countries. In: Kodron, C. et al., eds. Vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft: Herausforderung—Vermittlung—Praxis. Cologne, Germany: Böhlau Verlag. Wilson, D.N. 1998. Defining international competencies for the New Millennium. Ottawa: Canadian Bureau for International Education and Human Resources Development Canada. Wilson, D.N. 1999. A new wrinkle in planning post-secondary education in Ontario: B.A. degree holders enroling in colleges of applied arts and technology. Educational planning, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 3–22. Wilson, D.N. 2000. Technical-vocational education and training. In: Poonwassie, D., ed. Introduction to adult education. Toronto, Canada: Canadian Educators’ Press. Wilson, D.N. 2001a. Reform of TVET for the changing world of work. Prospects, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 21–37. Wilson, D.N. 2001b. Technical-vocational adult education. In: Poonwassie, D.H.; Poonwassie, A., eds. Fundamentals of adult education. Toronto, Canada: Thompson Educational. Wilson, D.N. 2003. The future of comparative and international education in a globalised world. In: Bray, M., ed. Comparative education: continuing traditions, new challenges and new paradigms. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Wilson, D.N. 2003. Knowledge workers and knowledge management in the workplace. (Symposium on Adult Education: Learning Opportunities for the Future, Canadian Defence Academy, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 18 June 2003.) Wilson, D.N. 2005. The education and training of knowledge workers. In: Zajda, J., ed. International handbook on globalisation and education policy research. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Wirth, L. 1928. The ghetto. London: Cambridge University Press.

Prologue Skills Development in the Informal Sector of Sub-Saharan Africa Arvil V. Adams

1 Introduction Since first recognized in the early 1970s, the informal sector of Sub-Saharan Africa has become a growing source of employment for large numbers of youth, but also for older workers pursuing entrepreneurial goals and others adjusting to structural changes in the region’s employment (Bangasser, 2000; Liimatainen, 2002; International Labour Organization [ILO], 2002a; Johanson & Adams, 2004; Becker, 2004; Haan, 2006; Fox and Gaal, 2008). Initially viewed as a safety net for those unable to find employment in the modern sector, the image of the informal sector has begun to change with time and the education of those entering it. More workers have begun to view it not as a temporary stop while searching for employment in the formal wage economy, but as a preferred destination offering opportunities to those wanting to become entrepreneurs. In countries throughout the Africa region, where job growth in the formal wage sector has stagnated making it difficult to absorb rising numbers of new entrants to the labour force, self-employment has opened opportunities for youths who are acquiring higher levels of education and skills (Fox and Gaal, 2008). Rising levels of education are producing higher earnings in the informal sector. In Ghana, using household data from the 2005 Ghana Living Standards Survey, the comparison of earning gains estimated with multiple regression analysis showed returns by level of schooling for self-employed workers in the urban non-agriculture sector that approach or match those of wage workers in the urban non-agriculture sector (World Bank, 2008). A cursory look at countries in Sub-Saharan Africa shows that informal sector activities maintain a significant and, in some cases, dominant share of their respective markets covering mining, manufacturing, commerce, finance and other sectors. Examples of this employment are seen on the streets and in home-based activities in countries like Nigeria, Kenya and Senegal in the vending of food and small merchandise, in health care by traditional healers, the tailoring of garments, and the manufacturing of furniture and repair of automobiles. The size of the sector, estimated to account on average for 42% of gross domestic product (GDP) in twenty-three African countries in 2000, is forcing governments to acknowledge its

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existence and importance to the national economy and the welfare of those employed therein (Schneider, 2002). In South Africa, with a larger formal sector, the informal economy still contributes between 7 and 12% of GDP (Devey, Skinner and Valodia, 2006). Confronted with evidence of the informal sector’s growing importance, this prologue examines the question of how workers are prepared with skills for these jobs and how governments are encouraging further investments in skills alongside a menu of other interventions that would raise productivity and earnings in the sector. It looks closely at the unique character of skills development in the sector and the roles played by schools and employers as providers of skills. Unlike the formal sector where workers may be specialized, those working in the informal sector must have skills to perform multiple functions and few can afford long spells away from work for training. These features set skills development for the informal sector apart from that for the formal sector. The chapter examines recent research covering measurement of employment in the informal sector, impediments to investing in skills within the sector, and policies and programmes to expand this investment. It extends earlier work on this topic carried out under the auspices of the World Bank (Johanson & Adams, 2004). The purpose is to examine what is currently known about these issues, identify gaps in knowledge, and offer a strategy for expanding skills development in the informal sector. Recent research, for example, like that mentioned above in Ghana showing the changing character of employment in the informal sector and the prospects of growing returns to skills, casts a new light on employment in this sector. Further inquiry into the robustness of these findings is merited in other countries to deepen our understanding of how skills influence the welfare of those who create their own employment in the informal sector and how investment in skills can be expanded. While recognizing informality in the economy and the importance of skills to the earnings of those employed in the sector, the chapter does not address incentives for this informality or suggest ways in which the informal economy might be formalized. The chapter does attempt, however, to unravel differences in the informal sector as a means to better understand how the welfare of those employed in the informal sector can be improved through investments in their skills. It provides a framework of questions for further study to meet this challenge. Finding ways in which to improve the working condition of those employed in the informal sector is part of a broader agenda defined for promoting decent work in the global economy (ILO, 2002b).

2 Measuring the Informal Sector The ILO first introduced a statistical definition for the informal sector in a January 1993 Resolution adopted by the fifteenth Conference of International Labour Statisticians (ILO, 2002a). The attention paid to the measurement issue was generated by interest in the size of the informal sector and its contribution to national in-

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come and economic welfare. A decade later, this interest has grown to include the increasingly precarious nature of employment in the formal sector, joining that in the informal sector, as previously secure jobs and benefits were being threatened by growing global competition. The result has been an effort to derive a broader definition of informal employment. This was reflected in a subsequent Resolution adopted in December 2003 by the seventeenth Conference of International Labour Statisticians (Hussmanns, 2004). Interest in the two concepts—employment in the informal sector and informal employment—has driven efforts to define and measure the informal economy.

2.1 The Conceptual Framework Just how are these concepts defined? The conceptual framework adopted in defining employment in the informal sector and informal employment uses a building-block approach that disaggregates total employment along two dimensions: type of job and type of enterprise. Labour-force surveys have been a primary source of data for measuring informal sector employment and informal employment. These surveys are conducted on a regular basis in most countries and are used to produce data on the two concepts by adding additional questions pertaining to the informal sector and informal employment (Hussmanns, 2004). Household surveys identify informal production units and then administer ‘enterprise’ modules as part of the household survey, thus adopting a mixed household and enterprise survey approach to measurement of employment in the informal economy. The two-step mixed survey approach is considered superior in coverage to using separate household or enterprise surveys (Roubaud & Razafindrakoto, 2007). Within the household survey, the type of job held in the informal sector covers the self-employed, own-account workers, contributing family workers, paid workers and members of producers’ co-operatives. In the absence of an enterprise module, the self-employed, own-account and contributing family workers are sometimes used as a proxy for informal sector employment. Where an enterprise module is used, informal sector enterprises are defined as unincorporated private production units owned by individuals or households producing at least some non-agricultural goods or services for sale or barter. Their size in terms of employment is below a certain number threshold determined by national circumstances, but often defined as under ten workers. These enterprises are not registered under specific forms of national legislation and may be separated into production activities that are legal, legal but underground or illegal. Informal employment can also be found outside the informal sector and includes unpaid family workers, workers with precarious employment in formal sector enterprises, and certain employment in households producing goods exclusively for their own use or employing paid domestic workers. The sum of employment in informal sector enterprises and that outside in these three categories defines informal employment. For an illustration of the building-block approach to measurement of formal and informal sector employment and also informal employment see Fig. 1.

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Fig. 1 Conceptual framework: informal employment Source: Roubaud & Razafindrakoto, 2007.

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While the study of employment in the informal sector is important for capturing the contribution of this sector to national income and welfare, the separate study of informal employment, going beyond the informal sector, has attracted the attention of policy-makers concerned with the increasing precariousness of employment in all enterprises. The ILO has expanded its traditional attention on employment in the informal sector to include informal employment as part of its ‘decent jobs’ agenda. Preceding the interest of the seventeenth Conference of International Labour Statisticians in the informalization of employment, the ILO set out to measure employment in the informal sector leading to the publication in 2002 of the ILO compendium of official statistics on employment in the informal sector. The 1993 ILO Resolution on employment in the informal sector provided national statistical agencies with a degree of flexibility in their definition of the informal sector and this produced problems in international comparability. Following recommendations by the Expert Group on Informal Statistics (the Delhi Group), a set of recommendations was offered in 1999 for the harmonization of national definitions (ILO, 2002a). The 2002 ILO compendium contains harmonized measures of informal employment, but for only seven countries globally, while also reporting measures based on national definitions for another thirty-eight countries.1 Only one of the harmonized country reports—Ethiopia—is from Sub-Saharan Africa. While there is a growing awareness of the informal sector by governments and its importance to national accounts and measures of economic activity and well-being, national statistics capturing the concept continue to vary from country to country. These differences are attributed to:

r r r r r r

Criteria used to define the informal sector, for example, employment size of the enterprise, use of registration status; Branches of economic activity covered, particularly concerning the inclusion or exclusion of agricultural activity; Inclusion or exclusion of paid domestic employees employed by households or producers of goods for their own final use within their households; Inclusion or exclusion of persons with a secondary job in the informal sector; Inclusion or exclusion of persons engaged in professional or technical activities: and Geographic coverage, some for urban areas only.

Caution, therefore, has to be exercised in making cross-country comparisons of published informal sector data. Careful attention must be given to the concepts and methodology used in each country in national statistics for the informal sector. One of the lessons drawn from this for further study of the informal sector is the importance of benchmarking the definition and methods used by a country’s national statistics agency, and if special surveys are undertaken, using the ILO’s building-block approach to define carefully the concept used in each country in order to harmonize definitions for comparison or to understand their differences. While recognizing the importance of informal employment outside the informal sector, this chapter is largely focused on issues of employment in the informal sector and the skilling of its workforce. It does not address skills in the formal wage sector.2

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2.2 A Profile of Informal Sector Employment The ILO’s 2002 report provides a glimpse of those employed in the informal sector. Table 1, drawn from the ILO report, presents informal sector employment using national definitions for countries reporting from Sub-Saharan Africa. The variation in this table of the percentage employed in the informal sector reflects the differences in national definitions. The share of informal sector employment varies from nearly 20% in Botswana to over 90% in Mali where agricultural employment is included in the national definition. Though not reported here, the share of informal employment in rural areas tends to exceed that in urban areas. Considerable churning of employment in the informal sector is noted in South Africa by Devey, Skinner and Valodia (2006) with slightly over 44% of those employed in the informal sector in September 2003 continuing to work in the informal sector in March 2004. Table 1 Persons employed in the informal sector: selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (latest available year) Employment (’000) Year

Total

Men

Employment as a percentage Women

Total

Men

Women

21.1 174.8

39.4 100.7

12.3 50

27.6 41

1444.2

3370.6

56.4

85.7

485.6 1572 1531.1

690.2 1746 838.3

19.3 46 57.3 74.2 57.5 94.1 31 22

91 25.7 28

96.4 38.2 15

National definition Botswana Benin∗ Cameroon∗ Ethiopia Madagascar∗ Mali South Africa Tanzania

1996 1999 1993 1999 1995 1996 2001 1991

Kenya

1999

60.5 275.5 119 4814.8 239 1176.1 3319 2369.4

Small or micro-enterprises (national definition) 1881

1090.4

790.6

36.4

43.9

29.5

Source: ILO, 2002a. ∗ = urban only.

Self-employed workers, most of whom are own-account workers and unpaid family workers, are considered the major component of the rural and urban informal sectors. Becker (2004) estimates that 70% of the informal sector is comprised of those who are self-employed with the percentage rising to 81% if South Africa is excluded. The number of self-employed in non-agricultural activities, measured by household surveys, has increased over the past two decades. Own-account and family workers represented nearly two-thirds of the non-agricultural labour force in Africa. Women’s share of informal employment is higher than that of men’s in about half of the countries for which data are available. Women comprise most of the unpaid family workers and are often undercounted, since many are home-based. Trade accounts for a major share of informal sector employment. From a survey of South Africa, Lund and Skinner (2003) report that informal employment is concentrated in the retail and wholesale trade with just over half of all informal sector workers located in this sector. A significant number

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are also employed in construction, manufacturing and services. Over 10% of those engaged in the informal sector have jobs in manufacturing and this is considered low in comparison with other developing countries. Haan (2006) reports that trade activities, including street vending and ambulant trading, are the most important segments of the informal sector in Africa, usually constituting half and sometimes up to 75% of employment. The self-employed dominate employment in the informal sector. In a survey of the characteristics of informal sector enterprises in Botswana, Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe, Mead and Liedholm contend that on average almost two-thirds of all informal sector enterprises are one-person businesses (quoted in Haan, 2006). Most of these enterprises are labelled as subsistence level firms with only a small likelihood of growing into larger enterprises. Earnings and profits in these small enterprises are low by comparison with larger enterprises that hire other workers. These small enterprises are sometimes referred to as the ‘working poor’.3 Still, evidence from a number of countries confirms that average incomes in the informal sector are generally higher than official minimum incomes and earnings from agriculture. Earnings of self-employed non-agricultural workers in Ghana in 2005, a proxy for informal sector workers, were 35% higher than those for selfemployed agriculture workers (World Bank, 2008). Fox and Gaal (2008) conclude that earnings in the informal sector pull workers out of agriculture with average incomes in the informal sector of most countries being at least 50% higher than those in agriculture. The impact on poverty, they report, is positive with data from a number of countries showing that households whose main economic activity is in the informal sector have a lower rate of poverty—the highest poverty rates are always in agriculture. Having a family member earn income in the informal sector raises household incomes. The education levels of those employed in the informal sector are generally lower than those in the formal sector (Liimatainen, 2002). However, this pattern is changing as young workers are entering with more education. Low education levels limit trainability and lead to modest skill levels. In a survey of five African countries— Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe—Haan (2006) reports that about half of informal sector workers have either no education or primary education, and less than 5% have a post-secondary education. Slightly better results are reported by Walther (2006) for South Africa. In contrast, a survey of those employed in the informal sector of Nigeria found larger numbers with a post-secondary education (14%), and some 45% with a secondary school certificate (NISER, 2007). Finding ways to continue education and promote skills training forms an important challenge to improving productivity in the informal sector and reducing poverty.

3 Building a Skilled Workforce in the Informal Sector Skills for work are acquired in different settings in classrooms, workshops and on the job. They are provided by public education and training institutions, private forprofit and non-profit institutions, and employers through training in the workplace and outside. Training may be taken to qualify for employment or to upgrade skills

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and prepare for the introduction of new technology in production. For those working in the informal sector, some or all of these approaches to skills may be used. Public and private schools can play an important role in preparing individuals for creating their own employment by providing them with a technical skill, usually through a technical and vocational education curriculum. A commonly used approach to self-employment is working for another employer and acquiring skills on the job, either informally or through an apprenticeship, before leaving to set up one’s own business. Each approach has strengths and weaknesses.

3.1 Public Technical and Vocational Education and Training Public secondary and tertiary schools with technical and vocational education programmes have played a smaller role than might have been anticipated in preparing workers for informal sector employment (Atchoarena & Delluc, 2001).4 Originally developed at the time of independence in the 1960s to meet the expected skill requirements of industrialization, these institutions have been slow to respond to the structural change and growth of the informal sector (Brewer, 2004; Haan, 2006; Liimatainen, 2002; NISER, 2007; Filipiak, 2007). Structural adjustment programmes and tight government budgets contributed in the 1980s and 1990s to deteriorating facilities and equipment and the inability of these institutions to update programmes and respond to the shift to informal sector employment (ILO, 2002b; Johanson & Adams, 2004). Other impediments also stand in the way of the public sector’s response to meeting the skills challenge of the informal sector. The training offered by the public sector is considered theoretical in focus without sufficient opportunities for practice and biased toward white-collar jobs in the wage sector (Liimatainen, 2002). Entry requirements and fees are often too high and the training methods used better suited to a more literate population. The courses offered are considered rigid and too standardized to meet the multi-skilling needs of the highly diverse informal sector. Where public financing is used without accountability for results, these institutions have few incentives to reflect and adjust to changes in the demand for skills (Ziderman, 2003). Weak accountability influences not only the responsiveness of the public sector to special needs of the informal sector, but in a more general way to the changing demand for skills in the formal sector. The population targeted for this training and the mode of delivery are also factors behind the failure to reach out to the informal sector with skills. Public technical and vocational education programmes are largely focused on the full-time student preparing for entry into the world of work and require sustained periods of time in school. The focus on pre-service training is not matched by a focus on in-service training for those already employed. This model has proved ill-suited to those among the poor seeking to combine school and work in a part-time fashion to provide families with income and, similarly, to meet the needs of older workers who are unable to afford time away from work to undergo training. A more flexible

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approach is needed. Examples of this are found where schools have adopted modular, competency-based curricula that permit flexible entry to and exit from training at hours not interfering with the workday. The Kenya Jua Kali programme (Kiswahili for ‘work under the hot sun’), offering training vouchers to those working in the informal sector in the mid-1990s, provides an interesting window on the response of public training institutions to the demand for skills that these vouchers created. The vouchers were observed to produce a positive supply response to the demand created for skills, but mainly from non-governmental organizations and from master craftspersons in the informal sector. New programmes were developed tailored to the needs of voucher recipients and offered during off-hours to fit work schedules. Public institutions showed little interest in adapting their traditional programmes to respond to this new source of demand (Adams, 2001). The motivation for responding to new sources of demand like this with innovative programmes is diminished where public institutions are unable to retain locally-generated income for quality improvements and incentives for instructors. The recent introduction of entrepreneurship education represents an innovation in public secondary and tertiary education institutions that is relevant to the informal sector. These programmes help develop attitudes favourable to starting one’s own business and provide knowledge and skills for running a business, e.g. business law, accounting and bookkeeping, credit and finance, and marketing.5 Farstad (2002) examined entrepreneurship education programmes in secondary and tertiary education institutions in Botswana, Uganda and Kenya. He found instructors generally well qualified, but observed no immediate impact on the numbers of students leaving school to start a business. The fact that students did not immediately start new businesses is not by itself an indicator of failure on the part of these programmes. Farstad acknowledged that the more traditional route to self-employment starts with an initial period of apprenticeship or wage employment to gain practical experience and build professional self-confidence. In a comparison of graduates of general secondary education programmes and those from technical and vocational education programmes, he observed that the latter group was more likely to start businesses within a few years of graduation. The technical education provided a skill that was then honed on the job with an apprenticeship and wage employment before setting out to start a new business. Entrepreneurship education has encouraged schools to think outside traditional patterns of pedagogy and classroom instruction. Periods of mandatory work placement have been introduced along with compulsory development of a business plan subject to examination and grading. In Kenya, entrepreneurship education is delivered with the assistance of small business centres attached to all public postsecondary and some private technical and vocational education institutions. In Botswana, students benefited from the requirement that they establish and operate a student enterprise. Co-operation between training institutions and private enterprises in curriculum development and training delivery was found to add value in the three countries studied (Farstad, 2002).

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Other options for engaging public education and training institutions in skills development for the informal sector are discussed below in the section on employers and traditional apprenticeships. The low educational background of many of those employed in the informal sector opens opportunities for greater attention of public sector institutions to adult education and literacy programmes, and to the offering of what is becoming known as second-chance education tailored to the needs of those who have missed opportunities for early education (World Bank, 2007; Adams et al., 2007). Where found, these programmes have provided low-cost education to open doors for employment, but have not been carefully evaluated for their impact on further training and earnings.

3.2 Private Providers of Skills While the public sector has been slow to respond to the changes in demand for skills brought about by growth of the informal sector, private institutions have been more responsive to this demand (Brewer, 2004). These institutions are of two types: for-profit and non-profit institutions (Bennell, 1999). The for-profit institutions have grown in numbers in the 1990s with the decreased capacity of public providers (Atchoarena & Esquieu, 2002). While many are registered trainers and follow official curricula and prepare trainees for government trade tests like their public counterparts, a large number are unregistered, small in scale and form part of the informal sector themselves. They appear as storefront operations that can be observed in any African city. Tuition and training fees constitute the main sources of income for these institutions, although registered institutions may receive subsidies from the government. Largely dependent on fees, for-profit institutions are concentrated in urban districts and less frequently found in rural areas. They are responsive to demands for skills, adjusting quickly to changing needs. The programmes offered often require limited investment in equipment and facilities and provide easy market entry and exit for the providers. Commercial courses are popular, including IT programmes. Other soft courses cover tailoring, driving schools, food preparation, auto repair, cosmetics, etc. Programmes are often of short duration to fit the ‘just-in-time’ learning needs of trainees. Fees are kept low, but still are not affordable by the poorest of the poor. Quality varies widely where standards are left to the provider (Johanson & Adams, 2004). Private for-profit providers could play a larger role in the provision of training to those in the informal sector. Their programmes are demand led. Their sometimes modular short courses are well suited to a more flexible delivery of skills training for those who cannot afford long spells away from their work. Expanding their role will require attention to the capital market constraints they face and the incentives needed to encourage more services in rural areas and to the poor. The promotion of private training associations could also open opportunities for co-operation and reduction of costs, while providing a framework for accreditation and quality assurance. Examples of these associations merit further study.

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The term non-governmental organization (NGO) generally refers to a range of non-profit organizations that include providers of training (Haan, 2006). Churches and international agencies play an important role in this capacity, along with national and local community-based organizations. NGOs include local branches of strong international NGOs and national NGOs with wide coverage and smaller ‘community-based organizations’. Training by larger NGOs is sometimes linked to other support services for small businesses, including micro-credit. Small business incubators, operated by NGOs, often offer entrepreneurs a package of business services, including training, but have not been carefully studied in Africa. Large church-based training NGOs like Don Bosco and secular NGOs like Opportunities Industrialization Centres (OIC) are found in a number of African countries. Many of the smaller church-based NGOs and community-based organizations maintain a strong social emphasis in their training outreach to the rural poor, minorities, women and the handicapped. Their training activities tend to have social and cultural rather than economic objectives with the result that their training is of limited value in helping participants enter into self-employment (Haan, 2006). They focus training on traditional trades. Curricula are outdated and the training offered is theoretical rather than practical. Quality is low. Services are generally free-of-charge, but with some beginning to charge minimal fees. These NGOs serve the poor, but they offer little that translates into preparation for selfemployment. What Haan (2006) calls ‘traditional training NGOs’ are larger in size and specialized in skills training. Don Bosco schools are an example. They benefit from international assistance and tend to resemble training provided by the public sector with full-time, centre-based training of long duration directed at wage employment in the formal sector. In many respects they look like modern, better equipped versions of public technical and vocational education schools. The quality of training offered in these traditional training NGOs tends to be better than that found in public institutions, offering more practical experience, but still without a focus on self-employment. These institutions are more likely to reach rural areas and serve the poor. Their financial base, however, is often limited and insecure.

3.3 Enterprise Investment in Skills Enterprises are a source of demand for and supply of skilled workers. They train and provide needed skills and experience for employees to promote competiveness and profitability. Some workers who are trained may choose later to take their skills and create their own employment. The training offered by enterprises tends to be short-term in nature and uses the firm’s own skilled workers or engages external vendors for its delivery. The training may be offered on-site in the enterprise, such as a typical apprenticeship, or off-site in an institutional setting. The World Bank provides a profile of enterprise training in over 100 countries world-wide through its Investment Climate Assessment (ICA) surveys. In Fig. 2, these surveys show

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considerable variation in enterprise training across regions with enterprises in SubSaharan Africa being active trainers. An earlier version of the ICA surveys in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Regional Programme for Enterprise Development (RPED), captured training by enterprises in the mid-1990s and the correlates of this training (Biggs, Shah & Srivastava, 1995). Enterprises found to be active trainers were large in size measured by employment, active exporters, users of technology and beneficiaries of foreign direct investment (Johanson & Adams, 2004). RPED surveys in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Zambia found that the training of workers was selective, with those having higher levels of education more likely to be chosen by the enterprise for training (Nielson, Rosholm & Dabalen, 2007). Smaller enterprises, especially those with less than ten employees—a proxy for the informal sector—are less likely to train. In Kenya, Zimbabwe and Zambia, only 4.6% of firms with ten or fewer employees trained in comparison with 81% of firms with 151 employees or more (Nielson, Rosholm & Dabalen, 2007). The impact of this training was favourable on the output of enterprises and wages of workers. A 1% increase in the workers trained from the sample average of 9% translated into a 60% increase in value added for all firms and a 99% increase for micro and small enterprises. Training was estimated to increase wages on average by 15–21% (Biggs, Shah & Srivastava, 1995). The returns to training for micro and small enterprises, noted above, raise the question of why a larger percentage of these firms do not train. A number of factors are offered to explain this pattern. Already observed is the fact that the education

Fig. 2 Enterprises are active trainers world-wide (as a percentage of total training) EAP = East Asia and the Pacific; LAC = Latin America and the Caribbean; SSA = Sub-Saharan Africa; ECA = Europe and Central Asia; MENA = Middle East and North Africa. Source: Tan, 2006.

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levels of workers in the informal sector are lower than those in the formal sector. With a small number of workers performing a wide range of tasks, multi-skilling is required, which can be expensive. The time away from work by a single worker in a small firm can be costly in foregone output. Small enterprises in the informal sector also face cash flow constraints in paying for training and a lack of professional capacity from human resources officers who can define training needs and design training programmes. For many in smaller firms, there may also be a lack of awareness of the benefits of training. While each of these factors requires careful consideration, one of the possible solutions to constraints on training comes in the form of support for industry associations (Johanson & Adams, 2004). The formation of industry associations and their engagement in training can offer solutions to a number of the problems above. These associations can promote a greater awareness of the benefits of training among small enterprises, help in defining training needs for members and the design of appropriate training programmes, contribute to economies of scale in the delivery of training, reduce the unit cost to the enterprise, establish training standards for a sector and certify the skills acquired as a means to promote the quality of the training offered. This role is already played by construction associations and many others and could be expanded. There has been little rigorous examination of the effect of these associations on skills development in the informal sector.

3.4 Employers and Traditional Apprenticeship Traditional apprenticeships are by far the most important source of skills training in Africa for the informal sector, with these apprenticeships concentrated in West and Central Africa (Haan, 2006; Filipiak, 2007). Liimatainen (2002) estimates that up to 70% of urban informal sector workers in Africa have been trained through the traditional apprenticeship system. The Ghana Statistical Service, for example, found 207,000 youths registered as apprentices in 2002, while in this same period a much smaller number of young people, just over 50,000, was enrolled by public and private providers (World Bank, 2008). Traditional apprenticeships in the informal sector consist of private contractual arrangements between a parent or apprentice and a master craftsperson who agrees to provide practical training in the workplace, ranging from several months to three or four years in duration, and subsequently certify the training in return for a fee or reduced earnings while learning.6 Traditional apprenticeships are distinguished from other formal apprenticeships registered with a government agency, usually a ministry of labour, and administered by employers and worker organizations. Traditional apprenticeships as individual contracts are self-financing and self-regulating and provide practical, handson training with good prospects for employment after the training. At the same time, traditional apprenticeships suffer from the weak level of education of those entering apprenticeships. Few have passed beyond lower secondary education and many will not even have completed primary education. Literacy is an issue. Choices of trades follow gender biases. Master craftspersons, in turn, do not provide theoretical

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knowledge alongside practical experience and, more often than not, teach out-dated technologies. Pedagogy varies and there are few market standards available for judging the quality of the training provided (Johanson & Adams, 2004). These apprenticeships are available in a wide range of trades, mostly in bluecollar occupations, and are a substitute for school-based instruction.7 Most trades offered by public and private training institutions can also be mastered through a traditional apprenticeship. The flexibility of apprenticeships in combining work and learning, their affordability and self-financing, their connection with future employment, and their generally lower entry standards make them attractive as a source of skills to disadvantaged youth. Haan (2006) reports that apprenticeships are less evident in Eastern and Southern Africa than in West and Central Africa with youth sometimes described in the former merely as ‘helpers’. Still, in countries like Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, he finds large numbers of youth who are acquiring skills in informal enterprises under the guidance of a master. In Kenya, available information indicates that some 40–60% of informal sector operators acquire their skills through apprenticeships. Household data from the Ghana Living Standards Measurement Surveys in 1991/1992 and 2005/2006 provide a profile of changes in apprenticeship over time. Table 2 compares the share of youth aged 15–30 years who have gone through an apprenticeship in each period. The share entering an apprenticeship has been rising for young men and women, but with a higher growth rate for young women. Apprenticeships are more evident in urban than in rural areas. Education levels for youths are rising as a consequence of Ghana’s efforts to provide basic education for all and the share of those following their education with an apprenticeship is also rising at each level of education except post-secondary. While those with a technical or vocational education are likely to acquire their skills in an institutional setting, those with a general education are more likely to pursue skills through an apprenticeship. Studies of traditional apprenticeship in other African countries could examine the robustness of these patterns. An apprenticeship opens opportunities for employment in the informal sector, but also in other types of employment as seen in Table 2. Those working in the private informal sector as self-employed or wage workers are likely to have acquired their skills through an apprenticeship. Reflecting the growing importance of traditional apprenticeships, 51% of youth in non-agricultural self-employment in 2005 acquired their skills in this manner—a rate twice that of the earlier period. With consumption levels used as a proxy for family income, apprenticeships are accessible to all income groups, but favour those who are better off. Those in the lowest consumption quintile demonstrate much lower rates of participation in apprenticeships. There is a question of whether traditional apprenticeships should form part of a strategy for skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is doubtful, for example, that small firms in the informal sector acquiring their skilled workers through apprenticeships will contribute in a significant way to the export-led development strategies of many countries. Moreover, the ability to leverage large numbers of apprentices is constrained by the number of skilled craftspersons available. These

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Table 2 Share of youth in Ghana (15–30 age group) who have gone through an apprenticeship 1991/1992

2005/2006

Urban

Rural

Total

Urban

Rural

Total

Gender Male Female

36.0 21.1

18.1 11.1

21.9 13.9

46.7 40.7

19.0 20.1

27.3 26.3

Age group 15–19 20–24 25–30

10.6 34.5 28.8

5.2 16.4 21.4

6.1 20.8 23.7

30.9 44.3 46.2

6.9 24.4 24.3

11.1 31.0 31.9

Education level No education Some primary Primary Secondary (lower) TVET Secondary (higher) Post-secondary

15.1 16.7 25.4 38.5 22.2 14.7 13.3

5.8 15.9 10.5 25.9 12.5 13.5 11.1

7.5 16.0 13.3 29.9 19.2 14.3 12.1

21.4 42.1 54.1 60.4 20.0 29.6 7.6

6.9 16.6 25.5 43.2 19.2 17.5 3.4

8.7 21.4 32.6 50.9 19.8 25.7 6.5

Type of employment Wage public sector Wage private sector formal Wage private sector informal Self-employed agro, paid Self-employed agro, unpaid Self-employed non-agro

9.1 50.7 53.8 12.2 16.2 27.0

12.7 56.4 57.5 16.3 7.6 24.2

10.8 52.7 55.2 16.0 8.4 25.7

12.4 28.0 36.0 32.2 22.1 56.8

10.9 42.5 49.6 18.8 8.4 44.1

11.9 31.6 41.2 19.7 9.2 51.2

Standard of living Lowest quintile Second quintile Third quintile Fourth quintile Highest quintile All

12.1 6.9 25.9 27.0 31.4 26.9

8.4 10.3 14.0 17.1 28.4 14.4

8.6 9.9 16.4 20.3 30.0 17.5

30.3 36.2 35.9 43.4 49.6 43.5

9.4 15.2 25.1 31.5 41.3 19.6

10.9 18.3 28.0 36.7 46.9 26.8

Source: World Bank, 2008.

considerations aside, improving traditional apprenticeships can contribute in a positive way to employment and poverty reduction. As shown in Table 2 for Ghana, traditional apprenticeships are a source of skills for employment in both the formal and informal sectors. Those employed in the informal sector earn more than those in agriculture and improving their productivity with skills can further contribute to poverty reduction (Fox and Gaal, 2008). As presently structured, public vocational and technical education programmes appear to have little to offer employment in the informal sector, but this could be changed if public financing for these institutions is instead shifted to focus on outcomes, such as their success in serving target populations of master craftspersons and apprentices, rather than simply financing inputs, i.e. classrooms, courses offered, instructors hired, etc. Performance-based budgeting for public institutions could provide incentives to upgrade technical skills for master craftspersons and

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improve the pedagogy they use (Ziderman, 2003). More attention and accountability could be given to these institutions in partnership with traditional apprenticeships for addressing the low levels of basic education that handicap the training of apprentices and master craftspersons and for providing the complementary theoretical training needed to accompany the practical training of apprenticeships.8 It is reasonable to question whether emphasis on skills alone will improve the productivity and incomes of those who are employed in the informal sector (ILO, 2000). The improvement of financial services and access to credit are often listed as critical needs in surveys of small businesses, along with secure worksites and access to new technologies and business services (Liimatainen, 2002; Riley & Steel, 2000). NGOs play an important role in the provision of these services to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, often offering a menu of services alongside training. Working through informal sector employer associations, as already noted, can further assist in organizing services, particularly in skills training, by using their size to reduce the cost of training needs assessments, establish competency standards, develop curricula and certify skills obtained in traditional apprenticeships. National training authorities (NTAs) in a growing number of countries throughout Sub-Saharan Africa influence training policies and resources for training. Training funds operated under NTAs or independently, as described below, can play a role in providing incentives for NGOs and industry associations to serve the training needs of the informal sector (Ziderman, 2003). In Côte d’Ivoire, the Vocational Training Development Fund helps NGOs organize training for informal sector enterprises (Johanson & Adams, 2004). Chafa (2002) describes the Skills Development Initiative of Malawi’s Technical Entrepreneurial Vocational Education and Training Authority (TEVETA) and its efforts to obtain credit in the national training system for skills acquired through training in the informal sector. There are few rigorous evaluations of these programmes available and more attention needs to be given to their impact on apprenticeship. The same can be said for the impact of apprenticeships and other forms of training on employment and earnings.

4 Policies Encouraging Enterprises to Invest in Skills Government policies to encourage enterprises to invest in skills subsidize the cost of this investment through various measures. The incentives may vary in their impact on the actual amount of training done. Twenty-one countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have introduced training funds financed by payroll taxes, while others, such as in Namibia, have recently proposed such a scheme (Ziderman, 2003). These funds reimburse enterprises for the cost of qualified training undertaken. Training vouchers are also an instrument used by governments and training funds to subsidize the cost of training by enterprises and individuals (Patrinos, 2002). Offered to master craftspersons and workers in the informal sector, vouchers can help pay for training

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selected by the worker. The cost of training is also subsidized by governments by allowing enterprises to deduct eligible training costs from their income for tax purposes or providing tax credits for qualified training expenses. The introduction of training levies on payrolls is used globally to mobilize additional resources for skills development (Ziderman, 2003). The fairness of the levy is judged on the taxation principle that those who benefit from the resources spent on training should be those who pay. Payroll levies have been used to finance the provision of training by national training organizations, as is found in Latin America in such countries as Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela, but also training directly by enterprises where a levy-grant system is adopted and administered through a training fund. Enterprises are reimbursed in a levy-grant system for the cost of qualified training expenditures by these funds. This is the dominant model found in Sub-Saharan Africa. The impact of these funds on training in the informal sector, however, is limited. Most funds exempt smaller enterprises (below fifty employees) from the payment of a levy because of the higher administrative cost of enforcing compliance on the part of these enterprises. Dar, Canagarajah & Murphy (2003), in a review of international experience with training funds, found that small employers do not benefit substantially from these schemes. The financial incentives offered are insufficient to offset the other factors mentioned earlier that deter training by small enterprises. As a result, training funds with levy-grant schemes tend to favour larger enterprises, particularly the training of more highly educated and skilled workers in these enterprises.9 There are exceptions, however, as found in Malaysia and Singapore. Both countries recognized the low participation on the part of small enterprises in their levygrant funds and set out to address the problem. Among the solutions offered were subsidies for conducting training needs assessments, pre-approved training courses not requiring costly application and justification, and the use of excess training capacity of large enterprise by smaller firms. Singapore offered training vouchers to enterprises with less than fifty employees that could be used to pay up-front training costs to ease cash flow problems. The vouchers helped Singapore’s Skills Development Fund reach 65% of enterprises with ten to forty-nine workers and 14% of those with fewer than ten workers (Hirosato, 1997). Limited evidence is available in Sub-Saharan Africa on the initiatives of national training funds to reach small enterprises in the informal sector. Other voucher programmes have been introduced to encourage training in the informal sector (Johanson & Adams, 2004). The Kenya Jua Kali voucher programme, described earlier, was successful in its pilot stage in expanding the supply of training to workers in the informal sector and lowering cost. There was evidence of its positive impact on the earnings of participants and strengthening of the capacity of local Jua Kali Associations responsible for distribution of the vouchers, but problems were encountered with corruption in scaling up that led to high administration costs (Adams, 2001; Riley & Steel, 2000). A similar voucher programme targeting informal sector enterprises was offered in Ghana in the early 1990s that largely failed due to lack of attention in the design to the marketing and distribution of the

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vouchers (Johanson & Adams, 2004). The role of vouchers in training is an area that merits further study in Sub-Saharan Africa. Worldwide, countries allow enterprises to deduct the cost of training from their income as a cost of business before taxes, but for the informal sector where small enterprises may not earn sufficient income to pay taxes or may avoid taxes altogether by not being registered, these deductions provide a limited incentive for training. The same result may apply to tax credits that are targeted to selected enterprises in return for agreed training and employment actions. Where the credit can be refunded to the enterprise in the absence of a tax liability, this may serve as an added incentive for training and even registration of the enterprise, but once again may not be sufficient to prompt small enterprises in the informal sector to train. As a general conclusion, the impact of these various financial incentives on training is not well documented for enterprises in the informal sector.

5 Moving the Skills Agenda Forward Employment in the informal sector is now an important feature on the landscape of Africa, accounting for a significant share of GDP and influencing the well-being of a growing number of households. Its character has changed ever so slightly as growing numbers of those who now enter this employment do so with higher levels of education than those before them and with entrepreneurial aspirations that look at this employment as a preferred destination for their future, rather than merely a staging ground in the on-going search for wage employment in the modern sector. Capturing the scale and characteristics of informal employment and its contribution to national welfare and poverty reduction is a first step for many countries in defining policies that can promote gains in productivity and incomes in this sector. Among these policies are ones that would improve the skills of those employed in this sector.

5.1 Elements of a Strategy A strategy based on what is known about the informal sector for improving skills as a means to promote its growth and productivity and improve the incomes of those employed in the sector needs to include the following:

r r r r r r r r

Acknowledging the existence of the informal sector for policy; Raising the educational and literacy levels of those employed therein; Recognizing the complementarity of training with other small business services; Promoting sustainable financing for skills development; Strengthening traditional apprenticeships; Defining a role for public providers of skills; Building the capacity of industry associations; Monitoring and evaluating outcomes for skills development.

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The informal sector has emerged as a reality and has to be recognized for policy purposes. How it is treated by governments will probably influence its future as an instrument for employment and poverty reduction. Forcing compliance with the regulations and imposing the taxation of an industrial economy through stronger enforcement measures is likely to drive it further underground or out of existence altogether. Finding the right balance of regulation and taxation that recognizes the higher risk and costs associated with operating a small business and providing the incentives for expansion and formalization of its activities forms a challenge for governments. Looking for ways in which government policy can support skills development in the informal sector is one way to promote the growth of small businesses and improvements in household welfare. The low education level of many of those employed in the informal sector impedes the upgrading of their skills and their capacity for absorbing new technologies. Policies that promote adult education and literacy and that offer second-chance education programmes enabling youth and adults to acquire non-formal education, recognized as equivalent to the basic education offered by traditional education, can open up opportunities and incentives for further investments in skills by workers and enterprises (World Bank, 2007). Investments in skills, as noted earlier, are part of a menu of services that are needed by small businesses, along with opening access to credit and business services (ILO, 2000). Policies that open credit markets and clear the way for non-governmental organizations to form and deliver these services along with training can create a more favourable investment climate for enterprises in the informal sector. As suggested above, countries with training funds can adopt new approaches like those used in Malaysia and Singapore that remove the barriers to investment in skills faced by small businesses. At the same time, public expenditures on skills development can be more effectively targeted through vouchers and tax credits to improve the incentives for investments in skills by informal sector enterprises. Costsharing is possible through these instruments. The Kenya Jua Kali programme, for example, shows how these targeted expenditures can be expanded to subsidize and improve the access of small businesses to technology and other business services, and also that these businesses are willing to share the costs (Riley & Steel, 2000). Traditional apprenticeships are observed to be a solution for skills development that works well in the informal sector, but there are steps described earlier that can be taken to improve the outcomes of this training without destroying what already works well. There are roles that can be successfully played by public education and training institutions to serve the informal sector, if financial incentives are in place to encourage this. Emphasis on adult education and literacy programmes are part of this process. The introduction of education equivalency programmes—so-called second-chance education—is designed for those who have left traditional education and are unlikely to return to this learning environment, but can be reached through non-formal programmes of education. There are many examples of this in Latin America, but fewer in Sub-Saharan Africa. Public technical and vocational education through reforms adopting modular, competency-based curricula delivered in

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a more flexible timeframe can teach students basic theories underlying a trade to complement the practical skills taught by master craftspersons in traditional apprenticeships. Industry associations serving the informal sector are prevalent in many countries throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Strengthening these associations so as to play a more active role in advocating skills development by members, defining training needs, designing and delivering short-courses, and engaging employers in setting competency standards and skills certification, including those for apprenticeships, can help address many of the issues that impede the investment of small enterprises in skills. Skill certification may also be undertaken as part of national qualifications frameworks and extended to cover apprenticeships (Johanson & Adams, 2004). These are some of the elements of a skills strategy suggested by this review of how skills are acquired for the informal sector. Refinement of this strategy and policies supporting skills development for the informal sector need to be informed by regular monitoring and rigorous evaluation of programmes. There are interventions that do not seem to work well for further skills development in the informal sector. Among them, training funds that are expected to promote training carried out by enterprises show limited evidence of this as far as small businesses are concerned. As suggested, there are tools that these funds could use to encourage training by small enterprises, but examples in Sub-Saharan Africa are largely absent. Treating training expenses as a tax deduction offers an incentive for training in larger enterprises, but this policy is unlikely to have an effect on training in smaller enterprises that operate at the subsistence level and pay hardly any taxes. Tax credits may in turn be a more effective tool for smaller enterprises in the informal sector. Smaller NGOs focusing on social and cultural skills rather than economic ones do little to help beneficiaries create new employment. Finally, public vocational and technical education that remains rigidly focused on skills for the formal sector at a time when this employment is stagnating provides little benefit to those who must find their employment in the informal sector.

5.2 The Role of Government This chapter has reviewed the sources of skills development in the informal sector along with their strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improvement. It has highlighted questions along the way where more research is needed to deepen our knowledge of skills in the informal sector. An over-riding theme of the review is the need for more data and information on the informal sector and its participants, particularly how the numbers and characteristics of those employed in this sector are changing with time and the factors affecting these patterns. From this review, it has been possible to sketch the elements of a strategy for moving the skills agenda forward for the informal sector. Fully developing the strategy, however, will require filling many of the knowledge gaps that remain around employment and skills development in the informal sector and adding to our confidence in other findings offered by a small number of countries.

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What can governments do as part of this strategy? While governments need to promote a more friendly investment climate for those who create their own employment, where skills are concerned their role in policy development and reforms to promote a more equitable, market-responsive training system for all is of greater importance than initiatives to provide or finance training for the informal sector. Policies that open the market to private providers, including NGOs, are important to expanding access to skills and reducing demands for public expenditure. Policies that provide information to the market about the skill requirements of jobs available and the quality and relevance of training offered by different providers can lead to a more efficient allocation of public and private spending on training. Policies that promote competition in delivery and financing and enforce accountability among providers can together improve training outcomes and lower costs. These actions by government serve the interest of all workers, not just those in the informal sector.

Notes 1. The ILO (2002a) reports that more than sixty countries have started to collect and publish data on employment and other characteristics of the informal sector. 2. For a review of skills in the formal sector of Sub-Saharan Africa, see Johanson & Adams (2004). 3. Bennell (1999) distinguishes between what he calls ‘survival’ enterprises and enterprises with ‘growth potential’. He argues that the former require few skills and therefore it is difficult to see how ‘conventional training services could significantly increase productivity and incomes’. 4. In a study of the informal sector in seven African countries, Filipiak (2007) estimates that on-the-job training, self-training, and traditional apprenticeships account for 95% of training in the informal sector. Senegal, for example, has some 400,000 youth in apprenticeships compared with 7,000 in technical and vocational education and training. Monk, Sandefur and Teal (2007) in Ghana, using a household survey, found that 80% of training is acquired through on-the-job training and traditional apprenticeships. 5. While curricula for entrepreneurship education are often locally developed, other packages have been developed and tested by donors, e.g. ILO’s Start/improve your business and GTZ’s Competency-based economies through formation of enterprises (Haan, 2006). 6. Haan and Serriere (2002) estimate that fees for traditional apprenticeships average about US$70 per year. The ILO in 2006 estimated fees to average US$160, ranging from US$22 to US$616. In 2005, Palmer (2007) estimated the average apprenticeship fee in the Ashanti Region of Ghana to be US$42 with a range from $13 to $173. 7. In South Africa a new learnership scheme has been adopted to broaden the present apprenticeship system beyond traditional blue-collar trades to include white-collar occupations in the service sector, as well as the informal sector (Gill, Fluitman & Dar, 2000) 8. The German dual system training provides an example where this complementarity has been achieved, but it has proved difficult to accomplish in other settings where the roles and responsibilities of the public sector and employers for skills development are not defined in this fashion. 9. Given the tendency noted earlier for large enterprises to train without subsidies, training funds are subject to criticism for their high deadweight effects. That is, the funds pay firms to train who would have trained without the subsidy. At the same time, these funds correct for a ‘free rider’ problem that transfers the cost of training more evenly across firms of all sizes and types.

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References Adams, A.V. 2001. Assessment of the Jua Kali Voucher Programme. <siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/278200-1099079877269/5476641099079934475/547667-1135281552767/Jua Kali Pilot Voucher Programme.pdf> Adams, A.V., et al. 2007. Education, employment and earnings in Ghana. Washington, DC: World Bank. Atchoarena, D.; Delluc, A.M. 2001. Revisiting technical and vocational education in SubSaharan Africa: an update on trends, innovations, and challenges, Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. (IIEP/Prg.DA/1,320.) Atchoarena, D.; Esquieu, P. 2002. Private technical and vocational education in Sub-Saharan Africa: provision patterns and policy issues. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. Bangasser, P. 2000. The ILO and the informal sector: an institutional history. Geneva: ILO. (ILO employment paper, 2000/9.) Becker, K.F. 2004. The informal economy: a fact finding study prepared for the Swedish International Development Agency. Stockholm: Sida. Bennell, P. 1999. Learning to change: skills development among the economically vulnerable and socially excluded in developing countries. Geneva: ILO, Employment and Training Department. Biggs, T.; Shah, M.; Srivastava, P. 1995. Technological capabilities and learning for African enterprises. Washington, DC: World Bank, African Technical Department. (Technical paper, no. 288.) Brewer, L. 2004. Youth at risk: the role of skills development in facilitating the transition to work. Geneva: ILO. (Skills Working Paper, no. 19.) Chafa, J. 2002. Informal sector programmes in TEVETA of Malawi. Lilongwe: TEVETA. Dar, A.; Canagarajah, S.; Murphy, P. 2003. Training levies: rationale and evaluation from evaluations. Washington, DC: World Bank. <siteresources.worldbank.org/INTLM/Resources/ TrainingLevies.pdf> Devey, R.; Skinner, C.; Valodia, I. 2006. Second best? Trends and linkages in the informal economy in South Africa. Durban, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal, School of Development Studies. (Working paper, 06/102.) Farstad, H. 2002. Integrated entrepreneurship education in Botswana, Uganda, and Kenya: final report. Oslo: National Institute of Technology. Filipiak, E. 2007. Vocational training in the informal sector: the outcomes of a field survey in seven African countries. (A Powerpoint presentation prepared by the Research Department, Agence française de développement, Paris, France.) Fox, M.L.; Gaal, M.S. 2008. Working out of poverty. Washington, DC: World Bank, Africa Region. Gill, I.; Fluitman, F.; Dar, A., eds. 2000. Vocational education and training reform: matching skills to markets and budgets. Washington, DC: World Bank; Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Haan, H.C. 2006. Training for work in the informal micro-enterprise sector: fresh evidence from Sub-Sahara Africa. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Haan, H.C.; Serriere, N. 2002. Training for work in the informal sector: fresh evidence from West and Central Africa. Turin: ITC/ILO. (ILO Occasional Papers.) Hirosato, Y. 1997. Skills development fund: a preliminary assessment of a financing alternative for enterprise-based training in the context of APEC. Nagoya, Japan: APEC. (GSID APEC discussion paper, no. 17.) Hussmanns, R. 2004. Measuring the informal economy: from employment in the informal sector to informal employment. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO, Bureau of Statistics. (Working paper, no. 53.) International Labour Organization. 2000. ILO activities concerning the informal sector: thematic evaluation. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. (GB.277/ESP/1/1.) <www.ilo.org/public/ english/standards/relm/gb/docs/gb277/pdf/esp-1-1.pdf> International Labour Organization. 2002a. ILO compendium of official statistics on employment in the informal sector. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. (STAT working paper, no. 1.)

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International Labour Organization. 2002b. Decent work and the informal economy: abstracts of working papers. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO, Employment Sector. Johanson, R.; Adams, A.V. 2004. Skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank, Regional and Sectoral Studies. Liimatainen, M.-R. 2002. Training and skills acquisition in the informal sector: a literature review. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. (IFP/Skills Informal Economy Series.) Lund, F.; Skinner, C. 2003. The investment climate for the informal economy: a case of Durban, South Africa. Durban, South Africa: University of Natal, School of Development Studies. <www.wiego.org/papers/2005/unifem/21 lund skinner SA durban case study.pdf> Monk, C.; Sandefur, J.; Teal, F. 2007. Apprenticeship in Ghana. Oxford, UK: University of Oxford, Centre for the Study of African Economies, Department of Economics. Nielson, H.S.; Rosholm, M.; Dabalen, A. 2007. Evaluation of training in African enterprises. Journal of development economics, vol. 84, pp. 310–29. Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research—NISER. 2007. Report of baseline study of employment generation in the informal sector of the Nigerian economy. Ibadan, Nigeria: NISER. (Prepared for the Africa Capacity Building Foundation and the ILO.) Palmer, R. 2007. Skills development, the enabling environment and informal micro-enterprise in Ghana. Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh. [Ph.D. thesis.] Patrinos, H. 2002. A review of demand-side initiatives in education. Washington, DC: World Bank. <www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2003/11/03/000112742 20031103154746/Rendered/PDF/269590Patrinos0Review1of1Demandside.pdf> Riley, T.A.; Steel, W.F. 2000. Kenya Voucher Programme for training and business development services. Washington, DC: World Bank, Africa Region Private Sector Group. Roubaud, F.; Razafindrakoto, M. 2007. The informal sector in the LDCs: an economic and statistical perspective. (A powerpoint presentation at United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok, 29 March 2007.) <www.unescap.org/stat/isie/Data-Collection-Instruments/index.asp> Schneider, F. 2002. Size and measurement of the informal economy in 110 countries around the world. Canberra: Australian National University. (A paper presented to a workshop of the Australian National Tax Centre.) Tan, H. 2006. In-service skills upgrading and training policy: global and regional perspective. (Paper presented at the MNA Job Creation and Skills Development Conference, December 2005, Cairo, Egypt.) Walther, R. 2006. Vocational training in the informal sector: report on the South Africa Field Survey. Paris: Agence française de développement. (Working Paper, no. 30.) World Bank. 2007. World Development Report 2007: development and the next generation. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank. 2008. Ghana: job creation and skills development draft report. Vol. 1: Main document. Washington, DC: World Bank. Ziderman, A. 2003. Financing vocational training in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. (Africa Region Human Development series.)

VOLUME 1


Part I

Overview


Chapter 1

The Pedagogical Roots of Technical Learning and Thinking Ron Hansen

1 The History of Technical Learning and Thinking The early history of technical learning for the purposes of this account includes the period from 700 BC to the Industrial Revolution. The earliest forms of ‘technical being’ were associated with the controlling of fire. Through fire, humankind was able to cook food, melt metals and shape simple tools. Eventually people became miners, smiths, carpenters, masons, weavers and so on. Systematic learning, if there was such a thing during this stage, is not well documented. It was a trial and error process. The first evidence of organized learning came from groups who valued a trade, skill or craft. In ancient times, the Jews, for example, sent their children to school for religious studies in the morning and skill development in the afternoon. Failure to give a Jewish boy an honest means of livelihood (manual trade) was excluding him from becoming a useful member of the community (Bennett, 1926). Furthermore, the Jewish people felt that labour held religious significance. It was regarded as a man’s [sic] duty. At no point in the pre-Renaissance period is there evidence of what would be called a system of instruction. Sons and daughters learned from their fathers and mothers. Their goals were always survival and betterment for the family members and eventually for larger communities of people. Even if a son was taught by someone other than his father or mother, the relationship was a paternal one—master and apprentice. During the Homeric Age (700 to 300 BC), handicrafts people in Greece occupied a place of respect for their mechanical aptitude. Later, however, banausic or mechanical arts lost their status. The beginnings of a stigma emerged. Manual arts were thought to be for the peasant class and not fit subject matter for upper-class youth. In 300 BC upper-class boys, according to Bennett,1 were taught drawing. The lower classes continued to be apprenticed under a master as in earlier times. Interestingly, the orators, lawyers, physicians and cooks of that time also employed the apprenticeship method in their training. Christian monks, much like the Jews, elevated manual labour. Labour was required of everyone—weavers, carpenters, curriers and tailors. Similarly, the Benedictines made manual labour a cardinal principle. Their thought was that labour banished indolence (the enemy of the soul). For every moment in the day that they celebrated the praises of God, they devoted one hour to labour, and two to reading. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 1, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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The religious zeal and missionary enthusiasm of the Benedictines2 carried them from Italy, north of the Alps, into Germany. Germany became filled with monasteries, each of which became a centre of civilization. Many of the church structures in Germany dating from 900 to 1200 AD are the work of the Benedictines. Bookmaking and modernized buildings followed the development of the printing press in 1450. The sole educational institutions of this period (900–1500) were monasteries. Their subject matter was religious writing. Outside of these monasteries, participation in skilled labour was the principal means of education, though not the kind of education which was recognized as such by schools. As trades and crafts developed, i.e. became more differentiated and specialized, apprenticeship included a large body of information, tools and techniques. The master was to teach the recipes, rules, applications of science, mathematics, as well as the art of the craft. The method was imitative and all instruction took place outside of school walls. A new conception of the process of learning began to emerge in the 1400s—the same spirit that led to the discovery of new methods for the schools. According to Bennett, this period spawned two new fundamental ideas upon which modern instruction in the manual arts has been built (1926, p. 30). The first is that the senses are the basis of thought and, consequently, of knowledge. The second is learning by doing. The idea that children could learn by working through a process and making something by themselves, with tools, was seen as rational thinking. The placing of handicrafts in schools followed. It was Francis Bacon (1561–1626) who helped make the transition from learning based on the writings of antiquity to learning based on nature and the arts of daily life. Comenius followed (1592–1670) by advocating learning that starts with the senses, then memory, the intellect, and finally the critical faculty. ‘The child perceives through the senses; every thing in the intellect must come through the senses’ (cited in Bennett, 1926, p. 36). British thinkers began to contribute to the technical learning story in the 1600s. In 1663 Moxon published a volume entitled ‘Mechanik exercises or the doctrine of handy works’. The subjects ranged from smithing to joinery and made extensive use of illustrations. Locke (1642–1727) became the main spokesperson for the idea that education should ‘fit a boy for practical life’ (Bennett, 1926, p. 61). Rousseau (1712–1778) took Locke’s ideas a step further. He believed agriculture was the most respectable of all arts and professions. Next to this came smithing and then carpentry. Bennett quotes Rousseau: ‘The great secret of education is to make the exercise of the body and mind serve as relaxation to each other’ (1926, p. 80). Ultimately, technical learning found its way into the school curriculum across Europe alongside classic academic subjects, such as mathematics, science, language, history and religion. Four distinct movements, three in Europe and one in the United States, are debated in the literature for their uniqueness and contribution to technical thinking and learning. Each provides an important element in the evolution of a socio/experiential pedagogy. Each shows how different cultures influenced or, adapted to, the Industrial Revolution: the Russian system of workshop instruction; sloyd in Scandinavia; manual training in Western Europe; and vocational education in the United States.

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1.1 The Russian System of Workshop Instruction One of the first societies to analyse tool processes and construction methods employed in the mechanical arts was Russia.3 Progress in teaching mechanical arts had been slow until the Russians institutionalized technical learning. Earlier studentlearning methods (prior to the 1800s), e.g. imitative or apprenticeship, were unsatisfactory. The lack of an effective ‘system’ of instruction created a problem for which a solution had not been devised. About this same time a Mr. Della Vos was appointed to lead a new institution which became known as the Moscow School of Trades and Industries (later decreed in Russia as the Imperial Technical School). He developed a six-year programme of instruction that would be considered college level today. The school was organized through instruction and construction shops. Large contracts for development/project work were taken on by the school and carried out partly by hired workmen and partly by the students. The machines they constructed included steam engines, pumps and agricultural machinery. Students were permitted to work in the construction shops only after completing required courses in the instruction shops. The goals or ends of instruction were to teach the fundamentals of mechanical arts in the least possible time, in large groups, with a strong knowledge base and in steps that would allow the progress of each student to be assessed. Each art or distinct type of work had its own separate shop, e.g., joinery, wood turning, blacksmithing, locksmithing. Large display boards were used to provide enlarged samples of wood joints, drawings, models, etc. The time devoted to joinery, as one example, was fourteen hours per week for one year. Each student was required to keep a ‘workbook’ recording the successive steps in each exercise, e.g. laying out, squaring stock, cutting and planing. Students could master the elements of the arts in a progressive sequence from easy to difficult. This separation of instruction and construction shops, along with the development of sequential exercises, led people to believe that mechanical arts could be taught in school settings. The way was paved for technical instruction in schools—at least the perception that it could be taught was beckoning and compelling (using the same methods as in the other school subjects). The Imperial Technical School provided a more economical and effective substitute for apprenticeship, or at least the early part of apprenticeship. Reference to the developmental potential of project work in human terms is not mentioned in the literature. Similarly, the Russian analysis does not mention how one mechanical art might differ from another in terms of its fundamental nature and how that nature might somehow define unique or distinct learning methodologies for each, or in fact if either suited itself to being taught in schools.4 The issue of whether or not such teaching or curriculum design was vocational or general was not an issue. The literature also highlights the important contribution that the Russian diligence and analysis made to tool and machine design. The word ‘design’ was not one that was used in those early days. However, it was an important outcome of the ‘system’ used in the many pioneering European schools that emerged through the 1800s, including that of Pestalozzi. The transfer of knowledge and designs

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that were tested and refined is remarkable. The Diderot Encyclopedia5 is a testimony of the contribution that European pioneers made to technical knowledge in the 1800s. In summary, the Russian system of workshop instruction and tool design proved that mechanical arts could be analyzed and their fundamental elements arranged and charted. It demonstrated that one instructor could successfully give instruction to a large number of young workers and students at the same time. It also showed, after years of trial and error, that whole-class instruction had to be supplemented with one-on-one instruction, suggesting that learning of technical means is not always viable in large-group situations. Furthermore, to ensure mastery of each step or operation the teacher needed to evaluate the student’s progress, i.e. exercise diligence. Without these safeguards or what Bennett called pedagogical procedures, lack of patience and attention to detail often resulted in waste of materials and unsatisfactory finished products, e.g. failed joints, awkward designs. Organizers and leaders learned that the teacher must be an expert craftsperson in the work he or she is teaching and must keep up his or her competence. Teacher credibility stemmed from being able to demonstrate and inspire.

1.2 Sloyd: Scandinavia’s Contribution to Technical Learning Sloyd (slojd, sloid) is a Scandinavian term that dates to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was the term used to describe what Nordic families did in the harsh and dark months of winter to pass the time. Webster’s International Dictionary (Babcock, 1971) defines it as a system of manual training developed in Sweden for training in the use of tools and materials, but emphasizing training in wood carving as a means to this end. Another historical analysis of sloyd gives credit to Finland for its origins. Kananoja, Kantola and Issakainen (1999) researched the archives and found that Uno Cygnaeus, a Finlander, first founded sloyd. In either case, families would sit beside the stone hearth fireplace in their cottages making tools and handicrafts out of wood. At first the tools and handicrafts were those needed for survival on the farm. Later they served an economic purpose as they could be sold to others in the spring and summer months. Home sloyd eventually died out and was replaced by school sloyd. Apparently, the abuse of alcohol had resulted in a breakdown of the skill and character of young Swedish men. The revival was prompted by a national education policy that introduced it into schools as a subject of study. The history from that point on differs across the Scandinavian countries. Each contributed something to the programme and tradition known today in all Scandinavian schools as sloyd. Finland was once a part of the Russian Empire. In grateful appreciation for the loyalty of the Finnish people in helping him resist the onslaught of Napoleon, Alexander II promised Finland a new and complete primary school system. The designer of that system (1860s) was Cygnaeus. In his early years Cygnaeus acquired considerable manual skill, thanks to his father, who took him to various workshops.


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Also, for five years, he lived in Alaska where he learned about both the governing class and aboriginal people. He ascribed some of his thoughts on the need for and character of popular education to these experiences. His philosophy was that children, young and old, should be educated through the senses to appreciate the aesthetics and functionality of independent artisanship and problem-solving. This meant the use of one’s hands in building and making artefacts. In 1866 his plans for a system of public or folk schools (as they were called) were enacted into law. He first set up a teacher-training school at Jyväskylä. Student learning was divided among book studies, domestic industries, and work in the garden and fields. He believed that handwork should lead toward future practical efficiency, yet the school should not become a technical or trade school. On these grounds, handwork was made one of the fundamental subjects in the school established by Cygnaeus and in all folk schools. Meanwhile, in Sweden a successful merchant in Gothenberg, August Abrahamson, retired to Naas (twenty kilometres away), a former hunting area of the King of Sweden. Within this great estate were forests with oak and birch trees, pastures, a castle and isolated villas. Abrahamson was a lover of nature and art, but with an interest in bettering the conditions of the common people. Thus, in 1868, at his wife’s suggestion, he opened a sloyd school. Originally this was intended for the boys on the estate, but it quickly expanded and needed leadership. Otto Salomon (1849–1907), a nephew and technical student at the Technical School of Stockholm, was invited to operate the school. In 1872 an industrial school (Arbets-Skola) for boys who had graduated from the folk school (the same concept as in Finland) was established under Salomon’s direction. The course covered two years, fifty weeks a year, ten hours a day (seven for sloyd, three for other subjects). In 1874 a similar school for girls was opened. The need for capable teachers soon became evident. Naas, as such, developed into a summer teacher education institution, with teachers from all over the world attending to learn about the pedagogy (human development) associated with handwork. Though there is no evidence that Salomon was acquainted with Della Vos and the Russian system of work instruction, he based his curriculum on a series of tool exercises and elementary forms of construction. Unlike Della Vos, however, he combined his exercises into the making of useful articles. There were three characteristics of educational sloyd as developed by Salomon: making useful objects; analyses of processes; and educational method. Salomon gave credit for the educational method characteristic to Cygnaeus. The pedagogical plan always included working from the easy to the difficult, from the known to the unknown, and from the interests and capacities of the children. Drawing or sketching often preceded project work. First, he tried to make sloyd teachers out of artisans; later he spent more of his effort in making sloyders out of teachers. Salomon believed that teachers should use one-on-one instruction in their teaching. He admitted that whole-class teaching was more economical but not sufficiently educational. Students from age 11 to 15 participated in sloyd. In Denmark Ansel (Axel) Mikkelsen,6 a manufacturer, began in 1885 to teach manual work to his apprentices, and a few other children. It wasn’t long before he

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heard of Salomon and Cygnaeus’s work. At his own expense, he started a sloyd school in Copenhagen. What developed was the Danish sloyd system. The general characteristics of Danish sloyd were: the starting point of all instruction should be the natural interests of the child; the materials used should be wood and the tools only those in common use; the course should be organized using a small or limited number of specific models and an unlimited number of co-ordinate (generic) models; it should be flexible to meet the varying needs of individual pupils; both whole-class and individual instruction should be used; tools should be selected or constructed to suit the child’s size and strength.

1.3 Manual Training in Western Europe The manual training movement is primarily a central and western European phenomenon, although the idea found its way to North American shores where it was renamed manual arts. More importantly, perhaps, it is a story of class differences, boyhood labour and schools as instruments of elitist beliefs. In France7 and Germany,8 as in many European countries, manual training grew out of an earlier type of workshop instruction, which was chiefly economic or industrial in its purpose. Beiderman and Goetz were two prominent leaders who figured in the German manual training movement. Goetze took Biederman’s ideas and went a step further, writing an important book entitled ‘Die Erganzung des Schulunterrichts durch praktische Beschaftigung’ [The completion of school instruction through practical activity]. Based on Biederman and Goetze’s ideas, manual training in German schools began to flourish. First a German Association for Boy’s Handwork (Leipzig Boy’s Workshop) was established. Then in the summer of 1882 a course for teachers was established. Within a span of ten years teacher training was provided at all major population centres across Germany. Goetze was made director of a special teacher-training college in Leipzig that was associated with the Leipzig Boy’s Workshop. Ultimately, the pedagogy associated with manual training came to be known as the ‘Leipzig method’ and the world-renowned German respect and valuing of technical learning in schools was born. The question of what form technical learning should take in the schools was also addressed in the German story. Because of resistance to technical learning by headmasters and other school leaders, Goetze raised the question of whether or not manual training should be a servant to other school subjects or independent. Many headmasters felt that technical learning should be offered in the curriculum if it helped students learn natural history, geography or physics. Is manual training to be admitted only on account of the service it renders to other branches of education, or whether, by virtue of its peculiar educative influence, an independent position is to be assigned to it in the system of education? We [The German Association for Boy’s Handwork] side with those who take the latter view. Manual training can neither do its own work nor be an efficient auxiliary to other subjects unless it be methodologically organized on an independent footing. Unless manual training is to become mere amateur


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bungling, it cannot possibly depart from the natural method of proceeding from easy to difficult (cited in Bennett, 1926, p. 178).

In England a different story was evolving and the principles upon which manual training and the school system were to be founded were being fixed. Before the Industrial Revolution, the ruling class in England, according to Bennett, accepted the idea that, in an ideal society, it was essential for a large proportion of the people be ignorant and poor. It took a hundred of years of debate to change this idea and to adopt a system of elementary schools at public expense (1926, p. 220). Elementary schooling would not be available and free to all children in England until 1905. At the same time lower-class parents felt it was their right to profit by the manual labour of their children. Many parents needed all the revenue that children could earn. To correct this situation the church became involved, followed by schools of industry. Volunteer teachers came to the rescue of poor children and a movement known as the ‘Ragged Schools’ emerged. Out of the Ragged School Movement came the polytechnics intended for the social, moral and educational improvement of adults. Independently, from 1824 to 1848, the Mechanics Institute Movement flourished with many of the institutes becoming technical schools. The technical curriculum for England was being shaped. They [the mechanics institutes] were intended to help mechanics learn about the principles behind mechanical objects, tools and machinery. However, it soon became apparent that a minimal level of language competence was necessary between people who were trying to convey the principles and those receiving it. This experience helped precipitate the opening of schools for children. Eventually, art and technical schools also came into being to provide skilled workers for industry. Fuelling the growth of technical schools was intense industrial competition between England and Continental Europe. It was felt that Belgium, France and Germany were gaining prestige over England in the race to industrial supremacy. The issue of what kind or form of education was needed to propel and sustain industrial development was being debated. In the end, a system of elementary schools provided instruction in basic literacy to age 10. Forms of handicraft were evident in the schools—but sporadic. Needlework is identified in the literature as one prominent craft. Early on, inspectors of needlework and drawing were appointed in London. Coincident with the emergence of both schools and crafts in them, the problem of child and juvenile delinquency was becoming prominent. The English solution was to incarcerate them in schools where they could learn heavy crafts. Here was a solution to the government’s need for public obedience and industry’s need for workers. ‘Industry schools’ were born. Moral reform was twinned with technical learning.9 In Scotland, a school quite different in character and with more egalitarian purposes was giving shop work a serious place in the curriculum. Allan Glen’s Institute in Glasgow was established in 1853 together with a free school for elementary education. It eventually became a school of secondary and technical education. Articles made by students were of their own selection and became their own property upon payment for the material consumed. In Scottish tradition, once a student mastered a

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scale model of wood, he or she began to work for the institution. Eventually, shop courses became a regular feature of schools in both England and Scotland, some with wonderful traditions of excellence and spirit. The debate about the function and form of technical learning in schools paralleled those on the European continent. Some school officials saw manual training as a distinct and important subject area; others viewed it as an adjunct. The one element that separated the English story from the rest of Europe was the role of the City and Guilds Institute of London. In 1886 the City and Guilds of London and the School Board formed a committee to plan the equipping of four schools for woodworking. Classes were visited by many men and women interested in the problems of education. Reports from the School Board of London for 1888 suggest the students were highly motivated and inspired to stay in school because of these classes. Another influence that impacted on manual training in English schools came from Naas in Sweden. Beginning in 1884, teachers from England began travelling to Sweden to take courses in sloyd. Armed with Salomon’s models and techniques, as well as an enriched summer experience, these teachers began to promote sloyd in their schools. A group of sloyd workers took shape and the promoters of manual instruction found themselves representing two more or less opposing groups of teachers. One group depended on the City and Guilds, the other on sloyd philosophy and practice. Finally, an experiment integrating the two approaches to manual training was undertaken. The result was ‘English Sloyd’.10 The English system of manual training in the elementary school was thus set. Unfortunately, the Education Department was unable to reconcile the two factions, partly because they were more focused on technical education. ‘It [the Education Department] could not catch the full significance of manual training as a vital factor in elementary education’ (Bennett, 1937, p. 247). Ultimately, a teacher preparation syllabus was established and teachers (some from other subjects and some artisans) were certified to teach manual training as a subject. Handwork, in spite of the turmoil over philosophy and means, became a staple in English elementary schools leading quite certainly to the arts and crafts for which British craftspeople are now famous. Technical education in England is a distinguishable but separate part of the whole story. While the general education advocates won out in rationalizing elementary school manual training as a non-trade oriented learning programme, the same fate would not befall technical education. The term technical education and the contents of classes under this name came to include: a group of general education subjects in the elementary and higher schools, to very trade specific teaching, to higher instruction in science and engineering, and to commercial studies. One other backdrop to the technical education story in England began in 1851 and lasted till the end of the century. In 1851 the Great Exhibition was held at the Crystal Palace in London. This was intended to showcase the superiority of British manufactured articles. It did, except for the category of superior skill and refined design. In this area, France was clearly superior. In 1855 the European countries met the British challenge by inviting the United Kingdom to compete in the Exposition Universelle in Paris. This revealed remarkable progress on the Continent. Again in 1862 in London, Britain


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was confronted with a host of rivals. The Paris exhibition of 1867 provided further evidence that the United Kingdom could no longer claim supremacy. The education of continental workers was clearly superior.11 In the final analysis, the Great Exhibition of 1851 was a very significant turning point in the technical school learning story. Envy among nations clearly had a significant impact on technical thinking and its position in schools during the midnineteenth century. Its [technical learning and thinking] stock increased dramatically in the public sentiment. But did it make any difference for technical teachers and students in the schools? The evolution of schooling in the twentieth century would surely prove, once and for all, how technical learning was central to both individual development but also economic development.

1.4 The Vocational Education Movement in the United States Bennett marks 1906 as being the beginning of the vocational education movement in the United States (1937, p. 507). Manual arts had been expanding in the high schools. Specific trades and apprenticeships were being identified by labour unions and manufacturers. Students were looking for practical and profitable workplace opportunities. Debates about social versus economic agendas took a back seat to the government’s needs and wants. After much wrangling at the federal level, the Smith-Hughes Act was passed (1917), paving the way for federal monies to be spent on buildings and equipment for specific occupational training. The purpose of vocational studies was to fit boys and girls for a job. Its integrity was tied to the ‘educative value of work’. Eventually, vocational guidance became a complimentary force that cemented the movement, both in schools and in the work sector. Students needed sound advice on which trade or occupation to choose. Also taking a back seat was the issue of whether or not technical learning should have cultural or industrial purposes. There was too much exciting work to be done in the schools associated with teacher training, curriculum and facility design. Discussion of what form technical learning should take in schools was overshadowed for the moment. Eventually many secondary schools and institutes would be known (reflecting the vocational nature of studies in them) as vocational schools. In his summation of the 1870 to 1917 period, Bennett traces the issues or interests that gave technical learning and thinking in the United States its substance. Throughout the years of effort to obtain the law [Smith-Hughes Act], there were three constantly recurring and conflicting interests that had to be harmonized or at least propitiated. One was between the manufacturer and the labor union; each wished to regulate vocational training in order to control the labor market. Then there was the conflict of ideals between those who feared that vocational training would lower the standard of cultural education. And finally, when the need for vocational training was admitted, some believed that it could be effective only when separated from the public-school work of general education; while others insisted on the unity of control in public education and saw no good reason for a dual system. The law passed was probably the best compromise that could have been obtained at that time (1937, p. 550).

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2 The Irony of Displacing Technical Thinking and Learning Regardless of whether or not technical learning and thinking is marginalized in the school systems of most Western societies, it is useful to critically examine the model that currently dominates and governs how children learn in school environments. Increasing numbers of pedagogues point to the flaws in the classic academic model of learning adopted in schools (Greenfield, 1993; McLaren, 1998; Rogers, 1997). Acceptance of and reliance on the school-knowledge-acquisition model also raises an important question. What are the limitations of that model of learning and thinking for technical teachers/students and for schools generally? Debate about the validity of scientific knowledge seeking and ordering in recent decades has been robust (Kuhn, 1962), but also ubiquitous. Seldom is any credence given to a knowledge-generation model or theory that emerges from people who value ‘doing’ as highly as ‘knowing’. Scholars point to the scientific method as a source for deriving new knowledge and validating it. The knowledge-seeking and validation process is known in the literature as ‘positivism’. Acceptance of positivism, even though it enjoys a nineteenth century history, has come under increasing scrutiny. Kuhn’s challenge to positivism, along with that of Hooker (1987), points to a renaissance of thinking regarding sources of knowledge. Missing from the science-based knowledge-building model is a way of learning that recognizes technical knowledge and knowledge that comes from experience. Finnigan and Layton refer to this in their annotated bibliography on teaching and learning in the third culture. So far as the schools are concerned, these developments [the recognition that technological activity is fundamentally different from science] have a direct and practical implication. If there is a distinct ‘technik’[technical thinking and learning], with characteristics which distinguish it from the sciences and humanities, should it not have a place in the general education offered by the schools? Are there, indeed, three cultures, not two as C.P. Snow suggested, the third corresponding to the creative, problem-solving and productive activities of the engineer? Ought we not to recognize more clearly in curriculum terms that the fundamental difference between science and technology is social, a difference in values between a community whose sovereign value is ‘knowing’ and another whose ultimate goal is ‘doing’? And if the answer to each of these questions is ‘Yes’, what problems arise in relation to teaching and learning in the third culture? (1994, p. 2).

Questions about the validity and verification of knowledge as the featured commodity of schools are also found in the field ‘sociology of knowledge’. Rogers (1997), in her paper on new views of knowledge and its representation in schools, illustrates the differences between subject-matter learning and disciplinary learning. She explores some of the problems posed by using disciplines as the primary source of authority in shaping the curriculum, and goes on to propose a more radical, alternative model for thinking about the curriculum. The alternative integrates the influence of the disciplines with other influences, such as the child’s world, the particulars of context and the knowledge of professions. She argues that we should think more broadly about the possible sources of influence and authority for the curriculum in schools.


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As nations and economies rush to claim a ‘knowledge-based’ lifelong learning model, the need for technical education to have its true nature and form properly recognized and valued, in and out of the formal learning institutions, is vital. Why would anyone want to exclude knowledge from everyday life in a learning model? A paper subtitled ‘Towards a sociology of lifetime learning’ (Rees et al., 1997) challenges the normative focus on ‘the learning society’ as one that can and should be driven by more than human capital theory. The authors conclude that a narrow approach looking only at human beings as capital will detract from an adequate theory of lifetime learning. There is a classic question that plagues educational policy and thought. It may also underscore why there was a lack of rebuttal from practical people who know how they learn when solving everyday problems. Can schooling, when separated from everyday reality, ever be relevant? Dewey writes: ‘Connect schooling to everyday life and the curriculum will, of necessity, be relevant’. Layton underscores the same point when he states that schools decontextualize knowledge (1993, p. 15): ‘A general characteristic of school technology and one which makes it different from many other school subjects is its engagement with practical action in the made world. No subject challenges the historic role of schools as institutions which decontextualize knowledge quite so strongly as does technology.’ Buchmann and Schwaille perceptively ask: Can knowledge be acquired and retained independent of practical action, by observing and imitating others and by extracting knowledge from experiences coded in text? Does learning in schools always have to be an interpretation of reality rather than reality itself (1983, p. 11)? Technicians and technologists who know how they learn through experience are often not informed about where knowledge and the school curriculum comes from, much less whether or not it is valid. And, even when they do, their voices and the platforms from which they might express themselves are remote.12 The fact that such knowledge and its dissemination was contrived or that something might have been lost in the translation, or that it might be at least once removed from world or human reality, as such, is not resolved. Sheridan writes: ‘schooling contributes to a priority of legitimacy of literacy, and this denies the legitimacy of experience, which is necessary for learning’ (2000, p. 23). School-teachers, unfortunately, technical or otherwise are seldom fully informed of this dichotomy/irony.

3 Epilogue The knowledge-oriented tradition that underpins schooling in Western societies continues to enjoy an unquestioned place in the minds of most parents, policymakers and professional educators. At the same time, the importance and place of experience versus knowledge as an orientation or tradition for learning awaits definition and institutionalization. The literature overview in this chapter draws out three important features of the academic versus experiential learning divide. First, the need for a deeper understanding of what it means to be technical and to think and learn technically in a human and social sense requires documentation

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and clarification. Second, how and what one learns when being technical is an elusive but culturally significant pedagogical terrain. Third, technological learning, as a cultural phenomenon that defines societies and governs economic prosperity, is undistinguished. A ‘first principles’ or critical analysis may be the only one that offers hope for reform. And, ironically, the one place where answers and enlightenment are traditionally found, i.e. the school, is the genesis of the problem. Formal learning institutions, thereby, are not likely to see it in their best interests to pursue a full and honest analysis. Teachers are not taught what Lindeman and other educational philosophers have known for some time—‘education conceived as a preparation for life locks that learning within a vicious circle. Youth educated in terms of adult ideas and taught to think of learning as a process which ends when real life begins will make no better use of intelligence than the elders who prescribe the system’ (1926, p. 3). In other words, we have become habituated to a method of achievement that is, in essence, antithetical to intelligence and to technical learning. Teachers are not taught or given this important contextual information in their training/education. The absence of this understanding and teachers who know nothing of the problem lies at the root of a huge dilemma in schools. Ironically, this ‘missing understanding’ is spoken about informally in workplaces and around the kitchen table all the time by families and people who trust their experience and life’s work ahead of what they learned or did not learn in schools. Lindeman puts it bluntly: ‘Too much of learning [in schools] consists of vicarious substitution of someone else’s experience and knowledge’ (1926, p. 6). In fairness it should be said that the ‘learned’ colonialists who attempted to share and rationalize this new-found way to learn and think were probably sceptical and euphoric at the same time. Book learning would eradicate a perceived and increasingly legitimized problem—illiteracy. Peasants and pagans who roamed many regions of the world using oral forms of communication were thought to be backward and their ways limiting. Settler and colonialist cultures felt that the printed word leading to widespread reading and dissemination of information would homogenize and standardize people and cultures. It did. The technical printing press, among other things, paved the way for a single and widespread way of transmitting important information and ultimately knowledge. What they [settler cultures] failed to recognize was that both the oral and the written forms of information dissemination and the ways of learning that go with each are equally significant and inextricably connected. Wisdom, it was thought, could be passed on from one generation to another by book learning. Can it? Does experience not intervene? The fact that the two kinds of thinking and learning [academic versus technical] are very different may be one of the explanations why technical thinking and learning have not found a home in formal teacher-education practices. There is a resulting universal conundrum. The notion of constructing knowledge and creating academic subjects for its dissemination is itself an anomaly. The pedagogical terrain in recent years has been tempered by the introduction of design as a precursor,


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if not a stand-alone component, of what is sometimes referred to as ‘Design and Technology’ in the schools. The notion of designing is often so prominent that undertaking a technical project and learning to be technical is discarded or deferred. Design and technology serves as a reminder of what happens when technical thinking and learning is defined in a school general education context. It becomes what McLaren (1998) calls another socially constructed subject.

Notes 1. Bennett was a professor of manual arts at Bradley Polytechnic Institute in Peoria, Illinois. He devoted a good deal of his life to documenting a comprehensive history of manual training and industrial education. His material provides a comprehensive review of the pioneers associated with pedagogical thought about technical thinking and learning. 2. ‘Through the promotion of agriculture, the handicrafts, and art, along with religious instruction for all, and book learning for a selected few, the Benedictines became the civilizers of barbarians and examples of enterprise, thrift, and Christian culture’ (Bennett, 1926, p. 20). 3. There is some debate about whether or not the French were engaged in systematic instruction ahead of the Russians. Pannabecker (2004) found evidence of formal technical instruction in Paris, France, as early as 1808, and certainly by 1828. 4. Two contrasting examples are joinery and blacksmithing (metal work). 5. The Diderot Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts, et des métiers (1751–80) is a compendium of thirty-five volumes that is considered the centrepiece of the Age of Enlightenment (Pannabecker, 1998). 6. Two authorities on Mikkelsen’s contribution to sloyd are Bent Illum and Benny Gaarde. The National Institute for Sloyd Teacher Training, in Copenhagen, contains the documents that record Mikkelsen’s contributions to Danish sloyd. 7. The following quote typifies how the French thought about manual training: ‘In France there is absolutely no sympathy with any kind of manual instruction that pretends to aim at purely educational results and entirely ignores the industrial condition of the country’ (cited in Bennett, 1926, p. 107). 8. Thanks to Waldemar Goetze, leaders of the manual training movement in Germany were not driven by the economic advantages of instruction in handwork but by its general educational value. After apprenticing for a year, Goetze went to the University of Leipzig. There he was able to study Friedrich Karl Biederman’s clear and democratic ideas on education. 9. The objective of the industrial work in those schools was ‘not to make profit of their labour, but to help them acquire habits of industry, skill in some useful art, and such correct moral habits as to render their service desirable’ (Bennett, 1926, p. 227). 10. It was shown that the instruction [City and Guilds curriculum] stimulated the intelligence and improved the physique of the children; that the discipline was pleasant to the learners; and that, whilst it gave reality to much of the abstract teaching of the school, it endowed the young workers with manual skill and adroitness that remained with them a permanent possession for life (Magnus, 1910). In 1892 an epoch-making book entitled ‘Woodwork’ detailed methods of procedure in teaching woodworking. English sloyd differed from Swedish sloyd in that the making of any object had to be preceded by the making of a working drawing. 11. John Mill, in a pamphlet entitled ‘What is industrial and technical education?’, summarized the results of these world fairs as follows: ‘The Great Exposition of 1851, and those which have been subsequently held, have given a rude shock to our insular pride and self-complacency by showing us that our former excellence in numerous branches of manufacturing industry has been lost’ (cited in Bennett, 1926, p. 277). 12. Hansen (1996) describes the apologetic nature of technological studies teachers in his teacher socialization research.

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References Babcock, P. 1971. The Webster’s New Third International Dictionary (unabridged). Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Company. Bennett, C.A. 1926. History of manual and industrial education: up to 1870. Peoria, IL: Chas. A. Bennett Co. Inc. Bennett, C.A. 1937. History of manual and industrial education: 1870 to 1917. Peoria, IL: Chas. A. Bennett Co. Inc. Buchmann, M.; Schwaille, J. 1983. Education: the overcoming of experience. American journal of education, vol. 92, pp. 30–51. Finnigan, R.; Layton, D. 1994. Teaching and learning in the third culture? An annotated bibliography of issues in engineering education. Leeds, UK: Centre for Studies in Science and Mathematics Education. Greenfield, T.B. 1993. The man who comes back through the door in the wall: discovering truth, discovering self, discovering organizations. In: Greenfield, T.; Ribbing, P., eds. Greenfield on educational administration: towards a humane science, pp. 92–119. London: Routledge. Hansen, R. 1996. Program equity and the status of technological education: the apologetic nature of technology teachers (Editorial). Journal of technology education, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 57–63. Hooker, C.A. 1987. A realistic theory of science. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Kananoja, T.; Kantola, J.; Issakainen, M. 1999. Conference proceedings: Development of Technology Conference. Jyväskylä, Finland: University of Jyväskylä. Kuhn, T.S. 1962. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Lindeman, E. 1926. The meaning of adult education. New York, NY: New Republic Inc. Layton, D. 1993. Technology’s challenge to science education: cathedral, quarry, or company store? Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Magnus, P. 1910. Educational aims and efforts: 1880–1910. London: Longmans, Green. McLaren, P. 1998. Life in schools: an introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education, 3rd ed., pp. 171–98). New York, NY: Longman. Pannabecker, J. 1998. Representing mechanical arts in Diderot’s Encyclopédie. Technology and culture, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 33–73. Pannabecker, J. 2004. Inventing industrial education: The Ecole d’Arts et Métiers of Châlons-surMarne, 1807–1830. History of education quarterly, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 222–249. Rees, G. et al. 1997. History, place and the learning society: towards a sociology of lifetime learning. Journal of education policy, vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 485–99. Rogers, B. 1997. Informing the shape of the curriculum: new views of knowledge and its representation in schooling. Journal of curriculum studies, vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 683–710. Sheridan, J. 2000. The silence before drowning in alphabet soup. Canadian journal of native studies, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 23–32.

Chapter 2

A Conceptual Framework for Technical and Vocational Education and Training Jay W. Rojewski

1 Introduction Unprecedented changes in work, family, community and political life in the twentyfirst century—fuelled by myriad phenomena such as globalization, market deregulation, the worldwide influence of capitalism, and a need for knowledgeable workers skilled in information technologies—confront people in every region of the world. While these phenomena pose significant economic, social and cultural challenges, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) professionals are particularly challenged to develop, adapt or redesign strategies to address the needs of workers and society. But, what drives the changes and modifications made to TVET programmes? Even more basic, what is the essential purpose of TVET programmes in an increasingly global economy requiring highly-skilled and highly-educated workers? Should TVET be viewed solely as a means for preparing people for specific types of work or as a means of providing academic education for living in a democratic society? Should purposes differ at secondary and post-secondary levels? Where is TVET headed in the foreseeable future, and what factors affect this direction? Answers to these questions—and many more—depend on any number of possible factors, not the least of which are the underlying philosophies, implicit assumptions and common vision held by those responsible for TVET. Presumably, this information can be collected and coherently presented in a conceptual framework. In this chapter, I attempt to articulate ‘a’ (rather than ‘the’) conceptual framework for TVET. Because of differing views about the nature of TVET, a conceptual framework must accomplish several goals to be effective and useful, including: (a) explaining the general purposes of TVET; (b) reflecting the underlying beliefs and perspectives of its constituents; and (c) shaping current activity and future direction—it cannot be developed in a vacuum. Many constituencies must be involved to provide a comprehensive view of TVET and its applications in classrooms, boardrooms, living rooms and factory floors. Therefore, this framework should be viewed as an initial point of departure for discussion and debate rather than as an arrival at the final destination.

R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 2, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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2 Nature and Role of Conceptual Frameworks Theoretical and conceptual concerns regarding TVET have often taken a back seat compared to changing political and economic landscapes dominated by shifting governmental and international agency policies and initiatives. Any attempt to articulate a framework for TVET is also fraught with potential points of contention about the ultimate purpose(s) of TVET, the diversity of countries and constituents served and their sometimes conflicting needs, and the degree of reliance on governments or international agencies to provide guidance and definition. A conceptual framework contains: (a) principles or ‘generalizations that state preferred practices and serve as guidelines for programme and curriculum construction, selection of instructional practices, and policy development’; and (b) philosophy which ‘makes assumptions and speculations about the nature of human activity and the nature of the world [and] helps vocational educators decide what should be and what should be different’ (Miller, 1996, p. xiii). Conceptual frameworks should accomplish several things, including: (a) establish the parameters of a profession by delineating its mission and current practices; (b) account for historical events by allowing understanding of how we got to where we are; (c) establish the philosophical underpinnings of the field and underscore the relationships between philosophy and practice; and (d) provide a forum for understanding directions of the field. A conceptual framework does not necessarily solve all problems or answer all questions, but it should provide a schema for identifying critical issues and allowing for solutions. Frameworks should be fairly stable, but have the capacity to change over time and adapt to external factors. Any conceptual framework for TVET must be flexible enough to allow for differences in secondary or post-secondary programmes and accommodate changes in various economies and countries, but at the same time identify underlying assumptions, beliefs and values that are consistent for all types of programmes and are not readily subject to change. Not a small order!

3 Philosophical Underpinnings In the United States, TVET emerged in the early 1900s in the midst of debate about the nature of vocational training in public education. A general consensus had emerged about the importance of establishing vocational training in public schools as an alternative to a classical, academic tradition. However, a disagreement existed about the specific design and implementation of public vocational education. Two historical figures, Charles Prosser and John Dewey, have come to represent opposing positions on the nature of vocational education. Prosser’s views on social efficiency, while lacking the qualities of a formal philosophic system (Miller & Gregson, 1999), posited that the major goal of school was not individual fulfilment but meeting the country’s labour needs. A bulwark of social efficiency was the preparation of a well-trained, compliant workforce (Doolittle

2 A Conceptual Framework for Technical and Vocational Education and Training

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& Camp, 1999). TVET was organized and rigidly sequenced, an emphasis was placed on hands-on instruction delivered by people with extensive experience, and programme funding and administration occurred via a system that was physically and conceptually separate and distinct from academic education. While strongly supported by a majority of TVET proponents at the time, Prosser’s approach to vocational preparation has been criticized in recent years for being class-based and tracking certain segments of society—based on race, class and gender—into second-class occupations and second-class citizenship (Hyslop-Margison, 2000; Lewis, 1998). In sharp contrast, Dewey believed that the principle goal of public education was to meet individual needs for personal fulfilment and preparation for life. This required that all students receive vocational education, be taught how to solve problems and have individual differences equalized. ‘Dewey rejected the image of students as passive individuals controlled by market economy forces and existentially limited by inherently proscribed intellectual capacities. In his view, students were active pursuers and constructors of knowledge’ (Hyslop-Margison, 2000, p. 25). Dewey’s work is recognized as a significant part of the philosophy known as pragmatism. In the last several decades, pragmatism has been identified as the predominant philosophy of TVET. Change and reactions to it are significant features of a pragmatic philosophy (Miller, 1985, 1996; Miller & Gregson, 1999). Pragmatic education seeks to prepare students to solve problems caused by change in a logical and rational manner through open-mindedness to alternative solutions and a willingness to experiment. The desired outcomes for pragmatic education are knowledgeable citizens who are vocationally adaptable and self-sufficient, participate in a democratic society and view learning and reacting to change as lifelong processes (Lerwick, 1979). Miller and Gregson cogently argued that a proactive stance to change in both the profession and society best reflects contemporary thinking in TVET and should be adopted. This position, known as reconstructionism, emphasizes the role of TVET in contributing solutions to problems such as discrimination in hiring, the glass ceiling experienced by women and members of minority groups, or poor working conditions. ‘One of the purposes of vocational education should be to transform places of work into more democratic learning organizations rather than perpetuating existing workplace practices’ (1999, p. 30). Another issue directly connected to philosophy is the relationship of vocational and academic education. Not only has vocational education struggled with self-definition, but also with determining how it fits with an academic curriculum. Miller and Gregson (1999) instruct us that public education in the United States has been influenced historically by the blending of two fundamental schools of thought—idealism and realism—into a philosophy labelled essentialism. Essentialism is characterized by an emphasis on basic academics (the Three Rs), respect for the existing power structure and nurturing of middle-class values (Sarkees-Wircenski & Scott, 1995). Education from an essentialist’s perspective includes the notions that: (a) ideas, concepts and theory should hold a more dominant place than preparing for a life role as a worker and producer; (b) learning theory reflecting a behaviouristic approach

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Pr

Es

se

ism

at m

nt

ag

Purpose of TVET is to meet needs of labor market. Characterized by sequential organized curriculum, instructors need extensive business/industry-related experience. System separate from academic education (Sarkees-Wircenski & Scott, 1995)

ial ism

These three philosophical positions are applicable to TVET. Specific choices about the nature and scope of TVET depend on the specific combination of philosophies selected to define a particular programme.

Purpose of TVET is to fulfill individual needs for personal fulfillment and life preparation. Characterized by an emphasis on problem-solving and higherorder thinking, learning is constructed from prior knowledge (Miller, 1985, 1996)

Pragmatism (Reconstructionist strand) Purpose of TVET is to transform work into democratic, learning organizations. Proactive rather than perpetuating existing workplace practices. Adopts a stance against injustice and inequity in work issues (Miller & Gregson, 1999).

Fig. 1 Alternate philosophies for TVET

and memorization should build over the individual’s personal experiences; and (c) a subject-matter should emphasize the so-called basic skills and preparation for college (Sarkees-Wircenski & Scott, 1995, p. 25). How should the presence of several different philosophies in TVET be treated from a conceptual standpoint? I suggest using a three-dimensional triangle to represent the prevailing philosophies, each side representing one of three prominent philosophies found in the field: essentialism, pragmatism and pragmatism with a reconstructivist strand (see Fig. 1). Philosophy is at the core of any conceptual framework. The specific tenets represented by the three philosophies reviewed here hold different answers to questions about the ideal nature and scope of TVET that, in turn, dictate the types of decisions made on curriculum structure, instructional strategies, programme delivery, etc. Identifying three influencing philosophies complicates matters, although the field seems to be converging on the pragmatic (combined with reconstructionism) position (Miller & Gregson, 1999).

4 Notions of the New Economy Economic developments often have major influences on the content and direction of curricula and programmes. Until recently, those developments had been gradual, fairly steady and, for the most part, predictable. However, more recently, most economists and labour analysts have identified a new economy emerging around the world (globalization). While specifics about the new economy are sometimes in


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dispute, most peoples’ understanding (e.g., Carnevale, 1991; International Labour Organization, 2001; Mandel, 2000; Reich, 2000; U.S. Department of Labor, 2000; Weinstein, 1997) of the emerging economy includes at least some of the following core characteristics.

r

r

r r

r

Manufacturers, spurred by advances in technology, maintain an accelerated level of growth in productivity. Businesses are in a continual production mode. However, the emerging system of production is shifting away from high-volume mass production to high-value production, and from standardization to customization. The globalization of business markets results in substantial increases in competition for manpower and goods. Competition is particularly keen for highly-skilled workers. The largest manpower needs are for persons with innovative and creative methods for: (a) producing new products and services; or (b) promoting and marketing these new goods and services to consumers (Friedman, 1999; Reich, 2000). Information handling—e.g. storage, transfer and production—continues to increase in importance in the new economy. Low overhead costs require workers to be able to manipulate data and provide customized, rather than mass-produced, information and services. Business management practices are undergoing extensive restructuring and can be characterized by: (a) continued downsizing; (b) a premium placed on personnel who can manage knowledge as opposed to people; and (c) an increasing reliance on outsourcing for most work. ‘Managers will become brokers/facilitators; there will be more technical specialists, more lateral entry, and shorter, flatter career ladders. Instead of the old-style division of labor into discrete tasks, job functions will converge, and work teams will consist of individuals who alternate expert, brokering, and leadership roles’ (Kerka, 1993). Fierce competition will affect both for-profit and not-for-profit institutions, resulting in pressure to be innovative and to do it all better, faster, cheaper and continuously. Restructuring will occur frequently in order to achieve the greatest efficiency and productivity.

What does all of this mean? Hawke observed that ‘the very essence of work has undergone a massive transition within the last decade and, for vocational education, this is having major implications’ (2000, p. 1). Smaller entrepreneurial groups linked to trusted name brands are likely to be big winners in the new economy. To remain competitive, the people comprising these enterprises must ‘continuously cut costs, lease almost everything they need, find the lowest-cost suppliers, push down wages of routine workers, and flatten all hierarchies into fast-changing contractual networks’ (Reich, 2000, p. 6). The decentralization of decision-making and reorganization of work structures around semi-autonomous, task-oriented teams will be the norm. Many of the implicit rules that have governed employment during the latter half of the twentieth century—e.g. employees who expect steady work with predictably rising wages, a clearly defined employer/worker relationship, and a clear separation

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between work and family—are no longer in sync with the emerging reality of work (Hawke, 2000). Instead, Reich (2000) foresees the end of steady work, the necessity of continuous effort regardless of tenure or seniority status, and widening inequality in wages paid to top- and lower-level workers. The new economy requires that workers possess a broad set of abilities, including both technical and interpersonal/communication skills. Higher-order thinking skills, such as decision-making and problem-solving, as well as flexibility, creative thinking, conflict resolution, and managing information and resources will also be expected (Carnevale, 1991; Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, 1991). Workers will also need to commit to lifelong learning, and organizations will need to provide on-going retraining for the existing workforce to remain viable. The International Labour Organization (2001) describes how the new economy is influencing the methods of instructional delivery and types of learning most desirable. Two consequences of this are, first, a shift in teaching methodologies away from the transfer of facts to students as passive recipients and, instead, towards teaching students how to learn and instilling in them the curiosity to do so. In short, how people learn is becoming as important as what they learn. The second consequence is observable in high-tech firms exposed to fast-paced competition. The ability to learn, to transform existing knowledge into new knowledge is a source of competitive advantage of increasing significance. Changes in the economy will also influence family and community life in many ways. In fact, Reich (2000) concluded that ‘rewards of the new economy are coming at the price of lives that are more frenzied, less secure, more economically divergent, more socially stratified’ (p. 8). The high-powered work force of the twenty-first century requires more and more employees to work late, be available at all hours, develop contacts and connections, and stay current with new developments. The new economy is also beginning to fragment communities, countries and geographic regions into those groups that have access to education, resources and the like, and those that do not. Reich explains that the growing demand for high-skilled workers is juxtaposed against the pressures of competition pushing the earnings of employees in routine jobs down. Thus, disparities in earnings continue to grow. TVET stands poised to affect positive change in terms of support, preparation and guidance in the areas of people’s lives likely to be affected. However, to be relevant, professionals must critically examine and modernize their underlying assumptions about the world of work and family life, and be willing to reconcile ‘the way we’ve always done things’ with emerging directions of the economy and needs of the work force.

5 Components of a Conceptual Framework 5.1 What Does a Conceptual Framework Entail? Much, if not all, of the information needed to develop a coherent perspective of the field has been addressed and is available through descriptions of the workplace


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and work force, research, opinion and everyday practice found in national and international arenas. Construction of the framework presented here, then, has capitalized on this information in an effort to synthesize and reflect current streams of thought and practice, rather than devise a new vision. The conceptual framework for TVET proposed here is offered as a graphic illustration of the relationship of major components that shape the field (see Fig. 2). While relationships between various components are given, the major function of the diagram is to serve as a starting point for discussion about the conceptual underpinnings of the field. Global pressures and expectations

en sm ss ta ud St

s

Instruction and Programme Delivery Options

n tio

ula

en

Curriculum

op

tp

es

en

ud St

t

The new economy Globalization

Philosophy

Programme evaluation Student learning, motivation, and achievement

Community and societal expectations

Fig. 2 Visual representation of the conceptual framework for TVET

5.2 General Assumptions TVET professionals hold certain beliefs and assumptions about the purpose of the field, the curriculum and so forth. It is important that these often-unstated beliefs be identified, so that confusion or misinterpretation about an articulated conceptual framework is minimized. To Miller (1985, 1996) philosophy is synonymous with conceptual framework. It is mentioned here so as to acknowledge the pervasive role of philosophy on both our assumptions and implementation of TVET. The assumptions listed here (adapted from several sources, including Copa & Plihal, 1996; Hoachlander, 1998; and Lynch, 1996) are not exhaustive, but rather serve as examples. Assumption 1. The purpose of TVET is to enhance the vocational development characteristics of an educated person. Vocational development is a lifelong process of developing the capacity for assuming vocational responsibilities; that is, the expectations for accomplishments in social and economic roles where individuals take responsibility to provide services or

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produce products of value to themselves and others. Long-term career development should be emphasized, rather than an exclusive focus on entry-level employment. Assumption 2. TVET must be dynamic and address the on-going changes found in workplaces, homes and communities so as to serve the needs of the larger society and interests of individuals it serves. The overarching structure conceives of work broadly and in the long term, encouraging generalization of learning and connections to work-based programmes and ideas. Assumption 3. A knowledge base exists that under-girds all of TVET, regardless of occupational specialization. A rigorous, coherent programme of academic study exists and can be identified for all programmes. Assumption 4. Changes in TVET must be concomitant with reform in academic specializations, and with educational reform and renewal in general. Assumption 5. Strong connections between high-school curricula and ‘the full range of’ two-year and four-year post-secondary opportunities must be forged. Assumption 6. TVET should address the long-term needs of successful economic and social development of individuals, and not the narrow, short-term interests of special-interest groups, business or industry.

5.3 Past Conceptual Frameworks Pratzner (1985) framed his discussion of the traditional paradigm in vocational education around six primary components: subject matter; beliefs in theories and models; values; methods and instruments; exemplars; and social matrices. This framework reflects an enterprise that serves the interests of employers, provides decontextualized instruction for specialized entry-level jobs, values job placement and earnings, follows a rigid, prescribed curriculum, uses norm-referenced and standardized tests to assess student learning, and has a considerable support network of professional associations and clubs. More recently, Copa and Plihal (1996) challenged the existing paradigm in vocational education, arguing for substantial change. They suggested a broad-field approach to curriculum integration where vocational and technical education is offered as a comprehensive subject for learning about work, family and community roles and responsibilities. A major advantage of this approach is that ‘the separate-fields structure fails to recognize the growing importance of the interaction among work, family, and community responsibilities and interests’ (p. 103). A major drawback to acceptance of Copa and Plihal’s proposal is that TVET would need to be reconceptualized with the likelihood that firmly established (entrenched?) traditions, organizations and structures would give way to new ones built on the principles of one broad field of study. While these changes could provide TVET with a focus needed to address emerging issues related to work, family and community, it is doubtful that a wholesale change will occur.


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Grubb (1997) advocated a shift from job-specific vocational preparation to a more generic, academic-based approach similar to Dewey’s notion of education through occupations. Four general practices framed Grubb’s new vocationalism. First, the purpose of secondary occupational curricula should be more general in nature rather than job specific. Second, traditional academic content would be integrated into occupational courses while occupational applications would be integrated in academic courses. Third, education through occupations would require a different school (institutional) structure designed to encourage curriculum integration, such as the use of career academies or school-within-a-school designs using career clusters as organizing themes. Fourth, several other elements would need to be incorporated into teaching, such as: (a) the availability of various work-based learning activities; (b) a hierarchical connection of educational and training opportunities; and (c) use of applied teaching methods and teamteaching strategies that are more contextualized, more integrated, student-centred and active. Lynch (2000) describes a new vision for TVET that supports emerging aspects of the new vocationalism. He proposed four major themes, including: (a) infusion of career planning and development activities throughout the educational process; (b) embedding TVET reform within the broad context of general education reform; (c) development of contemporary programmes based on the needs of business and industry; and (d) instituting a K-14 education model where all students are prepared for post-secondary education. Six components are also outlined in Lynch’s framework emphasizing both student achievement and school reorganization. They are to: (a) organize programmes around major fields of study; (b) use contextual teaching and learning; (c) infuse a work-based learning contributing to mastery of industry standards; (d) use authentic assessment, (e) increase use of career academies, and (f) implement successful models of tech-prep.

5.4 A Contemporary Framework In Fig. 2, major components of TVET are represented by five categories: curriculum; instruction and delivery options; student assessment; clientele; and programme evaluation (accountability). Philosophy, whether implicit or explicit, provides the motivation and impetus for actual practice and affects all areas. The influence of internal and external forces on the field, such as the new or emergent economy and globalization, the expectations of global institutions (e.g. World Bank, United Nations, etc.) and transnational corporations, student learning, and the expectations of society and local or regional communities are recognized. 5.4.1 Curriculum Curriculum reflects the state of the field: what is considered important, what is being taught and how it is taught (Lewis, 1999). Discussions surrounding required curriculum components have shifted the debate from a narrowly defined set of academic

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abilities toward a broader set of academic or general competencies, technical and job-specific skills, interpersonal abilities and behavioural traits. Three core curriculum issues are representative of the new vocationalism: (a) integration of academic and career and technical education; (b) articulation of secondary and post-secondary programmes; and (c) connections between school and the world of work. Lynch (2000) identified four predominant schools of thought, each defining the purpose of TVET according to the interests of primary stakeholders (see Table 1), including: 1. Curriculum emphasis on ‘education through occupations’ (see also Grubb, 1997), where TVET serves as the instructional (contextual) modality for teaching traditional academic content. 2. Focus on providing instruction around broad career clusters, along with specialized skills to the one-third of high-school graduates who are employment-bound (i.e. have not prepared for, nor entered, post-secondary education immediately upon graduation). 3. Provide TVET to the 8–12% of most educationally disadvantaged students who need extensive (concentrated) job training to enter the labour market upon highschool graduation. 4. Organize TVET programmes to be congruent with contemporary and successful articulated models (agreements between a high school and a community or technical college). Provides ‘non-duplicative, sequenced study that integrates academic with career and technical education, uses work-based and work-site learning, and leads to degrees, certificates and career placement’ (p. 17).

5.4.2 Instruction/Delivery Options Biggs, Hinton and Duncan (1996) asserted that major changes in the educational infrastructure are necessary to support and build a quality work-preparation system. A number of contemporary teaching innovations have emerged or assumed a greater role in TVET. Table 2 summarizes approaches to teaching and learning. Each approach requires new methods of pedagogy to accommodate teachers’ emerging roles as collaborators, facilitators of learning and as lifelong learners, as well as familiarity with the workplace and the ability to make school settings reflect workplace environments (Naylor, 1997). 5.4.3 Student Assessment The emphasis of many educational reform initiatives on higher-order thinking skills, such as problem-solving, critical thinking, reasoning and so forth, and expressed dissatisfaction with conventional testing approaches, demands that different approaches to assessing student learning be implemented (Johnson & Wentling, 1996). Most educators refer to this new form of student evaluation as authentic, or


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Table 1 Issues to consider when developing the curriculum component of a conceptual framework in TVET TVET is modality for teaching Four schools of Employment through traditional academic content; thought on TVET occupation; integration of academic and curriculum Employment-bound; vocational education; Educationally disadvantaged; Instruction on broad career clusters, along with specialized Tech-prep models. skills; Extensive job training to enter labour market; Non-duplicative, sequenced, and articulated secondary and post-secondary programmes integrating academic with TVET.

r

r

r r r

r r r

Components of TVET curriculum (workforce education)

r r r

Common core; Job-specific/content area specialties; New vocationalism.

r r r

Implications for TVET teacher preparation programmes

r

Curriculum components

r r

r r

Study of work, family and community as a composite of vocational roles and responsibilities; Focused on traditional vocational subject areas; Broad array of integrated academic (thinking skills, personal qualities) and general competencies, technical and job specific skills, interpersonal abilities, and behavioural traits. Assessment; Curriculum framework (general education, common core, specialized workforce education and workforce preparation; knowledge of learner, pedagogy, instructional technology, and professional education; and occupational and educational experiences); Standards of knowledge and practice; Philosophical foundations/principles of TVET.

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J.W. Rojewski Table 2 Contemporary approaches to teaching and learning in TVET

Approach Tech prep

Characteristics Articulation agreement(s) between secondary and post-secondary institutions; ‘2+2’ design (2 yrs secondary plus 2 yrs post-secondary leading to associate degree or certificate in specific career); Common academic core.

Strengths Combines academic rigour and applied instruction; Option to continue to baccalaureate level (‘2+2+2’ design); Appropriate for nearly all career areas.

r

r

r r

r r r

r

Integrated vocational and academic education

r r r

Career academies

r r r r r

Modifications of academic and vocational philosophies; Applied focus in learning activities; Balances theory with application; Co-ordination between teachers and counsellors.

School-within-aschool run by team of educators; Career field focus rather than specific job preparation; Integrated academic and vocational content; Includes workplace skills; Employer involvement.

r r r r

Uses TVET settings to apply and reinforce academics; Life-relevant education; Didactic instruction replaced with activity-centred instruction and problem-solving; Appropriate for all students. Career focus may keep high-risk students in school.

Challenges Resistance to career-oriented concepts; Securing support from stakeholders; Limited resources (funding); Uncertainty of post-secondary curriculum reform; Addition of work-based learning.

r r r r r r r r r r r r

r

Requires organizational change in schools; Requires interdepartmental co-operation and collaboration; Design and implementation takes time; Need for administrative and community support. Scheduling conflicts. Requires involvement of business and industry. Requires collaboration and co-operation between academics and TVET professionals; Limited instructional resources.


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Table 2 (continued) Approach Work-based youth apprenticeship

Characteristics Work experience and learning in industry; Linkage between education systems leading to high school diploma and post-secondary diploma or certificate; Collaboration among groups; Modeling, scaffolding, fading, coaching.

r r

Strengths Creates a learning situation that emphasizes the skills and knowledge required by the workplace.

r

r r r

School-based enterprises

r

Operated by traditional programmes; Written training agreements specify what students will learn and employer’s responsibilities. Students produce goods or services for sale to customers.

r r r

r

Co-operative education

Challenges Requires significant employer participation, workplaces are transformed; Potential conflict between employers’ and students’ needs.; Requires collaboration between schools and employers.

r r r

r

r

Students obtain part-time jobs; Work-based learning; Use as a screening device for new employees.

Students apply academic knowledge to work and gain understanding of business; Instructors maintain control of instruction.

r

r r r

Lack of co-ordination between students’ school and work experiences is common; Use as a screening device by employers for new employees. Focus can shift to production rather than instruction; Lack of understanding about how learning occurs in workplace.

Sources: Table structure and some content from Biggs et al., 1996. Additional content from Kincheloe, 1999.

performance-based, assessment. Authentic assessment has three fundamental goals: reforming curriculum and instruction; improving teacher morale and performance; and strengthening student commitment and capacity for self-monitoring (Inger, 1993). At its core, authentic assessment is a reaction to the deficiencies perceived in traditional approaches to testing. It requires students to demonstrate their grasp of knowledge and skills by creating a response to questions or a product that demonstrates understanding (Wiggins, 1990). This type of assessment reflects the complexities of everyday life and a belief that learning is actively constructed knowledge influenced by context (Kerka, 1995).

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A variety of options are available for conducting authentic assessments including: portfolios; exhibitions; checklists; simulations; essays; demonstrations or performances; interviews; oral presentations; observations; and self-assessment. Rubrics, scoring devices that specify performance expectations and various levels of performance, are used to establish benchmarks for documenting progress and provide a framework for ensuring consistency (Kerka, 1995). 5.4.4 Clientele While the historic roots for vocational education were in providing job-specific training to working class (non-college-bound) youth, the contemporary world of work requires fewer of the manual job skills required a century ago. Today, ample evidence shows that the work skills required in the twenty-first century include higher-order thinking skills (reasoning, decision-making, problem-solving), flexibility, interpersonal skills and technological literacy. Not only are cognitive skills in demand, but many jobs now require some type of post-secondary education (less than a baccalaureate degree) for entry-level. Currently, TVET programmes serve several primary functions ranging from integrated academics instruction to tech-prep to job preparation for employment-bound and educationally disadvantaged youth. These diverse goals aim to achieve very different ends and are often at odds with one another. Lynch (2000) suggests that upwards of one-third of all secondary students in the United States enrolled in career and technical education programmes are not college-bound. Another 8–12% of students are identified as being educationally disadvantaged. Both of these groups require job-specific preparation to transition from school to adult life. However, recent trends to promote articulated secondary/post-secondary programmes may overlook this substantial proportion of programme enrollees. And, when services are available, they are often relatively low skilled, entry-level jobs that offer limited advancement opportunities. 5.4.5 Programme Evaluation Accountability has become a hallmark of educational reform initiatives in the United States. Federal legislation requires that states develop evaluation systems to assess four core indicators of student performance, including: (a) academic and vocational achievement; (b) programme completion; (c) successful transition from school to post-secondary education and/or employment; and (d) accessibility and equity. Although programme evaluation is mandated, criticisms exist about the criteria and methods used to collect data, and the usefulness of evaluation results (Halasz, 1989). Indeed, collecting data to respond to these federal mandates can pose considerable challenges. Given current mandates and future projections, a conceptual framework in career and technical education must include performance indicators that examine legislative mandates and the underlying philosophy, as well as specific outcomes, practices and inputs. Halasz (1989) indicated that school culture and stakeholders’ needs must also be considered. ‘A variety of information should be collected (personal,


33

instructional, institutional, societal and so on) from multiple sources (teachers, students, administrators, parents) using multiple methods (survey, interview, participant observation, historical, archival)’.

6 Conclusions and Future Steps 6.1 Summary Table 3 summarizes the main components of conceptual frameworks for TVET— past, present and future. Historically, the conceptual framework of TVET has revolved around specific job training, clear distinctions between academic and vocational education, and preparing adolescents to transition from school directly to work. Curriculum and instructional approaches relied heavily on an essentialist philosophy where students were viewed as products and taught in ways that reflected the industries they were being prepared to enter. In sharp contrast, the emerging conceptual framework reflects efforts at local, state and national levels ‘to broaden vocational education—integrating the curriculum more closely with rigorous academics, improving articulation to post-secondary education (two-year and four-year), and stressing long-term preparation for productive careers that will be subject to increasing technological change and economic reorganization’ (Hoachlander, 1998, p. 1). Secondary programmes will continue a trend that focuses less on specific training for immediate entry-level employment upon graduation. Rather, they will provide more general knowledge about the workforce, offer career awareness and exploration activities in specified career clusters, nurture higher-order thinking skills development, and support students in making initial decisions about their career goals and plan post-secondary activities necessary to achieve those goals. Post-secondary education, on the other hand, will remain in the best position to prepare students for specific jobs.

6.2 Implications for the Curriculum The implications of any proposed conceptual framework for TVET are substantial. While myriad other arrangements or contextual structures can address the question of specific content to include or exclude, a relatively simple, straightforward approach focuses on the types of instructional content needed in three areas: general workforce education; content area specialties; and professional development. These areas are broad enough to incorporate issues recognized as integral to the emerging vocationalism (see Table 4). 6.2.1 General Workforce Education Aspects of curricula that focus on general workforce education assume that a substantial portion of the knowledge and experiences that define TVET cross specialty

34

J.W. Rojewski

Table 3 Illustration of components and contents of a conceptual framework for TVET from past, current and future perspectives Components Purpose, theories, models

Past

r r r r

Teacher education

r r r

Social efficiency; Essentialism; scientific method; Serves employers’ interests; Job training and preparation for less than a baccalaureate degree. Work experience and job expertise paramount; Focus on job skills preparation; Teacher-directed instruction.

Current

r r r

r r r

Pragmatism; Some aspects of progressivism (Dewey); Preparation for work and post-secondary education and training (mostly associate degree). College education focusing on general and specific labour market preparation; Focus on academic and vocational skills instruction; Emphasis on contextualized / facilitated learning.

Emerging

r r r r r

r r

Curriculum

r r r r

Narrow focus on entry-level, job specific skills; Separate vocational content areas; Separation of academic and vocational education; Rigid prescribed curricula.

r r r r r r

Four curricular strands; Education through occupations; Integration of academic and vocational education; Job-specific, entry-level training; Tech prep; Dual enrolment.

r r r r

Pragmatism with reconstructivist strand; Progressivism; Critical perspective; Preparation for work and post-secondary education and training (all levels). College education focusing on common core, specialized content area(s), and integrated academics; Comprehensive approach to learning using occupations as modality; Emphasis on contextualized / facilitated learning. Multiple options, including curricular strands currently available; Common core of workforce education for all regardless of post-secondary plans; Integrated (academicvocational) curriculum; Career clusters used to direct specialized instruction.


35

Table 3 (continued) Components Delivery options

Clientele

Past

r r r

r r

Behaviourism; Applied academics; Co-operative education.

Alternative track for less academically able students; Increasing emphasis on special populations.

Current

r r r r

r r

r Student assessment

r

Standardized and norm-referenced testing.

r r r

Programme evaluation

r r

Quality based on industry standards; Job analysis.

r

Cognitive learning theory; Tech-prep; Career academies; Work-based apprenticeships.

Different programmes and purposes for different student groups; Moderated emphasis on special populations tempered with phrases like ‘all students’ and renewed use of quality standards; Multiple constituency groups. Standardized testing; Industry-based skill standards; Emergence of alternative assessments (e.g. portfolios, authentic assessment). In U.S., state plans following guidelines established in federal legislation;

Emerging

r r r r r

r r r r

r Note: Information for past components column adapted from Pratzner, 1985.

Multiple options available; Democratic ideals reflected in instructional content and process; Separation between school and work less distinct. Multiple constituency groups; Inclusion of all students with continuum of outcomes available.

Standardized testing; Established alternatives to assessment; Criterion-referenced testing.

Quality based on variety of factors including dropout, retention, graduation rates, job placement, transitions to post-secondary education; Occupational analysis.

36

J.W. Rojewski Table 4 Possible components in TVET programmes based on conceptual framework

General workforce education

Content area specialty

Professional development

r

r r

Entrepreneurship;

r

Knowledge associated with career clusters;

r

Agriculture and environmental sciences;

r

r r

r r r r r

Foundations and philosophy of TVET (including changing nature of work place, new economy); Communication/ interpersonal skills necessary in work place; Communication, interpersonal, and leadership skills required when dealing with various constituencies; Higher-order thinking skills such as problem-solving and decision-making; School-to-work transition issues for all students; Balancing work and family life; Employability skills (workforce readiness);

r r r r r r r r

Arts and communications;

r

Business, marketing, information management; Family and consumer sciences;

r

Health services; Human services; Manufacturing and engineering technology;

r

Technology education.

r r

Contextualized teaching and learning; Integration of academic and vocational education; Work-based learning (e.g. apprenticeship, co-operative education); Articulation of secondary-, post-secondary, school/business instruction; Student assessment (formal, informal, alternative methods) and programme evaluation; Working with diverse student populations; Notion of lifelong learning; TVET teachers as change agent in school and community.

Acquiring a sense of social justice regarding the effects of work on individuals and society.

Note: Adapted from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, 2001. While a useful taxonomy, other organizational structures have also been proposed, e.g., the National Skill Standards Board proposes fifteen large economic sectors to structure vocational specialization (Hoachlander, 1998).

area boundaries. A common core of knowledge about the world of work is assumed stressing topics such as: the function of work and family life in society; economics and systems of production and distribution; cultural aspects of work, the family and society; development and application of higher-order thinking skills; employability skills; and job-seeking skills. The nature and underlying assumptions of general workplace education topics suggest an integrated approach to instruction where students from all vocational specialty areas are grouped together. This approach


37

should not only help students understand the need for a broad-based approach, but also nurture a sense of professional commonality and shared purpose.

6.2.2 Content Area Specialty Regardless of the specific structuring system used, some form of content area specialization will, in all likelihood, persist. While maintaining some aspect of traditional vocational education, teachers and students will increasingly be exposed to something other than business as usual. Regardless of the specific curricula and structure of TVET programmes, all must satisfy three essential requirements: They must prepare participants to: (a) address long-term prospects, not just entry-level jobs; (b) achieve high levels of academic proficiency and mastery of sophisticated work-based knowledge and skill; and (c) access the full range of post-secondary options for programme participants (Hoachlander, 1998). No small task.

6.2.3 Professional Development TVET professionals must be able to incorporate an array of possible teaching strategies in classroom, laboratory and work-based settings. Traditional teaching approaches will need to be supplemented with greater emphases on emerging pedagogical approaches, such as integrating of academic and vocational education, and contextualized teaching and learning forums. Knowledge about the diversity of students and school settings will continue to be a critical element. The successful implementation of changes to TVET programmes, and the field as a whole, requires recognition of the slow and difficult process of reform. Teacher educators and trainers must be especially aware of and understand how to successfully negotiate the change process.

7 Final Words It seems appropriate to take stock in the future of TVET. Many authors have contributed to an on-going dialogue about the nature of contemporary and future TVET. Ideas and options have been proposed, articulated and studied. Yet, action is slow. The development of any conceptual framework is of little value if action does not result. Collectively, the field must be willing to tackle tough questions and debate potentially contentious issues delineated in the professional literature to arrive at and then maintain a clear and concise framework. Such a framework can guide funding priorities, programme development, classroom instruction and relationships with external constituencies. To do otherwise runs the risk of glossing over fundamental issues and concerns, repeating the same arguments and issues for another century or—perhaps worst of all—allowing others (e.g. national and regional governments, funding agents, business and industry leaders) to make decisions for the field.

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Acknowledgments Earlier versions of this chapter were published as ‘Preparing the workforce of tomorrow: a conceptual framework for career and technical education,’ a monograph commissioned by the National Centers for Career and Technical Education for presentation at the 2002 National Teacher Education Conference, Scottsdale, AZ (ERIC ED 461 771), and an abbreviated article of the same name published in the Journal of vocational education research, vol. 27, pp. 7–35. Additional information was originally published in an article entitled, ‘Globalization and the internationalization of research in career and technical education,’ published in the Journal of vocational education research, vol. 28, pp. 3–13.

References Biggs, B.T.; Hinton, B.E.; Duncan, S.L. 1996. Contemporary approaches to teaching and learning. In: Hartley, N.K.; Wentling, T.L., eds. Beyond tradition: preparing the teachers of tomorrow’s workforce, pp. 113–46. Columbia, MO: University Council for Vocational Education. Carnevale, A.P. 1991. America and the new economy. Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training and Development. (ERIC ED 333 246.) Copa, G.H.; Plihal, J. 1996. General education and subject matter education components of the vocational teacher education program. In: Hartley, N.K.; Wentling, T.L., eds. Beyond tradition: preparing the teachers of tomorrow’s workforce, pp. 91–112. Columbia, MO: University Council for Vocational Education. Doolittle, P.E.; Camp, W.G. 1999 Constructivism: the career and technical education perspective. Journal of vocational and technical education, vol. 1, no. 1. Retrieved from: <scholars.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JVTE/V16n1/doolittle.html> Friedman, T.L. 1999. The Lexus and the olive tree: understanding globalization. New York, NY: Anchor Books. Grubb, W.N. 1997. Not there yet: prospects and problems for education through occupations. Journal of vocational education research, vol. 22, pp. 77–94. Halasz, I.M. 1989. Evaluation strategies for vocational programme redesign. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University, ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education. (ERIC ED 305 497.) Retrieved from: <ericae.net/db/edo/ED305497.htm> Hawke, G. 2000. Implications for vocational education of changing work arrangements. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University, National Centers for Career and Technical Education. [Professional development speaker series.] Retrieved from: <www.nccte.com/events/ profdevseries/20000720geofhawke/index.html> Hoachlander, G. 1998. Toward a new framework of industry programmes in vocational education. Berkeley, CA: MPR Associates. Hyslop-Margison, E.J. 2000. An assessment of the historical arguments in vocational education reform. Journal of career and technical education, vol. 17, pp. 23–30. Inger, M. 1993. Authentic assessment in secondary education. New York, NY: Columbia University Teachers’ College, Institute on Education and the Economy. (IEE Brief, 6.) Retrieved from: <www.tc.columbia.edu/∼iee/BRIEFS/Brief06.htm> International Labour Organization. 2001. World employment report 2001: life at work in the information economy. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Retrieved from: <www.ilo.org/public/english/ support/publ/wer/overview.htm> Johnson, S.D.; Wentling, T.L. 1996. An alternative vision for assessment in vocational teacher education. In: Hartley, N.K.; Wentling, T.L., eds. Beyond tradition: preparing the teachers of tomorrow’s workforce, pp. 147–166. Columbia, MO: University Council for Vocational Education. Kerka, S. 1993. Career education for a global economy. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University, ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education. (ERIC ED 355 457.) Retrieved from: <www.askeric.org/plweb-cgi/obtain.pl>


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Kerka, S. 1995. Techniques for authentic assessment. Columbus, OH: ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education. (ERIC ED 381 688.) Retrieved from: <ericacve.org/docs/auth-pab.htm> Kincheloe, J.L. 1999. How do we tell the workers? Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Lerwick, L.P. 1979. Alternative concepts of vocational education. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Department of Vocational and Technical Education, Minnesota Research and Development Center for Vocational Education. (ERIC ED 169 285.) Lewis, T. 1998. Toward the 21st century: retrospect, prospect for American vocationalism. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University, ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education. (Information series no. 373.) (ERIC ED 423 421.) Lewis, T. 1999. Content or process as approaches to technology curriculum: does it matter come Monday morning? Journal of technology education, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 1–16. Lynch, R.L. 1996. The past, present, and future of vocational and technical teacher education. In: Hartley, N.K.; Wentling, T.L., eds. Beyond tradition: preparing the teachers of tomorrow’s workforce, pp. 1–22. Columbia, MO: University Council for Vocational Education. Lynch, R.L. 2000. New directions for high school career and technical education in the 21st century. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University, ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education. (Information series no. 384.) (ERIC ED 444 037.) Mandel, M.J. 2000. The new economy: it works in America. Will it go global? Businessweek Online, 31 January. Retrieved from: <www.businessweek.com/2000/00 05/b3666002.htm> Miller, M.D. 1985. Principles and a philosophy for vocational education. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University, ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education. (Special publication series, no. 48.) (ERIC ED 250 497.) Miller, M.D. 1996. Philosophy: the conceptual framework for designing a system of teacher education. In: Hartley, N.K.; Wentling, T.L., eds. Beyond tradition: preparing the teachers of tomorrow’s workforce, pp. 53–72. Columbia, MO: University Council for Vocational Education. Miller, M.D.; Gregson, J.A. 1999. A philosophic view for seeing the past of vocational education and envisioning the future of workforce education: pragmatism revisited. In: Paulter, A.J. Jr., ed. Workforce education: issues for the new century, pp. 21–34. Ann Arbor, MI: Prakken. National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. 2001. Career and technical education standards. Arlington, VA: NBPTS. Naylor, M. 1997. Vocational teacher education reform. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University, National Center for Research in Vocational Education. (ERIC ED 407 572.) Pratzner, F.C. 1985. The vocational education paradigm: adjustment, replacement, or extinction. Journal of industrial teacher education, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 6–19. Reich, R. 2000. The future of success. New York, NY: Knopf. Sarkees-Wircenski, M.; Scott, J.L. 1995. Vocational special needs, 3rd ed. Homewood, IL: American Technical. Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills. 1991. What work requires of schools: a SCANS report for America 2000. Washington, DC: United States Department of Labor. (ERIC ED 332 054.) United States Department of Labor. 2000. Futurework: trends and challenges for work in the 21st century. Executive summary. Retrieved from: <www.dol.gov/dol/asp/public/ futurework/execsum.htm> Weinstein, B.L. 1997. Welcome to the new economy. Perspectives, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 1–4. Retrieved from: <www.unt.edu/cedr/dec97.pdf> Wiggins, G. 1990. The case for authentic assessment. Washington, DC: American Institutes for Research, ERIC Clearinghouse on Test Measurement and Evaluation. (ERIC ED 328 611.) Retrieved from: <www.ed.gov/ databases/ERIC Digests/ed328611.html>


Chapter 3

Towards Achieving TVET for All: The Role of the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training Astrid Hollander and Naing Yee Mar

1 Introduction: TVET Related Issues and Concerns within UNESCO 1.1 Understanding TVET Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is concerned with the acquisition of knowledge and skills for the world of work. Throughout the course of history, various terms have been used to describe elements of the field that are now conceived as comprising TVET. These include: apprenticeship training, vocational education, technical education, technical-vocational education (TVE), occupational education (OE), vocational education and training (VET), career and technical education (CTE), workforce education (WE), workplace education (WE), etc. Within the context of UNESCO and according to the 2001 UNESCO Revised Recommendation concerning Technical and Vocational Education: Technical and vocational education is used as a comprehensive term referring to those aspects of the educational process involving, in addition to general education, the study of technologies and related sciences, and the acquisition of practical skills, attitudes, understanding and knowledge relating to occupations in various sectors of economic and social life. Technical and vocational education is further understood to be: a. an integral part of general education; b. a means of preparing for occupational fields and for effective participation in the world of work; c. an aspect of lifelong learning and a preparation for responsible citizenship; d. an instrument for promoting environmentally sound sustainable development; e. a method of facilitating poverty alleviation (UNESCO, 2005b, p. 7).

In this broad definition, the term ‘training’ is not explicitly highlighted, with greater emphasis being placed on ‘education’. This simply reflects on the earlier division of roles with regard to TVET within the United Nations system, whereby UNESCO’s concern used to be centred on technical and vocational education, as part of the R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 3, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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A. Hollander, N.Y. Mar

Education for All (EFA) initiative, while the International Labour Organization (ILO) focused on aspects of training for employment at the workplace by stressing the concept of decent work and the welfare of workers as a global demand to be satisfied today. By giving prominence to joint efforts of promoting the world of work, international participants at the second International Congress on Technical and Vocational Training (Seoul, April 1999) clearly pointed out that: The two most renowned international agencies in the field of vocational education and training, UNESCO and ILO, need to address this issue seriously, so that we stop talking different things about what should be the same thing, and stop insisting that UNESCO’s role is vocational education, while ILO’s role is vocational training. This is not role splitting, but rather hair splitting! (Masri, 1999, p. 13).

In the light of such international attention being paid to the need to share collective responsibility for workforce development, the term ‘training’ was included in UNESCO’s terminology when referring to workplace and workforce education. In addition, in aiming to promote the implementation (and realization) of TVET as a fundamental human right, the concept of training for particular skills or appropriate types of work-related practices over a period of time has been introduced as part of UNESCO’s strategic objectives and activities. This makes sense, especially as the notion of educating and training individuals to be fitted or matched to jobs for life is being replaced by the necessity for lifelong learning. It becomes clear that learning no longer takes place only in the form of formal school education, but also in non-formal and informal settings, at the workplace, and through participation in economic and social life, in partnership with the private sector and employers.

1.2 Why is TVET Important? The purpose of TVET is to make people (self-)employable and to be a vehicle of transition for individuals to the world of work. Thus, in the ideal case, TVET leads to (self-)employment and income-generation which is expected to contribute to the individuals’ and their communities’ well-being. In line with this argument, TVET is often considered as a mechanism for poverty alleviation and a vital contribution towards the attainment of international development goals (such as the Millennium Development Goals and Education for All) as well as towards sustainable development. While this argument appears logical, it nevertheless needs to be used with care, since a number of other factors have to be in place for TVET to actually have an impact on phenomena such as poverty. In a situation of economic stagnation or jobless growth, even the well-trained and best-educated have problems finding employment and earning a living, let alone the poor and marginalized who often do not even have access to education and training. For TVET to effectively contribute to (self-)employment and poverty alleviation, there needs to be a labour market which can absorb the TVET graduates and provide them with decent work and an

3 Towards Achieving TVET for All

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income that allows them to live. In view of this, the purpose of TVET must permit a concentration not only on poverty alleviation but also on (self-)employment. There also is sufficient observational and research evidence to suggest that there is a need to improve adjustments between the labour market and available human resources. Thus, the extent TVET should be focused on skills development depends on the main policy set by countries (Lauglo, 2005, p. 4). Coombe (1988) explained that economic goals were the main driver behind TVET policies, though personal development goals and socio-political goals are also identified in some countries. Overall, TVET should evolve through the educational process by initiating strategic education planning which is ‘more analytical and less political’ (Wheelen & Hunger, 1998, p. 3) and policy-oriented to foster all-round development of nations. The 2004 World Bank Report on ‘Skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa’ sums this argument up clearly: Getting the macroeconomic context right remains the essential first step in focusing on skills development. Training does not create jobs. Skills are a derived demand and that demand depends on policies for growth and employment creation (Adams & Johanson, 2004, p. xv).

Influencing the ‘demand’ by focusing on policies for growth and employment creation lies beyond the scope of the work of UNESCO. Instead, the organization concentrates on optimizing the ‘supply’ of skilled labour. The general assumption is that TVET can only make a better contribution to poverty alleviation if it is of good quality, relevant to the demands of the labour market, and inclusive and accessible to all, especially the poorest of the poor. However, since there is ample evidence to indicate that well-prepared and trained workers increase productivity, one could argue that in the long-term the benefits of increased productivity will lead to impact growth and employment creation (de Moura Castro & Verdisco, 2000, p. 46).

1.3 TVET within the Context of UNESCO Originally, direct preparation for work was the main goal of TVET, and this remains prominent in many developing nations. However, with the technological revolutions and innovations in science and technology during the twentieth century, new domains of knowledge and new disciplines have become important at all levels of education and training. The current focus is increasingly upon preparing knowledge workers to meet the challenges posed during the transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, with its concomitant post-industrial human resource requirements and the constantly changing world of work. TVET systems are no longer expected to educate and train for a stable job, but to produce individuals who are innovative, capable of evolving and adapting to changing circumstances. There is a shift from the concept of ‘TVET for employment’ to ‘TVET for employability’. But within the context of UNESCO, TVET goes beyond even this concept; it is also understood as a preparation for responsible citizenship and an instrument for

44


promoting sustainable development (compare the definition above). UNESCO sees the role of TVET as educating the whole person, not just the worker. This implies the adoption of a ‘holistic approach to skills development for employability and citizenship by placing emphasis within skills training programmes on developing a sense of values, ethics and attitudes to prepare the learner for self-reliance and responsible citizenship’ (Quisumbing & de Leo, 2005, p. v). This broad understanding of TVET stems from the proposition formulated in the 1996 report to UNESCO by the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century, Learning: the treasure within, which postulates that education throughout life is built upon four pillars: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be, and is based on UNESCO’s overall mandate ‘to build peace in the minds of men’. While ‘learning to do’ seems to be the pillar most closely linked to TVET, the authors of the report argue that the four pillars cannot stand alone, but are ‘four paths of knowledge [that] all form a whole’(Delors et al., 1996, p. 86). It is this holistic view that distinguishes the work of UNESCO in TVET from those of other organizations, as it goes beyond the demand for TVET for purely economic purposes. The notion of TVET differs from one UNESCO Member State to another and between communities. Each country (and community) is characterized by its own unique socio-cultural, political-legal, technological and economic context, having a strong impact on the educational environment. These variables in societal environments may not compromise the educational activities of a country in the short term, but can, and often do, affect its long-term developments (Hellriegel, Slocum & Woddman, 1998). In addition to these societal considerations, governments, local communities, educational suppliers, learners and trends in labour markets directly influence the effectiveness of education and, in turn, are affected by it. These are multiple, contextual variables that need to be considered in order to best understand human intentions and interactions in different cultural settings (Sirotnik, 2000, p. 184). And it is UNESCO’s task to make sure that its work takes these contextual variables into account. TVET is dealt with at several instances within UNESCO as the Organization aims to respond to the many diverse needs of its currently 193 Member States. All parts of UNESCO that have an involvement with TVET are jointly responsible for the successful implementation of the global TVET Programme. The specialized TVET Section at UNESCO Headquarters is responsible for overall strategic planning and programme design in consultation with UNESCO-UNEVOC, and other relevant Education Sector Divisions. It functions as the TVET focal point in the Organization for contributions to the Medium-Term Strategy and the biennial Programme and Budget; reports to the Organization’s top management and Governing Board; strengthens strategic alliances with other multi-lateral organizations (such as the International Labour Organization) with a view to anticipating and addressing emerging policy issues in TVET; co-ordinates the implementation of UNESCO’s normative instruments regarding TVET; responds to requests from Member States for support; generates prototype resource material; provides technical support and backstopping for field-office activities; and participates in programme monitoring and assessment with UNESCO-UNEVOC.


45

The UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training is responsible for research on new trends in TVET, independently and in co-operation with the other UNESCO education institutes; publishes books and manuals; co-ordinates the UNEVOC Network; acts as a resource centre for information on TVET systems; disseminates information to TVET stakeholders worldwide; co-operates with multi-lateral partners at the research and implementation levels; implements activities in co-operation with field units and promotes capacity-building for TVET policy-makers and practitioners in the Member States. The various UNESCO field offices often have the closest contacts with the relevant stakeholders in Member States and are therefore valuable partners for both UNESCO Headquarters and UNESCO-UNEVOC in the implementation of activities at regional, sub-regional and national activities. In this article, however, the focus will be on the work of the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training.

2 The UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training The UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (UNESCO-UNEVOC) assists UNESCO’s Member States in strengthening and upgrading their TVET systems. It is at once UNESCO’s specialized centre for TVET and the hub of a worldwide network of TVET institutions, the so-called UNEVOC Network. It acts as part of the United Nations mandate to promote peace, justice, equity, poverty alleviation and greater social cohesion. The Centre assists Member States in developing policies and practices concerning education for the world of work and skills development for employability and citizenship, to achieve:

r r r

access for all, high quality, relevant and effective programmes, learning opportunities throughout life.

The Centre aims to contribute to increased opportunities for productive work, sustainable livelihoods, personal empowerment and socio-economic development, especially for youth, girls, women and the disadvantaged. Its emphasis is on helping to meet the needs of developing countries, countries in transition and those in a post-conflict situation.

2.1 Background UNESCO has been active in the field of technical and vocational education for more than thirty years. The idea to launch a comprehensive project on technical and vocational education dates back to 1987. In that year, UNESCO held its first International Congress on Technical and Vocational Education in Berlin, Germany.

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At this congress it was proposed that UNESCO should support the establishment of an international centre for research and development in technical and vocational education. UNESCO Member States supported this proposal and identified TVET as a priority area within UNESCO’s range of programme activities, recognizing its enhanced capacity to emphasize the role of technology in society, including the vocational aspects of that role. This new understanding stresses the importance of non-formal (or non-institution-based) TVET for young people in developing countries and particularly the need for TVET to seek actively the participation of marginalized population groups. As explained above, the rationale behind this is the assumption that TVET can play an essential role in promoting economic growth and the socio-economic development of countries, with benefits for individuals, their families, local communities and society in general. As a consequence, in 1991, the General Conference of UNESCO decided to launch the International Project on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (UNEVOC). Two years later the UNEVOC Implementation Unit became operational in Berlin. At the second International Congress on Technical and Vocational Education held in Seoul, Republic of Korea, in 1999, participants requested UNESCO to further strengthen and prioritize TVET within UNESCO’s work and supported the launch of a long-term programme on TVET. In the same year, the General Conference of UNESCO adopted a resolution authorising the Director-General to establish an international centre for TVET in 2000. The Government of Germany generously offered to host such a centre in Bonn. A Host Country Agreement between Germany and UNESCO was signed on 12 July 2000. The UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training started its work in September 2000 and was officially inaugurated two years later—on 8 April 2002.

2.2 The Mission of UNESCO-UNEVOC The UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre acts as a key component of UNESCO’s international programme on technical and vocational education and training. It also works to support UNESCO’s mandate for Education for All and Education for Sustainable Development by assisting Member States to improve and integrate TVET as part of their educational planning, and align TVET with the tenets of sustainable development. As the hub of the global UNEVOC networks, the Centre has an additional, specific responsibility—to develop vibrant global networks of TVET professionals, organizations and institutes. It is in these three key result areas that UNESCO-UNEVOC develops and implements its activities to assist UNESCO Member States to elaborate policies and practices concerning education for the world of work and skills development for employability and citizenship. 2.2.1 Global UNEVOC Networks There is significant scope of countries to share their experience in technical and vocational education. There is a need for mutual co-operative assistance between all countries,


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regardless of their state of development. Provision should be made at the national, regional and international levels for regular exchange, making use of contemporary information and communication technologies, of information, documentation, and materials (UNESCO, 2005b, pp. 49–50).

In line with this statement taken from UNESCO’s 2001 Revised Recommendation on TVE, the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training acts as the hub of the worldwide UNEVOC Network. It can be demonstrated that networks, as a vehicle for education reform, are vital for enriching learning environments and for facilitating members to interact. As such, specific networks serve as opportunities for learning and socialization, and the necessity of building a TVET community via networks has become a recurring theme in the reform literature (Keating, 2000). The idea behind all networking initiatives of the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for TVET is that educational reforms that have worked in one country or setting may well also work in another country if modified appropriately to meet local conditions. Through access to information, countries can learn from each other’s experience, whether they are success stories or disappointments. The Centre also creates networks with its closest partners and creates synergies with UNESCO Headquarters, other UNESCO institutes and centres and field offices. It also works in close partnership with other relevant institutions, such as specialized agencies within and outside the United Nations system, bilateral and multilateral donors, national institutions, non-governmental organizations and the private sector. This is an important aspect of the work of UNESCO-UNEVOC, since the improvement of TVET worldwide can be achieved most effectively if several agencies make a concerted effort through working together. It is also a way to avoid duplication of efforts, and to make best use of available human and financial resources. 2.2.2 UNESCO-UNEVOC’s Efforts in Achieving EFA In the past decades, UNESCO’s focus in education was mainly on achieving universal primary education (UPE). While this is an essential goal, it has been recognized that access to primary education alone is not sufficient and that basic education for all is not synonymous with UPE. It has become clear in all parts of the world that basic education can no longer be limited to primary education. Currently, education systems do not allow young people to obtain and strengthen the complex set of competencies for life, including technical and vocational education. [. . .] Lack of technical and vocational education and training, including entrepreneurship and training for creativity, hampers employability (UNESCO-IBE, 2004, pp. 11, 13).

Especially since the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, in April 2000, there has been extensive consultation and rethinking about the concept of Education for All (EFA) and what is involved in achieving a basic education which prepares for work and life. As more children and adults receive and complete elementary education, it is important to offer them relevant further education and to teach them skills

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for the world of work that enable them to work in dignity, supporting themselves and their families, as well as being respected and effective members of a community. TVET particularly contributes to achieving the EFA goals 3 and 6:

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Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life-skills programmes (Goal 3); and Improving all aspects of the quality of education, and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy, and essential life skills (Goal 6).

The Dakar Framework for Action further specifies that ‘all young people and adults must be given the opportunity to gain the knowledge and develop the values, attitudes and skills which will enable them to develop their capacities to work, to participate fully in their society, to take control of their own lives, and to continue learning.’ It continues by saying that ‘such opportunities should be both meaningful and relevant to their environment and needs, help them become active agents in shaping their future and develop useful work-related skills’ (UNESCO, 2000, p. 16). TVET, or education for the world of work, is one of the providers of such learning and life-skills programmes for young people and adults. With the change to work patterns demanding higher skills, more technical and analytical knowledge and the capacity to work productively in teams, young people must now have a preparation that goes beyond basic literacy and numeracy and includes both vocational and social skills, together with values that help to build harmonious societies (UNESCOUNEVOC, forthcoming). TVET needs to be as dynamic as the economies and communities it serves. Rapid changes in technology and employment patterns, in demographic growth and social expectations, and many other factors drive the need to reform as well as to expand TVET. Especially in countries of scarce resources, the efficiency and effectiveness of TVET is of paramount importance. Particularly since the 1999 second International Congress on TVE held in Seoul, with its strong focus on TVET reform, and since the endorsement of the Revised recommendation concerning technical and vocational education in 2001(see UNESCO, 2005b), UNESCO has been assisting Member States with TVET reform within the framework of Education for All. Furthermore, the UNESCOUNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training is uniquely placed to provide technical assistance and advisory services to governments, training authorities and many TVET institutes in developing countries, countries in transition and those in post-conflict situations that are increasingly interested in TVET reform. 2.2.3 TVET and Education for Sustainable Development Finding approaches to development that balance economic and social progress, address cultural difference, conform to global, national and local needs, and respect ecological values and limits is the key to sustainable development (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2006, p. 5).


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People in every country of the world must plan for, cope with and find solutions to issues that threaten the sustainability of our planet. Sustainable development is not a fixed concept; rather it is a culturally-directed search for a dynamic balance in the relationships between social, economic and natural systems. Sustainability is a complex concept and cannot simply be ‘prescribed’, but it can be taught and learned. It is the aim of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) to use education at all levels to impart the competences and knowledge that are necessary to address the global issues for sustainability that affect communities and nations (UNESCO, 2005a). DESD runs from 2005 to 2014 with UNESCO requested to lead activities and develop an International Implementation Scheme (IIS) for the decade. The IIS fosters collective ownership of the decade and emphasizes the importance of partnership amongst and between those with an interest in furthering education for sustainable development. Within this context, the alignment of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into TVET has been nominated as one of the key areas for collective UNESCO effort, and the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for TVET has already assumed leadership for a number of initiatives. TVET is important in this context as it affects attitudes towards sustainability held by future workers. The changing nature of the world of work, especially due to globalization and technological change, demands that TVET develop a skilled, committed and motivated workforce that understands how global changes impact upon local opportunities for business and industry and how these changes impact upon the quality of local social, economic and environmental conditions. The greater the exposure of trainees to sustainability concepts, practices and examples, the more likely the desired workplace culture change will take place in the future. TVET is a consumer and producer of resources and therefore has many different concerns about sustainability, such as over-exploitation of natural resources, ill-health and grinding poverty, which threaten the ability of future generations to satisfy their needs and wants. TVET needs to re-orient its curricula to imbue students and trainees with the conservation and sustainable use of resources, social equity and appropriate development, as well as with competencies to practise sustainable tasks at the workplace. UNESCO’s guiding Revised Recommendations on TVE took into account the notion of sustainable development, recommending that TVET should: (a) contribute to the achievement of the societal goals of democratic, social and cultural development, as well as the traditional emphasis on economic development; (b) lead to a broad and, when necessary, critical understanding of science and technology; and (c) empower people to contribute to environmentally sound sustainable development through their occupations and other areas of their lives (UNESCO, 2005b, p. 9). These three concepts are crucial to aligning TVET for sustainable development, and they framed discussions at the International Experts Meeting on ‘Learning for Work, Citizenship and Sustainability’ (Bonn, October 2004). The Bonn meeting, together with the Bonn Declaration that came out of it, deliberately addressed these forward-looking concepts. At that stage, the Decade for Sustainable Development had not yet been launched, and the role for UNESCO in providing leadership on educational issues was still unclear. Only eighteen months later, the concepts had

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been adopted as a key plank in UNESCO’s 2006/07 Programme and Budget with the request that TVET effort be directed towards assisting UNESCO Member States align their national TVET systems to be consistent with the objectives of sustainable development (UNESCO, 2004).

2.3 UNESCO-UNEVOC in Action As mentioned above, UNESCO’s key functions are to act as a laboratory of ideas, standard setter, clearing-house, human and institutional capacity-builder and catalyst for international co-operation. The Organization sees itself as a forum for intellectual co-operation that brings together experts and advises governments in the field of education with the aim of achieving quality education for all. In line with this, UNESCO-UNEVOC has developed a number of strategies, activities and instruments that the Centre uses to work towards achieving progress in the three key result areas identified above: TVET and EFA; TVET for sustainable development; and strengthening the global UNEVOC Networks. The Centre’s work especially focuses on:

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strengthening the policy-making capacity of Member States; improving the institutional capacity, especially of UNEVOC Network Members; and fostering international co-operation.

The proposed activities constitute either direct support to Member States or support of infrastructure and provision of services, and can be grouped under the following headings:

r r r r r

capacity-building and seminars; advisory services; knowledge sharing; research and publications; and global networking and promotion of partnerships.

As the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre is the hub of the UNEVOC Network, most of its activities are targeted at and for the direct benefit of its UNEVOC Centres. Since UNESCO is an organization of Member States, the activities are always demand-driven and tailored according to the needs of the Member States or target groups involved. 2.3.1 Capacity-Building and Seminars The globalization process, which affects economies and labour markets alike, increasingly requires staff involved in decision-making, planning, research and the development of TVET to be aware of worldwide developments and of solutions that are transferable and/or adaptable. Particularly, TVET experts from developing countries, countries in transition and those in a post-conflict situation often do


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not have access to the latest developments in TVET or to the opportunity to frequently up-grade their knowledge and abilities. Therefore, the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for TVET supports the development of human resources in key positions through a range of instruments, such as national or regional policy definition and capacity-building in planning, research and development. This support includes a range of modalities, such as workshops and seminars, small project grants, mobile training teams, fellowships and the implementation of projects. Examples of key issues brought up by Member States include: improving the status of TVET; HIV/AIDS and TVET; TVET for sustainable development; curriculum reform; harnessing ICTs in support of TVET; promotion of public/private partnerships and labour-market orientation; reducing the drop-out rate; promoting inclusive TVET; promoting quality assurance mechanisms for TVET; and assessing national and regional future skill demands. Some examples of concrete activities are described in the following text boxes. Box 1. Learning and working: motivation campaigns for the informal sector In many countries, traditional forms of learning have improved in recent years. Governments are making efforts to ameliorate the state of TVET and skills development. Nevertheless, in many countries there are population groups who do not have access to formal forms of training and learning opportunities and are therefore often marginalized from economic life in their communities. These groups would benefit from developing their occupational skills. UNESCO-UNEVOC therefore seeks to make skills development more attractive and accessible through informal learning opportunities. Based on an earlier UNESCO-UNEVOC activity pertaining to improving the status and accessibility of TVET, and on materials developed by UNESCO as part of the Global Action Programme on Education for All (Youth Project), UNESCOUNEVOC has developed the multi-media campaign package ‘Learning and working: motivating for skills development’, to motivate young people to acquire basic livelihood skills. Package I is a tool to facilitate the organization and implementation of awareness and motivation campaigns for marginalized groups in least-developed countries. The idea behind this campaign is to offer a platform and produce an environment to motivate people living in adverse economic conditions to enrol in TVET courses and/or to take up self-employment activities in order to improve their economic situation. The backbone of the package is a set of DVDs which show simple, traditional, but yet innovative ways to produce goods with low-cost materials and very simple tools demonstrating that vocational skills can be acquired and used to produce useful or marketable goods and services. The DVDs are complemented by a series of documents that make it easy for those interested in the running of the campaigns to have an orientation when implementing campaigns at the local level.

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The campaign package is in itself not a tool for skills development, but rather an ‘eye opener’ and ‘source for ideas’. The targeted groups will be encouraged to engage in tasks similar to those shown in the DVDs. The package has generated a high level of interest, especially from organizations from developing countries, where access to relevant learning resources is often scarce.

Box 2. Social partnerships for TVET: Central Asia Improved relevance and alignment of TVET with economic and employment trends are of crucial importance for a successful TVET system. This can be achieved, for example, through a closer involvement of social partners and stakeholders in TVET policy, planning, administration and implementation. Social partnerships for the development of TVET emerged as an issue of high priority for TVET leaders from Central Asian Republics and UNESCOUNEVOC facilitated co-operation among UNEVOC Centres and candidate centres in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan with partners in Germany for a mobile training team (MTT) to address this issue. A MTT is one of a number of instruments employed by UNESCO-UNEVOC to address its goals with regard to capacity-building in developing countries and countries in transition. Through the MTT, selected senior TVET specialists from UNEVOC Centres can learn rapidly and reflect about innovative and best practices on a given topic, while they are on a study tour in a country offering such best practice. In July/August 2005, four TVET specialists, one each from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, came to Germany for a Capacity Building International (InWEnt) training seminar on social partnerships in TVET, with a special focus on assessment and certification. They also participated in a number of field visits to German TVET institutions. Upon return to their countries, the participants of the MTT organized national seminars to share their newly acquired knowledge with other TVET specialists and social partners, such as trade unions and employers’ organizations, and to identify possibilities of applying the concepts in the respective national contexts. The MTT led not only to a significant improvement of the skills and knowledge of the four individual TVET experts who came to Germany but, through the national dissemination workshops, had a much broader impact on the countries involved. Through this activity, a foundation has been laid for the building of social partnerships in TVET and UNESCO-UNEVOC urges the UNEVOC Centres and their partners at the national level to take the necessary further steps.


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2.3.2 Advisory Services Worldwide, countries are facing the challenge of improving the capacity of their workforce to respond to their national development needs and to the demands of a rapidly changing global economy, and are increasingly recognizing the role TVET can play in addressing this challenge by equipping individuals with relevant skills and knowledge. In order to play this role, TVET systems need to be reformed to meet the needs and expectations of their clients. However, a large number of countries not only lack the funds, but also the capacity to manage and implement the necessary reforms. In this case, they can seek technical assistance and advisory support services from UNESCO-UNEVOC. Through its technical assistance services, the Centre can offer assistance to UNESCO Member States in:

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fact-finding, policy definition and national development plans; improving the institutional capabilities of UNEVOC Centres; formulating or reviewing TVET educational practice; facilitating co-operation between donors and recipients; and identifying experts for consultancy services.

Box 3. Guide to donor agencies in TVET International co-operation agencies have different approaches, methodologies, planning horizons, communication levels, financial regulations and submission and reporting procedures. As UNESCO-UNEVOC receives many requests from TVET institutions in developing countries with regard to resources for funding, the Centre developed, in 2004, the ‘Guide to donor agencies’. This publication provides an overview of sources of development assistance by the twenty-two Member States of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which are major donors in development co-operation. It focuses especially on support services for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and skills development. It is intended to facilitate access to information on:

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current trends in international co-operation policies; potential donors and their policies; donors’ requirements concerning project definition, project and budget management, assessment and evaluation techniques, and of reporting regulations.

It is perhaps the most frequently requested title of the current UNEVOC publications. It can also be accessed on-line through the UNESCO-UNEVOC website.

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2.3.3 Knowledge Sharing UNESCO has an important role to play in promoting and sharing best and innovative research and practices among countries. The need for greater knowledge management and knowledge sharing, particularly with and among developing countries, were amongst the main reasons to set up the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training. In developing countries, there is a great need for concrete information on best and innovative practices. Experience shows that what works well in one country has a good chance to also work well in other countries, with adjustments made to accommodate local conditions. Such transfer of knowledge and experiences helps to avoid the wasting of resources and is faster and easier to achieve than individual searches for solutions. Although the main interest is in cases of best and successful practice, disappointments can also be of help, as they give examples of what should be avoided. UNESCO-UNEVOC has in the past mainly, but not exclusively, worked on a sub-regional level. Such co-operation among neighbouring countries is important, because in many cases these countries face similar difficulties and should therefore look jointly for appropriate solutions. Additionally, UNESCO-UNEVOC enables a transfer of knowledge from developed to developing countries. A major part of this exchange takes place through the UNEVOC e-Forum, where relevant messages are exchanged between more than 600 TVET experts from over 122 countries on an almost daily basis. Through its clearing-house function, the Centre collects and disseminates relevant documentation on TVET. The clearing-house is designed to be a resource base for ministries, policy-makers, educational institutes, international agencies, consultants and others seeking information on TVET. The information and documentation service fulfils the following functions:

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Enquiry and reference services: responding to requests for information; Research services: searching, retrieving and editing information using the materials available at UNESCO-UNEVOC and other resources (including the Internet) and providing responses in the requested format; Distribution of UNESCO-UNEVOC publications.

One means through which UNESCO-UNEVOC facilitates access to information is the Internet. Information about all of UNESCO-UNEVOC’s work, including its activities and publications, is available on the Centre’s website. The website has been re-launched in 2006 to offer more interactive features and a more user-friendly navigation: www.unevoc.unesco.org 2.3.4 Research and Publications UNESCO-UNEVOC is concerned with contributing to the international debate on key aspects of TVET. The Centre publishes the results of research related to TVET through its major publication project, the UNEVOC International Library of Technical and Vocational


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Education and Training, which is a series of publications that provides comprehensive information about many ‘cutting-edge’ aspects of TVET. The library showcases best practices and innovative approaches to skills development for employability and seeks to create an effective bridge between research, policy and practice. Topics covered include TVET reform, TVET in the informal sector, TVET teacher education, etc. Discussion papers, annotated bibliographies, meeting reports and national profiles of TVET are also produced. While the Internet gains more and more ground in international professional exchange, print media still have an important role to play, particularly in countries with limited access to modern information and communication technologies. The Centre will apply an integrated concept for publishing and disseminating professional information; conventional forms of publishing will be harmonized with those on CD-ROM and on the Internet. 2.3.5 Global Networking and Promoting of Partnerships The major part of the above-mentioned activities, especially in the area of capacitybuilding and advisory services, is addressing members of the UNEVOC Network. While some UNEVOC Centres may primarily be beneficiaries of the international exchange, others contribute actively to the development at national, regional and sub-regional levels. In UNESCO-UNEVOC’s international activities the UNEVOC Centres play a prominent role. Action is taken to up-grade the Network of UNEVOC Centres through a range of means, such as the following:

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training seminars for key personnel in UNEVOC Centres; fostering national networks directed by UNEVOC Centres; increasing international co-operation between UNEVOC Centres through regional and thematic clustering; increasing membership in the UNEVOC Network.

It is expected that through building networks in their own countries, a trickle-down effect to other institutions and colleagues is taking place.

3 Conclusion We, the participants in ‘Learning for Work, Citizenship and Sustainability’, a UNESCO meeting of international experts on technical and vocational education and training, are agreed that, since education is considered the key to effective development strategies, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) must be the master key that can alleviate poverty, promote peace, conserve the environment, improve the quality of life for all and help achieve sustainable development (Bonn Declaration—UNESCO, 2004).

This part of the Bonn Declaration, which was developed by the participants of the international experts meeting ‘Learning for Work, Citizenship and Sustainability’, expresses a very high level of expectation towards the role that TVET can play in addressing and even overcoming some of the most pressing challenges the world

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is facing today and will be facing in the future. It is the aim of the UNESCOUNEVOC International Centre for TVET to respond to these expectations and to make a contribution to assist UNESCO Member States in achieving TVET of good quality for all. Given the limited human and financial resources of the Centre, this is an enormous challenge, which the Centre tries to tackle by concentrating on activities that focus on a small group of persons in key positions and have a potential multiplier effect. This idea is at the core of the Centre’s networking activities and co-operation with other agencies and partners, and much of the success of the Centre’s work in capacity-building and knowledge-sharing depends on its partners’ abilities to act as multipliers and to organize follow-up activities at the local level. In order to take stock of the Centre’s work during its first five years of existence, independent evaluators and TVET experts from Europe, Africa and Asia conducted a review of the work of UNESCO-UNEVOC in 2005. As major achievements of the Centre, the evaluators acknowledged: the networking activities of the Centre through the UNEVOC Network and the e-Forum; the promotion of TVET reform towards achieving the EFA goals; the contributions to the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development; the promotion of best and innovative practices in TVET; the high level of inter-agency co-operation; and the strong publications programme. But the evaluation report also highlighted some challenges where further improvements are necessary, for example, in the area of follow-up and outcome monitoring and evaluation of the Centre’s activities. It is essential that UNESCO-UNEVOC introduces quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods as part of its activities, otherwise it is not possible to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the activities’ impact. Evaluation and monitoring should not be restricted to the actual UNEVOC activity, but also examine the follow-up steps taken by the direct beneficiaries of these activities. As the Centre enters its second period of six-year planning (2008–2013), it is timely to reflect back as well as to look forward. Successes, challenges and lessons learnt need to be taken into account in order to strengthen UNESCO-UNEVOC’s role as UNESCO’s major vehicle for progressing the TVET agenda and to achieve its goal of becoming the pre-eminent global centre for TVET, in support of the development of accessible and quality TVET all over the world. Acknowledgments To a great extent, this article draws upon information available in a variety of UNESCO-UNEVOC documents (e.g. UNESCO-UNEVOC brochures and flyers, biennial reports, project documents and programme frameworks) as well as the Centre’s website (www.unevoc.unesco.org). These documents are not explicitly referenced in this article.

References Adams, A.V.; Johanson, R.K. 2004. Skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. Coombe, C. 1988. Survey of vocationally-oriented education in the Commonwealth. London: Commonwealth Secretariat.


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Delors, J. et al. 1996. Learning: the treasure within. Paris: UNESCO. (Report of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century.) de Moura Castro, C.; Verdisco, A. 2000. Training unemployed youth in Latin America: same old sad story? In: Atchoarena, D., ed. The transition of youth from school to work: issues and concerns. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. (Second International Congress on Technical and Vocational Education, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 26–30 April 1999.) Hellriegel, D.; Slocum, J.W.; Woddman, R.W. 1998. Organizational behaviour, 8th ed. Florence, KY: South Western College Publishing. Keating, D.P. 2000. Human development in the learning society. In: Hargreaves, A. et al., eds. International handbook of educational change, p. 699. Toronto, Canada: OISE, University of Toronto. Lauglo, J. 2005. Vocationalisation of secondary education revisited. In: Lauglo, J.; Maclean, R., eds. Vocationalisation of secondary education revisited, Vol. 1. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Masri, M.W. 1999. The changing demands of the 21st century: challenges to technical and vocational education. (Keynote speech presented at the second International Congress on Technical and Vocational Education, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 26–30 April 1999.) Quisumbing, L.R.; de Leo, J., eds. 2005. Learning to do: values for learning and working together in a globalized world. An integrated approach to incorporating values education in technical and vocational education and training. Mitcham, Australia: APNIEVE. (UNESCO-APNIEVE sourcebook no. 3.) Sirotnik, K.A. 2000. Ecological images of change: limits and possibilities. In: Hargreaves, A. et al., eds. International handbook of educational change. Toronto, Canada: OISE, University of Toronto. UNESCO. 2000. Dakar framework for action: meeting our collective commitments. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO. 2004. The Bonn Declaration. UNESCO. 2005a. Guidelines and recommendations for reorienting teacher education to address sustainability. Paris: UNESCO. (Technical paper, no. 2.) UNESCO. 2005b. Revised recommendation concerning technical and vocational education (2001). In: UNESCO, ed. Normative instruments concerning technical and vocational education. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO-International Bureau of Education. 2004. Quality education for all young people: challenges, trends and priorities. Paris: UNESCO. (Final report of the International Conference on Education, forty-seventh session, Geneva, Switzerland 8–11 September 2004.) UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, ed. 2006. Orienting technical and vocational education and training for sustainable development: a discussion paper. Bonn, Germany: UNESCO-UNEVOC. (Discussion paper series, vol. 1.) UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, ed. Forthcoming. Why access to Technical and Vocational Education and Training for All is essential if Education for All is to be achieved. Bonn, Germany: UNESCO-UNEVOC. (Discussion paper series, vol. 4.) Wheelen, T.L.; Hunger, J.D. 1998. Strategic management and business policy: entering 21st century global society. 6th ed. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley-Longman.


Chapter 4

TVET Glossary: Some Key Terms Jeanne MacKenzie and Rose-Anne Polvere

1 Introduction The glossary in this chapter has been compiled to complement the Handbook and, although not an exhaustive list, aims to reflect the terminology found in the recent literature of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) research, policy and practice internationally. The most common and significant terms (including acronyms) are listed and, in some cases, national and regional variations have been included. In compiling the glossary, the selection of terms was aligned to the aspects of TVET examined in the Handbook. To maintain an international perspective, other national and international glossaries and thesauri were consulted in conjunction with current TVET literature from around the world. These sources are listed as references at the end of the chapter. The glossary is organized alphabetically for ease of use. The entries contain the term, its definition and, where definitions have been written by other organizations, the source of that definition. Unattributed definitions were created in-house at the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). For some terms, where, for example, there are regional differences, more than one meaning has been provided.

2 Sample Entry Term in English

Transition from school or training to work The process of transferring from school to the workforce or further study (Source: NCVER); May also be referred to as: School to work transition (USA); Transition from school to work (AUS)

Origin of the information

Country where variation is used

Definition providing the meaning of the term

National or regional variations

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3 Glossary Accelerated training A period of intensive vocational training or retraining which enables workers to obtain the necessary qualifications in a much shorter period than usual in order to enter an occupation at the required level. (Source: VOCED) Access and equity A policy or set of strategies to make vocational education and training available to all members of the community, to increase participation and to improve outcomes, particularly focusing on those groups that have been traditionally underrepresented. (Source: VOCED) Access to education and training Conditions, circumstances or requirements (for example qualification, education level, skills or work experience) governing admittance to and participation in educational institutions or programmes. (Source: CEDEFOP) Accreditation The process by which a course or training programme is officially recognized and approved. (Source: NCVER) Accreditation (of skills and competences) See Certification (of skills and competences) Accrediting authority An organization with the authority and responsibility for accrediting courses and training programmes. (Source: NCVER) Accreditation of prior learning (APL) See Recognition of prior learning Active labour-market programme A programme designed to increase the number of people in employment or to improve the employment prospects of a target group, e.g. by the payment of subsidies to businesses who take on long-term unemployed people. Adult and community education (ACE) Education and training intended principally for adults, including general, vocational, basic and community education, and recreation, leisure and personal enrichment programmes. These are delivered by the ACE sector, which includes the organizations and providers who deliver adult and community education programmes, including evening and community colleges, community adult education centres, neighbourhood houses, churches, schools, technical education institutes, universities (continuing education) and universities of the Third Age. Adult education Education of adults; educational programmes designed for adults, often incorporating approaches to education which draw on the learner’s life or work experiences, involve learners in planning the learning activities, encourage learning in groups, as well as more self-directed learning. (Source: NCVER)

4 TVET Glossary: Some Key Terms

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Adult basic education (ABE) Remedial or school-level education for adults, usually with emphasis on the literacy, numeracy and social skills needed to function within the community or to gain employment. (Source: NCVER) Adult learning The processes by which adults learn and build on their existing knowledge and skills. (Source: NCVER) Adult literacy and numeracy The ability to read, write and use numbers and numerical information, specifically in adults. Alternated training Education or training alternating periods in a school/training centre and in the workplace. The alternance scheme can take place on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis depending on the country. Participants are not contractually linked to the employer where they do their practice, nor do they generally receive remuneration (unlike apprentices). (Source: CEDEFOP) Apprentice A person contracted to an employer, undergoing initial training for a recognized apprenticeable occupation during an established period. (Source: VOCED) See also Trainee Apprenticeable occupation Occupation for which apprenticeship has been officially approved, usually through legislation. (Source: VOCED) Apprenticeship A system of training regulated by law or custom which combines on-the-job training and work experience while in paid employment with formal off-the-job training. The apprentice enters into a contract of training or training agreement with an employer which imposes mutual obligations on both parties. Apprenticeship contract Verbal or written agreement binding a would-be apprentice and the prospective employer. (Source: ILO) Articulation The arrangements which facilitate the movement or progression of students from one course to another, or from one education and training sector to another. See also Credit transfer system Assessment (of skills and competences) The sum of methods and processes used to evaluate the attainments (knowledge, know-how, skills and competences) of an individual, and typically leading to certification. (Source: CEDEFOP) Assessor A person qualified to carry out assessment. (Source: VOCED)

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Awarding body A body with the authority to issue qualifications (certificates or diplomas) formally recognizing the achievements of an individual, following a standard assessment procedure. (Source: CEDEFOP) Basic skill 1. A fundamental skill that is the basis of later learning or is essential for employment. (Source: NCVER) 2. The skills and competences needed to function in contemporary society, including listening, speaking, reading, writing and mathematics. (Source: CEDEFOP) Benchmarking The process of comparing an organization’s performance, practices and procedures with those of leaders in the same or a different field of activity, in order to identify areas for improvement. (Source: NCVER) Best practice Management practices and work processes that lead to outstanding or top-class performance and provide examples for others. (Source: NCVER) Used for: Good practices. (ILO) Career and technical education (CTE) (USA) See: Technical and vocational education and training Career counselling See: Guidance and counselling Career development The continuous planning carried out to advance a person’s career based on experience and on any training undertaken to upgrade qualifications or to acquire new ones. (Sources: ILO; VOCED) Career education An educational programme conducted during secondary school to give students informed guidance, counselling and instruction enabling them to make a suitable choice of career and to help them prepare for it. (Source: ILO; VOCED) Career guidance See: Guidance and counselling Certificate An official document, issued by an awarding body, which records the achievements of an individual following a standard assessment procedure. (Source: CEDEFOP) See also: Diploma Certification (of skills and competences) The formal acknowledgement of successful achievement of a defined set of outcomes. (Source: NCVER) Communities of practice Networks that emerge from a desire to work more effectively or to understand work more deeply among members of a particular specialty or work group. They


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focus on learning, competence and performance, bridging the gap between organizational learning and strategy topics and generating new insights for theory and practice. Comparability of qualifications The extent to which it is possible to establish equivalence between the level and content of formal qualifications (certificates or diplomas) at sectoral, regional, national or international levels. (Source: CEDEFOP) Competence The individual’s demonstrated capacity to perform, i.e. the possession of knowledge, skills and personal characteristics needed to satisfy the special demands or requirements of a particular situation. (Source: VOCED; ILO) Competency standard 1. An industry-determined specification of performance which sets out the skills, knowledge and attitudes required to operate effectively in employment. Competency standards are made up of units of competency, which are themselves made up of elements of competency, together with performance criteria, a range of variables, and an evidence guide. (Source: NCVER) 2. Statement developed by industry specifying the competencies required by workers for each sector of the workforce. (Source: VOCED; ILO) Continuing education Educational programmes for adults, usually at the post-secondary level in personal, academic or occupational subject areas. (Source: NCVER) Continuing vocational education and training (CVET) Education or training after initial education or entry into working life, aimed at helping individuals to improve or update their knowledge and/or skills, acquire new skills for a career move or retraining, or continue their personal and professional development. (Source: CEDEFOP) Co-operative vocational education A combined programme of study and practice, applying originally to the United States, whereby legal employment is provided for secondary school or university students together with a regular school or university curriculum, organized on an alternating schedule of half-days, weeks or other specified periods. (Source: VOCED; ILO) Credit The acknowledgement that a person has satisfied the requirements of a module (subject) or unit of competency either through previous study (credit transfer) or through work or life experience (recognition of prior learning); the granting of credit exempts the student from that part of the course. May also be referred to as: Status or Advanced standing.

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Credit transfer The granting of status or credit by an institution or training organization to students for modules (subjects) or units of competency completed at the same or in another institution or training organization. (Source: NCVER) Credit transfer system A system which provides a way of measuring and comparing learning achievements (resulting from a course, training or a placement) and transferring them from one institution to another, using credits validated in training programmes. (Source: CEDEFOP) See also: Articulation Cross-cultural training Training in communicative, behavioural and attitudinal skills required for successful interaction with individuals of other cultures. It is often given to personnel about to undertake overseas assignments. (Source: ILO; VOCED) Decent work Sufficient, productive work in which rights are protected, which generates an adequate income, with full access to income-earning opportunities and adequate social protection. (Source: ILO) Digital divide The gap between those who can access information and communication technologies and use them effectively, and those who cannot. (Source: CEDEFOP) Diploma A formal document certifying the successful completion of a course of study in the vocational education and training and higher education sectors. See also: Certificate Distance education A mode of education in which students enrolled in a course do not attend the institution, but study off-campus and may submit assignments by mail or email. (Source: NCVER) May also be referred to as: Distance study or Distance learning. Dropout Withdrawal from an education or training programme before its completion. (Source: CEDEFOP) E-learning Learning supported by information and communication technologies (ICTs). (Source: CEDEFOP) Education/industry relationship Relationship between students, educational institutions and industry. (Source: VOCED) Education/work relationship Relationship between educational programmes or courses of study and status or opportunities in the workforce. (Source: ATED)


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Emerging occupation Occupation that is new or that consists of a new combination of existing skills and knowledge, for which considerable demand exists or is projected. (Source: VOCED) Employability 1. The degree of adaptability an individual demonstrates in finding and keeping a job, and updating occupational skills. (Source: CEDEFOP) 2. Relates to portable competencies and qualifications that enhance an individual’s capacity to make use of the education and training opportunities available in order to secure and retain decent work. (Source: ILO) Employability skill(s) The skills which enable people to gain, keep and progress within employment, including skills in the clusters of work readiness and work habits, interpersonal skills and learning, thinking and adaptability skills. Employer-funded training (UK) Training either institutional or work-based, involving delivery by external or inhouse training personnel and paid for by the employer; May also be referred to as: Employer-sponsored training (USA, Canada). Enabling course A course designed to equip a student to take up a new subject or course by covering the gaps between the student’s existing knowledge and skills and the subject or course prerequisites and assumed knowledge. See also: Pre-vocational course Entry into working life See Transition from school or training to work Entry-level skill A skill required to commence employment in an organization or more generally, to gain entry into the workforce. (Source: NCVER) Entry-level training Training undertaken to gain entry into the workforce or further vocational education and training. Entry-level qualification The minimum qualification required for employment in a particular occupation. Equivalence of certificates See Comparability of qualifications Flexible delivery A range of approaches to providing education and training, giving learners greater choice of when, where and how they learn. Flexible delivery may include distance education, mixed-mode delivery, online education, self-paced learning, self-directed learning. (Source: NCVER)

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Flexible learning The provision of a range of learning modes or methods, giving learners greater choice of when, where and how they learn. (Source: NCVER) Formal education Education or training provided in educational institutions, such as schools, universities, colleges, or off-the-job in a workplace, usually involving direction from a teacher or instructor. (Source: NCVER) Further education (FE) Post-secondary education, including higher education, adult education, and vocational education and training. (Source: NCVER) Further education and training (FET) (UK, South Africa) See Technical and vocational education and training Further training 1. Global term for training subsequent, and complementary to, initial training. (Source: ILO; VOCED) 2. Short-term targeted training typically provided following initial vocational training, and aimed at supplementing, improving or updating knowledge, skills and/or competences acquired during previous training. (Source: CEDEFOP) Generic skill A skill which is not specific to work in a particular occupation or industry, but is important for work, education and life generally, including communication skills, mathematical skills, organizational skills, computer literacy, interpersonal competence and analytical skills. (Source: NCVER) Governance The manner in which power and authority are exercized by both public and private bodies; covers management, legal framework, accountability and transparency. (Source: ILO) Guidance and counselling A range of activities designed to help individuals make educational, vocational or personal decisions and carry them out before and after they enter the labour market. (Source: CEDEFOP) Used for: Career counselling; Career guidance; Vocational guidance High-technology industry An industry that employs a large number of scientists and engineers, invests heavily in research and development, and has great potential for extremely rapid growth through the emergence of new products and processes. (Source: ILO)


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Hybrid skill A mixture of the skills and knowledge, possibly from different disciplines, generally required in sectors applying high technology. (Source: VOCED) Industry training council A body established by an industry or business sector to address training issues. (Source: NCVER) Also: Sector Skills Council (UK) Informal economy Part of the market economy in that it produces (legal) goods and services for sale or other forms of remuneration, covers informal employment both in informal enterprises (small unregistered or unincorporated enterprises) and outside informal enterprises; not recognized or protected under existing legal and regulatory frameworks. (Source: ILO) Informal learning Learning resulting from daily activities related to work, family or leisure. It is not organized or structured (in terms of objectives, time or learning support). Informal learning is in most cases unintentional from the learner’s perspective. It typically does not lead to certification. (Source: CEDEFOP) Information society A society in which information technology, computers and telecommunications are widely used to facilitate communication nationally and internationally and to promote access to libraries, data archives and other stores of information held by private organizations or in the public domain. (Source: ILO) Initial vocational education and training 1. General or vocational education carried out in the initial education system, usually before entering working life. (Source: CEDEFOP) 2. Pre-employment training for an occupation, generally divided into two parts; basic training followed by specialization. (Source: ILO; VOCED) See also: Entry-level training; also:Initial training In-service training Training and professional development of staff, often sponsored by the employer, and usually provided during normal working hours. (Source: NCVER) Also: Inplant training Information and communication technology (ICT) Technology that provides for the electronic input, storage, retrieval, processing, transmission and dissemination of information. (Source: CEDEFOP) Also: Information technology

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Innovation Making changes in something already existing, as by introducing new methods, ideas, or products. (Source: Concise Oxford Dictionary) Key competency Any of several generic skills or competencies considered essential for people to participate effectively in the workforce. Key competencies apply to work generally, rather than being specific to work in a particular occupation or industry. (Source: NCVER) Key performance measure (KPM) One of a set of measures used to monitor or evaluate the overall efficiency or effectiveness of a system, which may be used to demonstrate accountability and to identify areas for improvement. (Source: NCVER) Know-how 1. Practical knowledge or expertise. (Source: CEDEFOP; adapted from New Oxford Dictionary of English) 2. Includes technological and managerial components. (Source: ILO; VOCED) Knowledge economy An economy that is driven by ideas and knowledge, rather than by material resources, and in which the keys to job creation and higher standards of living are innovation and technology embedded in services and manufactured products. (Source: ILO) Labour force The economically active population, employed and unemployed. (Source: ILO; VOCED) Labour market The system of relationships between the supply of people available for employment and the available jobs. (Source: ILO; VOCED) Labour mobility Refers to the movement of members of the labour force between areas or industries. (Source: ILO; VOCED) Learning community A community that promotes a culture of learning by developing effective local partnerships between all sectors of the community, and supports and motivates individuals and organizations to learn. (Source: CEDEFOP) Learning organization An organization where everyone learns and develops through the work context, for the benefit of themselves, each other and the whole organization, with such efforts being publicized and recognized. (Source: CEDEFOP)


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Learning outcome(s) The set of knowledge, skills and/or competences an individual has acquired and/or is able to demonstrate after completion of a learning process. (Source: CEDEFOP) Learning region A region in which all stakeholders co-operate to meet local learning needs and devise joint solutions to local problems. (Source: CEDEFOP) Learning society A society in which learning is considered important or valuable, where people are encouraged to continue to learn throughout their lives, and where the opportunity to participate in education and training is available to all. (Source: NCVER) Lifelong learning All learning activity undertaken throughout life, with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and/or qualifications for personal, social and/or professional reasons. (Source: CEDEFOP) Lifewide learning Learning, either formal, non-formal or informal, that takes place across the full range of life activities (personal, social and/or professional) and at any stage. (Source: CEDEFOP) Minimum competency An essential skill for a given age, grade or level of performance. (Source: NCVER) Modular training The breaking down of whole educational qualifications into useful sub-units (modules) each of which has measurable outcomes that are assessed (and in some cases certified) in their own right as well as contributing to a larger overall educational outcome (primarily a qualification). Multiskilling Training workers in a number of skills, enabling them to perform a variety of tasks or functions across traditional boundaries. Multiskilling may be horizontal (broad skilling), vertical (upskilling) or diagonal (contributory skilling). (Source: NCVER) Mutual recognition of qualifications The recognition by one or more countries of qualifications (certificates or diplomas) awarded in one or more countries or across regions in one country. (Source: CEDEFOP) Non-traditional occupation Occupations in which certain groups are under-represented; usually applies to so-called male or female occupations. (Source: VOCED)

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Occupational qualification The combined aptitudes and skills which permit someone to take up a job. (Source: ILO) Off-the-job training Vocational training undertaken away from the normal work situation; it is usually only part of a whole training programme in which it is combined with on-the-job training. (Source: CEDEFOP) Online learning Learning via educational material that is delivered on a computer via an intranet or the Internet. On-the-job training Vocational training given in the normal work situation; it may constitute the whole training or be combined with off-the-job training. (Source: CEDEFOP) Pathway of training Various combinations of education, training and employment activities that individuals may undertake over time to reach a certain destination, for example a desired qualification or type of employment. (Source: ACER) Planning of training Regulations and arrangements adopted by governmental or other institutions responsible for vocational training. (Source: ILO) Post-compulsory education Education followed by an individual after the minimum legal school-leaving age. (Source: CEDEFOP) Pre-vocational course A course designed to prepare people for vocational education and training or work, including bridging courses, basic literacy and numeracy training, or training in job skills. (Source: NCVER) See also: Enabling course Pre-vocational training Training arranged primarily to acquaint young people with materials, tools and standards relating to a range of occupations, to prepare them for choosing an occupational field or a line of training. (Source: ILO) Prior learning The knowledge, know-how and/or competencies acquired through previously unrecognized training or experience. (Source: CEDEFOP) May also be referred to as: Prior learning assessment and recognition (PLAR) (UK) See: Recognition of prior learning Private training provider A non-government training organization, including commercial providers (providing courses to industry and individuals for profit), community providers


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(non-profit organizations, funded by government or community sponsors), enterprise providers (companies or other organizations providing training mainly for their own employees), and industry providers (organizations providing training to enterprises across an industry). (Source: NCVER) Qualification 1. Certification awarded to a person on successful completion of a course in recognition of having achieved particular knowledge, skills or competencies. (Source: NCVER) 2. The requirements for an individual to enter or progress within an occupation. (Source: CEDEFOP) Qualifications framework A structure for setting out the levels at which vocational qualifications accredited by regulatory authorities can be recognized. Recognition of current competencies (RCC) The assessment of a person’s current capacity to perform; it applies if an individual has previously successfully completed the requirements for a unit of competency or a module and is now required to be reassessed to ensure that the competence is being maintained. Recognition of prior learning (RPL) An assessment process that assesses the individual’s non-formal and informal learning to determine the extent to which that individual has achieved the required learning or competency outcomes. May also be referred to as: Accreditation of prior learning; Validation of informal/non formal learning. Reentry student An individual who returns to an education system programme or institution following an extended absence. (Source: VOCED) Refresher training Training to refresh skills and knowledge which may have been partly forgotten, usually as a result of a temporary interruption in occupational life. (Source: ILO) Retraining Training to facilitate entry to a new occupation. (Source: NCVER). May also be referred to as: Reskilling Return on investment in training (ROI) The measurable impact on an organization of training in terms of value adding, productivity and profitability. School to work transition (STW) (USA) See: Transition from school or training to work

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Short course A course of vocational education and training which stands alone and does not usually lead to a full qualification. A statement of attainment may be issued on successful completion. (Source: NCVER) Skill An ability to perform a particular mental or physical activity which may be developed by training or practice. (Source: NCVER) Skill development The development of skills or competencies which are relevant to the workforce. (Source: VOCED) Skill obsolescence Acquired aptitude and knowledge for which there is little or no demand or which is out-of-date either through technological and scientific advances made in the equipment used, a marked change in job requirements or through the gradual disappearance of a trade or profession. Can usually be rectified by retraining or skill upgrading. (Source: VOCED) Skill shortage Shortage of a particular skill in the labour market. (Source: VOCED) Skill upgrading Training to provide supplementary and generally higher-grade qualifications and knowledge within the same trade or profession to enable the trainee to better his/her work situation and eventually to make themselves eligible for promotion. (Source: VOCED) Skills analysis An identification of the skills or competencies needed for each job. (Source: NCVER) Skills audit An identification of the skills required and held by the workforce. (Source: NCVER) Special needs education Educational activity and support designed to address special education needs. (Source: CEDEFOP) Specialist training Advanced level training to broaden specialized knowledge of a particular task, function or aspect of an occupation. (Source: ILO) Student placement See: Work experience


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Sustainable development Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. (Source: UN/ISDR) Teacher in VET 1. A person whose function is to impart knowledge or know-how to students or trainees in a vocational school or training centre. (Source: CEDEFOP) 2. The vocational teacher’s functions tend to overlap with those of the trainer; the teacher usually works in a school situation and gives both related instruction and some, if not all, of the practical training. (Source: ILO) Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) Post-compulsory education and training, excluding degree and higher level programmes delivered by higher education institutions, which provides people with occupational or work-related knowledge and skills. May also be referred to as: Career and technical education (CTE) (USA); Further education and training (FET) (UK, South Africa); Vocational and technical education and training (VTET) (South-East Asia); Vocational education and training (VET); Vocational and technical education (VTE) (AUS) Trainee A person undergoing training or education with an occupational bias. (Source: ILO) See also: Apprentice Trainer Anyone who fulfils one or more activities linked to the (theoretical or practical) training function, either in an institution for education or training or at the workplace. (Source: CEDEFOP) Training allowance Stipend or other payment made by an employer or from public funds to an employee undergoing training for a certain period, usually outside the normal place of work. (Source: ILO) Training course planning and design A set of consistent methodological approaches employed in designing and planning training initiatives and schemes aimed at achieving set objectives. (Source: CEDEFOP) Training culture An environment in which training is seen as important and is closely linked with business strategy, particularly in creating competitive advantage for an enterprise. Opportunities are given to all employees to participate in training to develop their skills and competencies. (Source: NCVER) Training evaluation The systematic collection and analysis of data relevant to the development and implementation of learning activities.

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Training institution Any body which imparts vocational training. (Source: ILO; VOCED) Training investment Expenditure of an organization on training for benefit; improvement factors include increased productivity, reduction of waste, improved employee retention and improved profitability. Training levy Levy imposed on employers with a view to financing training activities. (Source: ILO) Training market A system of competition among public and private providers in the provision of vocational education and training. Training of trainers Theoretical and/or practical training for teachers or trainers. (Source: CEDEFOP) Training policy Combination of decisions, objectives and guidance emanating from an official body to fix the goals and priorities for vocational training. (Source: ILO) Training programme 1. Designed to achieve a specific vocational outcome, may include course, module (subject) and on-the-job training. (Source: NCVER) 2. Training activities defined in terms of objectives, target population, contents and results. (Source: ILO) Training provider An organization which delivers vocational education and training programmes; may be public, private or non-governmental. Transferability (of skills and competences) The capacity (of skills and competences) to be transferred to and used in a new occupational or educational environment. (Source: CEDEFOP). May also be referred to as: Transfer of training Transferable skill Skills that can be introduced in a different socio-cultural or technical environment, or that can be used in other occupations. (Source: ILO) Transition from school to work (AUS) See: Transition from school or training to work Transition from school or training to work The process of transferring from school to the workforce or further study. (Source: NCVER). May also be referred to as: School to work transition (USA); Transition from school to work (AUS); Entry into working life


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Transparency of qualifications See: Comparability of qualifications Validation of informal/non-formal learning See: Recognition of prior learning Vocational and technical education (VTE) See: Technical and vocational education and training Vocational and technical education and training (VTET) See: Technical and vocational education and training Vocational education and training (VET) See: Technical and vocational education and training Vocational education and training in secondary school Programmes allowing students to combine vocational studies with their general secondary education and providing industry-specific training that gives them credit towards a nationally recognized vocational education and training qualification; the majority of programmes give students opportunities to do unpaid work or vocational placement and, in some cases, the programmes involved paid work. May also be referred to as: VET in Schools (AUS); tech-prep (USA); School/industry programme. Vocational education teacher See: Teacher in VET Vocational guidance See: Guidance and counselling Vocational preparation Programmes designed to ease the transition from school to work, enhance the employability of young people and teach them how to cope with the world of work. (Source: ILO) Vocational rehabilitation Measures aimed at enabling a disabled person to secure, retain and advance in suitable employment and thereby to further such person’s integration or reintegration into society. (Source: ILO) Vocational teacher See: Teacher in VET Work-based training Training provided by an organization primarily for its own employees using the employer’s own staff or consultants. Work-based training can be conducted either on-site or at an off-site location. (Source: NCVER) Work experience Unpaid work undertaken by secondary school students as part of their careers education. May also be referred to as: Student placement (USA). Workplace change Changes in technology, changes in process and changes in the market and the wider economy that affect workers, their tasks, the structure of the organization

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and/or the product/service or the technology used in the organization. May also be referred to as: Changing world of work. Workplace learning The process of learning through experience at the workplace, both formally and informally, and through different forms of working arrangements, such as teams or one-to-one. Also the creation of a learning environment in the workplace. (Source: VOCED)

Sources ACER ATED CEDEFOP

Concise Oxford Dictionary ILO NCVER

UIE UN/ISDR VOCED

Young people’s participation in post-compulsory education and training. Camberwell, Australia: Australian Council for Educational Research, 1991. Australian thesaurus of educational descriptors, 3rd ed. Camberwell, Australia: Australian Council for Educational Research, 2003. Terminology of vocational training policy: a multilingual glossary for an enlarged Europe. Brussels: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2004. Concise Oxford Dictionary. 10th ed. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999. ILO Thesaurus. Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Organization, 2005. Knight, A.; Nestor, M. A glossary of Australian vocational education and training terms. Adelaide, Australia: The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER), 2000. Glossary of adult learning in Europe. Hamburg, Germany: UNESCO Institute for Education, 1999. Glossary. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. <www.passlivelihoods.org.uk/plow/default.asp?id = 5 > VOCED Thesaurus. Adelaide, Australia: The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). <www.voced.edu.au/thesaurus/index.php>

Part II

The Changing Context of Work and Education


Section 1 Changing Workplace Requirements: Implications for Education

Margarita Pavlova Griffith Institute for Educational Research, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia L. Efison Munjanganja UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Bonn, Germany


Chapter I.1

Overview: Changing Economic Environment and Workplace Requirements: Implications for Re-Engineering TVET for Prosperity France Boutin, Chris Chinien, Lars Moratis and Peter van Baalen

1 Introduction Globalization has created a new world order for doing business. New information and communication technologies (ICTs) have dramatically changed the way we live, learn and work, and even the way we think about work. The synergy of combining globalization with new information and communication technology has led to the emergence of the new economy. The new economy has created new opportunities as well as new challenges and uncertainties. Many workers have been displaced and dislocated, while a significant number of young people are structurally unemployed or under-employed. Skills polarization between so-called mind or knowledge workers and unskilled, low-knowledge workers has widened the gap in income inequalities. Youth, women and older workers are the groups most affected. While these changes have brought about considerable challenges to TVET, they have created new opportunities for change and innovation (Chinien et al., 2002). This overview provides a brief definition of the new economy and highlights its distinctive features. The crucial importance of human capital as a comparative advantage in global competition is examined, as well as the effects of this new economy on development and national prosperity. The effects of the new economy on jobs and skills are discussed and the strategies being adopted by countries in various regions of the world to re-engineer technical and vocational education and training (TVET) to respond to these opportunities and challenges are reviewed. A brief summary of the all chapters included in this section is presented to conclude this overview.

2 Demystifying the New Economy Several conceptions of what has become widely known as the New Economy have surfaced over the years. Many of these conceptions seem to acknowledge that this new economy refers to an economic era that is characterized by a new set of economic activities, economic volatility, new organizational architectures R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 I.1, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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and paradoxes. Two global trends seem to particularly explain this new economy: globalization and the widespread use of ICTs. Globalization has led to the proliferation of market forces, freer trade and widespread deregulation, while ICTs are creating new companies and new industries before our eyes (Shepard, 1997). Castells (1996) speaks of the prevalence of intertwined global and information features. It is informational because productivity and competitiveness of units or agents fundamentally depend upon their capacity to generate, process and apply knowledge-based information; it is global because the core activities of production, consumption, and circulation are organized on a global scale (Castells, 1996, p. 66). In summary, the new economy can be defined as a knowledge and ideas-based economy where the keys to job creation and higher standards of living are innovative ideas and technology embedded in services and manufactured products; it is an economy where risk, uncertainty, and constant change are not the exception but the main rule.

3 The Network Economy According to Shapiro and Varian (1999), the central difference between the old and new economies is that the first was driven by economies of scale whereas the second is driven by the economics of networks. The information technology revolution has resulted in the development of advanced infrastructure technological networks. These networks enable and induce global communication and information-sharing at decreasing cost and increasing speed. Knowledge is being transferred through these interconnected ICT applications, and it functions as the glue that holds networks together. These information network routes have become the highways of the modern age, akin to the railways, roads and canals of the industrial era. All sorts of intangible goods can be processed, stored and distributed over the networks in an easy and cheap way. Both information and communication technologies, together with the global scope they create (and therefore knowledge), are central parts of the network economy. The on-going process of globalization has resulted in the omnipresence of business in the global marketplace. Many firms now have multiple production sites, regional headquarters and numerous distribution channels at their disposal. Just-in-time systems, computer-integrated manufacturing and integrated inter-firm networks have contributed highly to the streamlining of production, de-massifying of factories, inventories and supply chains (Webster, 1995). The use of new technologies has resulted in the internationalization of core economic activities, such as the functioning of financial markets, multinational enterprises and the production of highly-skilled personnel. This global interaction now forms the basis for management, productivity and competition, which are expressed in more divergent ways than has been the case in former times. These changes in the economic landscape bring about different scope, different dynamics and a different mode of organization in the business environment.

I.1 Changing Economic Environment and Workplace Requirements

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4 New Organizational Models In a network society that is heavily based on the importance of knowledge, facilitated by technological advancements, new organizational models are being created in order to cope with current and future environmental challenges. We are witnessing the restructuring of organizations according to principles of, among others things, flattening and downsizing, business process re-engineering, subcontracting and outsourcing of non-core activities, creating multifunctional project teams, empowering employees, increasing workforce flexibility (multi-skilled workers), expanding the externalized workforce, replacing highly specialized machinery for flexible manufacturing systems and developing multipurpose information systems. The network organization symbolizes these new organizational models and can best be defined as ‘long-term arrangements among distinct but related for-profit organizations that allow those firms in them to gain or sustain competitive advantage’ (Jarillo, 1988, p. 70; Alstyne, 1997). By means of complex outsourcing infrastructures and effective supply chain management, (scarce) resources can be allocated wherever and deployed whenever necessary, in order to add value.

5 The Importance of Human Capital in a Knowledge-Based Economy While the new economy has challenged all nations, no matter how large or small, or how rich or poor, various trade agreements and global investments which emerged from this new world order have also created unlimited opportunities for growth and development. However, the globalization of businesses and the orientation of production around global value chains have created a very competitive trading environment (Industry Canada, 2007). In this new economic environment competitiveness has become the mantra of prosperity. Although, there is some controversy regarding an acceptable definition of competitiveness, the OECD ‘defines national competitiveness as the degree to which a country can, under free and fair market conditions, produce goods and services which meet the test of international markets, while simultaneously maintaining and expanding the incomes of its people over the long term’ (National Competitiveness Council, 2006). In an economy that is increasingly based on knowledge, human capital is considered as one of the most important comparative advantages to compete successfully in the global market and knowledge is positioned as a competitive resource. Based on renewed interest in the human capital theory, there is now a general consensus that a well-educated workforce is a key element to achieve competitiveness and prosperity. The management guru Peter Drucker once wrote: ‘The most valuable assets of a 20th century company was its production equipment. The most valuable asset of a 21st century institution, whether business or non-business, will

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be its knowledge workers and their productivity’ (1999). The Conference Board of Canada notes: ‘more than ever, employers depend on knowledgeable and skilful employees to create value-added products and services, efficiently and effectively, so that they can compete successfully’ (2001, p. 3). Economic prosperity in the global economy is becoming highly dependent on an ability to develop, attract and maintain a well-educated workforce. Recognizing the importance of knowledge, the Lisbon Summit (CEDEFOP, 2007) established an ambitious strategic goal for making Europe ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion by 2010.’ Education was a centre piece of that strategy. This radical transformation is based on the recognition that human resources are the European Union’s (EU) main asset and that investment in people is as important as investment in capital and equipment to achieve growth and improve productivity: ‘Never before had the EU been so clear about the crucial role of education and training in achieving economic progress and social inclusion’ (Otero & McCoshan, 2005, p. 8). As a result of these changes, the demand for skilled workers often exceeds the supply in many sectors of the economy. While education is considered a key for achieving economic progress and social inclusion, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is viewed as the ‘master key that can alleviate poverty, promote peace, conserve the environment, improve the quality of life for all and help achieve sustainable development’ (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2004). As a consequence, there have been sustained efforts in all regions of the world to improve the education and training systems, especially that of TVET.

6 The Miracle of Economic Development is within Reach The 1990s saw Ireland move from being among the ‘poorest of the poor’ to being one of the most rapidly growing industrialized countries, earning the name of the ‘Celtic Tiger’. Many factors have been invoked to explain Ireland’s economic boom (Burnham, 2003). The consensus that emerges is that not one, but numerous sensible policies, and internal and external situations, coalesced to contribute to the achievement of the Irish Miracle, including investment in physical infrastructure and human capital. Figure 1 shows the competitiveness pyramid model which helped to propel the economic prosperity of Ireland. As illustrated, the human capital element depicted by ‘labour supply’ is positioned as an essential enabler to achieve high productivity and sustain economic progress. Ireland initiated important educational reforms in the 1980s to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its human capital. In the area of TVET, funds were invested in the expansion the existing regional technical colleges. These institutions now offer tailored and flexible programmes, targeted at regional industry clusters. Ireland can now offer to investors a young, highly skilled and English-speaking


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Fig. 1 The NCC competitiveness pyramid Source: National Competitiveness Council, 2006.

workforce (OECD, 2006). Educational reform was an important enabler to the incredible success of the Irish economy. It is noteworthy that sustainable growth is at the apex of the Ireland’s competitiveness model. An important consideration: many people still believe that the goal of sustainable development and that of economic development are irreconcilable. Our ecological footprint suggests that our unsustainable approach to development is causing major ecological disasters, contaminating the air that we breathe, the water we drink, and causing other forms of irreversible harm to the environment. Reversing environmental degradation has become a global priority and world leaders recognize that environmental protection cannot be achieved without due consideration to economic and social development. The concept of sustainable development emerged from this critical reflection regarding the interdependence and interconnectedness between environmental protection and economic and social development. Sustainable development is thus commonly defined as ‘meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ The Irish competitiveness model embraces this triple bottomline paradigm. Education has the potential to equip the workforce with the critical skills that will enable workers to contribute to the goals of sustainable development. These skills clusters have been identified (Chinien et al., 2003) as follows: ethics and values; integrated decision-making; responsible use of resources; valuing diversity; safety and well-being; and continual improvement.

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7 The Benefits of Education and Skills Development Recent research shows that a one-year increase in average educational attainment of the population can yield a 5% increase in short-term growth and an additional increase of 2.5% in the long-term contribution to faster technological progress (Council of the European Union, 2004). Research sets the private rate of return on one year of education in terms of employment earning in the range of 7 to 15%, while the rate of social return is approximately 7% (Sweetman, 2002). A study conducted by the Australian National Centre for Vocational Education Research found a positive association between highest education level and employment and wages (Karmel & Nguyen, 2006). The 2006 assessment of the performance of the education systems of OECD countries also revealed that: ‘investment in education brings high social and private return, with completion of upper secondary education bringing a particularly large payback for individuals’ (OECD, 2007). Although the connection between skills and economic progress probably exists, it is less straightforward than sometimes assumed. ‘Skills are not the only, perhaps not even the most important, competitive factor in Europe’ (Otero & McCoshan, 2005, p. 8). The relationship between education and productivity is more complex than presented in most public policies. For example, Canada’s productivity level is not proportional to the share of the workforce with tertiary education. In contrast to the United States, which is among the most productive countries of the world, it achieves a high level of productivity using a small core of highly-skilled engineers and technicians and a large segment of low-skilled workers. Paradoxically, a significant proportion of university graduates in the United States are underemployed (Gray, 2002). Consequently, ‘blanket upskilling’ of the workforce would not necessarily yield higher productivity (Otero & McCoshan, 2005). In spite of the general consensus that education contributes to productivity which leads to prosperity and decent work, research conducted by Kusakabe (2005) showed differential effects of education for low-income, high-income and OECDincome countries. While primary education was important for lower- and higherincome countries in the 1980s, the correlation is now getting weaker. Secondary education is no longer a key determinant of growth in OECD countries as it used to be during the 1970s. However, it became key determinant of growth for lowerincome countries during the 1990s. Finally, in the period 1990 to 2000, tertiary education became an important determinant of growth for lower-income countries. This observation has led Maria Torres to severely criticize the emphasis of donor countries and other international organizations on literacy and primary education for developing countries—as it became obvious both will not pay dividends in the short term. Torres (2004) noted that countries of the North have realized the importance of human capital for economic development and social cohesion and inclusion. The ‘haves’ are still taking massive action to ensure a skilled workforce that will drive innovations and maintain competitiveness in world trade. These same countries have a double standard for countries of the South by advocating literacy development at the expense of skills development (Torres, 2004). The World Bank used to grant up to 40% of its educational loans for the development of TVET in developing countries. Today, educational loans for TVET account for only 8 to 9%.


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8 Effects of the New Economy on Jobs For some people, work over the past decade has become technologically complex, demanding sophisticated work skills. Others, as a result of unemployment, have been denied the satisfaction that comes from the challenge of work and the sense of achievement gained. The job market and jobs have become sharply polarized by a simultaneous increase in jobs requiring post-secondary education and casual jobs for unskilled workers. This polarization of the labour force is widening the inequalities between the haves and the have-nots and between the educated and less educated. Tuijnman noted: ‘Alienation, social exclusion, unemployment and slow productivity growth are among the consequences of limited capacity of some countries to adapt and fully exploit the opportunities offered in the global knowledge economy’ (1997, p. 4). The ILO (2007) reports that 195.2 million people were unemployed worldwide in 2006, despite strong global economic growth which has failed to translate into significant reductions in unemployment or poverty among the working population. There are 1.37 billion working people who are living on US$2 a day. Even the developed countries have not been spared. Maxwell noted: ‘despite all the talk about the explosion of knowledge-based economic activity and its contribution, 2 million adult Canadians work for less than $10 an hour—about one in six employed people’ (2000, p. 1). Surprisingly, many of these people are well educated. One-third of them have a post-secondary diploma or degree. The United States is experiencing the same kind of phenomenon. The results of recent surveys indicated that the rate of under-employment among four-year college graduates in the United States ranges from 40% to as much as 50% in the social sciences. Underemployment is severely taxing young, highly-educated workers (Gray, 2002). The ILO analysis suggest that young people aged 15 to 24 represent nearly half the world’s jobless, although they account for only 25% of the working-age population. Halving the world youth unemployment rate would add at least US$2.2 trillion to global gross domestic product, equal to around 4% of the 2003 value, according to an ILO analysis (ILO, 2004). Moreover, whether they are young adults or adult workers, ‘a high number of socially excluded people is a burden on economies and limits growth and investment in innovative and future-oriented areas and sectors’ (Tessaring & Wannan, 2004).

9 Effects of the New Economy on Skills Contrary to popular belief, the decline of industrial jobs in advanced economies is only partially related to globalization. Technological change has had a more profound impact on the labour market: ‘today’s workplaces are often in multi locations characterized by cultural diversity’ (Lynch, 2002, p. 7). Furthermore, in many organizations, relationships among competitors, suppliers and customers ‘are complex and boundaries have blurred between organizations and their environments’ (Hiniker & Putnam, 2002, p. 8). Advances in technology have helped to de-massify

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production, reduce economies of scale and boost industrial productivity to the extent of de-industrializing the economies, thus causing a movement of labour from industry to the service sector. There is a public perception that all service sector jobs are low-skill and low-paying. In reality, however, many good and well-paying jobs for highly-skilled workers have also been generated by the service sector, especially in more advanced countries (Camdessus, 1997). There seems to be no consensus regarding the impact of technological change on the workplace and its effects on jobs and skills. Some believe that technology is de-skilling jobs, while others argue that technology is up-skilling jobs. Tenets of up-skilling would argue that, in this emerging knowledge-intensive economy, the proletariat is being replaced by a ‘cognetariat’, where work is increasingly shifting away from manual tasks toward symbolic processing (Toffler & Toffler, 1995). The concept of ‘mind workers’ or knowledge workers has emerged from this transformation of work and it appears to be the fastest growing type of worker. An ILO study indicates that the introduction of ICTs can contribute both to up-skilling and deskilling of workers: ‘On the one hand, ICT can downgrade skills and competence to single-task machine-tending and, on the other, it can upgrade skills and competence to multi-task work relying on greater creativity’ (ILO, 2001, p. 9). The European Community’s ‘White Paper on education and training’ (1995) indicates that, with the advent of new technologies, Europe is moving toward a ‘cognitive society’ in which work content will be limited to tasks requiring initiative and flexibility on the part of the worker. The re-engineered workplace expects workers to perform ‘more complex tasks, use new technologies, involve less direct supervision of workers, and acquire the use of higher skill and knowledge levels in making-decisions and solving-problems individually and as members of collaborative work teams’ (Frantz et al., 1996, pp. 1–2). In the same vein, Lynch (2002) reported that ‘less than 20% of the workforce is in jobs classified as unskilled’ (p. 8) as opposed to 60% in 1959. The synergy of combining new technologies with human skills in the postindustrialized society has created a controversy regarding the effects of technology on skills. Those who posit that technology has augmented skill requirements advocate increased specialized job-skill training. On the other hand, proponents of the de-skilling concept argue that many trade skills traditionally imparted in TVET are no longer valued in the high-performance workplace. For this reason, they recommend the development of solid, basic foundation skills as well as generic, broadly transferable employability skills (Budke, 1988). This trend is more apparent in the service sector where entry requirements are less well-defined (Quebec. Ministry of Education, 1998). These conflicting messages ‘exacerbate a traditional split among educators and policymakers concerning the appropriate role and function of job training and vocational education’ (Budke, 1988, p. 11). Technical knowledge has a short shelf-life and workers of the future may expect to work on short-term assignments, on a contract basis, or within several project teams. They may have to work for more than one employer at any given time or even start new careers several times. Lifelong learning or continuing vocational education and training (CVET) is therefore an important element of the TVET system


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for continuous upgrading to keep pace with changing skill requirements. Lifelong learning is also desirable ‘in order to remedy the failures of traditional educational and socialization processes’ (Gasskov, 2001), which can have major consequences on employment prospects, labour productivity and decent work. However, research indicates that people with a low level of education are left behind in lifelong learning, while the more educated obtain more education and training. In some instances, lifelong learning has become the exemplar par excellence of the ‘rich getting richer’ (Myers & De Broucker, 2006). Furthermore, the United States Bureau of Labour Statistics indicated that the amount of training provided by the employer varies according to gender, age group and type of occupation, with workers in the service sector being less likely to receive training. This situation exacerbates qualification differences by up-skilling the already most highly skilled, rather than those that need it the most.

10 International Survey of TVET Reforms There is some strong empirical evidence demonstrating that TVET can indeed help to achieve economic growth by improving workers’ productivity (Malgen & Hopkins, 1998). Almost all nations have modernized, or are in the process of modernizing, their education and training system in order to ensure an adequate supply of highly-skilled workers. Reform initiated in the United States began with an open letter to the American people entitled ‘A nation at risk: the imperative for educational reform’, which was followed by a series of other successive policy initiatives: ‘Workforce 2000: work and workers for the 21st Century’; ‘Investing in people: strategy to address America’s workforce crisis’; ‘America’s choice: high skills or low wages’; and ‘The Secretary’s Commission on achieving necessary skills’. Canada responded by hosting a national summit on innovation and learning. A two-pronged innovation strategy emerged from that summit. The first was ‘Achieving excellence: investing in people, knowledge and opportunity’, which focuses mainly on creating and using knowledge as a national asset; strengthening Canada’s science and research capacity and, finally, building an innovative economy. The second innovation strategy was ‘Knowledge matters: skills and learning for Canadians’, which called for investment in people as a country’s most important resource, strengthening skills and learning, and enhancing opportunities for all to participate (Government of Canada, 2002a, 2002b.). Within the framework of the Lisbon goals, the main thrust of the reform movement of the European Union has been centred on: linking TVET to productivity, employment and social cohesion; improving the quality of TVET; establishment of national and European qualification frameworks; establishing a quality assurance framework; developing occupational standards; benchmarking TVET; improving the image and relevance of TVET; governance and financing of TVET; lifelong learning; recognition of prior learning and foreign credentials; improving social dialogues between stakeholders; addressing the needs of youth, displaced and older workers; and access and equity.

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Developing countries are also uniting their efforts in using TVET to harness the benefits of the knowledge-based economy. The African Union (AU) wants Africa to take advantage of education to carve its way to prosperity in the knowledge-based economy. In its Plan of Action for the Second Decade of Education (2006–2015), the AU ‘recognizes the importance of TVET as a means of empowering individuals to take control of their lives and recommends the integration of vocational training into the general education system’ (African Union, 2007, p. 1). The AU also reports on some TVET reform initiatives that have been very successful in Africa. For example, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania and Zambia have all established national training authorities and Ghana is in the process of establishing a Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training. A survey conducted by UNESCO (2005) indicates that Botswana, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Gambia, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Senegal, Tanzania and Togo have already adopted a national plan for TVET, while others—the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, the Seychelles and Uganda—were in the process of drafting or adopting a national strategy. Eight countries (Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Yemen) reported having implemented national polices and strategies for the development of TVET. The survey also revealed that two-thirds of the countries in the Asia and the Pacific region have implemented a national strategy to govern policy formulation and the planning and management of TVET. Over half of these countries have established specific initiatives to ensure the relevance of TVET with the world of work and to monitor the progress against some established benchmarks. This survey also revealed that the great majority of developing countries were using the UN Millennium Development Goals and UNESCO’s Education for All as the underpinning foundation for TVET reforms. Australia has also established a national strategy for the improvement of TVET for the period 2004–10, which has very similar objectives to the Lisbon goals and has been instrumental in achieving highly successful TVET reform in the country. The Australian success story in TVET is the result of successive and repeated commitment to TVET demonstrated through various policies, planning and investment initiatives formulated in the key national strategic plans, namely: ‘Towards a skilled Australia’ (1994–98); ‘A bridge to the future’ (1998–2003); and ‘Shaping our future’ (2004–10). Since 1998, Australia has showed a real commitment to fully develop and improve its TVET system. Today, the Australian TVET system is ‘recognized as among the best and most innovative in the world’ (McGauran, 2004).

11 Blueprint for Re-Engineering TVET UNESCO and the ILO have both made some very concrete recommendations for reforming TVET (UNESCO/ILO, 2002). A recent survey indicates that the great majority of States are using these recommendations as blueprints in their reform


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initiatives. The comprehensive national strategy adopted by Australia for improving TVET from 2004–10 is show-cased here as it adequately captures various worldwide initiatives for re-engineering TVET. The underpinning priorities of that Australian strategy are:


Increase participation in VET and improve performance of learners (particularly employed people). Improve access to information, guidance and counselling. Raise the image of VET and improve public recognition of its employment outcomes. Achieve equality in VET participation and learner attainment. Make sustained investment in technical and further education institutions (TAFE) and other registered training institutions. Promote partnerships between training providers and industry to drive innovation. Implement flexible funding models and planning and accountability approaches. Develop sustainable funding and encourage cost sharing. Strengthen industry’s role in anticipating skill needs and developing products and services to meet them. Improve learning pathways and transition from school to work. Improve the quality of VET. Simplify access to international VET markets (NCRVE, cited in CEDEFOP, 2007).

12 Overview of the Contributions To set the stage for the contributions included in this section, this overview has painted a picture of the landscape within which TVET must reinvent itself so that it can meet increasing expectations. Below is a brief summary of the nine chapters in this section which will each provide a more in-depth treatment of the various issues raised in this overview.

I.2 The Right to a New Utopia: Adult Learning and the Changing World of Work in an Era of Global Capitalism, by Budd L. Hall The author discusses economic globalization as a form of global market utopia and its impact on the lives and work of individuals. He then elaborates on possible responses to the form of this market vision, especially answers from the sphere of education and training. He finally endorses the right to what he calls a new utopian vision: ‘a vision which responds to the collective needs of the majority of persons in the world, not simply the few’.

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I.3 Decent Work for All: From ILO Initiative to Global Goal, by Peter Poschen Jobs have been polarized as good and bad jobs by the new economy. Peter Poschen’s chapter deals with the concept of decent work, which has been developed and applied by the ILO in recent years and which has been taken up by an increasing number of governments, as well as development organizations and other institutions. He discusses the relevance of decent work as a goal and a framework for policy formulation and gives examples of how the concept has contributed to policy debates at both national and international level. Special attention is given to the role of technical and vocational education and training in this context.

I.4 Redefining Gender Roles in the Workforce, by Karen F. Zuga Women are often left behind in various aspects of economic development. This chapter puts the focus on questions regarding redefining gender roles in the workforce. Aspects are: the contemporary roles of women and changes in these roles over time; issues and concerns that educators, trainers and society face as a result of such change or lack of change; and the influence of policy on that change. She finally discusses the question of how in particular vocational and technical educators should react as a result of the changing roles of women in the workforce.

I.5 Anticipation of Skill Requirements: European Activities and Approaches, by Manfred Tessaring Forecasting labour-market requirements and skills needs has become a very challenging task in the context of the new economy. Modern societies are characterized by rapidly changing social and economic conditions, increasing openness, permeability, complexity and therefore uncertainty. This development results in a need for new instruments that allow the early identification of skill requirements and facilitate updating and re-adjusting the design of education, initial vocational training and continuing training. In his article, Tessaring gives an account of European activities and approaches to deal with this situation.

I.6 Redefining the Status of Occupations, by Walter R. Heinz Heinz’s contribution focuses on the controversy regarding the concept of ‘occupation’. While there is a lot of literature suggesting that the concept of occupation is outdated, Heinz argues that ‘there is no end of occupation, but a transformation towards a new constellation of training, competence, work and company organization,


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due to a complex combination of economic, cultural and social changes’. His discussion focuses on Germany as a prototype for an occupation-centred society characterized by a highly standardized system of vocational education and training.

I.7 Changing Work, Work Practice: The Consequences for Vocational Education, by Stephen Billett Billett’s contribution discusses the changing characteristics of work, work practice and work requirements, and the impact they have on vocational education and training. His chapter provides an overview of different patterns of change to work and working life and discusses policy and curriculum practice associated with each.

I.8 Traditional and Transitional TVET Systems, by Poonam Agrawal Various forces are transforming the TVET system. In his chapter, Agrawal deals with the role of tradition when social and economic developments require education systems to adapt. Agrawal argues that ‘whatever is transitional today may become a tradition in times to come and something that had been a tradition may again find a place in transitional and futuristic systems’. He concludes that tradition needs to be viewed and discussed in the local context with in-built reference to the global scenario.

I.9 Partnering to Meet the Needs of a Changing Workplace, by LuAnn Hiniker and Robert A. Putnam Best practice examples and lessons learned from various countries indicate that social dialogues and stakeholders’ involvement and partnership are key elements for successful TVET reforms. The chapter deals with partnerships between education and industry. This can provide the technology and innovations necessary to provide a flexible learning framework to meet the needs of today’s lifelong learners. Fostering collaborative and innovative partnerships will help enable business, industry and higher education to transform in this high-speed information age. Nationwide studies will provide the identification of key characteristics of the changing workplace and evidence of the potential for successful new partnerships. The lack of highly-skilled workers, the growing needs for access to education by lifelong learners and the difficulty in forming fruitful partnerships are addressed in this paper.

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I.10 Bridging the Learning Divide: A Study into Adult Learning and Peer Motivation in the Workplace, by David Johnson Finally, David Johnson’s chapter points out that there is a significant number of working people with low basic skills and information technology skills who have difficulties in accessing learning provision. Johnson argues that, while there is no shortage of supply-side solutions to raising the skills levels of adult learners, there appears to be a significant problem on the demand-side. The failure to bridge this ‘learning divide’ has created a wide training gap in the United Kingdom, which has denied many adults access to learning and career opportunities. Johnson outlines a research project which seeks to address the difficulty of engaging or re-engaging working and other adults in learning opportunities through trade-union learning champions and a methodology for studying the learning trajectories of those who do.

References African Union. 2007. Strategy to revitalize technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in Africa. (Final Report. Third Ordinary Session of the Conference of Ministers of Education of the African Union (COMEDAF III), 6 to 10 August 2007, Johannesburg, South Africa.) Alstyne, van M. 1997. State of the network organization. Journal of organizational computing & electronic commerce, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 83–151. Budke, W. 1988. Trends and issues in vocational education. Columbus, OH: Center on Education and Training for Employment. (Information series, no. 334.) Burnham, J.B. 2003. Why Ireland boomed. The Independent review, vol. 7, no. 4. Camdessus, M. 1997. Making globalization work for workers. (Address to the twenty-fourth Congress of the World Confederation of Labour, Bangkok, Thailand, 2 December 1997.) Castells, M. 1996. The rise of the network society. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. CEDEFOP. 2007. Zooming in on 2010: reassessing vocational education and training. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. (Edited by P. Lipinska, E. Schmid and M. Tessaring.) Chinien, C. et al. 2002. New times and new ways for learning and skill development. (Main working document for the UNESCO-UNEVOC-Canada International Conference on Developing Skills for the New Economy, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.) Chinien, C. et al. 2003. Skills to last: broadly transferable sustainable development skills for the Canadian workforce. Ottawa: Human Resources and Social Development Canada. (A technical report for the National Centre for Workforce Development.) Conference Board of Canada. 2001. Brain gain: the economic benefits of recognizing learning and learning credentials in Canada. <www.campuscanada.ca/new/foreign/brain gain detailed findings.pdf> Council of the European Union. 2004. Education & training 2010: the success of the Lisbon strategy hinges on urgent reforms. Brussels: Council of the European Union. (Document 6905/04 – EDUC 43.) Drucker, P.F. 1999. Management challenges for the 21st century. New York, NY: HarperCollins. European Community. 1995. White Paper on education and training: teaching and learning: towards the learning society. Brussels: European Community. (COM (95) 590 final.) Frantz, N.R. Jr.; et al. 1996. Standards of quality for the preparation and certification of trade and industrial (T&I) education teachers. Journal of industrial teacher educators, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 41–66.


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Gasskov, V. 2001. Government interventions in private financing of training. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Government of Canada. 2002a. Achieving excellence: investing in people, knowledge and opportunity. Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services. Government of Canada. 2002b. Knowledge matters: skills and learning for Canadians. Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services. Gray, K. 2002. Skills shortages, underemployment and youth: the quiet international dilemma. (Paper presented at the International Conference on Technical and Vocational Education and Training, sponsored by the Canadian Vocational Association and UNESCO-UNEVOC-Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 17–19 October 2002.) Hiniker, L.; Putnam, A.R. 2002. Partnering to meet the needs of a changing workplace. (Paper presented at the International Conference on Technical and Vocational Education and Training, sponsored by the Canadian Vocational Association and UNESCO-UNEVOC-Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 17-19 October 2002.) Industry Canada. 2007. Backgrounder: creation of the Competition Policy Review Panel. <www.ic.gc.ca/cmb/welcomeic.nsf/> International Labour Organization. 2001. World employment report: life at work in the information economy. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. (CD-Rom.) International Labour Organization. 2004. Global employment trends for youth. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. International Labour Organization. 2007. Global employment trends. <www.ilo.org/public/ english/employment/strat/global.htm> Jarillo, C. 1988. On strategic networks. Strategic management journal, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 31–41. Karmel, T.; Nguyen, N. 2006. The value of completing a vocational education and training qualification. Adelaide, Australia: National Centre for Vocational Education Research. Kusakabe, M. 2005. ICT and national innovation system: is ICT engine of growth? (Presentation made at the International Workshop on Workforce Development for Knowledge Economy, 7-13 September 2005, Seoul, Republic of Korea.) <www.ictseminar.org/APU2007/Lesson9.asp> Lynch, R.L. 2002. New directions for high school career and technical education in the United States. (Paper presented at the International Conference on Technical and Vocational Education and Training, sponsored by the Canadian Vocational Association and UNESCO-UNEVOCCanada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 17–19 October 2002.) McGauran, P. 2004. Why science and innovation is the key to Australia’s economic prosperity. (CEDA WA Luncheon speech, 20 April 2004.) Malgen, L.; Hopkins, S. 1998. Linking VET to productivity differences: an evaluation of the Prais program, and its implications for Australia. Clayton, Australia: Monash University. (Working paper, no. 18.) (ED 426 184.) Maxwell, J. 2000. Smart social policy: ‘making work pay’. Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks. Myers, K.; De Broucker, P. 2006. Too many left behind: Canada’s adult education and training system. Ottawa: CPRN. (Canadian Policy Research Network Research report W34.) National Competitiveness Council. 2006. The NCC Competitiveness Pyramid. <www. competitiveness.ie/ncc/reports/ncc annual 06/ch01/ch01 00.html#fn5> Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2006. Education at a glance, 2005. Paris: OECD. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2007. Education at a glance 2006: highlights. Paris: OECD. Otero, M.S.; McCoshan, A. 2005. Study on access to education and training: Tender No EAC/38/o4, Lot 1. Final Report for the European Commission. Birmingham, UK: ECOTEC Research and Consulting Limited. Quebec. Ministry of Education. 1998. OECD thematic review: the transformation from initial education to working life. (Reference document co-ordinated for the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, Third National Forum on Education: Education and Life: Transitions, St. John’s, Newfoundland.)

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Chapter I.2

The Right to a New Utopia: Adult Learning and the Changing World of Work in an Era of Global Capitalism Budd L. Hall

We make, by art, in [. . .] orchards and gardens, trees and flowers to come earlier or later than their seasons; and to come up and bear more speedily than by the natural course they do. We make them also by art greater much than their nature: and their fruit greater and sweeter and of differing taste, smell, colour and figure, from their nature. Francis Bacon, New Atlantis, 1627. I think economic life is for teaching our species it has responsibilities to the planet and the rest of nature. Jane Jacobs, The nature of economies, 2000.

1 Introduction In this article I will do four things: examine economic globalization as a form of global market utopia; discuss the impact of this project on our lives and on our work; explore responses to the form that this market vision takes; and, finally, make a case for new utopian visions. John Carey, in his introduction to the Faber book of utopias (1999), tells us that: ‘Anyone who is capable of love must at some time have wanted the world to be a better place, for we all want our loved ones to live free of suffering, injustice and heartbreak.’ He goes on to say of utopian ideas that: ‘their imaginative excitement comes from the recognition that everything inside our heads, and much outside, are human constructs and can be changed.’ He ominously notes as well that: ‘They [utopian projects] aim at a New World, but must destroy the old’ (p. xi). I have found Carey’s views on utopias and his encyclopedic anthology of visions from all ages and from all parts of the world fascinating and helpful. The idea of utopian projects helps me to understand both the power of the current market dreams and the importance of recovering our own right to create new utopias. Globalization is a utopian vision. The creation of an integrated twenty-four hours per day economic system that allows total freedom for investors to find cheap money to borrow and high returns on investment anywhere in the world—is a dream. That all limits on corporate and individual profits would be removed—is a dream. That all workers in all countries would be integrated into global networks of production R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 I.2, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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and consumption that produce untold profits for investors—is a dream. That responsibilities to shareholders could take precedence over health and safety and environmental concerns—is a dream. Evidence of the power and excitement of this dream is that multinational corporations have joined with political leaders to promote this idea as the only dream leading to the possibility of making a better world. Not only is globalization the way for individual investors to accumulate riches beyond their wildest fantasies, but (thank heavens) the market utopia is also—its architects would argue—the best hope we have ever had of reducing poverty and creating a better world at home and abroad. The global market utopia is a dream, but it may not be our dream. It may not be a dream for all. And bear in mind, as I have earlier noted, that like all utopias this one ‘must destroy the old’ (Carey, 1999).

2 The Global Market Utopia Globalization is being experienced through a variety of forms and practices. Important dimensions of globalization also include the economy, the State, communications, movements of people, sales of arms, and violence and crime. The most dramatic financial figure, which illustrates the contemporary global market, is that each day about one-and-a-half trillion disconnected dollars change hands in financial transactions totally apart from funds needed for global trade purposes. These transactions have to do with currency speculation by private and public banks, with investments of all kinds through the computerized stock markets of the world, with bond undertakings at both private and State levels. Political leadership in most parts of the world has joined the call for each of us to play our part in the competitive global market. Products are assembled everywhere, sold everywhere, crossing borders sometimes scores of time before finding an ultimate place of rest or sale. And the movement of durable goods does not stop with sale. Within days, weeks or years most of the goods produced in the contemporary world will be discarded and our goods then rejoin the global search for another resting-place. If we live in cities, we send our waste to rural areas. If our waste is poisonous or toxic, we will send it to the furthest reaches of our countries or, failing that, to the poorest parts of the world where countries fight over the right to become a dumping ground for the waste of the rich. Jobs, health and safety conditions, environmental regulations, human rights and immigration policies are thrown out as deregulation on a global basis strips national legislation of its force. The State itself has taken on global forms. The richest States of Europe now work together in a powerful economic union where the restrictions and limitations of individual governments are giving way to regional forms of State control. In Asia, no serious economic decisions are taken by a single State government without direct or indirect talks with governments of trading partners, such as Australia, China, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan and, increasingly, Malaysia and Thailand. The United Nations system and related regional banking and development agencies are a further layer of an internationalized State

I.2 The Right to a New Utopia

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function. These multi-lateral bodies have more power and influence in the medium and smaller States, with institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank taking on nearly full control of economies in the least-powerful States. Crime and violence are also disturbing features of our globalizing world. The complex combination of rich country drug use and poor country weak economies creates patterns of international activity taking advantage of all the modern means of communications and money transfers. All of the world’s people are caught in vicious patterns of cruelty and violence that spill over into each and every one of our homes (Commission on Global Governance, 1995). The arms trade is another dimension of globalization. While overall world expenditure on the military has declined since the 1989 accords between the former USSR and the United States, the arms trade itself has taken on a new life. The United States in particular has accelerated its sales from roughly $9 billion in 1987 to over $22 billion in 1992 to over $50 billion in 2000. In that same period the former USSR has decreased arms transfers from $30 billion to $2.8 billion. According to the war historian John Keegan: Those who have died in war since 1945 by cheap, mass-produced weapons have, for the most part, been killed by small-calibre ammunition costing little more than the transistor radios and batteries which flooded the world during the same period (1994).

Among the low-cost weapons that cross our borders each day are landmines produced for a few dollars each and capable of killing or maiming a person with ease. There are an estimated 100 million landmines distributed in roughly sixty countries around the globe (Grimmett, 1994). While money flows with the speed of light, goods and services at the speed of air and sea transport, people are also more mobile than ever before. The combination of economic destruction, civil conflict and positive inducements to move has created global movements of people. In global terms, over 100 million people are refugees against their choice, living in countries that they were not born in (UNHCR, 1995). Of course, people do not move as easily as either goods or finance capital. Much of the contemporary movement of peoples is involuntary movement as economic and political refugees are forced to shift from their homes in search of security or a means to survive. This is in spite of the fact that obstacles to the movement of people from the poorer nations to the richer are exceedingly difficult to overcome. It would seem that at least one vision of the ‘market utopia’ is that people will stay in communities where low wages can be sustained while technology, tools and capital will move freely. In Canada, for example, money can move between Mexico, the United States and national financial institutions with ease, but for people it is more difficult. The open capital market has not produced an open labour market. In spite of the legal restrictions against movement between these three nations—partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—there are very large illegal movements of people from Mexico to the United States, some illegal Canadian movement into the United States as well, and vast displacements of persons from the rural areas of Mexico, Canada and the United States to places where their chances of finding jobs are better. As Miguel Darcy de Oliveira and Rajesh Tandon observe:

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‘the weaker, the more vulnerable, the powerless, those who do not produce or consume anything of value for the world market, those who can hardly be privatised or internationalised, are becoming expendable’ (1995, p. 7).

3 Further Impact of the Global Market Utopia 3.1 On Children Canadian scholars John McMurty and Teresa Turner, in a paper on the impact of globalization on the world’s children, argue that: ‘In truth what unifies global corporate investment patterns today is a ruling principle that is blind to the well-being or ill-being of children’ (2000). Dependency on gross national product (GNP) and similar economic indicators is obscuring a rising tide of social disintegration and exclusion. The cry is expressed on the ground with the unprecedented horror of families selling their own children in exponentially rising numbers as sex-slaves into the new free market economies, with tens of millions of children across the world now driven not only into forced prostitution, but street beggary, slave labour and military enslavement as a consequence of the impoverishment of their families in the globalization dynamics (McMurtry & Turner, 2000).

3.2 On the Rise of Social Exclusion The impact of globalization is not, of course, only on children or only in the majority world countries. In 1999, the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation of OECD came out with a study that examines the role of adult learning in overcoming exclusion. In this study they draw attention to the report provided for the meeting of Social Policy Ministers in 1998, which notes that: The labour market has turned against low-skilled workers, who in all countries are more likely to find themselves unemployed, non-employed or earning lower wages than their better-educated colleagues [. . .] Unemployment remains high—35 million or 7% of the work force [. . .] over half of all unemployed persons had been so for more than 12 months [. . .] households where children are present are much more likely to have low incomes than they were 10–20 years ago (CERI, 1999, p. 18).

Accumulated evidence from the ‘rich’ countries is that there are widening income inequalities, worrying levels of unemployment and inactivity and growing poverty often amid a general increase in affluence. In Ontario, Canada, household incomes after taxes dropped from $43,500 in 1990 to $41,800 in 1997. For those in the poorest 20% of the income spectrum there was a 7.3% decline from $12,066 in 1995 to $11,185 in 1997. In the entire group of OECD countries, there are a growing number of families where there are no wage earners, as well as a vast majority where all adult members of the family are obliged to work. Indeed, one in five of all households in OECD countries are now considered ‘work-poor’. They are


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working, but at such low-income levels as to leave them below the poverty line in their respective countries.

3.3 On the Environment On 24 November 2000 we learned that the Global Conference on Climate Change meeting in The Hague had failed to reach agreement on measures to be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And this occurred just over one year after we learned that two islands in the Kiribati Archipelago in the South Pacific were the first to be submerged by rising sea levels due to global warming—others in the area are also in danger. Canada, along with Australia, Japan and the United States, was one of the countries that was reluctant in making an agreement that would in any way slow down the super-heated production of automobiles or cut back other industrial processes threatening the rest of the world. Canada has the highest per capita consumption of energy of any country on Earth. But rather than take a creative look at what we might do to provide leadership for greener options, the Canadian government prefers to hold out for its vast forest areas to be considered as credits in the global warming game for their role as global air filters. The facts of the matter are that those kinds of life-styles and consumer patterns that fuel the global market utopia are a cancer for the planet. In the insightful work by Wackernagel and Rees, Our ecological footprint, they outline a method for determining the percentage of the world’s resources that we use as individuals, as communities or as whole nations. Their complex formula points out that if the entire world were to achieve the same levels of development and growth that characterize those of us who live in rich countries, we would need four entire planets worth of energy resources to satisfy these demands. Clearly we are on an ecological collision path between a utopia of the rich and the carrying capacity of a still fragile planet.

3.4 Effects on the Structure of Work As capital has loosened itself from the restrictions of the nation-State, so too has production. In Canada we assemble ‘American’ automobiles from parts that are made in both Europe and Asia and flown in for ‘just-in-time’ assembly in the auto plants of southern Ontario and Quebec. The tomatoes we buy in Canada (except during our short growing season) are harvested by women workers in Mexico where regulations on the use of toxic chemicals for production are lower. There are few clothes now available for purchase in Canada that are made—to use that old fashioned concept—‘at home’. On the North American continent, as in other parts of the world, production has been growing dramatically in the border area between the United States and Mexico. There, in what are called the maquiladoras, lower-paid Mexican workers, a majority of whom are women, live in company dormitories, work in U.S.-owned factories and send money home to their families

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in poverty-stricken northern Mexico. But, in a newer trend, we are also seeing, for example, that New York City immigrant sweatshops can be as competitive on the global market as similar workplaces in Thailand (Sassen, 1991). I am indebted to a colleague, Brian Milani, for his book Designing the green economy (2000) and its insights on the restructuring of work. Technological change has had an extraordinary impact on production. The dominant tendency, however, remains the one which has prevailed throughout the age of industrialization: that of the de-skilling of direct production. Rifkin in his study of work change in the United States estimates that 90 million jobs in the U.S. are vulnerable to replacement by machines. More and more, we are finding that creative, fulfilling jobs are becoming rarer and rarer: ‘islands in a sea of work degradation’ (Milani, 2000, p. 39). The explosion in producer services has fed into a polarization not only between nations, but also within nations as the fastest growing categories of workers are janitors, sales clerks, fast-food workers and security guards. Contrary to popular opinion or policy documents from governments, most new jobs are and will be low-paid jobs. The U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics projected the greatest number of jobs as cashiers, janitors, truck drivers, waiters and waitresses. In a recent report from Statistics Canada, it was reported that the fastest growth in jobs for men in Canada was as truck drivers. And at the same time the State continues to push for more ‘flexibility’ in labour conditions. In the province of Ontario, the Conservative Government introduced legislation that would make it legal for workers to work up to sixty hours per week if asked by their employers, after a tradition of nearly fifty years of a forty-hour work week. At the same time, it is well documented that the pay of senior executives has grown much faster than average earnings. Some 86% of executives in the top 500 companies in the United States received an average salary of $8 million dollars a year in 1999. In doing so, they earned 60% more than any of their counterparts in any other part of the world. They were compensated at a rate thirty-four times that of the average factory worker. This compares with multiples of fifteen to twenty in Europe. If there has been a growth in low-wage work for those fortunate enough to work in the larger globalizing companies of our rich countries, we are seeing a dizzying variety of new practices in the workplace. As Foley notes in his book on strategic learning: ‘As corporations and national economies compete for market share, it is increasingly recognized that what makes the difference is the quality of an organization’s human resources—its workers and managers’ (2001, p. 9). It follows that there is a dramatic need to engage workers and managers in the goals, vision and ambitions of the new enterprises if a given sector or company is to tap the larger reservoir of worker-manager knowledge advance in the global market. The attraction for the owners of twenty-first century businesses is the various approaches from high-performing teams, learning organizations, spirituality in the workplace or ‘360◦ ’ training. Increased performance and productivity are the bottom line. If the workforce can create more collective knowledge for company competitiveness, feel more involved in the destiny of the company and generate massive profits for the shareholders, so much the better.


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4 Responses to Globalization All present understood that the free market was another name for God, but then again, when one got to thinking about it, the market, like God, didn’t always answer everybody’s prayers. Lewis Lapham, The agony of Mammon, 1998 (p. 23).

Lewis Lapham is the editor of Harper’s magazine, a liberal publication in the United States of America. Some years ago, he had an opportunity to take part as a journalist in the Davos World Economic Forum, the club of 1,100 corporate and world leaders who collectively drive the Global Market Utopia. His account of his experience has been published in a book subtitled ‘The Imperial Global Economy Explains Itself to the Membership in Davos, Switzerland’. What is particularly insightful about this account of corridor conversations and as a witness to presentations by the most powerful of our world are the huge layers of uncertainty. The overwhelming topic of conversation (aside from remarks about the Monica Lewinsky affair which had just been revealed) was about the search for security on the one hand and the search for a moral grounding on the other. On 6 November 2000, Business week, an influential business magazine in the United States, published an article entitled ‘Global Capitalism: Can It Be Made to Work Better?’ The writers noted that: ‘There is no point denying that multinationals have contributed to labor, environmental and human rights abuses.’ They quote John Ruggie, the then Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, as saying that: ‘The current system is unsustainable.’ And in one of the most chilling admissions I have yet seen, they report that: ‘The downside of global capitalism is the disruption of whole societies’ Eric Hobsbawn, one of the most respected western historians, in his seminal history of the twentieth century notes that: ‘for the first time in two centuries, the world of the 1990s entirely lacked any international system or structure’ (1994, p. 559). He goes on to say that: ‘In short, the century ended in a global disorder whose nature was unclear and without an obvious mechanism for either ending it or keeping in under control’ (1994, p. 562). He closes his work with a plea to look towards something new: The forces generated by the techno-scientific economy are now great enough to destroy the environment, that is to say, the material foundations of life. The structures of human societies themselves including even some of the social foundations of the capitalist economy are on the point of being destroyed by the erosion of what we have inherited from the past. Our world risks both explosion and implosion. It must change (pp. 584-85).

Jorge Nef, a global security political scientist, in a study published by the Canadianbased International Development Research Centre, cautions us that: the seemingly secure societies of the North are increasingly vulnerable to events in the lesser secure and hence underdeveloped regions of our globe, in a manner that conventional international relations theory and development have failed to account for (1997, p. 13).

Nef continues adding that: ‘In the midst of the current crisis, the established flow of information, ideas, science and worldviews is being shattered’ (p. 94).

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Benjamin Barber, a political scientist based in the United States, has outlined his views in a fascinating book called Jihad vs. McWorld. Jihad forges communities of blood rooted in exclusion and hatred [. . .] McWorld forges global markets rooted in consumption and profit, leaving to an untrustworthy, if not altogether factitious invisible hand issues of public interest and common good that once might have been nurtured by democratic citizenries and their watchful governments.

‘Unless we can offer,’ Barber continues, ‘an alternative to the struggle between Jihad and McWorld, the epoch on whose threshold we stand is likely to be terminally post-democratic’ (1995, p. 7) What about geographers? The American author Herod notes in the introduction to his book, An unruly world? Globalization, governance and geography, that: ‘One might be tempted to proclaim at centuries end the emergence of an unruly epoch of ungovernable, turbulent and disorderly global space’ (1998, p. 1) Lester R. Brown, the respected director of the Worldwatch Institute, notes that: ‘In effect, we are behaving as though we have no children, as though there will not be a next generation’ (1998, p. 19). Daly and Cobb, in their powerful plea for an economics that reflects the environmental and human realities of our planet, note that: At a deep level of our being we find it hard to suppress the cry of anguish, the scream of horror [. . .] the wild words required to express wild realities. We human beings are being led to a dead end—all too literally. [. . .] The global system will change during the next forty years, because it will be physically forced to change. But if humanity waits until it is physically compelled to change, its options will be few indeed (1989, p. 13).

5 Responses from the Worlds of Adult Education and Training Adult education and training are intimately linked to our daily lives, our working lives, our legislative and professional possibilities and, obviously, to the larger political economic frameworks of our times. Adult educators and trainers have a complex approach to the changing world that we are facing. Given the dominance of the global market utopia, we might look at responses from the communities of adult education and training as facilitating this utopia, at making the best of global market implications or transforming relations of power. In fact, our adult education and training policy frameworks quite often contain elements of all three educational responses.

5.1 Facilitating a Market Utopia The British Secretary of State notes in the foreword to the 1999 Green Paper on Learning to succeed that: The skill needs of the future will be different from those of today and it is clear that we will not keep pace with the modern economies of our competitors, if we are unable to match


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today’s skills with the challenge of the developing information and communication age of tomorrow. As labour markets change, we must develop a new approach to skills and to enabling people, and businesses, to succeed (United Kingdom. Secretary of State, 1999, p. 2)

Indeed, there has been a dramatic growth in adult education participation in the past ten to fifteen years. According to Belanger and Federighi, the percentage of the adult population participating in some form of adult learning activities in 1994/1995 in the industrialized nations ranged from 14% in Poland to 53% in Sweden, with Australia and Canada at 39% and 38% respectively (2000, p. 6). The vast majority of this provision is for labour-market learning in areas of new information technologies, restructuring of larger enterprises and training related to lower-end employment opportunities. National adult education policies in Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, India, Ireland, Slovenia, South Africa, the United States and Venezuela have emphasized this important new requirement for global survival. The provision of vocational education is, of course, also an area into which the private sector has itself moved with the utmost vigour. Adult learning is not only needed for the global market, but in many ways has become part of the global market itself. Adult learning has been variously estimated to represent a huge potential global market—if it could be fully privatized—of upward of US$90 billion. Prior to 2001, in the province of Ontario in Canada, private universities had not been legal. As a result of openness on the part of the government, however, some sixty proposals in the Ministry of Education sought endorsement from private for-profit universities waiting to move into the field.

5.2 Making the Best of the Market Belanger and Federighi’s recent transnational study of adult learning policies, Unlocking people’s creative forces, makes perhaps the most eloquent case for an adult education framework that responds to both the economic as well as the individual and collective demand for adult learning. Written in the spirit of the 1997 Hamburg Declaration, of which Belanger himself was the architect, this book makes the case for a broad vision of adult learning meeting a variety of needs: In order to survive and improve their lives, adult men and women on every continent are striving to develop the means to enhance their capacity to act and to understand the ways of the world. Adult learning also has strategic importance for economic actors today. Risk management strategies, economic policy, environmental and health policies all invariably rely on continually raising people’s competencies and skills. Similarly, traditional and new types of popular movements and national liberation projects call for strengthening and spreading the capacity for initiative so that people can deal with the challenges facing them, bring about change and take an active part in economic and social development (2000, p. 2).

One of the most creative approaches to taking up the global market challenge from an adult learning and organizational change perspective that I have come across is the recent work carried out by the Australian adult educator Griff Foley. Better known for his work on teaching and learning processes and for his widely respected

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writings on radical or social movement learning, Foley has in the past several years entered fully into the world of the workplace, learning and change. In a book on what he calls ‘strategic learning’, Foley outlines a vision for an approach to organizational learning that he feels is both strategic and emancipator: A ‘strategic learning’ approach rejects the attempt to recast adult education and learning simply as an instrument for improving performance and productivity. It sees learning as complex (formal and informal, constructive and destructive, contested and contextual). It assumes that critical and emancipatory learning is possible and necessary. It asserts that a first step to their realisation is an honest investigation of what people are actually learning and teaching each other in different sites—workplaces, families, communities, the mass media, social movements (2001, p. 20).

Foley also calls for a new foundation of workplace learning. He considers that an appropriate analytic framework for workplace learning should include: (a) the nature of and reasons for the long-running global economic crisis; (b) the character and logic of the capitalist political economy; (c) the character and logic of work in capitalism; (d) the experiential learning of people in changing workplaces; (d) the unconscious dimension of workplace learning; and (e) gender relations in workplaces (p. 63).

5.3 Resisting and Transforming It may be argued that more adults learned about the nature of global market structures and the problems generated by them in the several days of the Seattle demonstrations before the WTO meetings in 1999 than from any adult education conference yet organized. There has been a dramatic increase in social movement learning linked directly to the anti-globalization struggles. Young people, trade unionists, activists from the majority world came together in Seattle, as they had in lesser numbers in other cities before and as they have since then in Prague, Washington DC and Windsor, Ontario, Canada. A new global civil society is a reality. The same computer networks, which support global flow of capital, are beginning to support a more active flow of ideas for resisting and transforming the global market frameworks. I would urge those interested to log on to the global web-sites of the ICFTU (www.icftu.org) for a rich array of educational materials and ideas for strategic thinking about all aspects of globalization and its transformation. You will find language for policy documents and collective bargaining that goes beyond the adaptation to global markets. Similarly, LabourStart, a project of the Labour NewsWire Global Network (www.labourstart.org) is a sophisticated educational and information service for trade-union educators and others interested in a labour perspective on the changing workplace. The world of adult education networks itself has undergone substantial changes. The International Council for Adult Education (ICAE), a global network of some 700 local and national NGOs interested in adult learning, organized a sixth World Assembly of Adult Education in Jamaica in 2001, calling for global advocacy towards adult learning for individual and collective transformation in the age of


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globalization. One of the most effective regional groups affiliated with the ICAE is the Asia and South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education (ASPBAE). Their web site (www.aspbae.org) is another vital resource for a transformative vision of adult education.

6 The Right to a New Utopia The most powerful instruments for transforming the world that we have are our own minds. UNESCO’s 1985 Declaration on the Right to Learn spoke, among other things, of the right to imagine. We have the right to a new utopian vision, a vision that responds to the collective needs of the majority of persons in the world, not simply the few. We need to grasp the power of the utopic vision for ourselves. The global market utopia is held in place by coercion and force, but it is most firmly supported because we share at least a part of the dream that this global utopia speaks to, but does not deliver. In part, we want to believe that by following the strictures of the global market we will find our way to a more secure world. Linda McQuaig, a Canadian journalist, in her recent book, The cult of impotence: selling the myth of powerlessness in the global economy, notes that: We have become convinced that we are collectively powerless in the face of international financial markets. And with the widespread acceptance of this view the rich have proceeded to create a world in which the rights of capital have been given precedence over and protection against interference from the electorate (1998, p. 283).

She argues that, in the case of Canada, we have been ‘sold’ a myth of powerlessness because it serves the interests of the current ruling alliances—not because, in fact, we do not have any power as citizens. I believe that her arguments hold true for many parts of the world. We have both the ideas and the means of implementing these ideas, if only our gaze could begin to be focused on new directions. It is a time to claim back the power of the utopian vision. In claiming back the power of a vision of the world that we want—as opposed to the world we do not want—adult learning has an important role to play. In surveys conducted in Canada, it has been found that adults already engage in, on average, eight hours of autonomous informal learning on their own. The individual and social demand for learning is a transformative force of the greatest power. The adult learning and training world is further rich with already existing networks, websites, newsletters, conferences and other structures of communications to support social demands for adult learning. We have established approaches that research has proven to be effective in supporting adult learning in a variety of settings. It is time for the resources and capabilities of the adult learning communities to support the search for new utopian visions. New utopian visions are found in local community gardens, in community shared agricultural schemes, in individual and family choices to live more simple lives, in the large and still growing movement for ‘green economic development’, for social economies of varying kinds and in the literally millions of creative ideas that women and men are engaged in as ways to survive in a world

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which they do not like, yet know not how to change. It is time for us to claim the right to a new utopia in our workplaces. Adult education and training can support the release of our creativity and imagination. We have the right, as Paulo Freire said, to become agents in our own history. For those of you who doubt the power of citizens working together, consider this fascinating account in the Economist’s publication The world in 2001: The anti-capitalists have been winning the battle of ideas [. . .] despite having no ideas worthy of the name. In 2001, their influence on governments and in boardrooms is going to increase. Equally worrying is the influence that they are having with big western companies which nowadays feel obligated to bow down before bogus nostrums of ‘corporate responsibility’.

And in another article in the same issue, Activists have already seized the initiative on global trade. They succeeded in scuttling both the OECD’s Multilateral Agreement on Investment in 1998 and the launch of the WTO’s new global trade talks a year later [. . .] This means that at the very best trade liberalisation is stalled (emphasis added).

In Which world: scenarios for the 21st century, Alan Hammond of the Worldwatch Institute reports on a research project that extrapolates current global trends in three different scenarios. This research suggests that, roughly speaking, the contemporary context provides evidence for what he calls Market World, Fortress World and Transformed World. In Market World, we see the extension of the global free-trade agenda—what I call the global market utopia. It is however a vision, which still contains nearly all prevailing economic and political power and influence. Fortress World arises in the scenario that sees market-led forces failing to redress social disparities, eventually leading to stagnation and fragmentation. Resources are shifted rapidly to security issues to contain growing violence and conflict. In Transformed World, also drawn from existing trends and the beginnings of new global civil society movements, we see a society with transformed values and cultural norms in which power is more widely shared and in which new social coalitions work from the grassroots up to shape what governments do. The market still exists, but it is balanced by other needs. In reality, of course, the future, as the present, will contain aspects of all three scenarios, but in what proportion, in what combination and for whom? Ulrich Beck explains it this way: ‘There is no lack of ideas for changing society. Today (just as in earlier revolutions) many contemporaries carry plans for changing the world around with them in their breast pocket or their heart’ (2000). Gandhi, according to Vandana Shiva (1998), elaborated the concept of swadeshi, an economic self-reliance based on the conviction that: ‘people possess both materially and morally what they need to evolve and design their society and economy and free themselves of oppressive structures.’ Indigenous knowledge, long suppressed, offers ideas for the future as well. From the book by Sefa Dei, Hall and Goldin-Rosenberg: We need to understand and move beyond the often genocidal effects of decades of colonialism and maldevelopment practices [. . .] We need to call for locally defined models of


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sustainability which will prevail the lived realities of local peoples with all their social, cultural, political, spiritual, moral and ecological goals and aspirations (2000).

Samir Amin, the veteran majority world political economist, notes that: ‘a humanistic response to the challenge of globalisation inaugurated by capitalist expansion may be idealistic, but it is not utopian: on the contrary, it is the only realistic project possible’ (1997, p. 10). In closing, I am reminded of the late Julius Nyerere, the first President of the United Republic of Tanzania, who had so much faith in adult learning. He set a target for us in 1976 at the first World Assembly of Adult Education when he noted that the primary goal of adult education was to convince people of the possibility of change. All other goals can be achieved if we believe that change is possible.

References Amin, S. 1997. Capitalism in the age of globalization: the management of contemporary society. London: Zed Books. Bacon, F. 1627. New Atlantis. <www.constitution.org/bacon/new atlantis.htm> Barber, B. 1995. Jihad vs. McWorld. New York, NY: Ballantine. Beck, U. 2000. What is globalization? Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Belanger, P.; Federighi, P. 2000. Unlocking people’s creative forces: a transnational study of adult learning policies. Hamburg, Germany: UNESCO Institute for Education. Brown, L.R. et al. 1998. Vital signs 1998: the environmental trends that are shaping our future. New York, NY: Norton. Carey, J. 1999. The Faber book of utopias. London: Faber. Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. 1999. Adult education and the allieviation of social exclusion. Paris: OECD. Commission on Global Governance. 1995. Our global neighbourhood. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Daly, H.E.; Cobb, J.Jr. 1989. For the common good: re-directing the economy towards community, the environment and a sustainable future. Boston, MA: Bacon. Darcy de Oliveira, M.; Tandon, R. 1995. Citizens: strengthening global civil society. Washington, DC: Civicus. Sefa Dei, G.J.; Hall, B.L.; Goldin-Rosenberg, D., eds. 2000. Indigenous knowledge in global contexts: multiple readings of our world. Toronto, Canada: OISE/University of Toronto Press. Foley, G. 2001. Strategic learning: understanding and facilitating organizational change. Sydney, Australia: Center for Popular Education. Grimmett, J. 1994. Conventional arms transfers to the Third World. Washington, DC: Library of Congress. Hammond, A. 1998. Which world? Scenarios for the 21st century. Washington, DC: Island Press. Herod, A. 1998. An unruly world? Globalisation. governance and geography. London: Routledge. Hobsbawn, E. 1994. The age of extremes: the short 20th century. London: Abacus. Jacobs, J. 2000. The nature of economies. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Keegan, J. 1994. A history of warfare. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Lapham, L. 1998. The agony of mammon. New York, NY: Verso. McMurty, J.; Turner, T. 2000. The effects of globalisation on the world’s children. Guelph, Canada: University of Guelph. [Unpublished.] McQuaig, L. 1998. The cult of impotence: selling the myth of powerlessness in the global economy. Toronto, Canada: Viking. Milani, B. 2000. Designing the green economy. New York, NY: Rowan & Littlefield.

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Nef, J. 1997. Human security and mutual vulnerability. Ottawa: IDRC. Wackernagel, M.; Rees, W.E. 1995. Our ecological footprint: reducing human impact on the earth. Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: New Society Publishers. Sassen, S. 1991. The global city: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Shiva, V. 1998. Swadeshi. Weekend observer. New Delhi. United Kingdom. Secretary of State. 1999. Learning to succeed: a new framework for post-16 education. London: The Stationery Office. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 1995. The state of the world’s refugees: in search of solutions. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Chapter I.3

Decent Work for All: From ILO Initiative to a Global Goal Peter Poschen

1 Introduction This chapter introduces the concept of decent work developed and applied by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in recent years and increasingly adopted by governments, by the United Nations system as a whole, by development organizations and other groups. It discusses the relevance of decent work as a goal and a framework for policy formulation and presents examples of its contribution to policy debates at national and international level. The presentation highlights the inter-relations between technical and vocational education and training, development priorities and decent work.

2 Decent Work: The Concept and Its Relevance Work is a major part of the life of most people. It takes up much of their time and energy, is one of the main forms of integration into society and an important factor for creating self-esteem and identity. Work is also the main source of income and livelihood for the vast majority of people. The nature of the work they do is thus a fundamental determinant of their quality of life (Mehran et al., 2002; Sennet, 1998). From the perspective of societies and economies, work is the driving force of growth and development. Well-being, poverty reduction, social cohesion, the ability to adapt to the forces of globalization and to attain sustainable development all depend to a large extent on work as a factor of production and distribution. For individuals as well as for societies and countries, work thus plays a pivotal role for sustenance and development. Social and economic outcomes for individuals, enterprises and economies are determined not only by the volume of work performed but critically by its quality. The central role of work and its quality was analysed by ILO Director-General Juan Somav´ıa in his first report to the International Labour Conference in 1999. The report culminated in the introduction of a comprehensive concept of work and the workplace which he called ‘decent work’. The report broadly defines decent R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 I.3, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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work as: ‘opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity’ (ILO, 1999). This definition captures the broad and varied dimensions of work in an expression that everyone can appreciate (Ghai, 2003). It encompasses four inter-related dimensions as shown in Figure 1:

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Employment: the availability of an adequate number of productive, quality jobs that include skills development as an essential ingredient. Social security: protection from work-related injury and from a lack of income due to the loss of employment, to illness or old age. Rights in the workplace, in particular fundamental rights like freedom of choice and equality of treatment. Social dialogue, i.e. the ability of workers to participate in making decisions that affect them and to represent their interests collectively.

Decent work for all has since been adopted as the central goal for the ILO and by governments, employers and workers’ organizations in the 180 member countries of the organization. It has also become the organizing principle for the ILO and much progress has been made with turning the notion of decent work into a concept that can be applied to social and economic analysis and policy formulation. As one of the first steps, the components of decent work have been identified in greater detail in order to be able to understand the inter-relations among them and with other development concerns. Operationalizing the concept also required making it amenable to measurement, so that goals can be set and advances towards achieving them can be assessed. Both purposes are served by a set of statistical indicators that has been suggested by Mehran et al. (2002). Looking through the eyes of working people, ten general characteristics of work have been identified which can be assessed by some thirty specific indicators as shown in Table 1. They include skills training as Indicator 10 under the characteristic adequate earnings and productive work. The lack of data on skill levels and development in many countries is an important limitation for assessing the status and progress of this dimension.

Fig. 1 The four elements of decent work

Employment + income

Social protection

Basic rights at work

Social dialogue

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The development and use of indicators of decent work is still incipient, but some important insights have already been gained. These include the fact that it is possible to capture most decent work dimensions in ways that are relevant for everyone. Assessments can focus on actual outcomes and conditions for workers, such as the Table 1 Summary of suggested decent work indicators Indicators EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES 1. 2. 3. 4.

Labour force participation rate Employment/population ratio Unemployment rate Youth unemployment rate Time-related underemployment rate

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Share of wage employment in non-agricultural employment

UNACCEPTABLE WORK 6. 7.

Children in wage employment or self-employment (percent by age) Children not in school by employment status (percent by age)

ADEQUATE EARNINGS AND PRODUCTIVE WORK 8.

Inadequate pay rate (percent of employed below 1/2 of median hourly earnings or absolute minimum, whichever is greater, by status in employment) 9. Average earnings in selected occupations Excessive hours of work Time-related underemployment rate 10. Employees with recent job training (percent with job training during last twelve months provided or paid for by employer or State) DECENT HOURS 11. 12.

Excessive hours of work (percent of employed, by status in employment) Time-related underemployment rate (percent of employed persons working less than hours threshold, but available and wanting to work additional hours)

STABILITY AND SECURITY OF WORK 13. 14.

Tenure less than one year (percent of employed persons who have held their main job/work for less than one year, by age) Temporary work (percent of employees who classify their jobs as temporary)

BALANCING WORK AND FAMILY LIFE 15.

Employment rate for women with children under compulsory school age (ratio to employment rate for all women aged 20-49) Excessive hours of work

FAIR TREATMENT IN EMPLOYMENT 16.

Occupational segregation by sex (percent of non-agricultural employment in maleor female-dominated occupations and index of dissimilarity) 17. Female share of employment in managerial and administrative occupations (ratio to female share of non-agricultural employment) Share of women in non-agricultural wage employment Female/male wage or earnings ratio, selected occupations Female/male ratios or differences for other indicators

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Indicators SAFE WORK 18. 19.

Fatal injury rate (per 100,000 employees) Labour inspection (inspectors per 100,000 employees and per 100,000 covered employees). Excessive hours of work 20. Occupational injury insurance coverage (percent of employees covered by insurance) SOCIAL PROTECTION 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Public social security expenditure (percent of GDP, separately for total, health services and old-age pensions) Public expenditure on needs-based cash income support (percent of GDP). Beneficiaries of cash income support (percent of poor) Share of population over 65 benefiting from a pension Share of economically active population contributing to a pension fund Average monthly pension (percent of median/minimum earnings) Occupational injury insurance coverage

SOCIAL DIALOGUE AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS 27. 28. 29.

Union density rate Collective wage bargaining coverage rate Strikes and lockouts (per 1,000 employees)

SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONTEXT Output per employed person (PPP level) Growth of output per employed person Inflation (consumer prices where available) Education of adult population (adult literacy rate, adult secondary school graduation rate) Composition of employment by economic sector (agriculture, industry, services) 30. Informal economy employment (percent of non-agricultural or urban employment) Income inequality (ratio of top 10% to bottom 10%, income or consumption) Poverty (percent of population subsisting on less than $1/day and less than $2/day) Bold italics indicate cross-reference to indicator presented in another section.

actual application of regulations rather than the legal existence of provisions (for examples, see ILO, 2006). Skills development is one of the more difficult dimensions in terms of outcomes. The proposed indicator measures training received, i.e. an input, rather then the level, relevance or benefits of the skills acquired for the worker and the enterprise. The notion of decent work implies a particular concern for the poorest and most vulnerable. It is therefore not so much the average value of an indicator that matters, as its distribution, for example with respect to men and women. As will be seen in the following, the more specific definition of decent work and relevant indicators have been successfully applied to tackle a range of development problems.


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3 Decent Work: An Aspiration, a Goal and a Policy Framework Decent work can be interpreted as an aspiration of people, as a goal that societies, countries and the international community have set for themselves, and a framework for shaping policies to achieve the objective of decent work for women and men everywhere (Egger & Sengenberger, 2001). As has been seen above, decent work takes on a specific meaning readily applicable to the work and life situation of individuals. It applies equally to women and men, to young and older workers, to nationals and to migrants. Decent work explicitly includes all working people and is not limited to employees who receive wages or salaries. It is an aspiration that is equally valid, though often harder to realize, for the self-employed, for farmers, for home-workers and entrepreneurs. By the same token, it applies to rural and urban workers, to farms as well as workshops, factories, offices and shops. Over the last few years, the concept and the indicators have been used to assess the situation of workers as individuals, of the workforce of enterprises and economic sectors, in local communities, for entire countries and to shed light on international phenomena like globalization. While decent work is a new term, its content is rooted in international law and agreements. Relevant international legal instruments include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948; in particular articles 22, 23 and 25), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1996), the Declaration and Commitments adopted at the World Social Summit in 1995, the ILO Constitution, the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (1998) and the body of International Labour Standards (ILO, 2001). This rights perspective helps to understand that decent work is a universal aspiration and goal whose precise definition will vary from country to country. It contains both absolute values, thresholds, which are non-negotiable minimum standards for decent work, and more ambitious objectives in keeping with the historical, economic and cultural context of a country. The minimum standards include in particular those enshrined in the ILO Declaration. These include the freedom from forced labour and from child labour, the realization of equality of opportunity and treatment at work, and the right to organize and to bargain collectively over working conditions. Over and above this threshold, decent work can be seen as a relative, evolving goal. Like the goal of sustainable development, the notion of decent work is progressive and changes over time. As a national goal, decent work can be defined in the light of national priorities and circumstances and can be reached through different routes. However defined, the goal of decent work is complex. Its four components of rights, employment, social security and social dialogue are inter-related. As a social goal, decent work both contributes to achieving other economic and social development objectives and depends on them. This implies that decent work needs to be integrated into the overall national development goals and policy agendas.

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Policies pursuing a set of national development goals can be mutually supportive or at cross-purposes. This applies, for example, to economic policies, which condition the creation of employment opportunities. It is also relevant for national human resource policies, which link health, basic education and employable skills to an economic development strategy or to enterprise investments in skills to improve competitiveness. The discussion of decent work and enterprise competitiveness in Box 1 illustrates the point.

Box 1. Decent work, skills development and enterprise competitiveness The continuous upgrading of technology, lower trade barriers, more integrated markets and the growing importance of information and knowledge systems have all led to a greater demand for skilled workers and renewed emphasis on the skills and competence of the workforce. The motivation, skills and organization of labour represent essential elements in competitive strategies of enterprises. Wide recognition has been given to the training and upgrading of workers’ skills to manage complex production or service systems, often based on advanced computer and information technology, but it cannot work as a stand-alone measure. Enterprises will only invest in training if they can be reasonably sure to retain the trainees. Workforce rotation and the drain of skilled workers are determined by job satisfaction, which includes objective factors, like wage levels and benefits, but also subjective elements, like the fairness of treatment. Training is only one dimension of enterprise competitiveness and is itself dependent on an environment in which workers are motivated and enabled to learn, innovate, and apply new technology at the workplace. This, in turn, is a function of work organization, worker participation and working conditions. Whether or not an enterprise will reap the benefits of skill development will also depend on its organizational and managerial capacity to link technology and skills to achieve the product quality, price competitiveness and to market them successfully. For a recent discussion of the role of human resources development for sustainable enterprises see ILO (2006). Countries face similar challenges with respect to skills development in tune with their comparative advantages, industrial development strategies and the risk of brain drain through migration. Source: Adapted from Egger & Sengenberger, 2001.

Policy coherence is therefore critically important for the realization of decent work for all. This applies to different levels of policy-making. Increasingly, decisions that directly affect work places are made rather far away from their location. If it is to make headway, the goal of decent work needs to be incorporated into development priorities and pursued by coherent policies at international, national and local level.


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4 International Initiatives to Promote Decent Work for All Globalization is not a new phenomenon, but has clearly accelerated over the last two decades, increasing the role of supra-national institutions in shaping economic and social development. Relevant institutions include the international financial institutions, inter-governmental policy organizations, such as the World Trade Organization, trans-national enterprises and investors, as well as civil society organizations. The ILO has responded to the growing importance of the international level with a number of initiatives.

4.1 The World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization In order to stimulate constructive dialogue and overcome the impasse in the debate about globalization, the ILO Director-General established an independent World Commission in 2002, jointly chaired by the Presidents of Finland, Ms Tarja Harlonen, and of Tanzania, Mr Benjamin Mkapa. The commission’s twenty-six members were broadly representative of the diverse and contending actors in the debate, including a Nobel laureate in economics, politicians, parliamentarians, social and economic experts and representatives of business and multinational corporations, organized labour, academia and civil society. In spite of its diverse composition, the commission arrived at a consensus. Its report (World Commission, 2004) acknowledges that globalization has immense potential, but also observes that ‘there are deep-seated and persistent imbalances in the current workings of the global economy, which are ethically unacceptable and politically unsustainable. [. . .] Seen through the eyes of the vast majority of men and women, globalization has not met their simple and legitimate aspirations for decent jobs and a better future for their children’. The commission took the view that the benefits of globalization can be extended to more people and better shared between and within countries, with many more voices having an influence on its course. It advocates ‘a process of globalization with a strong social dimension based on universal values and respect for human rights and individual dignity; one that is fair, inclusive, democratically governed and provides opportunities and tangible benefits for all countries and people’. The commission emphasizes that ‘people are most directly affected by globalization through their work and employment. For the gains from globalization to be widely shared, countries, enterprises and people have to be able to convert global opportunities into jobs and incomes’. Decent work for all is thus a pivotal objective for a fair globalization. In its recommendations, the commission called for a ‘focus on people’, including respect for their rights, cultural identity and autonomy; decent work; and the empowerment of the local communities they live in. It stressed the role of institutions, including the State, productive and equitable markets, fair rules and accountability to people of the public and private actors with power to influence the outcomes of globalization.

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4.2 Skills for a Fair Globalization The commission made an effort to do justice to this vast and complex subject and rejected the suggestion that there are simple solutions. Education and training are discussed as part of a complex problem calling for an integrated solution (see paras. 269-277, as well as 482-487 of World Commission, 2004).The commission identifies education as one of the key elements to enable and empower people: People can only contribute and benefit from globalization if they are in adequate health and endowed with knowledge, skills and values and with the capabilities and rights needed to pursue their basic livelihoods. They need employment and incomes and a healthy environment. These are the essential conditions, which empower them to lead a self-determined decent life and to participate fully as citizens in their local, national and global communities.

Education and skills are therefore at the centre of a fair and inclusive globalization and broad access to opportunities is vital. The commission notes that all countries that have benefited from globalization have invested significantly in their education and training systems. It suggests that education policies may have a stronger effect to offset the negative impacts of globalization than labour-market policies. It advocates a plurality of investments and incentives for training and the development of national qualification schemes. In order to reduce the need for expensive infrastructure in tertiary education and in vocational training, the commission recommends the extension of distance learning in developing countries with support from the North. One of the commission’s findings was that one reason why social goals, such as employment, fail to be given priority at the global level is that international organizations with different mandates do not work sufficiently together. In order to overcome this problem, the commission recommended ‘policy coherence initiatives’ by the relevant organizations.

5 The Policy Coherence Initiative on Growth, Investment and Employment This initiative is the first to follow up on the recommendation. It brings together the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the ILO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN/DESA), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Representatives of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and of employers’ organizations also participated. The goal of generating more decent jobs in the global economy is largely overlooked in international policies. While there is general acknowledgement of the importance of the issue in the mandates of international organizations, there has been no concerted effort to address it. The Policy Coherence Initiative is an attempt to improve upon the status quo by forging a consensus among relevant international


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organizations about integrated policy packages for specific problems that would balance economic, social and environmental concerns. The ‘benign neglect’ towards the employment objective has not been working (ILO, 2004). Economic growth does not automatically translate into enough decent jobs. High unemployment and under-employment remain serious problems in many parts of the world. Rather than leading to discernible improvements in the global employment situation, the last two decades of globalization have given rise to new stresses in labour markets. Compared to the 1950s and 1960s, open unemployment in the industrialized countries is significantly higher. Data for developing countries are patchy and less reliable but, taken as a whole, they do provide grounds for serious concern. Open unemployment rates are surprisingly high in a number of these countries, contradicting the conventional wisdom that unemployment is not an option in developing countries without systems of unemployment insurance. At the same time, there is evidence that precarious and low-productivity employment in the informal sector has expanded as a share of total employment. This reflects the slow growth of employment in the modern sector. As a result, a high proportion of those who have jobs are working poor, i.e. their income is insufficient to buy the basket of essential goods and services that defines the poverty line. This poses a serious threat to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, but more importantly to social peace, stability and democracy. In the industrialized countries the link between employment and globalization has mostly received attention because of anxieties over the transfer of jobs to the developing world and the potential ‘race to the bottom’ in employment conditions and labour standards in global production systems. While these issues have to be dealt with in order to maintain support for globalization, they should not deflect attention from the more important positive agenda of what can be done to enhance the overall employment impact of globalization. Constructive alternatives to a reversal of the process of globalization lie in finding means to achieve a higher overall rate of employment creation, strengthening the adjustment mechanisms for workers affected by dislocation, and adapting to the new competitive pressures from developing countries. More generally, it is also in the interest of the industrialized countries to support policies that contribute to higher and more stable rates of growth in the global economy. This is likely to boost growth and domestic employment creation in developing countries and hence attenuate some of the pressures of a global competition for jobs. Similarly, on the issue of the quality of jobs in global production systems, the solution does not lie in impeding the growth of these systems, but in strengthening the array of initiatives that are on the policy agenda for eliminating abuse and ensuring steady improvements in productivity and the quality of jobs. This requires action on several fronts. If the root problem is excessive market power enjoyed by transnational corporations and major buyers in these global production systems, then issues of anti-competitive behaviour will have to be dealt with. At the same time, cooperative solutions need to be found to mitigate any ‘race-to-the-bottom’ pressures arising from the competition for foreign investment and jobs among developing

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countries. This needs also to be supplemented by action to strengthen compliance with core labour standards and to promote collective bargaining within global production systems.

6 Global Policy Challenges in Skills Development Poverty reduction, a successful integration into global production systems or adaptation to changing global markets cannot be achieved by a single policy measure. They require coherent sets of policies to maintain effective demand, to stimulate investment, to improve productivity and to distribute the benefits widely. These policies include well-aligned exchange rates, safeguards against large and sudden international capital flows and measures to smoothen the economic cycle. Policies also need to include measures to overcome barriers for those working in the informal economy and for those affected by structural changes. In both situations, skills development is a vital element of a broader package of measures to facilitate access to the formal economy, to adopt new technology and become more productive or to reintegrate into expanding sectors of the economy. Box 2 sums up the policy challenges for skills development in that context. More specific examples of sets of measures, including appropriate technical and vocational education and training, are discussed in the country case studies below.

Box 2. Decent work for all: global policy challenges in skills development

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Investment in education and training. There is a critical need for a greater overall investment in education and training, particularly in developing countries, for all people (including women and groups with special needs, such as people with disabilities). Education and training investments should be closely linked to economic and employment growth strategies and programmes. Responsibility should be shared between the government (primary responsibility), enterprises, the social partners and the individual. Basic education, literacy and core skills. Literacy and basic education cannot be leapfrogged. Urgent reforms are needed to improve basic education and the literacy of people in the poorest countries. The development of ‘core work skills’ (such as communication, problem-solving, etc.) is an important part of the reform to prepare individuals for the knowledge and skills-based society. Reforming vocational education and training systems. To make lifelong learning for all a reality, countries will need to make major reforms of their vocational and education and training systems. School-to-work schemes for young people should integrate education with workplace


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learning. Training systems need to become more flexible and responsive to rapidly changing skill requirements. Reforms should also focus on how learning can be facilitated, not just on training for specific occupational categories. Recognizing an individual’s skills. Many people have acquired skills from a wide range of non-traditional sources, but these go largely unrecognized. It is critical that people should be able to have their skills recognized as part of a national qualifications framework, irrespective of where the skills were obtained. Promoting social dialogue on training. There is an urgent need to involve the social partners more closely in discussions on training policy and skills development, if the desired reforms and increased investment are to become a reality. It is clear that governments can no longer be the sole voices on education and training. The more successful training systems are underpinned by a strong social dialogue process. Advocating labour market programmes for disadvantaged people. Promote active labour-market programmes, including effective approaches to skills acquisition and development, in formal and non-formal settings, for people who are disadvantaged in the labour market—including people with disabilities. Reforming employment services and promoting co-operative efforts between public and private employment agencies. Public employment services are usually the dominant government institution responsible for providing a variety of active labour-market programmes, but their capacity often needs strengthening. In addition, recent international trends in the growth of private employment agencies and the outsourcing of public services provide new ways for public and private agencies to work together.

Source: ILO Global Employment Agenda, <www.ilo.org/public/english/ employment/skills/policy.htm> The international forces of globalization notwithstanding, the national level remains arguably the most important for shaping a response to the challenges and opportunities of globalization and for realizing development goals, including that of decent work for all.

7 National Initiatives to Promote Decent Work for All As the World Commission pointed out: fair globalization starts at home. People continue to live locally, within nation-States. While the forces of globalization are the same everywhere, their impact is very situation-specific. Most of the decisions that shape people’s work and life situations are still taken within countries.

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Strategies for national economic and social development therefore ought to differ from one country to another. Stereotypical national responses to globalization are not only less effective, but can have disastrous consequences. Witness the application of the structural adjustment programmes and of uniform recipes for economic growth in the 1990s (see, e.g. Stiglitz, 2002; Zagha, 2005). The ILO has therefore worked with its member countries to put the concept of decent work into practice at the national level. One of these initiatives will be discussed here: the Decent Work Pilot Programme.

7.1 The Decent Work Pilot Programme The task of developing practical methods for promoting integrated approaches to decent work policies at the national level was entrusted to a Decent Work Pilot Programme (DWPP). The objective of DWPP was to test the relevance of an integrated approach to meet national development goals and priorities, built around all four components of the decent work agenda: rights, employment, social security and social dialogue. For a general discussion of the Programme see ILO (2006) and Berar-Awad (2005); for more information please consult: <mirror/public/english/bureau/dwpp/> The DWPP operated from 2002 to 2005 and included eight countries: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Denmark, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Panama and the Philippines. These countries deliberately represented different regions, cultures and levels of economic and social development The programme was guided by a number of principles derived from the above discussion of the concept of decent work: (a) the entry points of the programme had to be defined at the country level in consultation with the national partners and in line with the overall national policy priorities in each country; (b) the complexity of the world of work in the context of globalization required multidisciplinary and integrated analysis and policy responses cutting across all four strategic dimensions of decent work; (c) actions to promote the four strategic objectives of decent work—i.e. rights at work, employment, social protection and social dialogue—were more effective and mutually reinforcing when cast into a single, coherent approach; (d) practical solutions required integrated ILO support at the country level, mobilizing resources and expertise, but also partnerships with other stakeholders. The major thrust was therefore to define the specific decent work platform within the framework of policy and reform agendas that were of prime concern to the country. The decent work agenda proved to be a comprehensive and flexible policy platform that can be defined nationally and can be applied in very different


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socio-economic and political contexts. The focus and entry points of the programme in each country are different and specific. Each represents a unique combination of policy issues. Each programme also shows the value of a policy agenda that can relate decent work to the national economic and social priorities at hand and engage a broad range of stakeholders and build partnerships. Looking across countries and the wide range of entry points that were retained, three overarching themes emerge as the main policy preoccupations at the country level. These are: (a) poverty reduction; (b) facing up to global competition; and (c) democratization and realization of fundamental rights. While these are not mutually exclusive goals, the hierarchy in priorities and focus varies from one country to another, whether the overarching priority is a national poverty reduction strategy, trade and financial liberalization policies, economic restructuring or the realization of human rights. The outcomes achieved through this pilot effort have been very encouraging. In all pilot countries, decent work has been adopted and used as the analytical and operational framework by national partners. It has enabled partners and policy makers to appreciate the central role of decent work for realizing national development priorities and for understanding the dynamic inter-linkages between economic and social goals. In all countries, integrated policies, action plans and strategies have been formulated, adopted and/or implemented that link the four elements of decent work and embed them in national policy frameworks. Kazakhstan, Morocco and Panama have allocated substantial resources and are implementing policies and programmes adopted with the help of the DWPP. Bahrain is implementing an integrated set of labour-market reforms and the Philippines are field-testing an integrated approach to local economic development. Bangladesh and Ghana have adopted policies and integrated them into the poverty reduction strategies, the blue-prints for national development in those countries.

8 National Decent Work Programmes Skills development, technical and vocational education and training have been an important element in a number of national programmes. The nature of the problem and the context in which a solution had to be found varied significantly from one case to the next, underlining the need for country-specific and integrated policy responses. In countries like Denmark, skills development is an integral part of an institutionalized and well-resourced mechanism to keep a small and very open economy competitive and to allow enterprises and the workforce to adjust to structural and technological change. The close integration of social and economic policies has been very successful, as documented by Egger and Sengenberger (2003) and summarized in Box 3.

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Box 3. Decent work in Denmark: employment, social efficiency and economic security The Danish experience demonstrates how policies can achieve both economic and social efficiency. The country is among the leaders in international rankings for economic performance and competitiveness, but also for human development, job quality and subjective job satisfaction. Flexibility, equality, social security and broad social participation were explicit policy goals. The combination of goals and policies allowed the national economy to remain open to world markets by strengthening the capacity to adjust rapidly to the changing global situation and cushioning the negative effects of external economic shocks. Well-timed macro-economic policy and active labour-market policies have been mutually supportive. Access to low-cost social services enables both men and women to take up employment. A policy of wage restraint based on the co-ordination of a decentralized wage bargaining system supplements the gains in enterprise competitiveness from rising productivity. Strong employers’ and workers’ organizations and continuous dialogue with the government at both national and local levels sustain this policy mix. The Denmark study shows that objectives, which are often regarded as incompatible and subject to trade-offs, can be managed through an appropriate policy mix. While there is little legal protection against dismissal and enterprises are rather free to adjust their workforce, there is a high level of income security and an effective mechanism for reintegration into work. Training plays a key role in this managed labour market mobility. Almost one-fifth of the total workforce participates in a labour market training scheme in any given year. The large income transfers and, in particular, the high level of unemployment benefits do not act as a disincentive to gainful employment, when combined with an extensive labour market policy that promotes obligations as well as rights. Unemployment spells in Denmark are among the shortest in Europe. Labour market flexibility need not be at the expense of social security; rather the two can go hand in hand. Source: Egger & Sengenberger, 2003.

The emphasis in Panama has been on matching skills development with demand and labour-market opportunities in a country that suffers from falling competitiveness and labour productivity, as well as from uneven access to education and training (Brú & Del Cid, 2002; Egger, 2002). The programme in Morocco was faced with a more specific challenge: restructuring the textile and garment industry in the face of the expiry of the quota system under international trade agreements. The sector is considered vital for the country’s development. A major export earner and highly labour intensive, the sector represented 42% of total industrial employment in 2000 and 71% of the workers


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were women. Entering the high end of the market with better quality, just-in-time delivery and the social image of producers as a sales argument was seen as the most promising strategy. The action plan adopted and implemented by the social partners in the sector and the government includes an investment in skills development. The effectiveness of that measure does, however, depend critically on the ability to improve work organization, working conditions, the resolution of conflicts in enterprises and on extending improvements to the supply chain where conditions are often precarious. A custom-made training programme was designed and widely applied in garment enterprises to bring about the required changes in practices. At the national level, the programme was instrumental in aligning the needs and responses of the sector with those of the government’s industrial and human resources policies as well as linking up with a large foreign aid project for vocational training. For more information see: <mirror/public/english/bureau/dwpp/countries/morocco/index.htm> The context for skills development in the Ghana Pilot Programme was totally different from the above. The focus of the programme has been on poverty reduction, particularly in the micro- and small enterprises that make up the informal economy. These enterprises are the bulk of all enterprises in Ghana and the single most important source of income for households. Many of those working in the informal economy are poor. They face numerous problems to survive, yield a decent income and grow. Shortages of vocational as well as entrepreneurial skills are among the problems commonly encountered, but policy interventions have to address all binding constraints to bring about improvements. A single-minded focus on training would not be effective. The programme has successfully tested a model of change based on local economic development, which included various training components as detailed in Box 4.

Box 4. Ghana: skills in the informal economy Four out of ten Ghanaians are classified as poor according to the 1998/99 Ghana Living Standards Survey. That would be 8 of the 20 million people in Ghana today. Poverty reduction has thus been declared the top national development priority. Between 25 to 30 per cent of the people who depend on the informal economy for their livelihood are poor, making them the second largest group of poor after subsistence farmers. In addition to providing often very low and unstable incomes, decent work deficits abound in the casual works and micro- and small enterprises that make up the informal economy in Ghana. The Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) is the national framework for policies, resource allocations and interventions to combat poverty. To contribute to this process, the Decent Work Pilot Programme used a two-pronged strategy: first, it enhanced the capacity of social partners to participate meaningfully in the GPRS process and to place decent work on the policy agenda; and, second, it has developed and tested an integrated approach to improving

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productivity, conditions and incomes in the informal economy at the local level. This approach is to be incorporated into national policies to decentralize initiatives for poverty reduction. The revised GPRS II, renamed Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy, was adopted by the government in September 2005 and endorsed by donors. It identifies employment as a central objective and means of poverty reduction. Priority sectors for investment and development have explicitly been selected on the basis of their employment potential. Specific programmes concerning the informal sector, local development, productivity and wages, as well as skills development, in particular the Skills Training and Employment Placement (STEP) programme of the government, are included in the text and the policy matrix. The local economic approach has proved to be a viable strategy for decentralized, pro-poor growth, which is led by small enterprises assisted by national and local government in a private/public partnership. It has led to improved governance, improved efficiency of government spending, better revenue collection, and small enterprise development benefiting poor groups, including a large proportion of women. It has also helped to identify ways skills development can be better targeted and integrated. Orienting skills development to meet real needs and opportunities has been one of the main challenges. In the districts, training was provided as part of a package supported by local and national government to upgrade sectors with economic potential. It included both vocational skills linked to quality requirements and improved technology and critical entrepreneurial skills for the operators of small businesses. The training was made a precondition for access to loans with which to finance the investments in improved businesses. The local economic development scheme is informing the government’s strategy for the informal economy, which is currently being formulated by an inter-ministerial group. It is to be replicated in other regions of the country as part of a major youth employment programme and of the new employment policy to be implemented as of 2006. Source: Government of Ghana, 2005.

9 Conclusions and Outlook As the preceding discussion has shown, decent work has proved to be a useful concept for analysis and for policy formulation. Much of its strength resides in its ability to reflect complex realities and to integrate relevant dimensions. There has been growing momentum since its adoption in 1999 in many quarters and parts of the world. A summit of African heads of State in Ouagadougou in 2004 embraced decent work as the best route out of poverty. The Summit of the


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Americas in Mar del Plata in November 2005 adopted a detailed agenda to promote decent work on the Latin American continent. The European Commission has issued a directive ‘Promoting decent work for all’ (Commission of the European Communities, 2006). A crucial step towards making decent work a global goal has been a Ministerial Declaration at the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations in 2006 expressing ‘the urgent need to create an environment at the national and international levels that is conducive to the attainment of full and productive employment and of decent work for all as a foundation for sustainable development’ (United Nations, 2006) Meanwhile, the ILO has been building on the experience of the Pilot Programme and adopted Decent Work Country Programmes as its mode of co-operation with individual member countries. Integration and policy coherence continue to be hallmarks of these initiatives. They are particularly relevant for the effective use of supply factors, like technical and vocational education and training. Over a relatively short period of time, decent work has evolved from an ILO internal concept and initiative to a recognized key contribution to sustainable development adopted and pursued by numerous institutions—nationally and internationally. Vocational educational and training will be an essential input for realizing the goal of decent work for all.

References Berar-Awad, A. 2005. Decent work as a national goal: the experience of the Decent Work Pilot Programme and other related initiatives. (Paper presented to the second South-East Asia and the Pacific Sub-regional Tripartite Forum on Decent Work, Melbourne, Australia, 5-8 April 2005.) Brú, E.; Del Cid, M., eds. 2002. Panamá: pol´ıticas de empleo y trabajo decente para la década del 2000. San José, Costa Rica: ILO. Commission of the European Communities. 2006. Promoting decent work for all. Brussels: European Union. (COM (2006) 249.) Egger, P. 2002. Globalization and decent work: options for Panama. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO, Policy Integration Department. (Working paper, no. 3.) Egger, P.; Sengenberger, W. 2001. Decent work issues and policies. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. [Mimeo.] Egger, P.; Sengenberger, W., eds. 2003. Decent work in Denmark: employment, social efficiency and economic security. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Ghai, D. 2003. Decent work: concepts and indicators. International labour review, vol. 142, no. 2, pp. 113-145. Government of Ghana. 2005. Growth and poverty reduction strategy II (2006-2009). Accra: National Development Planning Commission. International Labour Organization. 1999. Decent work. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. (Report of the Director-General, International Labour Conference, 87th session.) International Labour Organization. 2001. Reducing the decent work deficit: a global challenge. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. (Report of the Director-General, International Labour Conference, 89th Session.) International Labour Organization. 2004. Enhancing the employment impact of globalization. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. (Background paper for the second Technical Meeting on Policy Coherence, 2-3 November 2004.) [Mimeo.]

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International Labour Organization. 2006. From pilot to decent work country programme: lessons from the Decent Work Pilot Programme. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO, National Policy Group, Policy Integration Department. Mehran, F., et al. 2002. Measuring decent work with statistical indicators. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO, Policy Integration Department. (Working paper, no. 2.) Sennet, R. 1998. The corrosion of character: the personal consequences of work in the new capitalism. New York, NY/London: Norton. Stiglitz, J. 2002. Globalization and its discontents. London/New York, NY: Penguin Books. United Nations. 2006. Draft Ministerial Declaration of the High-Level Segment. Geneva, Switzerland: UN Economic and Social Council. (E/2006/L.8.) World Commission. 2004. A fair globalization: creating opportunities for all. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. (Report of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization.) Zagha, R., ed. 2005. Economic growth in the 1990s: learning from a decade of reform. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Chapter I.4

Redefining Gender Roles in the Workforce Karen F. Zuga

1 Introduction Watching television coverage of world events, we have become accustomed to images of women as police, in the military and on rescue teams. Women in nontraditional roles have been slowly creeping into our subconscious. We are also seeing more women in our communities working in professions that were dominated by men. Gender roles are being redefined and this modifies our ideas of women’s work. Public relations images of ‘Rosie the Riveter’, used during the Second World War in the United States, purposefully recruited women into essential war-time production jobs and just as quickly reconverted to images of domestic women when the need had passed (Honey, 1985). But women did stay in manufacturing jobs. Many females continued to work in industry. Today, everyone is getting the message that work roles are changing. What are society and those of us who are technical and vocational educators doing to facilitate this change? In this chapter I am going to discuss questions regarding redefining gender roles in the workforce. These questions will include: What are women’s roles today? Have women’s roles changed over time? What kinds of issues and concerns face educators, trainers and society because of change or lack of change? How does policy influence change? and What should vocational and technical educators be planning and doing as a result of the changing roles of women in the workforce?

2 What are Women’s Roles in the Workforce? Today, as in the past, women are still concentrated in service professions such as teaching, health care and government service. In most countries, they do not stay in school as long as men, suffer from occupational segregation, are more often found in part-time jobs, have not achieved earning parity with men and hit a ‘glass ceiling’ (Blau, Ferber & Winkler, 2002). There is some change, however. An overview of the condition of women and work reported by the United Nations concludes: R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 I.4, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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Women now comprise an increasing share of the world’s labour force—at least one-third in all regions, except northern Africa and western Asia. Self-employment, part-time and home-based work have expanded opportunities for women’s participation in the labour force, but are characterized by lack of security, lack of benefits and low income. The informal sector is a larger source of employment for women than for men. More women than before are in the labour force throughout their reproductive years, though obstacles to combining family responsibilities with employment persist. Women, especially younger women, experience more unemployment than men and for a longer period of time than men. Women remain at the lower end of a segregated labour market and continue to be concentrated in a few occupations, to hold positions of little or no authority and to receive less pay than men. Available statistics are still far from providing a strong basis for assessing both quantitative and qualitative changes in women’s employment (United Nations, 2005d).

3 What Evidence of Change is Apparent? Using data that was taken in 1970 and 1998, Blau et al. (2002) illustrate that, although there is much variability from country to country, there has been an increase in women’s participation in the workforce. Some of the variability is due to the economic circumstances in each country at the time of data collection. For example, there is a difference between developing and developed countries. In some countries, there may have been significant growth in the participation of women, but the starting point was so low that these rates still remain some of the lowest in the world (World Bank, 2004). In other countries, such as Russia, the change in government and economic problems resulted in a decrease of women in the work force (Blau et al., 2002). Regional differences also cause cultural differences and attitudes with regard to women’s roles in society (World Bank, 2004). However, the undeniable trend is that more women are working than at any other time in history, and they are also entering non-traditional jobs (Shackleton, 1995; Crompton, Gallie & Purcell, 1996; Blau et al., 2002). However, the change is slow and women still have a lower economic status than men (Shackleton, 1995). Data regarding the education of women show an increase in women completing higher levels of education (Shackleton, 1995; United Nations, 2005c). The illiteracy gap between men and women, even though acute in south central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and North Africa, is closing. Comparing data from 1960 to 2000, the more recent numbers reveal that in economically advanced countries and those of the former Soviet bloc, educational attainment figures are close to parity, while in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, women

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receive only 60 to 76 per cent as much schooling as men. However, these figures do represent an improvement from 1960 (Blau et al., 2002; United Nations, 2005c). Women benefit from education that goes beyond high school and involves college and vocational and technical education. They have higher levels of employment and higher wages as a result of increased levels of education. The growth in literacy rates among women and the increasing investment in their education in many parts of the world are encouraging for the future of women in the work force (Shackleton, 1995; Blau et al., 2002). However, the cost of educating women often prohibits their access to education when men are perceived to be the main wage earners in the culture (Elder & Johnson, 2001). Over the past twenty years there has been an increase in part-time work (Gallie, 1996; Rubery, 1996; Bollé, 2001). The disturbing data regarding the increase of part-time work for both men and women and the growth of women in part-time employment is a change that echoes the late twentieth century concern about the deskilling of work. It signals a change in the way business is conducted and it could have far-reaching ramifications for all workers and their job security. In all countries far more women are part-time workers than men. Whether or not part-time employment is a benefit or a penalty has not yet been determined, although part-time employment is on the rise. One outcome of this rise could be an increase in the demand for vocational education and training as a more insecure work force encounters a need for additional education. Even though women have lower educational attainment, earn less, are in different occupations and hold fewer senior governmental positions than men, their attainment and participation rates on all of these criteria have improved over the past thirty years (Blau et al., 2002) as many countries focus policy on providing educational opportunities and integrating women into the workforce.

4 What Education and Training Concerns are Relevant to Women’s Roles? Several problems identified above deserve further discussion as they relate more closely to vocational education and training. The differentiated and lower levels of education that women experience in some countries, the segregation of work that occurs and the larger numbers of women in part-time jobs are all problems that are related to vocational education and training.

4.1 Education United Nations data provide the following conclusions regarding women and education:

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The gender gap in primary and secondary schooling is closing, but women still lag behind men in some African and Southern Asian countries.

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Two-thirds of the world’s 876 million illiterates are women, and the number of illiterates is not expected to decrease significantly in the next twenty years. Women have made significant gains in higher education enrolment in most regions of the world; in some regions, women’s enrolment now equals or surpasses that of men. More women than men lack the basic literacy and computer skills needed to enter ‘new media’ professions. In many countries, women represent a rapidly increasing share of Internet users (United Nations, 2005c)

Developed nations have the greatest parity in educational attainment for women and men. For example, United States’ data from 1999 show that at all levels of completion, from less than four years of high school to four or more years of college, completion rates of men and women are within 2.5 percentage points (Blau et al., 2002). Basic education and the resulting literacy form a foundation for vocational and technical education and training. Education and training help to open doors to women in the work force, first, to work and, second, to work in non-traditional jobs. The very first problem encountered with regard to the redefinition of gender roles in the work force is a basic education or lack thereof. However, it is access to higher education that helps women to advance beyond non-skilled work. A problem with higher education for women is that it may be differentiated from higher education for men (Shackleton, 1995), and if it takes the form of on-the-job training, women are less likely to receive it (Shackleton, 1995; Gallie, 1996). Lack of training is one contributing factor to the limited number of jobs available to women.

4.2 Occupational Segregation Occupational segregation is consistent throughout the world; it exists everywhere (OECD, 1998; Anker, 2001; Barbezat, 2003; Blau et al., 2002; Estlund, 2003; United Nations, 2005b, 2005d). Essentially, women are segregated into jobs related to health care (such as nursing), clerical work and social services (such as education). Blau et al. state that: women are more likely than men to be concentrated in clerical and service jobs, whereas men are more likely than women to work in higher-paying jobs, such as skilled craft occupations. Similarly, although the representation of women in the professional category actually exceeds men’s, men are more likely to work in lucrative professions such as law, medicine and engineering, whereas women are more often employed in lower-paying ones, such as elementary and secondary school teaching and nursing (p. 211).

Explanations of why occupational segregation persists are many and are often related to economic theories. Human capital theories relate occupational segregation to choice and the labour market segmentation view relates it to institutionalized discrimination (Shackleton, 1995). No matter what theory is used to explain the phenomenon, what is important is the effect that occupational segregation has on


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the economy, society and training. Anker (2001) states that occupational segregation ‘is wasteful of human resources, increases market inflexibility, and reduces an economy’s ability to adjust to change’ (p. 129). Furthermore, he states that gender stereotypes have negative effects on education and training and that this perpetuates inequality. With regard to education, women do not receive the opportunities that men do for training, especially when it is company sponsored (Leach, 2000; Gallie, 1996), but also when it is part of public vocational and technical education (National Women’s Law Center, 2002; National Centre for Vocational Education Research, 2001; Phan, 2001). Regarding the similarities and differences between men and women with regard to skill, Gallie (1996) states that job qualifications and experience levels were similar, but that: ‘The exception was training; men were more likely to receive training’ (p. 155). Moreover, the National Women’s Law Center has issued a report (2002) requesting the appropriate federal offices to investigate sex segregation in vocational and technical education. As a result of their study, they found that: Thirty years after enactment of Title IX, the patterns of enrollment in vocational and technical programs look shockingly similar to the patterns that existed prior to passage of the law. Biased counseling, the provision of incomplete information to students on the consequences of their career training choices, sexual harassment of girls who enroll in non-traditional classes and other forms of discrimination conspire today to create a vocational system characterized by pervasive sex segregation. Young women remain clustered in ‘traditionally female’ programs that prepare them for low-wage careers and do not provide them with the training or technical skills necessary to enter high-wage jobs. Young men, on the other hand, fill a vast majority of slots in programs leading to higher-wage careers that can provide true economic self-sufficiency (p. 3).

Associated with the occupational segregation of women is the lower income that is endemic in jobs and professions dominated by women. In fact, the infusion of women in fields such as public relations has had the effect of lowering the income of the members of that profession! One way of dealing with the income disparity is to try to improve the status, hence the wages, of traditional women’s work (OECD, 1998).

4.3 Part-Time Work In most countries, women take up a larger share of the part-time labour market than men (Elder & Johnson, 2001; United Nations, 2005a). In many cases, part-time work has been encouraged by governments (Bollé, 2001). Part-time work can be a benefit, but it can also be a trap when people are forced into it against their wishes. While seen as a way to help young people enter the work force and allowing those with families to work, the very groups that part-time work is intended to help—the young and women—are over-represented in the part-time work force (Bollé, 2001; Wajcman, 1996). Part-time work can have a negative effect on job advancement and opportunities for job training, and can be viewed as under-employment. If the choice is between no employment and part-time employment, then, it is a benefit.

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However, if the choice is between unemployment or under-employment, there is no benefit. Part-time work also contributes to disparities in income and benefits, further widening the gap between the economic status of women and men. An Australian study of vocational and technical education graduates found that women were more likely than men to accept part-time work. Although women participate in VET on an equitable basis with men, they still have not achieved fully equitable employment outcomes on completion of their vocational training. According to the 2000 students outcomes survey [. . .] After completing their vocational training, women were much more likely than men to have part-time work (32.1% compared to 13.3%) (National Centre for Vocational Education Research, 2001, p. 10).

There has been a growth in part-time workers in general and that growth can have consequences for education and training. Again, this is a double-edged sword. On one side, employers may not be willing to support training for part-time workers. Part-time workers often lack security, job benefits and basic worker’s rights (Elder & Johnson, 2001) which can block the opportunity to train. On the other side, part-time workers may need to re-train more often. However, their training is more likely to be at their own expense.

5 How are These Concerns being Addressed by Policy? Policies are the result of economic and cultural constraints and they guide the workforce and the path to the workforce—education. In many countries, religion plays a major role in cultural constraints by forming the basis of a nation’s legal system and creating defined roles for women. Education, in turn, carries out cultural mandates and government policies by controlling workers’ destinies via educational opportunity and reproducing cultural norms and values (Carter, 2004). Policy regarding vocational education and training, from culture as a result of values and norms, government as a result of legislation, precedent as a result of legal action, business as a result of need, and education as a result of planning, all feed into how we can address the changing role of women in vocational and technical education. Not all policies work as expected and some agencies are more influential than others. However, policy is seen as the main means for achieving a ‘convergence between men and women’s human capital’ (Shackleton, 1995, p. 229).

5.1 Cultural Values and Norms Culture plays the largest role in keeping women in their place. Cultural norms create roles for women in society and they vary from region to region. They can be liberating or inhibiting with regard to women. What is fascinating, though, is that throughout history, even though cultural norms have limited the roles that women could take on, women have challenged the limits to those cultural norms by going


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to school and entering non-traditional jobs. As active members of society, they have brought about change in cultural values. When women push for change, there is often resistance. Frequently, women are controlled through a culture of violence, making women dependent upon a male protector and restricting their behaviour and access to all of the options provided to men (Miller, 2001; Akhaluola, 1999). If women believe that they will be abused by men when venturing into non-traditional places and activities, then they will stay away from them. The underlying idea of a dominant male plays out in occupational segregation in the workplace (Miller, 2001) and in vocational education and technical training (Lakes, 2004). Lakes offers us a view of how young males in traditional vocational and technical education, threatened in the global economy by the lack of work like their fathers had, engage in an array of exaggerated masculine behaviour. As young white men become more threatened by their inability to obtain good pay, they become more committed to the ideal of a traditional job, wife and family, blaming minorities and women for their inability to achieve their expectations. When they act upon their beliefs in classrooms and in the workforce, women and minorities often suffer in these ‘hostile’ climates (Miller, 2001).

5.2 Government Policies and Legal Action Government policies and educational opportunities have not always been effective in countering occupational segregation. Estlund (2003), while discussing the role of law and women’s roles in the workforce, makes a case for the ameliorating effect of working together, daily, on the job by citing several studies and anecdotes of ‘co-operative interdependence’ (p. 90). A major part of her thesis is that: The law has a well-established role in securing equal opportunity in the workplace [. . .] Antidiscrimination law should be interpreted, applied, and if necessary reformed so as to affirmatively promote workplace integration. [. . .] Workplace integration advances the compelling societal goals of mending and narrowing social (and especially racial) divisions and of promoting genuine equality on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender (p. 145).

This is a critical point with regard to women transforming the workplace and vocational and technical education. Women need to be in the workplace and in educational programmes in order to fuel the process of change. It is their presence that encourages men to respect their abilities and contributions to the job at hand, as well as the potential to do a non-traditional job. One of the most common types of government-created laws regarding vocational and technical training is the support of educational programmes via legislation and government funds (Miller & Vetter, 1996). In the United States, the initial federal vocational education act, the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, provided the first government funding for vocational and technical education in that country. As general support for vocational education, this act and those that followed, created the gendered system of vocational education that now exists in the United

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States. Continuing government policies which support general education are not effective in increasing women’s enrolment in vocational and technical education (Miller, 2001). ‘Gender-neutral subsidies to training may indeed lead to greater increases in men’s access to training than to that of women’ (Shackleton, 1995, p. 227). As suggested by Estlund (2003), laws that prohibit discrimination are needed. They help to create environments where women and men work together and, in time, begin to change the culture. Internationally, these laws and policies are embodied in key human rights documents, such as the 1979 International Treaty on the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, often initiated by the United Nations (Carter, 2004) and provide for the right to work and education. These treaties often influence policy-making as many countries legislate equal rights for women regarding education and work (Dyanko, 1996; Mboya, 1998; Amao-Kehinde, 1999; Egbo, 2000; Lakes & Carter, 2004). There is another legal approach to advancing the role of women in the workforce that has to do with the upgrading and enhancement of traditional women’s work by creating career paths, updating job classifications, reorganizing work and promoting pay equity (OECD, 1998). Legislation to provide equal pay for substantially equal work has been passed by legislators in several Western nations (Blau et al., 2002). As in all legislated change, enforcement of the policy depends upon the actions of citizens who can oblige compliance through the courts. That is the point of Estlund (2003), who believes that legislation and court action combined place women in non-traditional roles in the workforce so that change can begin to take place. Government agencies are another avenue for policies that foster change in the roles of women in the workforce. For example, in the United States, National Science Foundation Policies have helped to provide funding for projects that involve under-represented groups. Boudria (2002) describes a National Science Foundation funded programme that has encouraged female enrolment in non-traditional subjects, such as engineering and computer technology. Small changes such as this one, promoted by foundation policies, can help to spread change.

5.3 Business and the Economic Policy Evolution As business leaders begin to appreciate growth in women’s economic capacity and power as both workers and consumers, they have begun to shape policies that influence the role of women in non-traditional jobs. From the early days of the Industrial Revolution, manufacturers realized the potential of women and children as cheap labour. In Lowell, Massachusetts, in the early 1800s young, single women were recruited for manufacturing work in the textile mills. This tradition is carried on today by the maquiladoras on the Mexican border of the United States, in clothing factories operating in Asia, and in the telephone computer help centres in India. Over the years the concept has been the same. Young women, desperate for employment, will work in jobs with repetitive tasks for


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smaller wages than men and in ‘sweatshop’ conditions. Today, there is a new twist to save the corporation money: part-time work, which in many cases eliminates the need for employers to provide benefits. Yet, it is this kind of work that women see as a means of getting into the work force, getting ahead and becoming financially independent. Furthermore, it is their financial independence and the growth of wealth in the hands of women that have helped to raise the consciousness of corporate managers about the value of women in leadership and management positions, to the extent that the advancement of women in management is seen by the corporation as a ‘bottom-line’ with regard to corporate success (Burke & Nelson, 2002, p. 4). The goal on the part of business and industry executives is to ensure that women graduates and consumers will notice opportunities in management. Essentially, then, the use of women as workers leads to their ability to become stronger consumers and, as consumers, they begin to influence the policies of the corporation. In addition, they help to develop the economy of the country by contributing to its growth. In the end, more women in the workforce helps to improve a nation’s economy (Anker, 2001). While there is a reason for business and industry leaders to invest in women’s vocational and technical education, changes over the years in World Bank policies have shifted from favouring public responsibility for vocational and technical education to specialized, private institutions and employer training (Leach, 2000). In view of other data clearly indicating that women are not provided with equal access to employer sponsored training, this policy change is disturbing. It could lead to a problem for women to advance into all kinds of jobs, even when this is in the best interest of business, industry and the economy. The reversal of the World Bank policy is another indication of the confusion with regard to how best to redefine gender roles in the workforce and the value of doing so.

5.4 Educational Policy Educational policies for all citizens can form the foundation for improvement in the number of women who access vocational and technical education. In most Western countries there is a closer parity amongst women and men with regard to a basic education, with women leaving basic education with an overall better achievement than men (Shackleton, 1995). This foundation is an important first step in transforming vocational education with the goal of enrolling more women. While improving basic education for girls and women, several African researchers have indicated that the priority in creating opportunities for women in vocational and technical education is to provide for the basic education of girls and women (Mboya, 1998; Amao-Kehinde, 1999; Egbo, 2000). In fulfilling this goal, they recommend a concerted effort to improve the quality of education for girls and women and this effort would require an affirmative action programme to increase funding for separate but equal girls and women’s schools and boarding facilities (Egbo, 2000). Other suggestions from a group of African educators for reformed educational policies include: (a) defraying the cost of education for girls and women, since

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the high cost will not be taken on by their families (Mboya, 1998); (b) providing funding for women in literacy programmes in order to encourage their attendance (Egbo, 2000); (c) providing business start-up funding for women to encourage them to take advantage of educational opportunities (Amao-Kehinde, 1999); (d) reducing the instances of early specialization since girls are subject to peer pressure at the time when irrevocable choices are made (Mboya, 1998); and (e) conducting educational programmes for the public in order to help the public accept non-traditional roles for girls and women (Amao-Kehinde, 1999). Clearly, there is a need to create innovative educational policies that can improve the role of women in vocational and technical education.

6 What Should Vocational and Technical Educators do to Foster Change? As noted in an Australian study, there is a tendency for the literature of vocational and technical education to focus on women as the ‘other’, providing a perspective of disadvantage rather than advantage (Butler & Ferrier, 1999). Education and employment data do indicate a disadvantage for women in the workforce, but there have been policy changes in some countries that assumed that there was no disadvantage. In recent years, some governments have backed away from providing policies and financial support for helping women to gain entry into non-traditional jobs in the workforce (Culver & Burge, 2004; Lakes & Carter, 2004). In some cases, people may have thought that the job was already done or, in other cases, they may have objected on cultural grounds. However, these policy changes have not stopped the slow, but consistent entry of women into non-traditional work. Vocational and technical educators need to face the present reality of women in all types of work and the need for women, especially those in poverty, to be able to enter any job in order to provide a means of supporting themselves and their families. Getting middle-class women into non-traditional and higher paying jobs is good, but getting impoverished women into non-traditional and higher paying jobs is an essential move towards social justice. As a part of the wider society, vocational and technical educators need to address the societal problems that inhibit the full participation of women in the workforce (Kerka, 1999). There are a number of things that vocational and technical educators can do to promote women in the workforce and speed the transition to full integration. These things all relate directly to their roles as teachers and are discussed, in order of importance, below.

6.1 Teacher In-Service Education to Address Cultural Values Many vocational and technical educators have pointed out that the vocational and technical classroom is still a hostile place for girls and women (Culver & Burge, 2004; Lakes, 2004; Pae & Lakes, 2004; Reid, 2004; Zuga, 1999) and that the


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teacher has a large responsibility for helping to improve that climate (Reid, 2004; Zuga, 1999). Most important to the goal of transforming vocational and technical education is providing in-service education to teachers so that they can address their own and the peer-to-peer bias that exists in the classroom. Reid (2004) provides a list of cultural competencies that adapt well for vocational and technical educators. They should:

r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r

Ensure that they are aware of their own biases and limitations and are knowledgeable about how these affect the guidance process. Recognize the range of social variables that lead to cultural differences and know about the effects of oppression, racism, discrimination and stereotyping on themselves and others. Understand differences in communication styles and their impact. Be open about the guidance process and actively seek the client’s understanding about the purpose of the interaction and their view about working together. Actively engage in training and educational opportunities to enrich their understanding and effectiveness for working with culturally different groups. Be aware of the impact of negative reactions and treatment experienced by culturally different groups and seek to understand this, and not devalue the experience. Understand how and why traditional and established approaches may be inappropriate and seek out research and other material that will enrich their understanding. Engage in outreach work with clients outside the normal work setting to broaden their understanding. Respect clients’ beliefs, values and views about what guidance can offer and what their community can offer, and be aware of any conflicting values they may have. Value the language of the client and do not judge a language or manner of speech as an impediment to the guidance process, and will refer to others when their (practitioner’s) linguistic skills are inadequate. Recognize that institutionalized methods of assessment may be unhelpful and create barriers. Be aware of discriminatory practices at the individual, social and organizational levels. Make genuine attempts to advocate with, or lobby on behalf of, clients who overcome relevant discrimination. Extend their communication skills so that they are not limited by a singular cultural approach. Be open to alternative ways of helping, including using the resources of the client’s community (Reid, 2004, pp. 178–79).

Implementing these competencies would be the first step in transforming vocational and technical education to meet the needs of the increasing number of women and minorities who want to become a part of the workforce. No other changes or efforts can be successful if girls and women cannot feel comfortable in their classrooms and laboratories while studying for a new career.

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6.2 Affirmative Action in Vocational and Technical Education Once the teaching cadre is ready to address the needs of all students, there needs to be affirmative action taken to provide women with gender-sensitive vocational and technical education (Fenwick, 2004; Malik & Aguado, 2004; Amao-Kehinde, 1999; Zuga, 1999). In some countries, that will mean separate and equal facilities (Lasonen, 2004; Egbo, 2000; Amao-Kehinde, 1999), while in all countries it might mean using a wide range of teaching strategies to address the needs of all students (Malik & Aguado, 2004; Zuga, 1999). Malik and Aguado have provided a comprehensive list of teaching strategies for career education and guidance that are appropriate for all teachers.

r r r r r r r

Experiment with varied grouping arrangements in order to encourage social cooperation (e.g. ‘study buddies’). Provide multiple approaches to teaching to accommodate diverse learning styles (verbal, visual and auditory materials, projects, collaborative work). Teach classroom procedures and norms directly, even things that are usually taken for granted (e.g. how to get the teacher’s attention). Recognize the meaning of different behaviours for the students (e.g. how do they feel when they are corrected). Stress meaning in teaching (ensure meaningful learning, e.g. making sure students understand what they read, relating abstract concepts to everyday experiences). Know the customs, beliefs, and values of students (e.g. analysing different traditions for common themes; discussing different ways in which knowledge is constructed). Help students identify stereotypes and racist or sexist messages (analysing curriculum materials, news from the media, etc.) (Malik & Aguado, 2004, p. 66).

Implementing these teaching strategies will help all of the students in the class, no matter what gender, ethnicity or level of educational proficiency. Other affirmative action includes changing some of the structures and processes of vocational and technical education. This would include actively recruiting and making places for more girls and women in vocational and technical education, providing adequate facilities such as appropriate toilets for women (Lasonen, 2004), providing more web-based courses in areas where women have not had access to non-traditional programmes (Aichouni & Othman, 2004) and providing financially sponsored training for women who need assistance to return to school (Fenwick, 2004; Mboya, 1998). One can use very different circumstances and reasoning to encourage affirmative action worldwide. In the United States, Conroy (1998) found that schoolgirls had unrealistic expectations of their educational attainment leading large numbers of them to opt for a four-year college degree that would result in graduates who could not be absorbed by the labour market. She suggested that earlier exposure to career education about opportunity for vocational and technical education could help to


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avoid future under-employment of these young women. In Africa, Mboya (1998) asserts that women need to have financial assistance as a necessary condition to enable them to attend vocational and technical schools. Either families cannot afford to send girls on to further schooling or women who have family responsibilities cannot afford to go to school without assistance. For very different reasons, active recruitment of girls and women and affirmative action with regard to vocational and technical education is needed worldwide. In addressing vocational and technical education for the informal economy where there are more women employed than men, Singh (2000) stresses the need to view this ‘as decentralized activity, in which local businesses and associations and community initiatives are a leading force in skills development’ (p. 617). He further adds that this work needs to be done as close to the future employers as possible. Evans (1996) suggests that there are several types of programmes that are needed in order to increase women’s participation in vocational and technical education. They include bridging programmes that update women for re-entry into the workforce, conversion programmes that help women to change direction, and community-based, role-related programmes that are geared to local environments and more traditional roles of women. The strength of this approach is that the programmes are tailored to the needs of groups of women in different contexts.

6.3 Critical Vocational and Technical Education Vocational and technical education needs to adopt a more critical stance. Trapped in an ideology that eliminates reflection in the effort to teach job skills, vocational and technical educators need to question their practices and values more often (Fenwick, 2004; Malloch, 2004; Irving, 2004). Irving provides a model of career education that puts social justice into practice, but also models a critical stance towards teaching. He provides three key dimensions:

r r r

opportunity awareness (that looks beyond progression in education and employment through the inclusion of alternative pathways); self and social awareness (concerned with the development of a sense of individual, collective and cultural being); critical understanding (that examines and interrogates the various political, economic and social discourses that influence the construction and distribution of work, and impacts on how we might shape our lives) (Irving, 2004, p. 19).

If vocational and technical teachers were to implement these three dimensions in their daily practice, then they would begin to develop and practice a more questioning and critical form of vocational and technical education. In this way, vocational and technical education, social justice for all students—women and men of all ethnicity—could evolve over time.

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6.4 Public Education for Gender Equity Once the vocational and technical education community begins to improve its performance in teaching women and diverse cultural groups in their classes, then it will be ready to reach out into the larger community to provide advice and guidance for the general public and managers and workers in business and industry. A critical step in the transformation of the workforce will be to provide management education for gender equity to business and industry managers (Dyanko, 1996; Fenwick, 2004). The evolving workforce is not just a vocational and technical education problem, but a much larger one for those who participate in the workforce. Change can be facilitated by vocational and technical educators if they have demonstrated their ability to transform their own practice with regard to inclusion of diversity and social justice. Training managers for equity would be a fitting final effort for vocational and technical educators as they help to ease the inevitable transition of the workforce. Helping parents and community members to learn about opportunities for women to work in non-traditional jobs should help to continue the process of evolution with regard to gender roles in the workforce.

7 Conclusion While women in the workforce are still underpaid, segregated into ‘women’s work’ and often doing part-time jobs, there are more women in the workforce than ever before. More women are receiving a basic education that, in turn, is fundamental to advancement in the workforce. Their presence will create change and will lead to women’s roles being redefined. Examples of that change are already visible through the media and through the policy changes instituted by a number of countries. Vocational and technical educators will need to meet the needs of more women as they move on from basic education to vocational and technical education. In order to meet the needs of women, traditional practices will need to be re-examined. Genderfairness and social justice in vocational and technical education will need to become a part of daily practice. By preparing for and adapting to the growing numbers of women in the workforce, vocational and technical educators will create better forms of vocational and technical education that address the needs of all people.

References Aichouni, M.; Othman, M. 2004. E-learning in technical education and vocational training: from concepts to practice. (Paper presented at the third Saudi Technical Conference and Exhibition, Riyadh, 11-15 December, 2004.) Akhaluola, F.C. 1999. Socio-cultural barriers to the active participation of women in the economic development of Nigeria. In: Esomonu, N.P.M., ed. Women education for active participation in the next millennium, pp. 122-130. Awka, Nigeria: MAR DAT Educational Research and Publishers.


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Amao-Kehinde, A.O. 1999. Enhancing female participation in science and technology in the next millenium. In: Esomonu, N.P.M., ed. Women education for active participation in the next millennium, pp. 1-12. Awka, Nigeria: MAR DAT Educational Research and Publishers. Anker, R. 2001. Theories of occupational segregation by sex: an overview. In: Loutfi, M.F., ed. Women, gender, and work, pp. 157-188. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Barbezat, D. 2003. Occupational segregation around the world. In: Moe, K.S., ed. Women, family, and work, pp. 177-97. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Blau, F.D.; Ferber, M.A.; Winkler, A.E. 2002. The economics of women, men, and work. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bollé, P. 2001. Part-time work: solution or trap? In: Loutfi, M.F., ed. Women, gender, and work, pp. 215-238. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Boudria, T.J. 2002. Implementing a project-based technology program for high school women. Community college journal of research and practice, vol. 26, no. 9, pp. 709-22. Burke, R.J.; Nelson, D.L. 2002. Advancing women in management: progress and prospects. In: Burke R.J.; Nelson D.L., eds. Advancing women’s careers: research and practice, pp. 3-14. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Butler, E.; Ferrier, F. 1999. ‘Don’t be too polite, girls.’ A report on a critical literature review of women, work and VET. (Paper presented at the AVETRA Conference.) <www.avetra.org.au/abstracts and papers/09 BUTLER.pdf> Carter, P.A. 2004. Education and work as human rights for women: a feminist analysis. In: Lakes, R.D.; Carter, P.A., eds. Globalizing education for work: comparative perspectives on gender and the new economy, pp. 19-42. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Conroy, C.A. 1998. Influence of gender and program enrollment on adolescents’ and teens’ occupational and educational aspirations. Vocational and technical education, vol. 14, no. 2. <scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JVTE/v14n2/JVTE-2.html> Crompton, R.; Gallie, D.; Purcell, K. 1996. Work, economic restructuring and social regulation. In: Crompton, R.; Gallie, D.; Purcell, K., eds. Changing forms of employment: organisations, skills, and gender, pp. 1-20. New York, NY: Routledge. Culver, S.M.; Burge, P.L. 2004. Gender equity in vocational education in the United States: the unfinished agenda. In: Lakes, R.D.; Carter, P.A., eds. Globalizing education for work: comparative perspectives on gender and the new economy, pp. 189–202. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Dyanko, A. 1996. Current issues and trends in technical and vocational education. Paris: UNESCO. Egbo, B. 2000. Gender, literacy and life chances in Sub-Saharan Africa. Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Elder, S.; Johnson, L.J. 2001. Sex-specific labour market indicators: what they show. In: Loutfi, M.F., ed. Women, gender, and work, pp. 251-69. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Estlund, C. 2003. Working together. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Evans, K. 1996. Barriers to participation of women in technological education. In: UNESCO, ed. Promotion of the equal access of girls and women to technical and vocational education. Paris: UNESCO. (ED 398 458.) Fenwick, T. 2004. Gender and the new economy: enterprise discourses in Canada: Implications for workplace learning and education. In: Lakes, R.D.; Carter, P.A., eds. Globalizing education for work: comparative perspectives on gender and the new economy, pp. 131-52. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Gallie, D. 1996. Skill, gender, and the quality of employment. In: Crompton, R.; Gallie, D.; Purcell, K., eds. Changing forms of employment: organisations, skills, and gender, pp. 133-59. New York, NY: Routledge. Honey, M. 1985. Creating Rosie the riveter: class, gender, and propaganda during World War II. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press. Irving, B.A. 2004. Social justice: a context for career education and guidance. In: Irving, B.A.; Malik, B., eds. Critical reflections on career education and guidance: promoting social justice within a global economy, pp. 10–24. New York, NY: Routledge-Falmer.

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Kerka, S. 1999. Has nontraditional training worked for women? Myths and realities no. 1. Columbus, OH: ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education. (ED 435 037.) Lakes, R.D. 2004. Working-class masculinities and schooling: new considerations for vocational education. In: Lakes, R.D.; Carter, P.A., eds. Globalizing education for work: comparative perspectives on gender and the new economy, pp. 43-58. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Lakes, R.D.; Carter, P.A. 2004. Afterword. In: Lakes, R.D.; Carter, P.A., eds. Globalizing education for work: comparative perspectives on gender and the new economy, pp. 203-208. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Lasonen, J. 2004. Poverty and powerlessness in Ethiopia: shaping gender equity through technical, vocational education, and training. In: Lakes, R.D.; Carter, P.A., eds. Globalizing education for work: comparative perspectives on gender and the new economy, pp. 97–110. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Leach, F. 2000. Gender implications of development agency policies on educational and training. International journal of educational development, vol. 20, pp. 333-47. Malik, B.; Aguado, T. 2004. Cultural diversity and guidance: myth or reality? In: Irving, B.A.; Malik, B., eds. Critical reflections on career education and guidance: promoting social justice within a global economy, pp. 56–72. New York, NY: Routledge-Falmer. Malloch, M. 2004. Where are the women in vocational education and training? An assessment of technical and further education (TAFE) in Australia. In: Lakes, R.D.; Carter, P.A., eds. Globalizing education for work: comparative perspectives on gender and the new economy, pp. 153-68. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Mboya, M. 1998. Girls’ and women’s participation in scientific, technical and vocational education in Tanzania. In: Bendera, S.J.; Mboya, M.W., eds. Gender and education in Tanzanian schools, pp. 125-136. Dar-es-Salaam: DUP (1996) Ltd. Miller, D.C. 2001. What is needed for true equality: an overview of policy issues for women. In: Peterson, K.J.; Lieberman, A.A., eds. Building on women’s strengths: a social work agenda for the twenty-first century, pp. 45-66. New York, NY: The Haworth Social Work Practice Press. Miller, J.V.; Vetter, L. 1996. Vocational guidance for equal access and opportunity for girls and women in technical and vocational education. Paris: UNESCO. (ED 391 949.) National Centre for Vocational Education Research. 2001. Women in VET, 2000: Australian vocational education & training statistics, 2000. At a glance. Leabrook, Australia: NCVER. (ED 461 726.) National Women’s Law Center. 2002. Title IX and equal opportunity in vocational and technical education: a promise still owed to the nation’s young women. Washington, DC: NWLC. (ED 468 221.) Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 1998. The future of female-dominated occupations. Paris: OECD. Pae, H.K.; Lakes, R.D. 2004. Preparation for (in)equality: women in South Korean vocational education. In: Lakes, R.D.; Carter, P.A., eds. Globalizing education for work: comparative perspectives on gender and the new economy, pp. 85–96. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Phan, O. 2001. Women in vocational education and training: an analysis of 1996 and 1999 data. Leabrook, Australia: NCVER. (ED 457 381.) Reid, H. L. 2004. Beyond the toolbox: integrating multicultural principles into a career guidance intervention model. In: Irving, B.A.; Malik, B., eds. Critical reflections on career education and guidance: promoting social justice within a global economy, pp. 172-85. New York, NY: Routledge-Falmer. Rubery, J. 1996. The labour market outlook and the outlook for destabilization of social and economic relationships. In: Crompton, R.; Gallie, D.; Purcell, K., eds. Changing forms of employment: organisations, skills, and gender, pp. 23-39. New York, NY: Routledge. Shackleton, J.R. 1995. Training for employment in Western Europe and the United States. Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar. Singh, M. 2000. Combining work and learning in the informal economy: implications for education, training and skills development. International review of education, vol. 46, no. 6, pp. 599-620.


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United Nations. 2005a. Statistics and indicators on women and men: economic activity, Table 5b–Part-time employment. United Nations. 2005b. Statistics and indicators on women and men: economic activity, Table 5d. United Nations. 2005c. Statistics and indicators on women and men. The world’s women 2000: Trends and statistics. Chapter 4: Education and communication. United Nations. 2005d. Statistics and indicators on women and men. The world’s women 2000: Trends and statistics. Chapter 5 – Work. Wajcman, J. 1996. Women and men managers: career and equal opportunities. In: Crompton, R.; Gallie, D.; Purcell, K., eds. Changing forms of employment: organisations, skills, and gender. New York, NY: Routledge. World Bank. 2004. Gender and development in the Middle East and North Africa: women in the public sphere. Washington, DC: World Bank. Zuga, K.F. 1999. Addressing women’s ways of knowing in order to improve the technology education environment for all students. Journal of technology education, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 57-71.


Chapter I.5

Anticipation of Skill Requirements: European Activities and Approaches1 Manfred Tessaring

1 Introduction In contrast to the rather rigid manpower supply and demand projections in the 1960s and 1970s, the objectives and approaches of forecasting, in particular in the fields of education, training and skills, have changed considerably. This is due to the fact that industrialized societies nowadays are characterized by increasing openness, flexibility, complexity and, therefore, also uncertainty. The ‘mega trends’ impacting on education and training, e.g. globalization and internationalization of economies, job markets and even of education and training systems, demographic transition and the transformation towards an information and knowledge based society in the context of lifelong learning, can be taken as familiar ground which need hardly be discussed in detail in the context of this chapter. However, these trends affect the education and training systems of European countries to a different extent: these systems vary considerably across countries and so does the educational attainment of populations.2 Against this background, the search for skills and qualifications that are ‘fit for the future’ and how they can be designed and implemented in curricula and educational/training routes are increasingly gaining in importance. Appropriate measures call for substantiated findings on skill requirements in a longer-term perspective, as well as information on new qualifications, competences and requirements that have not yet been defined by statistics and classifications. Early identification and anticipation of future skill needs is of the utmost importance for educational and training policies. This also becomes evident when considering the time lag between the occurrence of an event (e.g. technological innovation) triggering new or substantially different skill requirements and the point in time when the first cohorts leave the system with these new skill profiles. Depending on the training system of the country in question and the relevant institutional, legal and formal regulations,3 there may be a time lag of as much as ten years (see Figure 1). This is also the approximate time frame which projections should at least cover if their results are to be policy-relevant and not arrive too late. More long-term projections are necessary for fundamental reorientations or redesign of the education and training systems.

R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 I.5, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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Time lag

Cumulated time lag

0.5−1 year

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Recognition and identification of new skill requirements Design/revision of skeleton curricula in initial training Implementation in the training system Young people commence training in the revised training programmes Completion of training, job market entry of the first cohorts with the new skill profiles Passage through working life

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Fig. 1 Estimated time lags(a ) between new skill requirements and job market entry of the first cohorts with the new skill profiles (a) dependent on national institutional, legal, formal, etc., factors. Source: Tessaring 2003, based on Descy & Tessaring, 2002, p. 300.

At individual level and in the framework of lifelong learning, on the one hand, the fundamental objectives of such efforts are the optimal design of individual life and career biographies and pathways. Societal objectives, on the other hand, are prevention of unemployment and inappropriate employment and avoiding the exclusion of disadvantaged groups, which can be decisively achieved by means of future-oriented and targeted education and training provision. And, finally, information on the future requirements of work in enterprises is of central importance to human resource development and continuing training within companies. A majority of scientists and political and economic stakeholders agree that flexibilization of work and working careers, the dissemination of information and communication technologies in virtually all areas and the growing role of ‘knowledge’ are increasingly calling for flexible, broadly-based and transferable skills—in parallel with and complementary to ‘traditional’ specialized skills and working qualities. At the same time, however, openness, flexibility and the movement away from (formal) ‘qualifications’ towards a more comprehensive understanding of ‘competence’ in many countries, which includes non-formal and informal forms of learning and knowledge acquisition, is making it increasingly difficult to anticipate and define the knowledge, skills and competences required in the future.

I.5 Anticipation of Skill Requirements

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Whereas it was previously a question of applying an ‘equilibrium approach’, and detecting and forecasting functional and formal qualifications at a high level of aggregation, today the focus is increasingly on more comprehensive and qualitative approaches which are not intended to replace, but to supplement the ‘traditional’ methods and provide differentiated and exploitable information on changing trends in work requirements. It should be pointed out here that efforts to identify and forecast skill requirements decisively depend on the type of education and training system and the job markets in the country in question: the question as to what is to be forecast and how this forecasting is to be conducted will be seen in a completely different light in vocationally-oriented labour markets with nationally defined training and qualification standards than in countries with predominantly competition-based or internal labour markets. Other factors which will play a role, to mention but a few examples, are differences in planning and control and the participation of the various societal groups (governance) at centralized, decentralized/regional or sectoral levels, as well as the increasingly indistinct boundaries between general and vocational education and training, continuing training and even between vocational training and higher education in many countries.

2 Approaches to Identify Future Qualification and Skill Requirements A whole series of quantitative approaches to the forecasting of the supply and demand of skills and jobs have been developed in recent decades, ranging from macro-economic projections to surveys among enterprises and the workforce at micro and meso level, including the regional and sectoral level (for an overview see: Tessaring, 1998, 1999; Wilson, 2001; Descy & Tessaring, 2002). However, although they may be consistent within a given socio-economic framework and important for fundamental long-range policy strategies in view of their long-term character, macro approaches cannot provide detailed insights into specific and new qualification and skill requirements. Furthermore, long-term projections are of only limited relevance for individuals standing before educational/training or career decisions and expecting information on employment prospects in the coming few years. Similarly, enterprises are more interested in short- and medium-term skill trends. On the other hand, specific findings on skill developments at micro and meso level cannot always be generalized. Moreover, they generally tend to refer to present skill requirements or needs foreseeable in the short or medium term. These are some of the reasons why European as well as other countries have long been searching for methods, approaches and data from which they can derive information on future skills and new qualifications not yet delivered by the education and training system. In complement to quantitative approaches, qualitative methods, e.g. Delphi or scenario methods, are increasingly applied, often ‘enriched’ by quantitative information relating to the various areas of relevance to the development of education and training (e.g. demographic or macro-economic trends, job market

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structures, social developments, etc.). By drawing on expert knowledge from various areas, the aim of these approaches is to place possible and/or expected alternative education and training trends in a wider context as a means of deducing appropriate strategies and responsibilities. The decisive difference between these and quantitative methods is not only that trends on both the supply and demand side can be dealt with simultaneously, but also that ‘anticipation’ is no longer based on calculations backed up by figures and statistical techniques, but takes place ‘in the minds’ of experts consulted and depends on the strength of their knowledge and their sources of information. It is therefore of decisive importance for the quality and relevance of these approaches that they be theoretically substantiated, that the ‘right’ and relevant questions are asked and, above all, that suitable experts are found from all fields of activity (research, politics, business, social partners, etc.) and prompted into constructive co-operation. The variety of approaches—also within given countries—raises a further, by no means insignificant problem: how can the findings obtained via the different channels be collated, compared and rendered exploitable for policy action at national or supra-/international level? There will always be contradictions between macroeconomic and specific sectoral or occupational projections or enterprise surveys. The reasons for these contradictions lie in differences in the time horizon, the depth of aggregation, the information and data basis and the methods. The question is: how do those responsible for the planning and management of the education and training system handle these contradictions? What can be done to place their decisions in a reliable and reasonable framework that is not dominated by the interests of individual groups? And, last but not least, what conclusions can be drawn for the delivery of information to guide the educational/training and career decisions of the individual? These are questions that can only be briefly touched upon in the present context. Instead, the following sections seek to provide an overview of relevant activities at both European and national level.

3 Forecasting and Early Identification Activities 3.1 Activities at European and International Levels At the European level, the European Commission has and continues to support a number of related projects, particularly in its programmes Leonardo da Vinci and Targeted Socio-economic Research (TSER) and their follow-up programmes, and also within the framework of the European Structural Fund. In 2002, the European social partners4 adopted a ‘framework of actions for the lifelong development of competencies and qualifications’ (European Trade Union Confederation, 2002). The first of the four priorities is to ‘identify and anticipate the competencies and the qualifications needed’. The implementation of this objective is envisaged at two levels: at enterprise and at national/sectoral level.


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A number of forecasting activities conducted in recent years at both European and international level are presented below: 1. In the ‘Employment in Europe’ reports, the European Commission/Eurostat publishes information on sectoral employment growth at irregular intervals. Those sectors identified as sectors with high (previous and expected) growth are generally those in which the proportion of the lesser skilled is lower than elsewhere. 2. The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), one of the institutes of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, has presented a series of—qualitative and quantitative—forecasting studies in recent years which also touch upon aspects of education, training and skills. In the framework of the ‘Futures’ project, launched in 1998, the IPTS provided insights into trends in the demographic, social, economic, skill and technology fields, as well as their impact on competitiveness and employment up to 2010. The reports drawn up in the framework of this project comprise analyses and trends of various socio-economic aspects of European society, whereby the focus is on their relationship with technological development. The conclusion of future trends is not or only partially based on projections in the technical sense, but is largely the reflection of estimates and assessments of the participating experts or takes the form of scenarios. The reports were discussed and summarized in five panels: demographic and social trends; ICT and the information society; natural resources and the environment; the political and economic context; life sciences and the frontier of life. The panel study and the research reports are published in the ‘Futures Report series’ (further details: ). In 2001, in conjunction with the Information Society Technologies (IST) Advisory Group, DG Information Society and thirty-five European experts, the IPTS published a series of scenarios on the future development of information and communication technologies taking account of: (a) socio-political factors; (b) enterprise and industrial models; and (c) the demand by key technologies for ‘ambient intelligence’. The scenarios also included aspects of learning, human resources management and competences (European Commission. ISTAG, 2001). 3. The European Commission’s Forward Studies Unit conducted a project entitled ‘Scenarios Europe 2010: Five possible futures for Europe’ (European Commission, Forward Studies Unit, 1999). The project draws on the expertise of European Union (EU) officials in a process of brainstorming and reflection. The scenarios encompass all the important aspects of European development: markets, the economy, employment and technologies; social, political, demographic, cultural and changing values; globalization and EU enlargement; the role of national and European organizations, social partners and NGOs, etc. 4. In view of the EU enlargement and the resulting challenges in the coming decades, the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) prepared, within the study ‘Four futures of Europe’, scenarios addressing socio-economic trends within European countries and their implications for reforms and policies, including labour market participation, investments in human capital and skill demands (de Mooij & Tang, 2003).

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5. In 1999, CEDEFOP, along with the European Training Foundation (ETF) and the Max-Goote Expert Centre (University of Amsterdam), initiated a scenario on vocational training in Europe with the participation of five EU Member States and five central and eastern European countries. The scenario is based on a Delphi survey among several hundred vocational training experts per country, asked to indicate expected trends, strategies and players in the field of vocational training. The findings provide an insight into possible and probable developments of vocational training systems (up to approximately 2010), by examining trends in the following three important contexts: (a) the economy and technology; (b) employment and the job market; (c) training, skills and knowledge. The project also provides information on possible strategies and players in the field of vocational training (van Wieringen et al., 2003). 6. CEDEFOP has, in early 2004, established a network Skillsnet on the early identification of skill needs. The aims are to generate innovative solutions concerning the early identification of skill needs and to transfer findings to education and training policy and practice. The project looks for similarities across territories, sectors or occupations in order to identify common European and international trends, and also examines the needs of specific groups, such as low-skilled people and small and medium-sized enterprises. In the context of this network, conferences and workshops are organized or planned on specific and topical themes (for example: skill needs in tourism and new technologies such as nanotechnologies). Conference proceedings and other papers are available for download. A particular focus is attached to the transfer of findings into education and training policies. The network is open to all; specific sections are only accessible by network members. For more information see: <www.trainingvillage.gr/etv/Projects Networks/skillsnet>. Publications so far: Schmidt et al., 2003; Schmidt et al., 2004. 7. Several CEDEFOP publications in the recent years address issues of future skill needs, forecasting and anticipation.

r

r

The publication ‘European trends in the development of occupations and qualifications’ features a summary of contributions to CEDEFOP’s ‘Ciretoq’ network. It summarizes, among other things, the main macro-trends in the development of occupations and qualifications; the socio-economic context and systems development; development of supply and demand in initial vocational training; inter-enterprise and in-company developments and local/regional competition; and EU programmes and outcomes of vocational education and training research (Sellin, 1999; Sellin, 2000). Since 1998, CEDEFOP has been publishing regular ‘Reports on vocational education and training research in Europe’ covering a wide range of issues. The reports include a presentation and analysis of the latest forecasts on skill supply and demand. The research reports consist of a comprehensive


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background report with contributions from reputed scientists, as well as an extended synthesis report, featuring a summary and a critical appraisal of this and other research studies. The first research report (Tessaring 1998, 1999) addresses the future of work and skills, and presents approaches and findings of both quantitative and qualitative skill and job supply in various EU countries. The second research report (Descy & Tessaring, 2002) provides a detailed overview of quantitative and qualitative forecasting activities at national level in various EU and non-EU countries and of relevant activities at regional and local level. The contribution by Wilson (2001) also features a discussion of skill projections at enterprise level. The synthesis report provides information on the latest forecasts and scenarios in Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and a number of central and eastern European countries. 8. In 1990, the OECD launched the ‘International Futures Programmes’, consisting of four interrelated and mutually supportive elements: (a) OECD Forums for the Future: a platform for informal, high-level meetings with the aim of testing new ideas, developing fresh perspectives on problems and advancing the understanding of strategic economic and social issues; (b) OECD Futures Projects: targeted and multidisciplinary research and policy analysis on certain subject areas, which are in particular from the Forum conferences; (c) OECD Future Studies Information Base: a documentation system (CDROM) providing the key findings and conclusions of published and unpublished literature worldwide; (d) OECD International Futures Network: a global network of some 600 persons from government, the economy, research, who share a mutual interest in long-term developments and related policy aspects. More information on: <www.oecd.org/sge/au/>

3.2 European Initiatives Anticipating and Forecasting Skill Requirements The following text provides a summary of selected activities relating to the forecasting and anticipation of skill requirements in a number of European and OECD countries. These initiatives encompass a wide range of quantitative and qualitative approaches at the level of sectors, occupations or qualifications, derived from statistics or information drawn from enterprises and experts. 3.2.1 Frequenz.net, Germany: Early Identification of Qualification Needs Within the framework of the ‘Initiative for early identification of qualification needs’, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research set up a network ‘FreQueNz’ directed towards future-oriented issues concerning the development of

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qualifications. Altogether eleven institutes participate in this network with specific approaches and themes; all results are published. The information and communication platform (<www.frequenz.net>) provides information on projects, products and services, partners, literature database, newsletter, events and links. Part of the ‘FreQueNz’ network activity is the project ‘Qualification needs in the OECD countries’ carried out by the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). The project analyses micro-economic models in a string of OECD countries and on the basis of this information and other elements, carries out cross-country comparisons, in particular in a number of specific sectors (services, computers, health and care).

3.2.2 National Observatory of Employment and Training, Czech Republic: LABOURatory The Leonardo da Vinci project ‘Regular forecasting of training needs: comparative analysis, elaboration and application of methodology, “LABOURatory”’, sponsored by the European Commission, was set up in 1998. The aim of the project is to draw up forecasting methods applicable not only to western but also to eastern European countries. The project is co-ordinated by the Czech National Observatory of Employment and Training. The project’s first step was to take stock of forecasting activities in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovenia. The second phase of the project involved the presentation of methods and models used in forecasting training needs and their application in various countries: (a) quantitative models and their application in the Czech Republic; (b) comparative analyses and forecasting activities in Poland; and (c) regional and sectoral methods (case studies for the hotel, catering and tourist trade in the Czech Republic, France and Slovenia). The publications (National Training Fund, 1999, 2001) include an overview of the methods, applications and findings as well as the conclusions on possible improvements to the methods.

3.2.3 European Training Foundation: Regional Skill Needs in Five Candidate Countries In 2001, in co-operation with national partner organizations, the European Training Foundation (ETF) carried out a survey on skill needs in specific regions of five candidate countries (north-west Bohemia/Czech Republic, southern Estonia, the southern Hungarian plain, Lithuania and the Lubelskie district of Poland). The purpose of the survey was to conduct an intensive qualitative assessment of emerging regional skill requirements in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to examine demand-related perspectives in the context of the local infrastructure supply and to prepare the development of intervention strategies. The survey included 952 SMEs located in economies in various phases of the transition process (Kerr, 2003).


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3.2.4 Career Space Consortium: The Demand for ICT Skills in Europe The Career Space Consortium, comprising a number of major electronic companies alongside the European Commission, has set itself the aim of analysing information on the situation and perspectives of skills and skill requirements in the field of information and communication technologies in Europe and to draw up appropriate recommendations for education and training policy—in particular with a view to narrowing the current ICT skills gap (CEDEFOP, 2001; Curley, 2003). 3.2.5 Overview on Country Initiatives on Skill-Need Anticipation and Forecasting With no pretension that the information is exhaustive, up-to-date or correct in every detail, Table 1 gives an overview of the institutions in Europe involved in skills and occupational forecasting activities as well as the approaches applied. Further information and source references can be obtained from the contributions in Schmidt et al. (2003).

4 Summary and Future Co-Operation Identifying and forecasting future skill requirements—at the level of individuals, enterprises and society as a whole—and implementing these requirements in the framework of the education and training system has long been the subject of intensive research efforts and political discussion. Societies characterized by rapidly changing social and economic conditions, increasing openness, permeability, complexity, and therefore uncertainty, are seeking new, alternative or complementary instruments for the early identification of skill requirements and their implications for the design of education, initial vocational training and continuing training. Such approaches consider the future skill requirements of target groups, enterprises, sectors and regions, and increasingly incorporate options and alternatives for policy and strategic actions. In this context, the objectives of the early identification of skill requirements may in fact differ substantially:

r r r r r r

Projecting future developments/trends of supply and demand of existing (formal) qualifications; Forecasting changing skill profiles in a given occupation, sector or region; Identifying newly emerging skills and requirements; Analysing the increasing or declining significance of contents or elements within specific qualifications; Detecting new configurations or bundles of skill elements in a given activity; Taking into consideration competences (acquired formally, non-formally or informally) instead of formal qualifications, etc.

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Table 1 National skill requirement forecasting and early recognition activities, as of 2002 (a ) Country

Institution

Approach/Method/Data sources

Comments

Czech Republic

CERGE-EI

Macro-economic projection model: extension, replacement and recruitment demand; those leaving the education/training systems; balancing supply and demand; macro-economic forecasting model for the tourism sector in the region of north-west Bohemia.

Ministry of Employment

Integration of macro-economic forecasts in an ‘integrated system of typical positions’ (ISTP) to determine qualification requirements and training needs.

Based on the ROA and ESRI forecasting models; implemented within the Leonardo project, ‘LABOURatory’. In the set-up phase.

AKF

Macro-economic projections of labour demand according to level of education/training and sector at national and regional level; projection of labour supply according to education/training categories based on demographic trends. Short-term forecasting of skill requirements in the regions, combination of job-market data with panel data from surveys among enterprises and experts.

Denmark

Regions Germany

IAB/Prognos IAB BLK

FreQueNz

‘Early identification of qualification needs’; sponsored by BMBF; eleven participating research institutes. Approaches: job vacancy analysis; reference enterprise surveys; examination of regional continuing training provision; examination of the skill supply of vocational schools and colleges; utilization of the network of specialized associations and chambers; development of methods for the on-going observation of skill trends; skill trends in the service sector; identification of trendsetters; comparative international studies; skill structure report; skills report and skill trends—online.

FORCEM

Observation of skill and training requirements, including at sectoral and occupational level.

On the basis of various projections (of e.g. IAB/Prognos, etc.) Further details in the relevant articles in this publication or at the FreQueNz website: <www.frequenz.net> M. Tessaring

Spain

Long-term macro-economic demand projections per sector, qualification level and field of activity; carried out on an irregular basis since 1986. Projection of labour force supply and the those leaving education/training on the basis of the educational accounting system (BGR) (on an irregular basis). Macro-economic projection of skill supply and demand (on an irregular basis).

In the development phase.

France

Institution


Autonomous regions

Observatories to identify skill requirements at regional level.

OBINCUAL/ Ministry of Employment BIPE

Network to identify key qualifications/skills and sectors and future trends in occupations, jobs and occupational profiles; scenarios, Delphi surveys, etc. Macro-economic projections of skill and recruitment requirements per occupational category, sectors and (to a certain extent) region; supplemented by scenarios. Qualification needs at national, sectoral, regional and local levels; skill supply and projection of school-leavers and those coming out of training; employment perspectives. Changing skill requirements based on expert/enterprise surveys and job market analysis.

OREF

Céreq Finland

Ireland

Italy

Central Office for Education Ministry of Employment National Board of Education

Projections of occupational and skill trends (supply and demand), since 1976.

ESRI

Regular macro-economic projections of skill requirements per sector.

´ Expert FORFAS/ Group on Future Skill Needs

Short- and medium-term forecasting of the supply and demand of skilled manpower in certain sectors and areas, in particular ICT and research.

Government, network

National surveys on short- and medium-term job and skill requirements per sector; surveys on regional and occupational skill needs; scenarios; annual recruitment needs; medium-term macro-economic forecasts. Various skill requirement projections.

Regions Netherlands ROA

Comments

In the set-up phase.


Table 1 (continued) Country

Manpower supply and demand: short- and long-term trends. Medium- to long-term macro-economic projections of manpower supply and demand per educational/training and occupational category, combined with scenarios and experts’ forecasts.

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Short- and medium-term macro-economic projections of skill supply and demand according to sector; incorporation of mobility and substitution processes; projection of school-leavers

Co-ordinated by the Ministry for Employment and Social Affairs

Table 1 (continued) Institution


Max-Goote Expert Centre Various organizations, government

Scenarios of educational and training trends.

National Observatory

Short- and medium-term projection of manpower requirements according to sector, occupation and educational/training level, including a regional structure; projection of those leaving the education/training system and manpower supply

Portugal

Ministry of Employment

Surveys on the short-term training requirements of enterprises according to sector and region.

Slovenia

HRDF

Surveys on the training requirements of enterprises (in certain regions). Development of the tourist sector and training requirements (in certain regions).

Poland

Sweden

United Kingdom

Projection of skill requirements.

Projection of recruitment requirements and transitions from education/training to employment; balance of supply and demand.

Swedish Foresight

Projection of long-term technical, social and economic trends (including education and training) and their interaction on the basis of an expert panel and additional information.

IER

Macro-economic long-term projection of manpower requirements according to qualification levels, including regional and local structures; forecasts of those coming out of training; on a regular basis.

DfEE

Compilation and analysis of job market trends, on a regular basis.

DfEE/Skills Task Force

Skill requirement projections.

NIESR

Qualitative projection of training requirements.

QCA, London University, etc.

Scenarios on skill requirements in various sectors and regions.

a. The abbreviations are explained in Schmidt et al., 2003. Source: Tessaring, 2003.

Preparatory work; projection of global labour supply available. Implemented within the context of the Leonardo project ‘LABOURatory’.

Implemented within the context of the Leonardo project ‘LABOURatory’

Partially in the set-up phase

M. Tessaring

Central Statistical Office

Comments

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Country


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The channels and the approaches used in the various countries and by the different scientists are extremely diverse. Some countries have already made considerable progress, whereas others are only at the beginning of the process—either due to a lack of relevant experience and skills, or because the relevant organizational infrastructure or support on the political level is not yet sufficient. Access to this information is frequently difficult and co-operation across national borders—despite a certain degree of progress in the recent past—is not yet well-developed. From this perspective, the network Skillsnet established by CEDEFOP in 2004 could provide the starting point for future intensive co-operation—both between scientists and research institutions from different countries, as well as between researchers, policy-makers and practitioners. Both aspects are of the utmost importance: exchange of experience and transnational research co-operation should serve as a driving force for the further development of methods and approaches. The involvement from the very outset of policy-makers and practitioners—including the social partners—is designed to raise awareness among the stakeholders of the relevance of and the need for a future-oriented design of education and training—based on concrete information and recommendations—and thereby encourages them to provide support in terms of personnel, finance and organizational resources.

Notes 1. This is a revised version of a paper presented at the Conference on Early Identification of Skill Needs in Europe, Berlin, 30-31 May 2002 (Tessaring, 2003). 2. Cf., inter alia, the analyses in CEDEFOP’s first two reports on vocational training research in Europe (Tessaring, 1999; Descy & Tessaring, 2002) and the extensive bibliographies indicted in both reports. 3. E.g. duration and permeability of training courses, involvement of the social partners, government, chambers of commerce, etc., competence and implementing regulations. 4. European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC); Union of Industrial and Employers’ Confederations of Europe (UNICE); European Centre of Enterprises with Public Participation and of Enterprises of General Public Interest (CEEP).

References CEDEFOP. 2001. Generic ICT skills profiles: future skills for tomorrow’s world—Career Space. Thessaloniki, Greece: Cedefop Panorama. Curley, M. 2003, Addressing the ICT skills shortage in Europe. In: Schmidt, S.L. et al., eds. Early identification of skill needs in Europe, pp. 122–127. Luxembourg: EUR-OP. de Mooij, R.; Tang, P. 2003. Four futures of Europe. The Hague: CPB. Descy, P.; Tessaring, M. 2001. Training in Europe: second report on vocational training research in Europe 2000—background report. Luxembourg: EUR-OP. (Cedefop reference series: vol. II.) Descy, P.; Tessaring, M. 2002. Training and learning for competence: second report on vocational training research in Europe—synthesis report. Luxembourg: EUR-OP. (Cedefop reference series.) European Commission. Forward Studies Unit. 1999. Scenarios Europe 2010: five possible futures for Europe. Brussels: European Union. [Edited by B. Gilles, A. Michalski and L.R. Pench.] <europa.eu.int/comm/cdp/scenario/index en.htm>.

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European Commission. ISTAG. 2001. Scenarios for ambient intelligence in 2010. Seville, Spain: IPTS. (Final report compiled by K. Ducatel et al.) European Trade Union Confederation. 2002. Framework of actions for the lifelong development of competencies and qualifications. Brussels: ETUC/UNICE/CEEP. Kerr, L. 2003. A demand-side analysis of SME skills needs in regions of five candidate countries. In: Schmidt, S.L. et al., eds. Early identification of skill needs in Europe, p. 286–303. Luxembourg: EUR-OP. National Training Fund. 1999. Forecasting education and training needs in transition countries: lessons from the western European experience. Prague: NTF. National Training Fund. 2001. Forecasting skill needs: methodology elaboration and testing. Prague: NTF. Schmidt S.L. et al., eds. 2003. Early identification of skill needs in Europe. Luxembourg: EUR-OP. (Cedefop reference series, 40.) Schmidt, S.L. et al., eds. 2004. Identifying skill needs for the future: from research to policy and practice. Luxembourg: EUR-OP. (Cedefop reference series.) Sellin, B. 1999. European trends in the development of occupations and qualifications, vol. I. Luxembourg: EUR-OP. Sellin, B., ed. 2000. European trends in the development of occupations and qualifications, vol. II: Findings of research, studies and analyses for policy and practice. Luxembourg: EUR-OP. (Cedefop reference document.) Tessaring, M. 1998. The future of work and skills: visions, trends and forecasts. In: Tessaring, M., ed. Vocational education and training: the European research field. Background report, vol. I, p. 271–317. Luxembourg: EUR-OP. Tessaring, M. 1999. Training for a changing society: a report on current vocational education and training research in Europe 1998. Luxembourg: EUR-OP. Tessaring, M. 2003. Identification of future skill requirements: activities and approaches for European cooperation. In: Schmidt, S.L. et al., eds. Early identification of skill needs in Europe, p. 306–25. Luxembourg: EUR-OP. van Wieringen, F. et al. 2003. Future education: learning the future—scenarios and strategies in Europe. Luxembourg: EUR-OP. Wilson, R.A. 2001. Forecasting skill requirements at national and company levels. In: Descy, P.; Tessaring, M., eds. Training in Europe: second report on vocational training research in Europe 2000—background report, vol. II, p. 561-609. Luxembourg: EUR-OP.

Chapter I.6

Redefining the Status of Occupations Walter R. Heinz

1 Introduction In the past thirty years we have seen waves of re-assessments carried out on the world of work in the wake of the declining industrial society: the degradation of work (Braverman, 1974) was prominent in the 1970s; the end of the division of labour and the upgrading of work (Kern & Schumann, 1984) in the 1980s; the end of work (Rifkin, 1995) in the 1990s; and the end of the career (Moen & Roehling, 2005) at the turn of the century. Will we witness the end of the term ‘occupation’ in the years to come? While Rifkin (1995) propagated the decline of the labour force on a global scale in the post-market era, as the consequence of massive job cuts in production and marketing of goods and services, Moen & Roehling (2005) argue that the lock-step pattern of career is dissolving, that it never existed for women and is becoming less and less the employment pattern of men. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, there is rising job insecurity, discontinuous employment and the requirement to upgrade one’s skills, a structural shift of the relationship between education, training and employment that has generated the ‘contingent work-life course’ (Heinz, 2003). In this chapter, I shall argue that it is not the end of the term occupation, but a transformation towards a new constellation of training, competence, work and company organization, due to a complex combination of economic, cultural and social changes. The following discussion focuses on Germany, because it is a prototype for an occupation-centred society with its standardized system of vocational education and training (VET) and a close fit between certified skill qualifications and employment status and careers (e.g. Schwarze, Buttler & Wagner, 1994; Solga & Konietzka, 1999). The extent to which the status of occupations has to be redefined in post-industrial service societies can be demonstrated by looking at the effects of structural and cultural changes on Germany’s well-organized system of occupations.


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2 Occupation Defined There are several forms of work: housework and career work; paid and unpaid work; creative and routine work; dependent and autonomous work. One form of work is occupational. Ever since the Reformation people were situated in society by reference to their social origin and their occupation (Weber, 1976/1904). One has an occupation—a nurse, a lawyer, an accountant. The assignation of people to occupations, on the one hand, promotes the culture of a society because occupations represent recognized and valued tasks and serve the economy by contributing to the wealth of nations. On the other hand, however, occupations also indicate different ranks, levels of prestige and participation rights in society. They mirror the structure of social inequality, because they are coupled with social and ethnic origin, gender and education. For a first approximation, ‘occupation’ can be defined as a specific pattern of labour, aptitude and competence, constituted by society and held stable over a certain historical period. When these patterns are formalized and regulated by institutions, they gain long-term validity and serve to orient people in their vocational choice. From the perspective of social science, the notion of occupation has two basic features: first, it reflects the social division of labour at a certain stage of a society’s economic and cultural history; second, it is a matter of a person’s identification with a certain pattern of gainful activity. An occupation cannot be reduced to vocational education and training, employment or working at a job, because it is the core medium linking a person’s life-course to the political economy and the work culture of society. This meaning has been fundamental to the understanding of the material and symbolic aspects of occupations ever since the analyses of society by Karl Marx and Max Weber. An occupation mirrors the location of an individual (and his/her family) in the social structure of society and determines the individuals’ life-chances. Traditionally, occupational work also implies a model of a division of labour between a household and employment that reflects the gender relations in a society (Hochschild, 1997; Krüger, 2003; Moen, 1992). With increasing participation by women in service sector occupations, the issues of gender segmentation in the employment system and solutions to the problem of reconciling occupation and family life have become urgent for social policy and for companies’ human resources management. The manifold aspects of an occupation, however, make it difficult to arrive at a concise definition. In the context of capitalist democracies, an occupation implies at least the following characteristics (Beck, Brater & Daheim, 1980; Dostal, 2002; Jahoda, 1982): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Freedom to choose a certain occupation; A source of social identity and life planning; A focus for organizing human capital (knowledge and skills); The allocation of rights and duties (social status); The representation of society’s values (achievement; individualism/collectivism).

I.6 Redefining the Status of Occupations

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In sum, an occupation is the point of convergence of skills and activities, working tools and procedures, social status and career mobility. This notion, for example, informs the definition given by the German Federal Employment Agency (cf. Dostal, 2002): An occupation is an integrated set of qualifications, a specific combination of knowledge, practical and social competence (skill profile). It attaches tasks to a set of qualifications and differentiates levels of activity (autonomy vs. restriction) at work and is a major property of the stratification of society. Entering an occupation requires education and training, a preparation that leads not only to a certain skill profile, but also creates legitimate expectations concerning working conditions and income. Having an occupation is a crucial prerequisite for participation and consumption in society. Furthermore, an occupation is an indicator of social (in)equality because it links the person with particular segments of the labour market, where the exchange of labour power and wages is negotiated according to employers’ requirements. This process of status allocation decides a person’s life-chances; thus, it structures social stratification. An occupation also facilitates the matching of skill supply and demand and reduces the costs of job search and of recruiting employees. Last but not least, the notion of an occupation supports the social integration of individuals in the context of the cultural and economic institutions of society. Because of the close coupling among VET institutions, the organization and conditions of work and social security, an occupation is a fundamental principle of social and economic structures—in its most developed form in German-speaking societies. The ideal model of occupation-centred work is built on the idea of a social contract and champions a stable arrangement between the distribution of occupations, the requirements of societal reproduction and individual needs—an arrangement that is embedded in a system of industrial relations and social security (‘social market economy’). This coupling of skills and employment has advantages for the employers with regard to training, recruitment, standards of good work and promotion; for the employees, it conveys social identity and provides a long-term employment perspective. Furthermore, through its connection to firms, work teams, unions or associations, occupational work constitutes communities of practice that provide social recognition and occupational commitment.

3 Redefining Occupation In reality, the arrangements that represent occupation-centred work are thwarted by economic interests, mainly business strategies such as cost-cutting, the creation of lean organizations and competition on the labour market. These factors tend to restrict the matching of skills and jobs and create less employment security and continuity than the social contract would lead us to expect. Recent research (cf. Kurtz, 2001) shows that there is a contradictory development. Occupational credentials gain in importance by entering the labour market, while in fact they are losing their exchange value for stabilizing workers’ identity in the sense of promoting

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their social integration. Since the shaping of one’s life-course is contingent on the extent to which continuity of participation in the labour market is possible, the accumulation of human capital as a resource for negotiating job contracts becomes more important, though employment careers cannot be taken for granted anymore (Heinz, 2003). The accumulation of educational degrees and vocational certificates becomes essential for succeeding in the competition for employment. This is a major reason why most job-seekers and workers invest in education, VET and continuous training—they expect, as a result, opportunities for decent work, income and advancement. The principle of occupation still legitimizes the validity of individual and social investments in the process of skill formation and, at the same time, strengthens the education and training system as an institution contributing to the reproduction of social inequality via differential access to the hierarchy of occupations. There are two questions that need to be dealt with: what are the consequences of the new design of work and uncertain career prospects for the meaning that individuals attach to the notion of occupation? And to what extent will the linkage between technical and vocational training, occupational certificates and employment be weakened? Answers are not easy to be found, because empirical data that would permit us to analyse the interactive effects between structural change and subjective response are scarce. The redefinition of occupation is an element of social change in the transition from an industrial to a service and knowledge society, along with the decline of traditional agencies of social integration, such as family, neighbourhood, workers’ solidarity and employers’ benevolence. This means that living circumstances and life-course become more dependent on labour-market opportunities, and learning an occupation is a prime resource for social integration. Certified skills are still the entrance ticket to good jobs; they facilitate access to continuous employment, the upgrading of skills and retraining. The routes to an occupation, however, are getting much more difficult to pass, because employers are offering far less training places for occupations with prospects. This requires that school graduates and job-seekers engage in much more exploration with an increased risk of failing to land an employment contract. This creates an ‘individualized occupational orientation’ (Berger, Konietzka & Michailow, 2001), which differs from the traditional concept of occupation by being ‘work in progress’—not based on the expectation of a lifelong commitment to the occupation that has been learned. With rising unemployment and increasing numbers of working poor, the coupling between occupation and employment has also become more tenuous in recent years in Germany. There are two complementary developments that have weakened the occupational model: massive lay-offs, outsourcing, franchizing as a form of fake self-employment and non-standard work, on the one hand; and the demand for skill profiles that are adaptable to the companies’ shifting organizational needs, which tend to question the utility of occupational competence. When work time and tasks become more mobile and less predictable, because companies are reacting to market forces much faster than in the period of mass production, then the workers’ capacity for coping with multiple demands gains in importance.


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4 Global Competition, Local Institutions and Values Occupations are embedded in the economic and social history of society leading to the division of labour and the education system. Depending on economic and technical developments, as well as value change in society, fields of occupation may only be stable for a certain period; they constantly lose and gain in number and importance. The decline of crafts and the rise of person-centred services is an obvious example. In the transition to the service society, there has been an increasing differentiation of national and transnational spheres of occupational work. The expansion of financial services and of the media industries has created a number of new highly skilled occupations. There is no general pattern, however. Occupations show path-dependent modifications in response to global change. They adopt different directions in conservative, liberal and social-democratic welfare societies (Esping-Andersen, 1990, 1996). Depending on the respective balance between markets, social services and the active labour-market policy followed by the State, societies develop and maintain different institutions for regulating training, labour-market entry and exit, and industrial relations. These institutions can promote—but also impede—processes of adapting occupations to economic and technological change, because they continue to shape policy decisions and tend to reproduce the basic features of social structures and occupations. The Scandinavian countries, for example, have managed to increase women’s employment by expanding the public service sector in combination with creating occupations in the primary labour market. This policy has led to an upgrading of skilled person-centred occupations and more gender equality in the division of labour between family responsibilities and employment. An active labour-market policy with job creation in the public sector also prevented a rise in the number of working poor in the service sector, a trend characteristic of liberal welfare States such as the United States of America and the United Kingdom. The (neo)liberal strategy and the social democratic policy can be contrasted with the development in countries with a mix of conservative welfare policy and stepwise deregulation of the labour market, like Germany, where the information and communication technology and new forms of work organization are implemented by creating new skill profiles in a reform of its VET-system aimed at modern occupations. This kind of restructuring, however, leads to an increasing risk of social exclusion for the unqualified and those who cannot upgrade their qualifications because they lack social and material resources, such as unskilled youth, single mothers, migrants and unemployed older workers. Because of the dynamic nature of occupations and social mobility, the empirical monitoring of processes that are redefining the status of occupations on the national level is difficult—and at the international level it is almost impossible. Thus, systems of classification must be kept open for future developments in job activity patterns, which include at the minimum the variations in tasks, activities, means, qualifications and social status. For international comparisons, it is important to distinguish between references to employment occupations and to training occupations. For example, in Germany, there are about 30,000 occupational titles and 350

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recognized training occupations according to the federal Vocational Education and Training Act. In addition, there are quite a number of school- and college-based and academic occupations that belong to the expanding category of professions. In the United States, there are no recognized VET occupations, but college and university-based occupations linked to the BA degree (Grubb, 1999). Applied skills are culturally unpopular and are not regarded as providing access to jobs and careers, though the large enrolments at community colleges indicate that there is a demand for intermediate skills. As comparative research shows (Büchtemann, Schupp & Soloff, 1994; Heinz, 1999; Shavit & Müller, 1998), German institutions concerned with transition from school to work provide certified, flexible and nationally recognized skills that support the process of matching workers and occupations. In order to grasp the impact of global competition on the extent to which occupational change is occurring, the structure of occupations must be compared across countries. Since nation-specific fabrics of institutions and local values define and stabilize the respective employment systems and the cultural meanings of jobs, occupations and professions, conducting such a comparison is challenging. There are international attempts, though, for classifying and comparing occupations that are the starting point for answering the question of to what extent, and why, the status of occupations is undergoing a transformation. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has been developing the ‘International Standard Classification of Occupations’ (ISCO) since 1923 (see Hoffmann, 1999) with an updated version in 1988. This classification serves as a guideline for comparative research on the changes of occupations and labour markets. ISCO is based on two dimensions of skills: (a) their level of complexity, range of activities and degree of specialization; and (b) the kind of knowledge, tools, equipment, materials, type of goods and services. This definition does not take into account, however, the type and level of education and training necessary to qualify for a certain occupation. Though there is a more or less close relationship between the structure of skill levels, the complexity of work and educational levels, this definition is meaningful only for those societies that have an elaborate system linking VET with the structure of occupations and the labour market. ISCO-88 covers ten major groups of occupation according to the respective level of skills, twenty-eight sub-major, 116 minor and 390 unit groups. These categories descend from general to more specific occupational details and can serve as a guide for categorizing and comparing national occupational structures. To complicate the comparison of occupational change across nations, most post-industrial service societies have their own system. In the United States, the ‘Standard Occupational Classification’ (SOC 1998) is more specific on the levels of the minor (‘broad’) groups (449) and detailed occupations (821). In Germany, six occupational areas based on economic sectors and twenty fields of occupations are distinguished. The obvious variations for classifying occupations result from using the dimension of ‘level of specialization’ in different ways and by being silent in regard to the educational requirements of occupations. More refined classifications for the purpose of assessing changes that call for a redefinition are called for which combine economic sector and occupational status with skill level, education and specialization. In the light of the trend


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towards the ‘flexible specialization’ of work in post-industrial society (Priore & Sabel, 1984), such a refined taxonomy could improve the collection of comparable data on the extent to which occupations are shifting to multi-skilling (hybrid skills profiles) in the context of required organizational flexibility and lifelong learning.

5 Reasons for Redefining Occupations The causes, processes and consequences for the constitution, development and modification—as well the vanishing—of certain occupations tend to be discussed by referring to the economic and technological forces, globalization and the rise of information and communication technologies. However, there is no deterministic relationship between the progress of technologies, skill requirements and the restructuring of occupations (cf. Kurtz, 2001). The restructuring of occupations can best be understood not as being driven by the economy or technology, but as a process of social construction that involves the divergent interests of relevant agents— companies, policy-makers, educators, unions, customers, bureaucracy and, last but not least, the workers themselves. The creation, consolidation and branching of occupations, as well as their modification, are based on a social process of negotiating the supply of skills and the demand for workers. If this negotiation turns out to be successful, standards of training, membership and execution of tasks arise that regulate the interaction between workers, employers and customers. Such a process may take several decades, as in the setting up of crafts in the context of guilds in mediaeval Europe; or just a few years, as in the creation of Information Technology (IT) and media occupations at the turn of the twentieth century. New service occupations were established in order to manage the implementation and use of computers, new care facilities, financial transactions (analysts), information services (call centres), etc. The demand for IT and media services continuously generates the need for employees with technical, sales, and social and consulting skills. Such skill profiles define new occupations that differ from their predecessors by being open to changes in their composition. The fast expansion of technical and person-related services, however, did not generate well-defined occupations, but rather a range of jobs, from casual work to professional work. The high-end occupations, as well as the less-qualified jobs, are growing at the expense of traditional production, sales and office work. These changes are resulting from a process-oriented organization of companies and work situations that is supposed to be more efficient in responding to market forces and customer demands than the occupational model of designing and performing work. This new model is tied to a skill-based division of labour and promotes primarily the execution of tasks, instead of planning and problem-solving in the context of overlapping, multi-occupationally composed project teams. Such flexible forms of organizing work come to characterize manufacturing and service companies that require employees to be prepared for co-operation and self-control in flat status hierarchies. This restructuring also leads to a much more flexible regime of work-time, especially in businesses that depend upon customers and clients. This

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regime has been labelled the ‘24/7-work-week’ (Presser, 2003), e.g. twenty-four hours a day for seven days a week. In the United States, almost half of the work force is employed in non-standard time regimes, due to the constraints on service jobs that dictate flexible work time. When work is performed under time pressure in combination with new tools, new procedures and in company with co-workers, employees cannot rely on their experience-based calculation of time frames for services and innovative manufacturing activities. These changes impact on the qualifications that are sought by employers: procedural and technical skills must be combined with sensitivity for customers’ variable wishes and the personality of colleagues. Based on their skill profile, employees must perform multiple tasks, e.g. manufacturing, repairing, selling and customer advice. Changing teams, locations and different customers require communicative competence, role-playing and, increasingly, foreign language skills as well—usually English. Competence requirements thus not only increase but are also changing in their composition towards a mix of technical, sales and communicative skills in order to solve hard- and software problems for IT users or to support families in the care of ailing grandparents. As OECD reports (e.g. 1996), there is a rising level of education in all postindustrial service societies that is not just a response to new skill demands, but reflects a cultural change towards post-secondary education and lifelong learning, promising a working life that can be shaped according to individual talents and goals. This trend towards a new political economy of education is also at the roots of the ‘Bologna-Process’, which promotes the introduction of the Anglo-American system of academic certification—the BA and MA—in Europe by the year 2010. It is still a matter of academic debate whether these trends are evidence of the knowledge society with increasing autonomy at work (Stehr, 2000) or a transformation of the supply and demand negotiation pattern towards a flexible employment society (Sennett, 1998), which may endanger the image of occupation as a vehicle of career continuity that used to provide social identity in the past. There are only a minority of skilled workers who benefit from more autonomy at work, because there is a widening gap between the educational accomplishments of workers and their actual employment: under-employment and non-standard work are widespread experiences for recent generations of job-starters (Livingstone, 1998). The better qualified ones, however, tend to be integrated in social networks of alumni and job-contacts, and thus are better prepared to cope with uncertain and discontinuous careers. At present, there are two possible scenarios that may redefine the status of occupation in post-industrial service societies: a decline in occupational commitment; or a professionalization of occupations.

5.1 A Decline in Occupational Commitment The reduction in regular employment and the requirement to engage in continuing training, cope with wage cuts and the risk of long-term unemployment all contribute to a creeping de-valuation of occupation as the key for entering and staying in the


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labour market and as a marker for continuity in one’s life. When work contracts become short-term and individualized, the employees must learn to behave like entrepreneurs and act in a self-rationalizing manner, because they have to compete in the labour market over and over again. Occupational skills are taken for granted, but they are not enough to keep a job with prospects. Employees and job-seekers need self-management skills in order to come to a rational and efficient arrangement with the varied demands of firms in respect to time, location, content and conditions of work. A new type of employee, the entrepreneur of one’s own skills (‘labour power entrepreneur’), has been described by Voss (2000), an employee who can navigate the work orientations and practices that correspond to the fast-moving and highly demanding work situations in the IT, media and financial services fields. When a loose coupling between certified skills and work activities becomes the norm, then a person’s commitment to the occupation they once learned will weaken in favour of optimizing job opportunities and taking chances by changing occupations, or at least integrating new features into their skill profiles. This, however, means reshaping one’s ensemble of knowledge and aptitudes on demand, corresponding to the principle of ‘just-in-time’ in the manufacturing industry. Such a flexible orientation towards content and the work context reduces commitment to one’s occupation and may have long-term stressful effects on the worker’s self-identity.

5.2 From Occupation to Profession The other scenario is the upgrading of occupations in a process of (re)professionalization. Professions are one of the three forms of organizing work, together with markets and administrations (Freidson, 2001); they are characterized by specific expertise, self-organization and self-regulation. Prominent examples are lawyers, doctors and architects. While in Anglo-American societies professions have developed from the bottom-up by gaining a strong position in society, in Germany and France professions, similar to trades, were defined by the State and regulated by education, training and certification institutions. Professions differ from occupations by providing and requiring more autonomy in the design and practice of work and by being based on an academic education. They create their own standards for assessing their output and implement practices of self-control that tend to be core elements of a code of ethics. Professions can be regarded as providers of solutions for crucial service problems of modern societies, in the sense that they command a field of knowledge that can contribute to the regulation of crises (e.g. illness, crime and housing) in the context of core social values like health, justice and safety. There are four central properties that characterize a profession: 1) It is in charge of providing a socially important task through a set of special knowledge, e.g. illness is cured by medical expertise. 2) It establishes a relationship with a central value of society. 3) Education takes place in an academic setting offering abstract knowledge and communication skills.

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4) Formal knowledge and its certification, as well as continuing skill improvement, is regulated by associations (in Europe in negotiation with the State), which organize and defend their monopoly of expertise by strategies of social exclusion and control of the client market. The wearisome dispute between the medical profession and the association of clinical psychologists in Germany about the recognition of psychological psychotherapy and its integration into the system of health insurance is an exemplary case. In his seminal paper, Wilensky (1964) proposed a model of a stepwise generation of a profession, a model which may also be applicable to the transformation of an occupation into a profession. A job turns into a full-time gainful activity; a body of skills is defined that can be learned; then a curriculum and educational providers are established; a professional association is founded; finally, a code of ethics is set up. Public recognition tends to be conferred in a process of licensing by State authorities, which implies the definition of educational requirements. The case of the semi-professions is instructive in regard to the redefinition of the status of occupations, because it shows how occupations in the fields of personcentred services, like caring, nursing, physiotherapy and social work, struggle for recognition as self-responsible fields of expertise. They will only succeed when they can convince the State authorities—as well as their clients—that they command the formal and practical knowledge for analysing a problem (diagnosis), deriving a solution (inference) and putting it into practice (action, treatment) (cf. Abbott, 1988). The diagnostic competence is the feature that distinguishes a profession from a semi-profession and an occupation; because this competence rests on abstract, theoretical knowledge—it requires an academic education. There are indications that highly skilled production workers may experience a re-professionalization by learning at work. Recent case studies in German automobile plants (Baethge-Kinsky & Tullius, 2005) show that flexibly standardized manufacturing can generate learning-friendly work constellations that promote an upgrading of workers’ knowledge and participation profile. Knowledge of the flow of production and marketing processes, and for some workers also of IT and business processes, develops from design-oriented settings. Such a learning process improves not just productivity, but also workers’ satisfaction. Although we cannot assume that all criteria of professional work are met, there is a pro-active redefinition of the status of productive work that is based on occupational competence acquired through TVET.

6 Is There a Discontinuity Between TVET and the Employment System? In the last decade of the twentieth century, a controversy in regard to the future of the occupation in post-industrial society began, a debate which is less optimistic about the prospects of transforming occupations into professions. Flexible employment and social skills are taking over from careers and technical skills, a tendency


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that weakens vocationally-based work in favour of process-centred work requiring readiness for a ‘constant flux’. In Germany, the system of occupations is still linked to the VET-system, which passes on less theoretical than practical knowledge and operates with rules and regulations that do not seem to adequately prepare the young generation for rapidly changing work situations. Therefore, it is likely that many occupations that do not succeed in transforming themselves into professions will turn from complex social and cultural units into a fluid mix of competence profiles and activity patterns. If this scenario should become reality, such a shift would reduce the occupation to its functional characteristics of employability. This could have severe consequences for the allocation of life-chances in the context of the knowledge society for those who cannot afford to invest time and money in a permanent up-grading of their skill profile. The growing importance of a highly skilled and flexible labour force leads to a shift towards more individualized employment patterns, putting a premium on selfguided and self-responsible decisions about the choice of an occupation. Depending on the outcomes of a series of difficult decisions, apprentices and trainees cannot expect to be employed by the company that trains them. For an increasing number of qualified job-seekers, the transition into employment has become protracted, bridged by voluntary work, temporary jobs and spells of unemployment. Training and labour market data (BMBF, 2004) show that, since the mid-1990s, firms have reduced their intake of apprentices and tend to recruit people for positions at the middle-management level. They do not train their own experienced skilled work force, but prefer college graduates. There are indications that employers’ recruitment strategies take occupational qualifications for granted, but they do not regard them as a guiding principle for hiring employees. The knowledge-intensive technical and person-centred tasks require that education and training experiences are equipping workers with a flexible combination of cognitive, methodological and practical skills. Such skill profiles tend not to be generated by the conventional TVET that has its roots in crafts, trades and manufacturing. Therefore, a structural crisis of the German VET-system and similar institutions in other societies is impending (cf. Baethge, 2001). The signs of crisis cannot be denied. There has been a 20% decline in training places since the 1990s; in financial services it is much steeper (30%). Instead of VET-graduates, more college graduates are hired, which blocks the advancement of skilled workers. In responding to the decline of occupational training, Germany’s dual system of VET is re-forming itself by concentrating on basic or core occupations that promote a flexible approach towards innovative and challenging designs at the work place. The main target is to improve workers’ capacity for occupational activities in variable and unpredictable employment circumstances by work-process learning and continuing training. These are promising reforms that are also changing the relationship between in-firm training and vocational schooling in the direction of upgrading the quality of basic and continuing theoretical education in college curricula. Such an institutional arrangement would create some similarity with the vocational education provided at further education colleges in the United Kingdom and at community colleges in Canada and the United States, albeit with the added

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value of a close coupling of in-firm training and nationwide recognized occupational credentials. The extension and specification of knowledge and skills with a wide range of utilization drives the reform of TVET curricula, which takes place hand-inhand with the reduction in the number of training occupations (‘core-occupations’— Rauner, 2000). This modernization in numbers, content and form of TVET already occurred in other countries in the 1990s, where there was not the successful legacy of an internationally profiled export industry (cars, machinery), such as in Switzerland and Denmark.

7 Outlook In post-industrial service society there has been a transformation from an employment system based on a strong linkage between education, training and occupation to a system which operates according to the criteria of employability, cost-efficiency and flexibility. This leads to a diversification of types of employment with an increase of service jobs, self-employment and contingent careers. These developments are path-dependent and will take two possible routes in the future: a devaluation of occupation on the labour market and as a signpost for life planning; or a transformation of occupations into professions. It is likely that an enhancement of a training-and-employment culture in the context of lifelong learning will not be enough for a redefinition of the status of occupations that would benefit workers, if it is not combined with a new social contract providing employment and social security in the context of flexible work and discontinuous careers.

References Abbott, A. 1988. The system of professions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Baethge, M. 2001. Beruf – Ende oder Transformation eines erfolgreichen Ausbildungskonzepts? In: Kurtz, T., ed. Aspekte des Berufs in der Moderne, pp. 39–68. Opladen, Germany: Leske & Budrich. Baethge-Kinsky, V.; Tullius, K. 2005. Produktionsarbeit und Kompetenzentwicklung in der Autoindustrie. SOFI-Mitteilungen, no. 33, pp. 39–53. Beck, U.; Brater, M.; Daheim, H. 1980. Soziologie der Arbeit und der Berufe. Reinbeck, Germany: Rowohlt. Berger, P.A.; Konietzka, D.; Michailow, M. 2001. Beruf, soziale Ungleichheit und Individualisierung. In: Kurtz, H., ed. Aspekte des Berufs in der Moderne, pp. 209–37. Opladen, Germany: Leske & Budrich. Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), ed. 2004. Berufsbildungsbericht. Berlin: BMBF. Braverman, H. 1974. Labor and monopoly capital: the degradation of work in the 20th century. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press. Büchtemann, C.; Schupp, J.; Soloff, D. 1994. From school to work: patterns in Germany and the United States. In: Schwarze, J.; Buttler, F.; Wagner, G., eds. Labour market dynamics in present day Germany, pp. 112–41. Frankfurt a.M., Germany: Campus; Boulder, CO: Westview. Dostal, W. 2002. Der Berufsbegriff in der Berufsforschung des IAB. In: Kleinhinz, G., ed. IABKompendium Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, pp. 463–74. Nürnberg, Germany: IAB.


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Esping-Andersen, G. 1990. The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Esping-Andersen, G., ed. 1996. Welfare states in transition. London: Sage. Freidson, E. 2001. Professionalism: the third logic. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Grubb, N.W. 1999. The subbaccalaureate labour market in the United States: challenges for the school-to-work transition. In: Heinz, W.R., ed. From education to work: cross-national perspectives, pp. 171–93. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Heinz, W.R., ed. 1999. From education to work: cross-national perspectives. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Heinz, W.R. 2003. From work trajectories to negotiated careers: the contingent work life course. In: Mortimer, J.; Shanahan, M., eds. Handbook of the life course, pp. 185–204. New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Hochschild, A.R. 1997. The time bind: when work becomes home and home becomes work. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Hoffmann, E. 1999. International statistical comparisons of occupational and social structures: problems, possibilities and the role of ISCO-88. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Jahoda, M. 1982. Employment and unemployment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kern, H.; Schumann, M. 1984. Das Ende der Arbeitsteilung? Munich, Germany: Beck. Krüger, H. 2003. The life-course regime: ambiguities between relatedness and individualisation. In: Heinz, W.R.; Marshall, V.W., eds. Social dynamics of the life course, pp. 33–56. New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Kurtz, T., ed. 2001. Aspekte des Berufs in der Moderne. Opladen, Germany: Leske & Budrich. Livingstone, D.W. 1998. The education-jobs gap. Boulder, CO: Westview. Moen, P. 1992. Women’s two roles: a contemporary dilemma. Westport, CT: Auburn House. Moen, P.; Roehling, P. 2005. The career mystique: cracks in the American dream. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, ed. 1996. Lifelong learning for all. Paris: OECD. Presser, H.B. 2003. Working in a 24/7 economy: challenges for American families. New York, NY: Russel Sage Foundation. Priore, M.; Sabel, C. 1984. The second industrial divide: possibilities for prosperity. New York, NY: Basic Books. Rauner, F. 2000. Zukunft der Facharbeit. In: Pahl, J.-P.; Rauner, F.; Spöttl, G., eds. Berufliches Arbeitsprozesswissen, pp. 49–60. Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos. Rifkin, J. 1995. The end of work. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam Sons. Schwarze, J.; Buttler, F.; Wagner, G.G., eds. 1994. Labour market dynamics in present-day Germany. Frankfurt a.M., Germany: Campus; Boulder, CO: Westview. Sennett, R. 1998. The corrosion of character. New York, NY: W.W. Norton. Shavit, Y.; Müller, W., eds. 1998. From school to work: a comparative study of educational qualifications and occupational destinations. Oxford, UK: Clarendon. Solga, H.; Konietzka, D. 1999. Occupational matching and social stratification. European sociological review, vol. 15, pp. 25–47. Stehr, N. 2000. Die Zerbrechlichkeit moderner Gesellschaften. Weilerswist, Germany: Velbrück. Voss, G.G. 2000. Unternehmer der eigenen Arbeitskraft: einige Folgerungen für die Bildungssoziologie. Zeitschrift für Soziologie der Erziehung und Sozialisation, vol. 20, pp. 149–66. Weber, M. 1976/1904. The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Wilensky, H.L. 1964. The professionalization of everyone? American journal of sociology, vol. 70, pp. 137–58.


Chapter I.7

Changing Work, Work Practice: The Consequences for Vocational Education Stephen Billett

1 Changing Work, Changing Workers This chapter discusses the changing and emerging characteristics of work, work practice and work requirements, and their consequences for vocational education. Changing patterns in work and working life are proposed as comprising: (i) the kind of work available; (ii) how individuals participate in work; (iii) what constitutes competence within that work; and (iv) those participating in work. The consequences for vocational education are systemic in terms of the kinds of occupations that need to be developed, variations in and complexity of work requirements, shifts in employer/employee relations, and the demographic shifts in those who will need to be supported by vocational education. The chapter examines these patterns of change to work and working life, and discusses policy and curriculum practice associated with each. Overall, it argues that the changes to work make it more demanding, and the frequency of change in work and how work is carried out demands careful, comprehensive and targeted preparation and on-going development. Moreover, with broader participation in the work force and longer working lives, the arrangement for this preparation and on-going development will need to be targeted, differentiated and sustained.

2 Changes in the Kinds of Work Available In the last quarter of the twentieth century and continuing into this, there have been considerable changes to the kinds of work available across and within countries (Handel, 2005; McBrier & Wilson, 2004). Changes in the demand for particular kinds of paid employment (occupations) are shaped by continuities and transformations in the requirements for vocational practice in particular countries or regions. As these requirements are subject to constant change, the demand for particular occupations transforms both the amount and kinds of available paid work. Through this process, some occupations are reshaped, transformed or simply disappear. This means that the availability, location and accessibility of particular kinds of paid work also change. Although the character and scope of these changes differ across R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 I.7, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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countries and economies, there are some trends that are consistent across many countries espousing Western-style economies. These trends include a reduction in the demand for ‘semi-skilled’ and ‘unskilled work’ and an increase in demand for professional, technical and administrative work, and also service work—yet much of it ‘low skill’ (Noon & Blyton, 1997). For instance, there has been a considerable decline in the number of workers engaged directly in agricultural work, which impacts on farm workers and farming communities. In the United States, the decline in farming employment commenced in the early 1950s, and levelled off by the mid-1970s (United States of America. Department of Labor, 2005). The agricultural sector and agricultural communities experienced a decline resulting in only a fraction of the former numbers of people employed in farm work. However, this sector remains a major source of employment. Because of the centralization and intensification of food production in the United States, many more workers are employed in the processing and distribution of farm products: ‘from the gate to the plate’. This change indicates a shift in the forms of work required or available in this sector. There has been a significant decline in employment within manufacturing in many Western countries. Between 1940 and 2002, American manufacturing employment declined from 48% to 28% of the workforce (Employment Policy Foundation, 2003); in Australia between 1983 and 1999 it declined from 18.1% to 12.8% (Pusey, 2003). Like agriculture, the impact of this decline impacts both individuals who work in those sectors and the communities in which they live. Some of this decline has been the result of labour-saving technologies and also manufacturing work being exported to other countries. Thus, while manufacturing work in countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States has declined, it has grown significantly among the Korean labour force and now constitutes the single largest category of employment at 32% (Korean Economic Planning Board, 2005). Alongside this there is the centralization of specialized manufacturing (e.g. aircraft, automobiles, shipbuilding), which sees particular forms of high and specifically skilled employment restricted to particular locations and countries. Thus, in different ways, the transformation of economic activity through increased use of technology, the export of jobs to other countries and emerging community needs is having a profound effect on the availability of particular kinds of work. Yet, any claims of a general trend towards high-skill work are contradicted by a burgeoning service industry sector in some countries, such as Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, where this kind of work is often low paid and low skill (Carnoy, 1999). In these countries, there has also been some growth in the allied health and community work sectors (e.g. community health and care of the aged) that are emerging as responses to changing demographics. Yet again, much of this work is characterized as low paid and low skill. With the growth in employment being largely within professional, technical and service work, there is a hollowing out of mid-skill work and polarization between high- and low-skill workers. These patterns of growth, like those of manufacturing and agriculture, are largely unidirectional indicating structural changes in the work

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available. For instance, in 1940, American managers and professionals made up only 18% of the non-farm labour force, yet by 2002 they comprised 32% (Employment Policy Foundation, 2003). Barley and Orr (1997) claim that the number of professional and technical jobs in the United States has increased over 300% since 1950, overshadowing increases in sales work (248%) and managerial work (182%). Yet, other shifts in the labour market complicate this trend. During the 1980s, there were significant declines in mid-level managerial positions in the United States. At a time when many African-Americans were gaining middle management jobs, they are claimed to have experienced declines in their careers more frequently and more severely than their white counterparts (McBrier & Wilson, 2004). This suggests another dimension of the hollowing out thesis, based on factors other than human capital. The reduction of manufacturing employment in Australia has been overshadowed by the decline in private-sector employment (31% to 20%), matched by a comparable increase in private-sector employment (Pusey, 2003). Although reflecting the trend of strong employment in professional and managerial work, the shift from public-sector to private-sector employment for such large numbers of Australian workers would lead to significant impacts upon their work, careers and the course of their lives. Thus, even within employment categories that are experiencing overall growth, there can be quite different outcomes for groups of workers. Barley and Orr (1997) claim that many jobs have been so transformed that the existing occupational categories no longer reflect the division within contemporary workforces. For instance, transformations in the printing industry have seen a wholesale change in the skills required as hot-metal printing processes were replaced by informationprocessing and offset technologies. Clearly, as work requirements change, quite different sets of skills are required to secure and maintain employment in these sectors. Significant patterns of change are occurring in the kinds of work available in particular countries, localities and in what constitute categories of occupations. There are long-term consequences for these occupations, as well as for those people and communities wishing to maintain secure employment in particular kinds of occupations. The implications include the capacity to sustain a career throughout one’s working life, and the prospect of dealing with shifts in locations, wholesale transformations in work requirements and even the demise of particular occupations. For vocational education, it means that, beyond initial preparation, there has to be curriculum and certification arrangements that can facilitate occupational transitions throughout a person’s working life.

3 Changes in Participation in Work The ways in which individuals engage in work and the organization of that work are being transformed—and in diverse ways. This has implications for the capacities that individuals require and how their skill development is assured throughout

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their working lives. There are shifts to increasingly ‘non-standard’ forms of employment practices. These can comprise contingent forms of employment (e.g. part-time, contract based and non-continuing) that, in the main, are involuntary (Lipsig-Mumme, 1996). Across many Western-style economies, the number of workers who are employed in these kinds of work arrangements is high and increasing. In Australia, Pusey (2003) notes that full-time employment declined between 1985 and 2000 from 82% to 74% of the workforce. In the United Kingdom, the percentage of employees working part-time increased from 21% in 1991 to 27% in 2000 (United Kingdom Labour Force Survey, 2005). Similarly, temporary jobs increased from 4% to 8% and self-employment rose from 7% to 11.6%. There are also other forms of non-standard work that are reshaping the organization and conduct of work, such as working from home or otherwise being remote from the worksite. The advent of low-cost forms of information technology has provided circumstances in which workers are less required to be physically located in a particular workplace. Yet, as with contingent work, these workers refer to difficulties in maintaining their contact with and their understanding of what constitutes the requirements for work, particularly as these are subject to change (Noon & Blyton, 1997). As with the changes to the kinds of occupations that are available, these nonstandard forms of employment are deployed and experienced differently across workforces. Involuntary contingent work arrangements are less likely to be experienced by highly-skilled or highly-paid workers, but are more likely among lowerpaid and low-skilled workers, such as those in the service sector (Bernhardt, 1999). These employment arrangements are counter to orthodox labour-market practices, as they are typical of times of high unemployment. Yet, in countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, contingent work situations have continued even within times of soaring economic activity and performance. All this contradicts and stands in contrast to what was predicted for the contemporary workforce. In the 1990s it was forecast that most work in Western economies would become highly skilled, increasingly self-managed and highly discretionary (Carnevale, 1995). Yet such arrangements have only been accorded to a minority of workers (Bernhardt, 1999; Berryman, 1993). Highly-skilled professionals are most likely to experience these arrangements, but they remain a remote prospect for service and retail workers. As Bernhardt (1999) suggests, some retail work is deliberately downskilled to secure low levels of pay and maximize opportunities for using part-time and contingent workers. Technology, which is increasingly becoming a requirement of workplace performance, can be used to de-skill these workers, including marginalizing their discretion. For instance, massive technological investment by the retailer Wal-Mart has been used to keep inventories responsive to turnover patterns. Here, some tasks are being transferred to the suppliers themselves, who can re-supply stores based on access to records about product sales (Bernhardt, 1999). Yet, these changes have been driven by technological and process innovation—not on the basis of making work more expansive and skilled. Although these are not ‘high-performance workplaces’, their operations are highly profitable. Hence, it


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is unlikely that retailers like these will engage in expanding employees’ working opportunities. The prospects for expansive work practices are based upon perceptions of the complexity of work and the standing of workers. Darrah (1997) noted in a company manufacturing computers that the system designers were seen to have the most high status and were afforded greater levels of support and professional development. Yet, analysis of the work conducted by production workers indicated that their skill requirements were at least as demanding as those of the system designers. Nevertheless, the production workers were rarely given opportunities to develop their skills further, nor were they involved in organizational decision-making, even that associated with production matters. Thus, perceptions about the standing of individuals’ work can influence how they participate in and contribute to the workplace. Moreover, the bases upon which employers support employees in their on-going development throughout their working lives also appears to be marked by diversity. Studies from America and across Europe indicate the same trend. Employers are more likely to spend funds on and support younger, more educated, skilled and male workers who speak the native language than those who are older, less educated and skilled, female and who do not speak the native language (Brunello & Medio, 2001). They are most likely to support the kinds of workers who are best able to fend for themselves, probably because these workers are seen to be more valuable and less replaceable. Thus, consideration of expansive and high-performance workers needs to include the broader requirements for being able to perform vocational practice in dynamic, intense and differentiated circumstances. This suggests requirements for the development of workplace capacities that go beyond technical competence and emphasizes how this knowledge might be applied, managed and used strategically in fluid and transforming work practices. Beyond the prospects of institutional support (e.g. workplaces, educational institutions), the agency of individuals as learner-workers will be central to their effective on-going participation in work.

4 Changes in the Requirements for Work It follows from the above that the requirements for work performance will change continuously throughout individuals’ working lives. Regardless of whether work is up-skilling or down-skilling, the requirements for work are changing. This means that individuals will need to maintain their workplace competence actively. These changing requirements will be manifested in particular ways across workplaces and will vary in terms of the breadth and scope of change. Yet, some requirements are likely to comprise work that is more: (i) non-routine; (ii) specialized and diverse; (iii) intense; (iv) conceptual; (v) discretionary; (vi) complex; and (vii) based on interactions with others, tools and artefacts. Each of these has implications for vocational education.

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4.1 Work is Becoming Less Routine Regardless of whether work is being up-skilled or down-skilled, it is increasingly subject to change and transformation. This makes it less routine, demanding continuous learning. Production and service cycles are getting shorter (Bailey, 1993). Technology brings about changes as it moves through cycles of introduction, growth, stability and then further change (Bartel & Lichtenberg, 1987), with these cycles becoming increasingly close together and overlapping. Consequently, workplace competence premised on engagement with technology can be fleeting. A car mechanic claimed that each model of automobiles has particular nuances associated with its operation, maintenance and mechanical problems. Beyond general mechanical knowledge, familiarity with particular models of cars is central to mechanics’ workplace competence developed over time in working on these vehicles (Billett & Somerville, 2004). However, the replacement of one model by the next nullifies the value of existing nuanced knowledge. The mechanics must learn, through experience, the mechanical foibles of the new model. In this way, the frequency of change that workers are subject to reflects the frequency with which they have to learn anew. Some implications for vocational education are as follows. The degree to which the requirements for work are different or new to the worker makes this learning an easier or more difficult task. Learning about new requirements that are similar to what has been experienced before are easier to learn because of the existing knowledge base. Changing from one form of word-processing package to another might not be too difficult. However, tasks that are novel to an individual can represent a significant learning task, with the danger of overwhelming their learning ability. Importantly, beyond the objective requirements of the tasks to be learned, the degree to which the task is novel is person-dependent. That is, what will be a routine activity for one person may be non-routine for another. Women returning to clerical work after being principal care-givers for their children are confronted by significant transformations in the technological requirements of clerical work (e.g. using word-processing, spreadsheets and electronic mail). For the worker whose previous competence was with a typewriter, there is a requirement for considerable skill development. The degree to which learning tasks are novel to individuals is likely to determine the level of support required to guide their effective work performance. Generally, new learning or the adaptation of existing knowledge is the kind of learning that would most likely require guidance by more expert monitors. This can include demonstrating practices, elaborating concepts and assisting individuals’ access to knowledge that they might not otherwise be able to learn.

4.2 Specialization and Diversification A need for specialization or diversification—or both—arises as workplaces change. Particular technologies require individuals to become specialized in their operation, because expensive equipment or complex processes require specific expertise.


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Conversely, and particularly in workplaces that have reduced the number of workers, the remaining workers are required to perform a wider range of tasks. Individuals might need to be more broadly skilled and engage in a wide range of activities that demand a broader range of work competencies. The motor mechanics referred to above have noted the way that longer vehicle warranties have changed their work. These warranties tend to wed car owners to the garage from which it was purchased and mechanics’ jobs become concerned with maintaining close contact with and providing a service for a client over a longer period (Billett & Somerville, 2004). Mechanics may have to develop skills associated with communication, explanation and being patient with clients’ complaints or requests. Therefore, depending on the degree to which individuals are asked to develop specific skills or to be more broadly skilful suggests different but particular kinds of skills development. Both the scope and depth of work requirements demand particular kinds of vocational preparation: the broadening of the vocational base and the development of specialization through richer procedural and conceptual knowledge of particular domains of activities.

4.3 Intensity of Work To provide high-quality goods and services, work is becoming more intense through the need to compete locally and globally. For instance, changes to medical practices have made nurses’ work more demanding. Hospital wards once contained recuperating patients who required little intensive care by nurses, who could then focus their attention on the sick patients who really needed their care. Now patients often recuperate elsewhere (e.g. at home), leaving hospital wards for the really sick patients requiring the nurses’ attention. The latter’s work has become more challenging. Managing such work requires monitoring, prioritizing and conducting multiple tasks simultaneously (Bertrand & Noyelle, 1988). This requires considering a range of factors, making and enacting decisions and monitoring execution of a number of tasks simultaneously. Higher order capacities are required to manage work that is intense, and these capacities have to be developed for effective work practice. Developing these kinds of capacities represents a key goal for vocational education, yet such capacities are not likely to be easily developed through classroom-based activities.

4.4 Conceptual Requirements Work requirements might also become more opaque—difficult to comprehend and increasingly reliant upon conceptual and symbolic knowledge—particularly where technological requirements are high. There have always been conceptual elements to working knowledge (e.g. force factors, process considerations). These are gradually becoming a requirement for contemporary and emerging work practice. Technology more often requires particular understandings on the part of workers premised

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on conceptual and symbolic knowledge, than when individuals engage more directly with their work activities. Computer-controlled lathes, for instance, require levels of symbolic and conceptual knowledge that are distinct from those required for operating a manual lathe (Martin & Scribner, 1991). The former requires that the operator utilizes digital co-ordinates and commands, that are more abstract and may be more difficult to comprehend and learn than those from physical engagement and observation (Zuboff, 1988). Similarly, while bedside computers can ease nurses’ workload through performing routine monitoring tasks (CookGumperez & Hanna, 1997), this technology requires understanding operations and functions represented in digital form, rather than those physically engaged with or through observing a patient. Further, the separation between the operator and the object upon which they are working makes the task of understanding more difficult (Zuboff, 1988). With increases in technology use, the requirements to work with forms of conceptual and symbolic knowledge are likely to become more common, and therefore a goal for vocational education. Because of the demands associated with the learning of conceptual and symbolic knowledge, it may be necessary to use specific instructional devices to secure understanding. Without specific instructional interventions this ‘hard to learn’ knowledge will not be successfully learned.

4.5 Enhanced Discretion and Complexity in Work Although the promise of high-discretion work has not been realised universally, the discretionary qualities of many forms of work are increasing for many if not all workers. Job expansion (e.g. cross-skilling) and changes to workplace practices, such as the flattening of organizational structures, often introduce increased demands for workplace discretion (Noon & Blyton, 1997). These changes may require workers to make more decisions and take into account an increased array of work-related factors, thereby making the requirements for effective performance more complex. Complexity refers to the number of compounding factors that need to be considered or taken into consideration when enacting a work task. From the examples above, work requirements are becoming more complex because of their novelty, job expansion or specialization, the conceptual knowledge needed to be exercized, and the broad range of discretionary qualities required. For many, the demands for effective work performance are increasing. Ironically, this may not be the intention of workplace management, who may even wish to simplify and de-skill work (Danford, 1998). Yet, the range of factors that underpins much of contemporary and emerging work, including the constancy of change, suggests that—regardless of these intents—work itself is becoming increasingly demanding about maintaining competence, because of the kinds of barriers that are erected to subordinate and control, around which workers have to work to exercise their sense of self as individuals and workers.


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4.6 Workplace Interactions In addition to the changing characteristics of work tasks as outlined above, the requirements for workplace interactions with others and with technologies are changing and likely to increase. Across a range of occupations and kinds of work practice, there seems to be a growing demand for individuals to work as teams, even if they are not interested in or empowered through these arrangements (Darrah, 1997). Nevertheless, the distribution of activities across groups of workers and flatter organizational structures premised on a reduction in direct supervision (McGovern, 1996) demand increases in workplace interactions. These include requirements for negotiation and working with others in order for work to be commonly understood, shared and conducted. Such requirements are complicated by the breadth of work individuals engage in, the cohesiveness of teams and common understandings about work (Billett, Smith & Barker, 2005). The ability to communicate and the capacity to engage with others are emerging now as basic requirements for work. Beyond being able to communicate orally and in written form, there are also work practice requirements that are both a product of and premised on workplace interactions. Moreover, and related to the requirements for developing the conceptual and symbolic capacities required for work, there are the requirements to interact with tools and artefacts, and with technologies of different kinds—and to communicate about it. So, together, the growing requirements for interactions with others, tools and technologies suggest that these aspects of work performance require particular capacities and, therefore, new forms of development. Overall, the requirements for contemporary and emerging work practices are more demanding than in the past. Yet, not all of these requirements are new. There have always been new activities, specialization and diversification, intense forms of work and conceptual underpinnings for effective work, discretionary qualities and capacities. However, currently—and also probably in the future—there will be a requirement for these capacities to be learned with greater frequency. The outcome will result in making work more demanding and therefore requiring more thorough initial preparation and continuity. It seems that initial vocational preparation will need to be thorough and go beyond just work techniques and providing for the on-going development of vocational practice.

5 Changes in Who is Participating in Work Having identified changes in the forms of work available, their conduct and performance requirements, there are also changes noticeable in those who are participating in work; that is, in those who require initial preparation and on-going development throughout their working lives. The most significant increase in many Western countries is women’s participation in the labour force. Between 1970 and 2000, the proportion of women aged over 16 in the American labour force increased from 43% to 61% (United States of America. Department of Labor, 2005) and is

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currently at 47% of the total work force. This increase in women’s participation is closing the gender gap, with female workers predicted soon to outnumber males. In Australia, the percentage of women aged between 25 and 34 in the Australian labour market has increased by three-quarters in just one generation: from 41% to 71% between 1970 and 1996 (Pusey, 2003). Similarly, in the United Kingdom their participation has increased from 42% in 1980 to 47% in 2000. Being married now has less effect on women’s participation in the workforce (McGovern, Smeaton & Hill, 2004). In 1960, fewer than 20% of women with children under the age of 6 participated in paid work, yet in 2004 60% of these women and 75% of women with school-age children are participating in paid work, which is consistent with the overall level of participation by women (Jacobsen, 2004). American women are now marrying and having children later. They have fewer children, can access childcare, are less willing to interrupt education for marriage and more likely to have a career before marriage (Jacobsen, 2004). Moreover, they have benefited from education to secure better paid work (Loutfi, 2001). The increases in women’s remuneration are believed to be based on: (i) women’s educational attainment, particularly in post-graduate education; (ii) work experience and lifetime hours worked; (iii) remuneration in some female-dominated occupations and sectors that has modified demand and supply; and (iv) measures to combat blatant forms of gender pay and promotion discrimination (Jacobsen, 2004). Thus, across many Western countries, women are participating more in the paid workforce than in earlier times. There are variations in this trend, with women’s participation in paid employment being the norm in northern Europe and Scandinavia, whereas in Japan women are still expected to leave the workforce upon marriage. However, despite increased levels of participation and work that is well remunerated, women have failed to secure benefits comparable to those of males. Women are more likely to be employed part-time than their male counterparts, leading to truncated and unsatisfactory career options (Tam, 1997). The distribution of occupations in which women work tends to be quite narrow, often concentrated in particular occupational fields. Some 25% of American women report being employed in administrative support positions, compared to only 5% of men. Only 2% of women against 20% of men report being employed in precision production work (United States of America. Department of Labor, 2005). Similarly, even in the relatively emancipated Nordic countries occupational segregation is relatively high (Anker, 2001). Overall, women are also in receipt of lower levels of pay, although the gap is closing (Jacobsen, 2004). It also seems that prospects for women remaining competent and enjoying successful careers depends upon developing positive work identities through workplaces that support their career trajectories. Yet, this may not always be available to them. The division between those who are highly skilled and paid and those who are lowly skilled and paid is not distributed equally across national populations. In the United States, African-Americans and Hispanic Americans disproportionately participate in low-wage work encouraging the development of an entrenched underclass perilously placed in evolving working life requirements, and whose employment is often located in precarious service work (Bernhardt, 1999). Levels of education also


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distribute work options, with workforces being characterized by increasing levels of qualifications. In 1940, the majority of the US labour force (75%) had less than a high-school education (Employment Policy Foundation, 2003). Yet, by 2002 those who had not completed a high-school qualification were estimated at only 10% of the adult labour workforce. So, recipients of lower levels of education may struggle to secure effective and continuous employment. Older workers are now a focus of attention in many Western countries. In the United States, some have been required to stay at work longer because of limited public pension schemes. However, the phenomenon of older workers is now predicted to be experienced more widely. Demographic changes in many countries mean a requirement to work and remain competent far longer, as well as growth in the provision of human services, including care for an ageing population (McNair et al., 2004). There is little evidence to suggest that older workers become less competent or capable (Baltes & Staudinger, 1996), although there is a decline in reaction times and physical strength, which can affect some kinds of work performance. Specific training and older workers’ experience can compensate for some of these declines (Sigelman, 1999). However, given the constantly changing character of work, older workers may well need additional support to learn new requirements as their existing capacities become redundant. They may need to reaffirm their competence more often and at the cost of existing competence and identity. One view suggests that, as older workers become an increasing component of workforces, employers will provide adequate support for their skill development. However, experience calls for caution in supporting this optimistic view. Just as there is little evidence of widespread employer-sponsored childcare to support workforce participation by women with young children, there is no guarantee that employers will support older workers. Instead, the privileging of younger workers may be accentuated by their relative scarcity and they will likely remain the focus of enterprise support, rather than older workers. Of course, this will be affected by circumstances. Overall, opportunities at work and impacts of recession are likely to impact most heavily on disadvantaged groups. These impacts are not wholly based on human capital (e.g. educational levels and experience), with factors associated with race, age and ethnicity apparently shaping opportunities. So, changes in participation mean a need to develop and maintain work skills for a longer and potentially discontinuous working life as individuals move in and out of the workforce. There will also be a need to focus on specific skill formation for workers at different stages of their working life.

6 Changing Work, Changing Workers Having identified changes to work, working life, work requirements and participation in work, it is important to understand and address the impact upon individuals. Workers will experience these changes. Ultimately, the enactment of work is a human process and individuals will bring particular capacities, identities and a sense of self to their work in different ways and in different measures throughout

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their working life. Consequently, the changing requirements of work are engaged with, negotiated and made sense of by individuals whose backgrounds and experiences are diverse and differentiated. The inevitability of change brings with it not only threats to existing competence, individuals’ standing and confidence, but also individual’s different capacities to respond to those changes. In combination, the capacities, identity and agency of people to engage with and secure appropriate development, on the one hand, and the degree by which workplaces or other agencies, including vocational education and training institutions, on the other, support that development will shape the prospects for individuals to maintain their competence throughout an increasingly long, but turbulent, working life. Yet, many vocational education systems are premised on standard curriculum provisions and industrybased requirements that serve to deny the importance of the relevance and tailoring of these provisions to meet individuals’ needs. Thus, curriculum and instructional frameworks that are responsive to the diverse requirements of learners, rather than viewing them as having universal starting points, capacities, levels of readiness, etc., are likely to be required.

References Anker, R. 2001. Theories of occupational segregation by sex: an overview. In: Loutfi, M.F., ed. Women, gender and work, pp. 129–155. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Bailey, T. 1993. Organizational innovation in the apparel industry. Industrial relations, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 30–48. Baltes, P.B.; Staudinger, U.M. 1996. Interactive minds in a life-span perspective. In: Baltes, P.B.; Staudinger, U.M., eds. Interactive minds: life-span perspectives on the social foundations of cognition, pp. 1–34. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Barley, S.R.; Orr, J.E. 1997. Introduction: the neglected workforce. In: Barley, S.R.; Orr, J.E., eds. Between craft and science: technical work in US settings, pp. 1–19. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Bartel, A.P.; Lichtenberg, F.R. 1987. The comparative advantage of educated workers in implementing new technology. Review of economics and statistics, vol. 65, pp. 1–11. Bernhardt, A. 1999. The future of low-wage jobs: case studies in the retail industry. New York, NY: Institute on Education and the Economy. (Working paper, no. 10.) Berryman, S. 1993. Learning for the workplace. Review of research in education, vol. 19, pp. 343–401. Bertrand, O.; Noyelle, T. 1988. Human resources and corporate strategy: technological change in banks and insurance companies in five OECD countries. Paris: OECD. Billett, S.; Smith, R.; Barker, M. 2005. Understanding work, learning and the remaking of cultural practices. Studies in continuing education, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 219–37. Billett, S.; Somerville, M. 2004. Transformations at work: identity and learning. Studies in continuing education, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 309–26. Brunello, G.; Medio, A. 2001. An explanation of international differences in education and workplace training. European economic review, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 307–22. Carnevale, A.P. 1995. Enhancing skills in the new economy. In: Howard A., ed. The changing nature of work. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Carnoy, M. 1999. The great work dilemma. In: Ahier, J.; Esland, G., eds. Education, training and the future of work—1, pp. 62–75. London: Routledge.


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Cook-Gumperez, J.; Hanna, K. 1997. Some recent issues of professional literacy and practice. In: Hull, G., ed. Changing work, changing workers: critical perspectives on language, literacy and skills, pp. 316–34. New York, NY: State University of New York Press. Danford, A. 1998. Teamworking and labour regulation in the autocomponents industry. Work, employment & society, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 409–431. Darrah, C.N. 1997. Complicating the concept of skill requirements: scenes from a workplace. In: Hull, G., ed. Changing work, changing workers: critical perspectives on language, literacy and skills, pp. 249–72. New York, NY: CUNY Press. Employment Policy Foundation. 2003. An economic primer to white-collar reform. Washington, DC: Employment Policy Foundation. Handel, M.J. 2005. Trends in perceived job quality, 1989 to 1998. Work and occupations, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 66–94. Jacobsen, J.P. 2004. Women as labor force participants: effects of family and organisational structure. (Paper presented at Reaching the Top: Challenges and Opportunities for Women Leaders, Boston, MA.) Korean Economic Planning Board. 2005. Yearbook of Korean statistics. <www.itu.int/dms pub/ itu-d/md/02/isap2b.1.1/c/D02-ISAP2B.1.1-C-0028!!PDF-E.pdf> Lipsig-Mumme, C. 1996. Bridging the solitudes: Canadian perspectives on research partnerships in the new work order (keynote address). (Paper presented at the ANTARAC Annual Conference, Melbourne.) Loutfi, M.F. 2001. Women, gender and work: an overview. In: Loutfi, M.F., ed. Women, gender and work, pp. 3–20. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Martin, L.M.W.; Scribner, S. 1991. Laboratory for cognitive studies of work: a case study of the intellectual implications of a new technology. Teachers College record, vol. 92, no. 4, pp. 582–602. McBrier, D.B.; Wilson, G. 2004. Going down? Race and downward occupational mobility for white-collar workers in the 1990s. Work and occupations, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 283–322. McGovern, P. 1996. Trust, discretion and responsibility: the division of technical labour. Work, employment and society, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 85–103. McGovern, P.; Smeaton, D.; Hill, S. 2004. Bad jobs in Britian. Work and occupations, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 225–49. McNair, S. et al. 2004. Changing work in later life: a study of job transitions. Guildford, UK: University of Surrey, Centre for Research into the Older Workforce. Noon, M.; Blyton, P. 1997. The realities of work. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. Pusey, M. 2003. The experience of Middle Australia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sigelman, C.K. 1999. Life-span human development, vol. 3. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company. Tam, M. 1997. Part-time employment: a bridge or a trap? Brookfield, MA: Aldershot. United Kingdom Labour Force Survey. 2005. <www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nscl> United States of America. Department of Labor. 2005. What jobs do American women and men have? <www.prb.org> Zuboff, S. 1988. In the age of the smart machine: the future of work and power. New York, NY: Basic Books.


Chapter I.8

Traditional and Transitional TVET Systems Poonam Agrawal

1 Introduction Human ingenuity, supported by an instinctive urge to explore and learn, manifests itself in dynamic creativity. It transforms itself into a mechanism for transferring ‘acquired’ knowledge and accumulated experience to future generations. The whole process of acquisition and evolution of knowledge and its transfer is covered by the term ‘education’. It also covers various transitions, reforms and adaptations that are taking place more frequently in the current context. The fast pace of development is driving even ‘established’ societies to conduct a process of continuous review and reforms. With respect to technical and vocational education and training (TVET), throughout the world countries are constantly trying to adapt it to a new economic and social order. However, whatever is transitional today may become a tradition in times to come, and something that had been a tradition may again find a place in transitional and futuristic systems. Tradition need not be discarded without scrutiny; similarly, transition cannot be delayed or deferred. Yet, it needs to be viewed and discussed in the local context with in-built reference to the global scenario. It is relevant to carry out an overview of the manner in which education systems evolved in different societies. For the purpose of this chapter, the focus will be on TVET systems.

2 Ancient (Traditional) TVET Systems Education, in its real sense, has always been perceived beyond literacy and numeracy. In India, in olden times, education was imparted in the ashrams (Gurukuls) of rishis (saints). The students, irrespective of their socio-economic backgrounds, lived together in the Gurukul from the age of 5 or 6 years until the Guru adjudged them (each individually) fit for the responsibilities of life. The education was wholesome, and neither differentiated into levels (primary, middle, secondary or higher) nor forms (academic, religious, moral, career oriented). It included knowledge, character-building and skill-training through the ashram’s dayto-day work, e.g. cooking, cleaning, farming, gardening and cattle-rearing, amongst R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 I.8, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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others. The students were taught to develop qualities of self-reliance and to respect mutual equality. This system also gradually spread into small villages and continued for thousands of years. Some world-famous universities of India, such as Nalanda, Taxshila (now in Pakistan) and Vikramshila, were based on this system of education (Narottam, 2000). Besides this, the two age-old methods of on-the-job learning (apprenticeship) and learning within the family tradition existed in ancient cultures. In ancient and mediaeval India, young children were exposed from childhood to the skills relating to the family vocation, leading to intensive training within the family that gradually made them masters of that vocation. It was also the responsibility of the elders in the family to educate children about moral conduct and behaviour, and initiate them such that they could face the challenges of life and assume responsibilities with the appropriate level of preparedness. Education within the family was also a tradition in Ancient Egypt. By precept and example, parents would instil into children various educational principles, moral attitudes and views of life from a very tender age. Parents familiarized children with ideas about the world, their religious outlook, ethical principles and the correct behaviour. Education covered both general upbringing and training for a particular vocation. The children did not usually choose their own careers but adopted the family vocation (Tour Egypt, 1999–2003). Reverence for the gods, respect for law, obedience to authority and truthfulness were the most important lessons to be taught. Girls were taught by their mothers. They learned to spin, weave and sew. References to the Roman period contain some interesting details about the training of girls to become weavers and spinners. At this time, weavers usually sent their children to be taught by colleagues in the same trade. The master undertook to return any payment if he failed to get his pupil through the whole course (Tour Egypt, 1999–2003). Later, around 200 BC, the Romans borrowed some of the ancient Greek system of education. They began sending their sons to school outside their home at age 6 or 7. Some girls also attended schools with their father’s permission. The children studied reading, writing and counting. At age 12 or 13, boys from the upper classes attended ‘grammar’ school, where they studied Latin and Greek grammar and literature. At the age of 16, some boys studied public speaking at the rhetoric school, as preparation for life as an orator (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2006). Thus, in ancient civilizations, before the advent of the industrial era, home and apprenticeship were the main systems for educating children. In other words, vocational education was an integral part of the system characterized by handwork (manual work)—Ancient China being an exception. China is one of the oldest countries with an education system. In the period 770 BC-476 BC, private schools existed through which different schools of thought—e.g. Confucianism, Taoism— were taught. These schools continued to exist although there were times when State education became popular. Vocational education first appeared in China in isolated schools around 1870 (Xinli Wu, 1991).

I.8 Traditional and Transitional TVET Systems

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3 Transitional TVET Systems As cultures progressed, the demands of development necessitated formalization of education imparted outside homes in schools and colleges. The institutionalization of education split societies into those who could take advantage of such education and others, who remained disadvantaged and marginalized for various reasons. The split was more evident in developing and under-developed countries than those of the developed nations. People came to be differentiated between intellectuals and working class, the latter remaining uneducated or educated to a very low level. An overview of the development of education in different parts of the world brings to the fore some characteristic features of the institutionalization of education. Firstly, the pace of the development of education and ideologies was not uniform throughout the world. Traditionally, the TVET systems in a country were determined and influenced by factors such as demography, culture, the social system, extreme political turmoil (external rule, world wars) and the struggle for survival. These systems varied from one country to another, with some countries being closer to the norm than others. Secondly, the integrated system of imparting knowledge about manual work (skills) gave way to two distinct systems of education: general and vocational (or technical) education. Even today, general education aims to enhance general proficiency, is mostly knowledge based and does not prepare the learner for any specific job or occupation. Vocational education, on the other hand, was specifically designed to develop competencies associated with particular occupations. Traditionally, in many countries, general education and vocational education are conceptually and operationally separated from each other; vocational students not being admitted to academic education. Vocational education is usually offered at secondary or upper secondary level (leaving school after the tenth or twelfth years of schooling, respectively) and terminates with a certificate. There are some options for continuing vocational education leading to a higher diploma, but it still remains at a sub-university level without any articulation with academic education. Vocational education and vocational training were also distinctly differentiated from each other by their relative emphasis on knowledge and skills. Vocational education programmes were designed to develop a considerable knowledge base along with skill development, while in the case of vocational training there was often very little, if any, theoretical content. The target groups, mode of delivery and management also differed. The delivery mechanisms varied depending on comprehensive schools, differentiated schools, polytechnics, technical colleges, Fachhochschule, technical and further education (TAFE) institutions on the one hand, and training within industry on the other. Some countries offer technical and vocational education in differentiated schools, e.g. vocational schools that are separate from general secondary schools, offering specialized courses preparing learners for specific vocations and are terminal in nature. Malaysia, Philippines and the Republic of Korea are some examples of this type of vocational preparation. In Europe, Germany stands out as a very strong and successful example where skill training is provided by industry.

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Some countries have focused on developing primary and secondary education, while others prioritized higher education. Relative emphasis between general, technical and vocational education (and in the latter case between theoretical content and practical experience, i.e. between education and training) also differed markedly. Barring a few exceptions, vocational education was considered as an alternate educational path for low achievers, school-leavers/dropouts, the less intellectual or for children from lower socio-economic strata. It aimed at preparing the low or middle order of the workforce by inculcating specific occupational skills. In this chapter, we will come to see all of these variations as we study the TVET systems of different countries/continents, how these systems developed and also how changes have taken place, such as dissolving distinctions and boundaries during reforms. In Latin America, during the period between these countries gaining independence and the First World War, interest was more directed at developing higher education, as the secondary education of elites took place through tutoring systems. Educational content was copied from Spain and Portugal, although there were also some British and French influences. Between the First and Second World Wars, the basic role of secondary education was to prepare elites for privileged social, economic and political positions as it was almost exclusively oriented towards access to higher education. Vocational education, through schools of industrial art and commercial education, was kept separate from secondary education and specifically aimed at preparing people for manual work (Corvalán-Vásquez, 1988). By 1960, technical and vocational education came to be recognized as part of secondary education, but still prepared students only to enter the world of work and, hence, was regarded as low-status education. Nevertheless, countries like Brazil, Argentina and Colombia significantly expanded their provision of technical and vocational education. After 1960, developments, such as the realization that education was an instrument of modernization, the necessity of involving the middle and lower-middle classes in political structures in order to enlarge its base and several educational experiments led to diversification, which opened up entry to higher education in universities to technical and vocational school graduates, provided they qualified in entrance examinations. Needless to say, general secondary education remained the main path for entry to university education and retained its higher social status (Corvalán-Vásquez, 1988). Among other factors, growing urbanization has also been an important influencing factor. Argentina, Cuba and Costa Rica, with early urbanization, had relatively more developed education systems as compared to other Latin American countries, and represented higher enrolments in TVE (25 to 50%). Brazil developed a strong TVE system owing to rapid industrialization (Corvalán-Vásquez, 1988). A societal demarcation was evident in the United Kingdom through its grammar school and regular school system, the former for the intellectual elite and the latter for the masses (Ishumi, 1988). This two-track system appeared in Africa as a prototype in Nigeria and in its modified form elsewhere. In the United States of America, Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute were among the pioneer trade schools in industrial, agricultural and home economics training,


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initially for African Americans. The University of Minnesota established the first regular public vocational secondary school in the form of an agricultural high school in 1888. The federal government took a significant step to promote vocational education, passing the Morill Act (1862), in pursuance of which land-grant colleges were established. After this, a number of acts and bills led to the development of vocational training in the United States, which helped to upgrade the workforce. Even in the nineteenth century, some kind of vocational and technical education systems existed in most Asian countries. Certain countries, like India, were ahead of the others. However, most of these countries, including India, had to start afresh after attaining independence. In Sri Lanka, the TVET system has evolved over a period of 100 years with rapid expansion after independence in the 1950s. In India, the deep-rooted and celebrated system of education in the family tradition and apprenticeship with a focus on working with one’s hands was strategically destroyed during the period of colonial rule. The implanted system forcefully propagated by the British, commonly known as the ‘Macaulay System’ and intended to prepare people ‘to serve the British rulers’, was not concerned with the growth and development of India as a nation. This truth was realized by the great thinkers, such as Mahatma Gandhi. His experiments in education in South Africa and India led him to conceptualize basic education (nai talim) in India. He visualized education as a basic tool for the development of national consciousness and the reconstruction of society. Character-building by education through good deeds, the development of virtues, the ability to find solutions to problems and the development of intellect through craft were the main elements of basic education. Gandhi stated: ‘In my definition of education, there is no wall of brick and cement separating intellectual training from vocational training, but the latter includes the former, that is, it provides scope for development of the intellect’. The visionary thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi became reflected in recommendations of various commissions and policies and are relevant even today. In India, vocational education was perceived as a continuum of exposure, orientation, exploration and training. It was recommended that students should be exposed to a variety of work of a practical nature, to become oriented towards work, and be given time to explore various vocational options before choosing their final field of specialization. With a view to linking education and productivity, the Education Commission (1964–66), also called the Kothari Commission, recommended that work experience should form an integral part of general education. This concept was essentially similar to the philosophy of basic education, although it was more broad based and included several modern productive activities. Consequently, the National Policy of Education (1968–86) in India reemphasized vocational education in schools, introducing work education from classes I to VIII, pre-vocational education in classes IX and X, and vocational education as a distinct stream in classes XI and XII. The work-oriented education offered at elementary level under a variety of nomenclatures—e.g. work experience, work education, life-oriented education, craft education, socially useful productive work—is meant to prepare children to face life with a proper attitude, knowledge and skills in relation to work. This is expected to promote social, personal and vocational development and ultimately lead to a smooth transition to the world of work

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(Agrawal, 2000). The policy document on Vocationalization of Secondary Education (1976) is a landmark in the history of vocational education in India. However, its success is ‘patchy’ and fresh debates are going on at present to introduce reforms. The eighty-third amendment to the Indian Constitution has made eight years of elementary education compulsory; however, it is yet to be achieved. A policy of ten years of common school curriculum is pursued, after which streaming into general and vocational or technical education begins. However, industrial training institutes (ITIs) take both class VIII and X graduates and train them according to the needs of specific industries, offering certificate courses of varying duration. Some states in India, e.g. Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, also run technical schools after lower secondary stage (class VIII) in which, in addition to the common curriculum, one vocational subject is offered. These schools mainly feed the polytechnics. India has a chain of polytechnics (more than 1,300) providing broad-based education after class X in engineering and some non-engineering areas. The polytechnics usually offer three-year programmes leading to a diploma (Postlethwaite, 1995). Technical and vocational education in India is generally separated from academic (general) education and does not enjoy a reputable status, except for higher education in engineering and technology which are fed from the academic stream. In 1972, the National Education Commission of Bangladesh, appointed immediately after independence, recommended the diversification of secondary education from grade IX onwards. In China, although the history of vocational education can be traced back about 130 years, the ‘Schooling System of 1902’ laid down systematic regulations for vocational education. However, until 1949 progress was slow until the People’s Republic of China was founded, after which vocational education witnessed substantial improvement and development. In the 1950s, thousands of specialized secondary schools and skill-worker schools were established (CIIC, 2004). In China, technical and vocational education (TAVE) is one of the four distinct sectors of education. TAVE is mainly offered in specialized secondary schools, skilled-worker schools, secondary vocational schools and advanced technical and vocational colleges. Nine years of compulsory education in China covers education up to the lower secondary level. Specialized secondary schools offer four-year programmes for the lower-middle school-leavers, i.e. after nine years of compulsory schooling. In Japan, the first national Vocational Education Law, passed in 1894, marks a long history of national support. However, the ideology is quite different. The education system is not built up around specialist vocational models. Mastery of one subject area (skills) is not what the Japanese society or employment sector is looking for. In general, Japan takes a ‘broader view’ rather than a ‘subject-specific’ approach on technical and vocational education. Nine years of schooling is compulsory in Japan. After six years of elementary education, students learn pre-vocational subjects at lower secondary level, which is three-year education. Streaming into general and specialized courses starts from upper secondary level (three years of full-time schooling). However, a majority of students enrol for general education. This may be because, in Japan, willingness to adapt to a concrete working situation (i.e. in


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the employing company) and being productive is highly valued. On the contrary, high priority was given by the Republic of Korea and Taiwan to specific vocational education as they entered the industrial era. In Australia, there are nine years of compulsory education. Most of vocational education takes place in the TAFE system, the most accessible tertiary education in Australia, with entry in principle after ten years of education; however, in practice, it is now after twelve years of education. TAFE institutions offer a wide variety of courses classified into the following six streams: professional, para-professional, trades, other skilled, preparatory and adult or further education. Courses in the first two streams lead to a diploma or associate diploma; in the third and fourth streams to a certificate; the fifth and sixth streams offer less formal or shorter courses not leading to any certified qualification. The majority of TAFE courses are conducted on a part-time basis, concurrent with employment, but there is also a provision for full-time study (Kurian, 1988). The TVET systems in European countries show substantial diversity, despite their developmental similarities. Education in the United Kingdom is compulsory from 5 to 16 years of age (eleven years). Some vocational courses are offered in comprehensive schools; some technical secondary schools also continue to exist; however, most vocational education is given through a separate ‘further education system’ called technical colleges or colleges of further education (Kurian, 1988). There has been an effort in the 1980s and 1990s to give more technical and vocational orientation to secondary education, and a course of technology, which includes craft and design, has been included as a compulsory ‘foundation’ subject. A two-year programme of training for school-leavers is offered outside the school system consisting of vocational, some general education and work experience, known as the Youth Training Scheme. In France, ten years of schooling is compulsory, after which streaming of secondary education occurs for general and technical high schools. There is also a provision of technical higher education (two years) leading to a diploma. Unlike Germany, technical and vocational education has never been considered an attractive option in France. Schooling is compulsory for nine to ten years in Germany. After four (or six) years of primary education, there are three options for grade 5 (or 7) to 9. The Hauptschule, the Realschule and the Gymnasium, as well as a comprehensive form (Integrierte Gesamtschule). Among these, the Hauptschulen offer vocational education preparing students for entry into employment and are attended by most young people. At tertiary level, Fachhochschulen, requiring successful completion of twelve years of schooling, train students in the practical application of scientific knowledge. Every young person in Germany with nine years of general schooling must attend some part-time or full-time professional qualification programme. The specialized secondary schools include commercial secondary schools (Wirtschaftsgymnasium), which offer some business subjects in grades 11 to 13 and technical secondary schools (Technisches/Berufliches Gymnasium or Technische Oberschule), which lead to higher education in technical fields. These are slight variations of academic programmes only. The real vocational and technical

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education, however, takes place in many different specialized schools. These are part-time vocational school (Berufsschule), full-time vocational school (Berufsfachschule), the extended vocational school (Berufsaufbauschule), the specialized secondary school (Fachoberschule) and the technical school (Fachschule). Part-time vocational schools are the most common vocational schools in Germany providing compulsory part-time schooling with practical apprenticeship training leading to a certificate. This dual system forms the usual route to trades for most young people. However, there are opportunities for its articulation with advanced qualifications through the Berufsaufbauschule, Fachhochschule, etc. The Fachhochschulen are university polytechnics, established in Germany and German-speaking countries—e.g. Austria, Switzerland—preparing students for a variety of technical specialties and leading to good employment prospects. Fachhochschulen are an important source of training for engineers, accounting in 1992 for two-thirds of the engineering degrees awarded in Germany. The government has planned to divert more engineering students from universities to Fachhochschulen, to develop a more highly skilled workforce and to boost the economy, especially in the former East Germany. In addition, Germany has two- or threeyear higher education programmes in vocational academies (Berufsakademien), which integrate practical training in industry with theoretical education in a local university (National Science Board, 1996). The Fachhochschulen differ from polytechnics in other countries as they are unique examples of higher vocational education offering not only a diploma but also bachelor’s and master’s degrees (no doctoral programme, however). In India also, vocational courses have been introduced at bachelor’s degree level since 1994, but these are far from comparable to the Fachhochschulen. A number of countries, such as India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Singapore, have polytechnics and technical colleges forming an important component of the post-secondary vocational education system. Greinert (2004), while analysing European vocational training systems, suggests that VET has evolved quite differently, even in countries that have experienced similar economic and social development. The process of European industrialization did not produce a uniform model, but rather more or less destroyed the age-old, roughly homogeneous craft/trade-based vocational training methods. Three general types of VET systems are identified: the liberal market economy model in the United Kingdom; the State-regulated bureaucratic model in France; and the dual corporate model in Germany. The three countries have different priorities in the area of industrial relations and labour law. In the case of the British liberal model, the market directs the supply and demand relationship, the qualification demands depend on their possible application in the labour market. The bureaucratic, Stateregulated model, first implemented in France, uses the education sub-system to create a political, power-based relationship between capital and labour. The ‘disadvantaged’ workers are ‘qualified’ with the help of a State-regulated and financed education sector, including vocational training. The dual model of Germany uses a new independent, self-referral system of vocational training linking labour, capital and the State. Mainly run by industry, companies are the primary learning location for vocational skills. The learners also attend a vocational school financed by


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the public sector. Although largely isolated from the general education sector, its success can be understood by the fact that in Germany even small enterprises are highly organized, training is viewed as a long-term investment for industry and the education sub-system (the dual system) is a ‘normal track’ for the majority of youth. This is in contradiction with several other countries where vocational education and training is considered to be an alternative option for low achievers. Thus, if this model were to be successfully replicated in other countries, it would demand pre-conditions typical of Germany. Various other vocational education and training models in European countries arising throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are modifications, variations and/or combinations of these three models.

4 The Contemporary Context and Reforms Traditionally, historical, cultural, political and sociological features affected the TVET systems in a country. Later, the pace of urbanization and industrialization, technological revolution and labour demands impelled expansion and reforms. However, in the most recent decades, globalization, the emergence of a knowledge society, liberalization and employment equations in free economies have necessitated rethinking the policies and long-existing structures of education and training. Concerns for gender equity, social equilibrium and justice have placed demands on policies and programmes for specific social groups. The mandate is to reach all and build human resources for all areas of need within emerging global society (Agrawal, 1999). There is a renewed emphasis on the development of skilled but adaptable human resource in the international arena. The Delors Report projects four pillars of education, in which ‘learning to do’ essentially represents vocational education and training (Delors et al., 1996). In the present context, TVET is being seen as a major human resource development strategy. In the Asian region, there is a common realization of the importance of skills in socio-economic development, as reflected in the conference report on case studies on TVE in Asia and the Pacific in 1996: ‘The future international competitiveness in trade and increases in national productivity will only occur by having a skilled work force capable of meeting the technological changes of the 1990s and beyond’ (NIER/UNESCO, 2002). In Indonesia and Malaysia, the reforms that took place in 1984 were meant to make students more employable and entrepreneurial, while preparing them for lifelong education. This led to creating a better image of TVE with the result that enrolment increased (Wilson, 1991). The modernization process in China, carried out since the 1980s, led to rapid expansion of TAVE, accounting for about 45% of total enrolment at the upper-secondary level. To cope with global changes and sustain competitiveness, Germany has enacted a Vocational Training Reform Act in 2005. This act aims at securing and improving training opportunities of high quality for all young people, irrespective of their social

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and regional origins. The success of vocational training within industry is enhanced by training support programmes for disadvantaged trainees, e.g. those with learning disabilities, socially disadvantaged trainees, disabled trainees and those with language difficulties (immigrants). In recent years in the United States, corporations and labour organizations have established the majority of new vocational and cultural centres. Public high schools have placed a renewed emphasis on students to meet general academic standards and also learn a trade.

5 Lifelong Learning, the Role of Industries and Trade Unions Nowadays, merely acquiring knowledge and skills is not enough. Liberalization, globalization and rapid technological changes have substantially changed the world of work. Traditionally, formal training aimed at preparing a worker for a lifetime of employment. Now the trend is towards frequent and multiple career changes, part-time and casual work. This necessitates continued lifelong learning and training strategies that are able to cope with changing technology and employment demands. The work force needs to be flexible and adaptable. The emphasis is on competitiveness, interpersonal skills and the ability to sustain employment by adapting to changing job requirements and circumstances. Traditional concepts are being redefined and the relationship among and between knowledge, information, training, learning, qualifications, skills and employment are being understood afresh. The distinction between education and training is not as clear-cut as it used to be. Different countries have responded to this situation in different ways. The Australian approach is to develop competencies essential for work in all young people and to lay the formation for their continuing vocational education and training. The TAFE colleges and other publicly-funded infrastructures already have wide coverage but, in order to cope with future demand, the Australian Government is promoting an open training market called ‘User Choice’ in which a learner can select preparation from any registered training organization, be it public, private or solely an enterprise. Chile is also following a similar pattern of privatization. Countries like China, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Republic of Korea are focusing their attention on creating a new breed of highly skilled employees, equipped with skills such as communication, teamwork, problem-solving, the ability to handle information, etc. The objective is to make a niche in the global market. Singapore has developed a set of such key competencies called ‘critical enabling skills’ (ILO, 1999). Expenditure on continuing training in European Union countries has registered significant increases (65% in Belgium since 1987; multiplied by four in Greece between 1988 and 1990), while handling joblessness for the long-term unemployed through vocational training is a top priority with many countries (Münch, 1996). In Asia and the Pacific the concern for employment is even more vital. Globalization adversely affected the employment scenario in East Asia. The situation in


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countries like Indonesia, Philippines, the Republic of Korea and Thailand, became quite alarming (ILO, 1999). Asian and African countries anticipate tackling the problem of unemployment through the global migration of labour. Training also has to address the concerns of the informal sector. The ILO (1999) suggests that efforts to generate training and employment should aim to create an environment conducive to income-generating activities, provide skill training, business training and access to credit, particularly for socially disadvantaged groups. The relationship between pre-service and in-service vocational training varies from country to country. In Spain, continuing vocational training also covers basic general education, while in countries like Belgium and the Netherlands it is not covered. In Denmark, general in-service training is a part of continuing vocational training, while in countries like Ireland and Portugal it is not. A clear distinction exists in countries like Germany, Denmark and Luxembourg between initial and continuing vocational training. In Portugal and Greece, initial vocational training for adults is part of continuing vocational training (Münch, 1996). These differences can be attributed to the initial training itself. In Germany, for example, there is an important system for preparing the majority of young people for skilled employment, but this is not the case with most other countries. Trade unions have a crucial role to play in retraining and updating the workforce and are also geared up to cope with changes, renewed requirements of vocational training and the need to ensure greater and better participation on the part of industries. In some instances, trade unions determine the training needs, negotiate with the government, create suitable upgrading and updating programmes for the workforce, motivate the workers to undergo training and, in certain cases, also manage the training programmes and the institutions. In Argentina, trade unions offer vocational training with a significant coverage. In Brazil, major union federations and their affiliates run training programmes. In Mexico, unions are involved with the certification of occupational competencies. Some central unions in Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil are think-tanks for workers’ organizations and give research input on training aspects (ILO, 1999). The Irish Congress of Trade Unions has established a training company that delivers training in various specific areas—e.g. electronics, hydraulics and core skills—leading to certification. It also acts as a broker for its members. Despite certain differences, enterprises play a major role in providing continuing vocational training and it is generally well understood that it is a crucial factor for sustaining and facing the challenges of a fast-changing economy and technological advances, as well as answering the concerns of social equity. In China, skilledworker schools are run by enterprises and professional organizations, with State guarantee of employment (Postlethwaite, 1995). The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has recently renewed its objectives and strategies to promote skill development as a priority industrial issue. ACTU is seeking to maintain an industry-led vocational education system that responds to employment needs, develops strategies to give equitable access to VET opportunities to non-standard workers and to disadvantaged people within the labour market, and improves the TAFE system to respond to industrial needs, employees and the

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community (ACTU, 2005). Prior to the 1990s, Australian industries were not taking a keen interest in employee training, but the situation thereafter has changed to some extent. Various employer groups in the European Union understand that offering opportunities for initial and further vocational training in keeping with the needs of industry is in the interest of both the employers and the employee. Nowadays, not only vocational training but regular and appropriate further training and lifelong learning throughout a person’s entire working life is crucial to maintaining efficiency, productivity and the employee’s employability (ECEG/EMCEF, 2004).

6 Open and Distance Learning (ODL) Strategy in TVET ODL, mainly referring to pedagogical aspects, has wide-ranging implications not only for delivery but also on the instructional design, reach, impact and quality of education. As well as being advocated as a means of reaching a large number of learners at one time, it is also viewed as a strategy for gender equity and social justice. The flexible mode of delivery offering possibilities for lifelong learning, learner-centred approaches and high adaptability to changing demands are added advantages. However, issues of quality have been a concern with ODL and this has to receive special attention if it is to accrue real benefits. Australia is a country with probably the greatest number of courses and degrees offered through distance learning. The Australian Flexible Learning Framework for Vocational Education and Training, 2000–2004, a collaborative commonwealthstate strategy, elaborates nationally agreed goals, principles and actions designed to give a boost to flexible learning (Australia. DETYA, 2001). In Turkey, vocational and technical open education high schools offer educational opportunities and teach vocational knowledge and skills through distance education. The Ministry of National Education projected that, in 2000–2001, more than 77,000 students received vocational education through these schools. Distance education in China started in the 1950s as correspondence education, with education via satellite taking shape in the 1980s. In the 1990s, developments in information technology led to faster delivery of distance education, which is serving as a strong mechanism to offer programmes for vocational and technical education and training (CERNIC/CERNET, 1998–2000). India initiated correspondence courses in teacher education in the early 1960s. Now a strong network of ODL through a central open university (Indira Gandhi National Open University) and state-level open universities has been established that also offers vocational programmes. At school stage, the National Institute of Open Schooling offers about seventy vocational courses of various levels and duration through the correspondencecum-contact mode. This, in fact, has been the global trend. ODL started primarily with correspondence courses and accelerated with the satellite system. With the advent of the era of information technology, a form of e-learning has been made possible that is being


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seen as a strong strategy to bring within the fold of education those who for various reasons have been left out of the regular school system, as well as for training and retraining employment seekers and the employed, according to the changing job profiles.

7 Conclusion Society constantly reinvents itself through education. It is a process by which the young generation builds its roots and becomes prepared for the future. In a dynamic surrounding, nothing that is growing or that facilitates growth and development can be static. Education is a facilitator of growth and development and, hence, cannot afford to be static. It demands a constant change without compromising with continuity. The key is to strike the right balance between ancient and modern, ideal and real, while neither the key nor the balance are ever static. Consequently, designing education is a continuous endeavour of exploration, experimentation, invention and reinvention; with a pace that the society demands. The proverbial rigidity of education systems reflected in resistance to change has to vanish in the face of fast global transformation. Education is the key to understanding the current scenario, but it has to be relevant and effective. While knowledge is necessary, it becomes functional only when supplemented with competencies and skills. Never before was there as strong a need as today for TVET to adapt itself to serve as a critical binding force between society, productivity and sustainable development.

References Agrawal, P. 1999. Vocational education for all. In: Pandit Sunderlal Sharma Central Institute of Vocational Education, ed. Vocationalisation of education: perspectives for the new millennium— the challenge, pp. 44–50. Bhopal, India: PSSCIVE. Agrawal, P. 2000. Vocationalization of agriculture education and gender issues. Indian journal of vocational education, vol. 3, no. 2; vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 30–34. Australia. Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs. 2001. Annual report (2000–01), Chap. 3. Education and training in Australia. <www.dest.gov.au/archive/ publications/annual reports/2001/03/3b.htm> Australian Council of Trade Unions. 2005. <www.actu.asn.au/congress2003/draftpolicies/vetpolicy. html> China Education and Research Network Information Centre (CERNIC); China Education and Research Network (CERNET). 1998–2000. Modern distance education. <www.edu.cn/20010101/21934.shtml> China Internal Information Centre. 2004. <www.chinaorg.cn> Corvalán-Vásquez, O. 1988. Trends in technical-vocational and secondary education in Latin America. International journal of educational development, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 73–98. Delors, J. et al. 1996. Learning: the treasure within. Paris: UNESCO. (Report of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century.) Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2006. <www.britannica.com>

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European Chemical Employers Group (ECEG); European Mine, Chemicals and Energy Workers Federation (EMCEF). 2004. Joint position paper on education, vocational training and lifelong learning in the European chemical industry. <www.emcef.org/Committees/ SD/Che/2004/ECEG-EMCEF-Decl-EN.pdf> Greinert, W.-D. 2004. European vocational education ‘systems’: some thoughts on the theoretical context of their historical development. European journal of vocational training, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 18–26. International Labour Organization. 1999. Skill in Asia and the Pacific: why training matters. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. (Technical report.) Ishumi, A.G.M. 1988. Vocational training as an educational and development strategy: conceptual and practical issues. International journal of educational development, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 163–174. Kurian G.T., ed. 1988. World education encyclopedia. New York, NY: Facts on File Publications. Münch, J. 1996. Continuing vocational training in the countries of the European Union: diversity of functions and special problems. European journal of vocational training, vol. 1, no. 7, pp. 3–7. Narottam, P. 2000. Nai Talim in Gujarat, philosophy and development. Amdavad, India: Gujarat Nai Talim Sangh, Gujarat Vidyapith. National Institute for Educational Policy Research/UNESCO. 2002. Implementing UNESCO/ILO Recommendations for TVET. Tokyo: NIER. National Science Board. 1996. Science and engineering indicators. Chapter 2: Technical Education in Germany, France, Japan and South Korea. <www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind96/ch2 cont. htm> Postlethwaite, T.N., ed. 1995. International encyclopaedia of national systems of education, 2nd ed. Oxford, UK: Pergamon. Tour Egypt. 1999–2003. Education and learning in Ancient Egypt. <www.touregypt.net/ historicalessays/lifeinEgypt7/htm> Wilson, D.N. 1991. Reform of technical-vocational education in Indonesia and Malaysia. Comparative education, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 207–21. Xinli Wu. 1991. The potential for technical education in the People’s Republic of China. Journal of technical education, vol. 3, no. 1.

Chapter I.9

Partnering to Meet the Needs of a Changing Workplace LuAnn Hiniker and Robert A. Putnam

1 Introduction Knowing how our profession is evolving can help us position ourselves for the future. Some of the trends we describe are already emerging; others can be foretold from current and emerging events. All are supported by data and demographics gleaned from many sources, both academic and industrial. Two major forces— global competition and rapid technological advances—have profoundly changed, and will continue to change, the nature and content of work in the workplace of the future. The world of work has entered a new economic era that has no precedent in the past. This new economic age is the result of many shifts that have happened in the global socio-economic, industrial and political environment. These shifts have created new paradigms based upon technology, people and industrial organizations, which differ significantly from those that we have relied upon for decades. These shifts are happening continuously and at an ever-increasing pace. In today’s business environment, the only constant is change. This new economic age is challenging in many ways, but it also provides us with new opportunities as individuals, organizations, nations and the world. But for businesses to prosper in this ever-changing world, they must completely rethink how and why they do what they do, and prepare their members well to work in this new environment. In other words, the new economy will require new paradigms in how we educate, train and develop the workforce (Hartanto, 1993). Sustainable competitive advantage is no longer based on technology or machinery. Corporate leaders are saying that people are our most important advantage. Through downsizing, restructuring and reorganizing, many organizations are creating high-performance work systems and transforming themselves into learning organizations. They are giving more responsibility to workers, who have been asked to do more with less (Bassey, 1990). The American economist Lester Thurow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has reminded us that: ‘in a global economy of the twenty-first century the education and skills of a workforce will end up being the dominant competitive weapon’ (Thurow, 1993). Similar admonitions have come from Carnevale (1991), Reich (1992), Judy & D’Amico (1997) and others. In this brave new world, Shield (1995) reminds us,


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education and training systems must not be based upon knowledge acquisition at the expense of knowledge application; upon past practice; or upon theoretical models with little or no consideration of application, data-based needs analysis, or planning for quantitative or qualitative evaluation.

2 The History of Work-Based Education One of the first models to be put in place, first in manufacturing but later extended to all industries, was Frederick Taylor’s The principles of scientific management (1911). With authority, it was argued, a manager could get anything done. Systems were created, developed and implemented by management. Workers were only there to run the system under the supervision of management, while productivity problems were the result of failure to follow procedure. It was argued, therefore, that workers really did not need to know very much. When this centralized planning method proved unsuccessful—as it almost always did—jobs were ‘dumbed down’ leading to even less worker involvement and, inevitably, to a cycle of industrial decline obvious in the late 1970s and the 1980s. These centralized planning axioms developed under Taylorism suggested that management goals were specifications for performance. Actually, when used to reduce or replace worker input, they were primarily tools for shifting blame away from management when the centrally planned systems didn’t work—which they seldom did (Bradley, 1993). Today, ‘scientific management’ has been largely discredited. In a survey of employersponsored training in the United States, Lakewood Research (1995) found that 54% of all budgeted training dollars were aimed at programmes for managers and professionals rather than for workers. In addition, 64% of training managers reported that they expected their budgets to remain the same or be cut for the next fiscal year, despite an increase in training requests from their organizations and increased corporate profits. A more recent report by Lakewood Research on the Dun and Bradstreet organizations (2001) shows that, despite the fact that the non-exempt employees greatly outnumber managers and exempt professionals in the American workforce, only 36% of training spending is directed at them. An argument could be made, perhaps, that workers do benefit indirectly from the training their bosses get. It would appear that a considerable amount of research-based analysis is needed in education and training policy in both the public and private sectors. The purpose of this chapter is to suggest a starting point for the development of a work-based learning system, which will serve a motivated, highly-skilled and welleducated workforce. This system must be developed using the tools at our disposal, while working under real-world constraints. Innovative partnerships, as discussed in this chapter, may help achieve this goal. Albert Einstein reminded us that: ‘the mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution. [...] To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and makes real

I.9 Partnering to Meet the Needs of a Changing Workplace

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advances in science’ (Fields, 1993). We suggest that the first step is an understanding of the problem using the elements of good research as suggested by Anderson (1990), Bassey (1990) and Hammersley (1992): determine the question, collect data and then conduct a systematic, critical inquiry in order to explain, generalize and predict. A good place to begin our investigation into what work-based learning should be is to try to understand what the workplace of the future will be like and who will work there. What do emerging trends and current and projected data tell us about the work organizations and demands of the future? What about the people who will work there? What will their needs be?

3 The Workplace of the Future Analysis of a review of the literature revealed six major areas of structural organizational change that will have a significant impact on development-oriented practices in and intended for the workplace. In a study commissioned by the American Society for Training and Development (McLagan, 1989), it was found that the pressures for workplace productivity will intensify, and that the pace of change will continue to accelerate with organizations and industries looking beyond obvious efficiency gains to more systematic ways of being low-cost producers of high-quality products and services. Research by Grant Thorton LLP, a major international accounting firm, found that 78% of mid-sized companies surveyed are reducing cycle times and that ultimately, speed and agility will become the critical requirements for survival for mid-sized manufacturers (Cantwell, 1996). Work will continue to change rapidly because of advances in technology and, according to Peter Drucker (1994), time has become the most valuable business resource. In a study of best practices by industry leaders in the United States and Canada, researchers identified the practices of quantifying and measuring reductions in cycle time, employees’ recognition of their responsibility to continuously improve their work processes, and employees’ understanding the compelling need for change as a major difference between highperforming and low-performing companies (Yearout, 1996). Further evidence of this trend is found in the report by Lakewood Research (1995) that 84% of businesses reported measuring the reactions to training provided by the employer, 60% reported evaluating behaviour when they returned to the job, and 43% reported measuring the business results of training provided—all a dramatic change in the past few years. The useful life of information was estimated at ten years in 1980 by the software industry, at two years in 1995, and estimated at fifteen months in 2002 (Olson, 2002). Recent anecdotal information from a variety of sources in manufacturing and service industries, both in the United States and Europe, confirms this trend. The ‘do more with less’ refrain will be a dominant theme in work organizations in all industries in the future. The second clear structural change occurring across industrial sectors is that more people continue to do applied knowledge work. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in 1950, 60% of all jobs in the United States were classified as non-skilled; in 2000, only 15% were.

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Virtually every group of adults examined increased their participation in adult education between 1991 and 1999, often in ways that reduced disparities in participation that had existed in 1991. Although the widespread increase in participation in adult education has been accompanied by an elimination of some inequities, in many cases the highly educated and high status groups that have been the traditional beneficiaries of adult education remain the main beneficiaries today (NCES, 2002).

Workers will continue to have greater access through technology to the information needed to do their jobs, and are therefore less dependent on hierarchy and structures. As cycle times decrease and change accelerates, the ability to apply skills quickly and effectively is becoming more important than simply having skills. Technology is continuing to take over a category of jobs, which do not require critical thinking. Automation engineers use the rule of the ‘three Ds’ to determine which jobs will be automated: dirty, dangerous and dumb. In the emerging work environment, knowledge skills such as judgement, flexibility and personal commitment are now the most valuable skills to the organization (Yearout, 1996). A third very clear trend is that work organizations in all industries and sectors will continue to shift their focus to the customer and quality. It will be pervasive because it is a key competitive characteristic. In tomorrow’s work organization, customer and quality focus will continue to permeate the organization, with every employee clear about the value he or she adds internally, as well as for external customers. One of the greatest differences between high-producing and low-producing companies identified in recent research was that employees in high-producing companies understand the link between their tasks and the organizations’ strategic plans and goals, and that change in the high producers is driven by customer needs and expectations (Yearout, 1996). The pervasiveness of this trend can be seen by the variety of work organizations that have endorsed the quality movement. Within the past decade, the United States Department of Defense, Organizational Dynamics, Inc., General Motors, Ford Motor Co., Daimler–Chrysler, Kroger Food Stores, American Telephone and Telegraph, General Electric, Proctor and Gamble, health-care organizations, schools, hotel chains and many other organizations have proclaimed their conversion to quality. Lakewood Research (1995) reported that 70% of those surveyed from the Dun and Bradstreet list of organizations in the United States employing 100 people or more are providing employer-supplied training in at least one of the current quality initiatives. They also noted that 82% report providing training intended to develop a customer focus, and 74% of manufacturers report adopting total quality management, with 50% reporting transitioning to a teams-based structure. In 1995 the Baldridge Quality Award, the equivalent in the United States of the Japanese Deming Quality Award, was piloted with health care and educational organizations. An emphasis on customers and quality is obviously not an issue in only a few industries and sectors, but has become a way of conducting work in most industries within the realm of new technological advances. The Lakewood Research report (2001) states that 37% of all employer-sponsored training in the United States is devoted to teaching computer skills.


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In the work organization of the future, a fourth major and clearly developing trend is that in many organizations the arena for planning and action will be global. McLagan (1989) predicted that markets, resource pools, competition, partnerships— or all of them—will cross national lines. For some, competitors are suppliers or even customers. Relationships are complex and boundaries have blurred between organizations and their environments. One study indicated that in the automobile industry, Japanese and American management attitudes became remarkably similar with each national group acquiring some of the other’s philosophy. A study by Yauas (1995) of Asian managers and American managers in the electronics industry showed a great deal of ‘convergence’ in management attitudes and practices in the entire Pacific Rim. The International Standards Organization has also greatly homogenized practices of management and production through its ISO 9000 standards and sub-standards. In addition, the pressures created by international trade unions and agreements, such as the European Union (EU), the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), will intensify internationalism in all industrial sectors and in both the industrialized and the non-industrialized world. In the work organization of the future, business strategies will become more dependent on the quality and versatility of the human resource. As McLagan (1989) noted, whether they rely on improved productivity, quality or innovation, the strategies of the future will not be delivered if the organization’s human resources are not capable and committed. Organizations that apply only money and technology to problems, without bringing the people along, will not survive; especially in industries in which knowledge, skills and willingness to change are critical to competitive advantage. Confirmation that the message is clear to competitive industries is demonstrated by expenditures. Total dollars budgeted for formal training in 1998 by United States organizations with more than 100 employees was US$52.2 billion; an increase of 3% from 1994 and the 2001 report indicates US$56.8 billion dollars budgeted for formal training (Lakewood Research, 1995, 2001). Shawn Miller of Eastman Kodak could have been talking to every work organization in the future when he gave the advice ‘train everyone’ (Miller, 1995). Training has become so important that the Baldrige Award criteria, ISO 9000, QS 9000, ISO 14000 standards and MRP II (the Eastman Kodak total quality standards) all have a category or requirements for a formal training plan and a disciplined approach to training. Finally, all of our data and sources agree that work structure and design will change dramatically. In most major industries in all sectors, hierarchies have already begun to melt into or have been replaced by a flatter and more flexible organizational design. The boundaries between individual jobs are blurring, with more team accountability, flexible and multi-skilled job designs. Major downsizing and other initiatives that emphasize doing more with less have also had a great impact on worker flexibility. As large companies, such as Sears and IBM, which tend to represent their industrial sectors, continue to move to a more decentralized work environment, this trend, already strong, can only accelerate.

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4 The Impacts of Change The next task is to ask what these projections and our interpretation mean for the development of work-based learning. What will the workforce needs be in the work organization of the future? How will the changes in the workplace affect the workforce? What knowledge and skills will workers need? How will these impact work-based learning? Each of the six identified areas of major organizational structural change dramatically increases demands upon the people who work within the organization. As these changes occur, demands made upon any work-based learning system will also change. It would be of value to examine each of the changes to see what they mean in terms of the skills and knowledge that will be required. Pressures for workforce productivity will intensify and the pace of change will continue to accelerate. Organizations are still downsizing and still expecting workers to do more with less. Overall, 31% of United States industries employing over 100 people reported downsizing in 1998, but in industries employing 100,000 or more, the percentage was 56%! Another 25%, but as high as 46% in some sectors, reported increasing the use of ‘outsourcing’, up from 14% in previous years, and 21% overall. As high as 30% in some sectors reported increasing the use of ‘contingent’ workers. ‘Reengineering’ was also popular, with 35% overall, but as high as 59% in some sectors being involved. Of the US$56.8 billion total dollars budgeted for formal training in 2001, the amount of US$19.3 billion will go to outside providers of training products and services (Lakewood Research, 1995, 2001). In slimmed-down organizations, with fewer workers to do the work, and the nature of the work changing rapidly, those fewer workers are going to need to learn to do additional tasks frequently, and to work more effectively. Obviously, any future-oriented work-based learning system will have to be grounded in solid fundamentals, close to or linked to its application, and emphasize ‘learning to learn’. More people today are doing applied knowledge work, which requires judgement, flexibility and personal commitment rather than submission to procedures (Carnevale, 1991; Marshall & Tucker, 1993; Judy & D’Amico, 1997). Creating competent knowledgeable workers who can apply what they know with the ability to keep pace with rapidly changing technology will be a key challenge. The emphasis will not be what the worker knows, but what he or she can do with it (Drucker, 1994). The Hudson Institute reports that net job growth between 1994 and 2005 is greatest in three categories: professionals, service workers and technicians. ‘The high-paying “professional specialty” occupations are expected to grow by 25 per cent between 1994 and 2005, faster than any other major occupational category. On the other hand, the low-paying “service occupations” are also slated to grow by 23 per cent in these years’ (Judy & D’Amico, 1997, p. 77). Organizations will continue to shift their focus to quality and customers. Of the nine current industrial trends identified by Lakewood Research (1995), six were quality or customer driven. Overall, 58% of the organizations, but as high as 80% in some sectors, report adopting ‘total quality management’. Overall, 50% of the organizations, but as high as 69% in some sectors, report development of an


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‘organizational vision’. Overall, 78% of organizations report ‘teaming’ with 61% of the total workforce involved. The largest change from 1994–95 was an increase from 34% to 44% of organizations who report that they now ‘partner’ with suppliers and customers. The change to a customer-oriented, group-centred and broad-based responsibility and application in a total quality environment has tremendous implications for traditional work-based learning, which has stressed isolated and intensive skill acquisition and single practitioner application in narrowly defined parameters of responsibility. The arena for planning and action will be global. Any successful work-based learning system must be prepared to serve clients who work in a global setting. Flexibility and adaptability are no longer merely desirable, but are required. Indicative of this is that 53% of United States companies with over 100 employees provided training in ‘diversity’; 51% provided training in ‘strategic planning’, and 16% provided training in a foreign language (Lakewood Research, 1995). Also, 72% of mid-sized United States manufacturers recently surveyed by the accounting firm Grant Thornton reported that they planned to increase their emphasis on developing foreign markets as a result of various regional and world trade agreements (Cantwell, 1996). Diversity is now a dominant feature of all work, while teaching the skills required to function effectively in diverse work settings must become a major thrust of work-based learning. Business strategies will become more dependent on the quality and versatility of the human resources. An anecdote might be an appropriate example here. A technician was summoned to a company to repair a major piece of manufacturing equipment. The plant manager looked on anxiously, as the production line was stopped. The technician removed the metal inspection cover, then, shaking her head, replaced it. She then walked to the rear left side of the machine and tapped it with a hammer. The machine lit up, reset itself and began operating again. Before leaving, the technician presented an itemized bill which read: ‘Tapping the machine with hammer, $1.00, knowing where to tap, $999.99’ (Burban, 1995). A look at the relevant literature indicates that many organizations are getting the message. Lakewood Research (1995) reported that 72% of United States organizations employing 100 or more people provided training in ‘leadership’, 60% provided training in ‘decision making’ and ‘listening skills’, 58% in ‘quality improvement’ and ‘delegation skills’, and 57% in ‘problem-solving’ and ‘managing change’. Between 19% and 35%, depending on sector and size, provided some form of ‘remedial training’. The 2001 report by Lakewood Research reports that the most frequently offered training sessions focus on computer applications for end-users, technical skills/knowledge and customer service, while training for computer systems/programming, executive development and sales is far less frequently provided. ‘The training most frequently provided on a weekly or monthly basis consists of new employee orientation, product knowledge, customer education and new equipment operation’ (Lakewood Research, 2001, p. 48). Work structure and design are changing dramatically. As organizational hierarchies become flatter, the result is more flexible work organization designs. Increases in responsibility and accountability for many workers have also increased.

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As organizations become leaner, clear lines between jobs begin to blur and the fewer workers must acquire more skills to accomplish more tasks. Teams carry out complex operations and everyone must work more effectively. An effective work-based learning system in this environment must have maximum flexibility in content and delivery.

5 The Workforce of the Future Now that we have some understanding of what the workplace and work organization will be like, and some understanding of the demands that will be made on the people who work in these organizations, our attention must be turned to the people who will work in these organizations. Any effective work-based learning system must meet the needs of the learners it serves. What are their needs likely to be? What unique problems must the system address? What resources will be needed? What challenges must be met to prepare the workforce of the future for the workplace of the future? When we examine the data, the first thing that they tell us is that the workforce is changing as fast as the work organization, but not in the same way, and not for the same reasons. One similarity, however, is that the changes are structural. This means that the changes have begun and will continue and intensify through all industrial sectors. An advantage is that since some of the changes have already taken place, we can examine some impacts of those changes. The first of three structural changes in the workforce that the research identified is that it is rapidly becoming more diverse. In the United States it will be more female and non-white than male and white in the future (Johnson, 1987; Carnevale, 1991; United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1994; Judy & D’Amico 1999). In Western Europe, judging from recent events, this also appears to be the case. Literacy gaps will widen, with increasing proportions of the adult population classified as ‘functionally illiterate’ as the demands of technology accelerate skill requirements. Inability to function adequately in the language of the workplace is another emerging problem (Chissman, 1993; National Center for Education Statistics, 2002). When it is considered that that the birth-rates of all the Western industrialized democracies have remained relatively low for some time, the challenges that relate to an older workforce are added. The South to North and East to West migrations in all parts of the world accelerate the multiculturalism of the workforce and add even more diversity. It is clear that to educate and train the future workforce, management practices, communication processes and development issues must be addressed forcefully. The second major workforce change reflects a value shift: people will expect meaningful work and involvement. They will see their skills as resources to be used. They will have access, through technology rather than hierarchy, to more of the information they need to do their jobs. They will expect to participate in decisions, as well as in the wealth they help create. Studies by Hatcher and Hill (1993) involving regional industries in the United States noted that, for several years, workers had


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been exhibiting increased work ethic scores on measurement instruments as compared with workers in the region in comparable industries of a generation ago. Productivity indicators, however, did not always rise. Closer investigation revealed that the workers, while believing that they should always do their best, were sometimes reluctant to do so if they believed that their input was not valued by the organization and that they would not benefit from their increased effort. These findings are consistent with the literature of the past forty years, which consistently identified worker involvement as one of the more important motivators. As Breisch (1996) notes: In the 21st century, people will gravitate toward organizations that add a unique valuable dimension to their lives. [...] The choice is clear: You can either compete by offering high salaries and wages or work to create an environment that makes people beat down your door to get in. The only way to survive in the 21st century is to build a dynamic, creative environment that motivates people.

It should also be noted that employee empowerment is a prominent feature in all total quality initiatives. Any work-based learning system designed for tomorrow’s workforce must emphasize the concept of the worker as a value-adding human resource. Finally, a shift is occurring in the nature of the contract between organizations and their employees. Merit is replacing loyalty as the basis of the bond between the worker and the work organization. Evans (1976) observed that as the skills of a worker became noticeably improved, their loyalty tended to shift toward the skill area, and away from the employing organization. The effects of continuing massive industrial plant relocation, outsourcing even in knowledge industries and professions, the dominance of the knowledge professions in compensation, and extensive corporate downsizing in all industrial sectors have now made this a major structural change in the workforce. Technology is changing the way we live, work, play and learn. Successful partnerships between education and industry can provide the technology and innovations necessary to provide a flexible learning framework to meet the needs of today’s lifelong learners. Fostering collaborative and innovative partner ships will help enable higher education to transform in this high-speed information age.

6 Types of Partnerships The National Alliance of Business has been instrumental in examining and promoting partnerships. In their report ‘Partnership planning structure for business/education/ government partnerships’, they outline the following categories for partnerships and indicate that most partnerships fall under one of these areas: 1. Partners in public policy These partnerships are collaborative efforts at the national, state or local level, among businesses, schools and public officials that shape the public and political

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debate, bring about substantive changes in state or federal legislation or local school governance, and affect the overall direction of the education system. Partners in systemic educational improvement. Systemic educational improvement partnerships are those initiatives in which businesses, education officials and other community leaders identify the need for reform or improvement in the education system, and then work over the long term to make those major changes happen in the system. These partnerships generally affect a large number of youth, combine and channel resources in a different way, and bring about lasting institutional change. Partners in management Management assistance partnerships provide school officials with management support and business expertise in a broad range of areas. Some management partnerships address administration and organization reform in matters such as increased principal or teacher autonomy, labour management relations, flexible personnel and incentive systems, purchasing efficiencies and plant and equipment issues. Others address such areas as management information systems, strategic planning and goal setting, legal insurance, finance, accounting and tax assistance, organization development, performance standards and productivity, public relations and school-building management. Partners in teacher training and development Businesses involved in teacher and counsellor training and professional development provide opportunities for school personnel to update, upgrade or maintain their skills. For example, to learn the latest developments in science or mathematics, or learn more about the labour market, industries and business in the community, workplace needs and career opportunities. Partners in the classroom Classroom partners are business volunteers who improve the learning environment by bringing their business or occupational expertise directly into the classroom for students and teachers, or bringing the classroom to the business. The activities are planned and co-ordinated with the school staff, generally are tied to the school year or semester and can focus on the needs of the school or of the individual students. Partners in special services Special-service partnerships provide short-term, project or student-specific activities or resources to help with a specific problem or need, such as awards, recognition programmes, scholarships and other incentives, professional memberships, fund-raising, donating or sharing equipment or educational material, sponsoring career fairs or book fairs, hosting receptions, sponsoring student teams, etc. These partnerships can include both financial and staff support, but are generally shorter term, are confined to one school, one teacher or one class, and they involve less business time and money (National Alliance of Business, 2001).

In an earlier report ‘The fourth R: workforce readiness’, the National Alliance of Business gives detailed information regarding the types of activities involved in all


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types of partnerships, as well as the amount and type of resources that are necessary, the commitment and leadership of top management, the focus of the activity and scope of involvement and investment. The major focus of these partnerships is identified under the following categories: public policy, systemic education reform, leadership, professional development, classroom enrichment and special projects (National Alliance of Business, 1987).

7 Learning Partnerships Technology learning partnerships can provide a flexible learning framework to meet the needs of today’s lifelong learners. Fostering collaborative and innovative partnerships will help enable higher education to transform in this high-speed information age and provide new e-learning opportunities for the adult learner to help address the needs for today’s highly-skilled workforce. Electronic networks and the Internet increase an individual’s opportunity for gaining an education in a variety of new modes. Students are no longer differentiated by manner of attendance and learning is distributed across networks, geographic areas and age spans. ‘Learners expect seamless, lifelong, affordable, asynchronous, interactive diverse, customized, specialized, learner-centered higher education’ (Hill Duin, Baer & Starke-Meyerring, 2001, p. 59). The challenge to educators remains that of assisting students to achieve learning from today’s diverse information-rich environment. E-learning incorporates courses that are web-based, as well as those delivered through video-conferencing and combinations of the two. Innovative e-learning is an exciting and challenging endeavour for business educators and trainers. It is critical that e-learning courses adhere to the same standards and quality as those courses taught in the traditional classroom, yet they provide additional flexibility to placebound learners. In a report from Berg, manager of education programmes at WMX Technologies, it is reported that businesses want to form partnerships, such as: return on investment/results orientation, school accountability, positive image/public relations, good communication, school reform. Companies learn what they do not even know they are going to learn, such as: what it is to be a teacher today. While businesses want partners who want to learn, grow and change (1995). The report goes on to explain how a partnership should be started. Universities need to think about the important benefits to their students when entering into partnerships and I believe a very important aspect of this report is the section on what students need from partnerships: 1. To be able to connect what they are asked to learn in school with ‘real life’ applications. Business can provide a ‘sneak preview’ of the world of work and give students a reason to study and do well. 2. To take responsibility for their own learning.

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3. To understand that they must be lifelong learners. Finishing high school or college is no longer enough. 4. To be proficient in technology, especially computers. Waste management garbage trucks now have on-board computers. Students can no longer say to themselves: ‘Well, I can always be a garbage truck driver if I drop out of school.’ 5. To be exposed to a variety of career options and understand the educational and experiential paths to various careers. 6. To figure out what they have a natural aptitude for, enjoy doing and could develop into a career. 7. To be exposed to real-life success stories and role models. 8. To set higher personal goals (Berg, 1995).

8 Internship Opportunities through Partnerships The United States Department of Labor predicted that 18 million graduates will be competing for the 14 million college-level jobs in the year 2005. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich pointed out that 80% of these jobs will require some vocational training, according to the Watson study (as cited by Gault, Redengton & Schlager, 2000). Experience is a major issue when it comes to the job search. Practical experience is a key attribute that entry-level professionals can offer as structured work experience related to career interests. The National Society for Experiential Education reports that one out of three four-year college students worked as an intern prior to graduating. The research states that work-experience programmes are more likely to receive increased research attention and faculty support when a clearer link is established between on-the-job experience and career development (Gault et al., 2000). Higher education research has focused on improving teaching methods and modalities and pedagogical processes, which operate in the classroom setting. There is a lack of research into the efficacy of internships, which diminishes the perceived legitimacy of field experience programmes, and as a result they remain marginal to academic programmes (Migliore, 1990; Gault et al., 2000). There are three terms that are commonly used to describe higher education programmes that pertain to learning through employment in industry: there are co-operative extension programmes, which refer to state-sponsored agricultural work experiences; co-operative and internship are the two university names most often used to describe field experience opportunities for students. Co-operative students tend to work full-time while internship students tend to be part-time (Gault et al., 2000). In their study of internships, DiLorenzo-Aiss and Mathisen (1996) describe a typical internship programme as being characterized by four criteria: (1) a specified number of work hours; (2) the work may be paid or unpaid; (3) credit is awarded; and (4) oversight is provided by a faculty supervisor or co-ordinator or other university representative and a corporate on-sight supervisor.


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Interns are expected to be novices, not experts. They are very different from consultants. When consultants are hired, they are expected to be experts in their respective fields. Also, it is intended that through the internship experience students gain knowledge in an area where they have received academic training. The intern may be a student or faculty intern and is expected to gain specific skills pertaining to tasks in which they already possess general knowledge (Peak & O’Hara, 1999). There is little information in the literature regarding predictors of internship success and outcomes of successful internships. According to Beard & Morton, there are six predictors of internship success: ‘These include: (a) academic preparedness; (b) proactivity/aggressiveness; (c) positive attitude; (d) quality of worksite supervision; (e) organizational practices and policies; and (f) compensation’ (1999, p. 42).

9 Summary and Conclusions In this chapter we have presented the necessity for the development of a work-based learning system that will prepare a motivated, highly skilled, well-educated and selfdirected workforce for the work organization of the future. In order to present the elements and challenges the system must face, we have outlined six major structural changes in the work organizations of the future revealed by our research. We have also analysed what these changes will mean in terms of demands upon the people who will be working in them. We next turned our attention to the four structural changes that are occurring in the workforce itself, then attempted to interpret the meaning of these. We provided a discussion on partnerships between business and industry and higher education that may help to fill the needs of today’s lifelong learners. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to factor analyse the workplace organization and the people who will work in and operate it; such a task must be left to future research. Two major conclusions, however, can be drawn: 1. The escalating pressures of productivity, change and technology, combined with increasing diversity from many directions in the workforce, make it imperative that in order to maintain our standard of living, a true work-based learning ‘system’ must be developed built upon co-operation between all stakeholders. This must include education, government, labour and industry. All levels of public and private education must be articulated, and education and training (specific task-oriented training as compared to general multi-purpose education) must be moved closer to or linked with its applications as a result of accelerating change. 2. The total quality demands of the workplace combined with the changing values of the workforce make it imperative that the quality model be nurtured along with industry and educational partnerships. Innovative partnerships will help to meet the challenges of a work-based learning system needed for the future. Elements of this system must include:

r r

Clearly understood and agreed upon goals; A focus on customers, both internal and external;

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r r r r r

Commitment to excellence in which all functions focus on continuous improvement; Commitment to teamwork; Decision-making based upon measurement and data; Commitment to lifelong learning; Partnering to meet the needs of a work-based learning system.

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National Alliance of Business. 1987. The fourth R: workforce readiness report. Washington, DC: NAB. National Alliance of Business. 2001. Partnership planning structure for business/education/government partnerships. <www.nab.org> National Center for Education Statistics. 2002. Education statistics quarterly, vol. 3, no. 4. Olson, D. 2002. Personal interview. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University, Department of Information Technology. Peak, D.; O’Hara, M. 1999. Internship and consulting engagement: management of the university’s liability. Journal of managerial issues, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 56–76. Reich, R. 1992. The work of nations. New York, NY: Vintage. Shield, G. 1995. Technology education, innovation and management. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer Verlag. Thurow, L. 1993. Head to head: the coming economic battle among Japan, Europe and America. New York, NY: Warner Books. Taylor, F.W. 1911. The principles of scientific management. New York, NY: Harper Bros. United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1994. Employment situation. Washington, DC: Department of Labor. Yauas, B. 1995. Quality management worldwide. Quality progress, vol. 20, no. 10. Yearout, S. 1996. Secrets of improvement-driven organizations. Quality progress, vol. 21, no. 1.


Chapter I.10

Bridging the Learning Divide: A Study into Adult Learning and Peer Mediation in the Workplace David Johnson

1 Introduction: The Learning Divide As we enter the twenty-first century, it has become clear that the rapidly changing nature of our working lives, public lives and private lives requires us to engage continually in new forms of learning. It is now accepted wisdom that everyone needs to be able to learn throughout life, both to remain employable and to fulfil his or her potential. The problem has been accentuated as the United Kingdom, like elsewhere in Europe, moves rapidly towards a knowledge-based economy and it is becoming clearer that, in many communities, a significant number of adults are disengaged from learning and have poor basic skills. There are also significant numbers of working people with low basic skills and information technology skills who have difficulties in accessing learning provision. But, while there is no shortage of supply-side solutions to raising the skill levels of adult learners, there appears to be a significant problem on the demand side. It seems that efforts aimed at engaging in learning programmes those adults identified as having learning or skills deficits do not take account of how the trajectories and life histories of adults and young adult learners influence their dispositions towards learning. This arises, in part, from the limited use of methodologies for gaining insights into the learning histories of adult and young adult learners and, in part, from the limited conceptual understandings applied to the nature of learning. Our failure to bridge the learning divide between those who want to and can access learning provision, and those who are unwilling—perhaps because of their prior, and possibly unsatisfactory, experiences of learning—has created a wide training gap in the United Kingdom, which has denied many adults access to learning and career opportunities. The National Skills Task Force (2000) reports that over half the workforce has no qualifications above National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ) level 2 and that one in three employees say that their employer has never offered them any training. A particular concern is with levels of basic literacy, numeracy and information technology. The Moser Report (Moser, 1999) showed that one in five adults have such poor reading skills that they would not be able to find the entry for ‘plumbers’ in the Yellow Pages. A recent survey in the West of England showed that 33% of employers with five or more employees in Bristol identified


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skills gaps1 in their organization. The most frequently mentioned shortages included basic literacy and numeracy, basic IT skills, technical and specialist skills, and work ethic and motivation. The most frequently occurring skills shortages in basic literacy and numeracy, technical and specialist skills and basic IT skills were found in the transport and communications sector. But it is not only the workforce that we should be concerned about. There are strongly held views amongst social reformers that learning throughout life is necessary as the United Kingdom becomes more plural and socially diverse. Indeed, there is evidence from the Cantle Report (United Kingdom. The Home Office, 2002) that community/social cohesion is threatened when there is a high incidence of poverty and unemployment and low levels of education and skills. Yet, many communities on the ‘wrong side’ of the learning divide are vulnerable and tentative in their consideration of further learning. Importantly, traditional outreach methods have not had much success in bringing them into learning provision. As noted above, there is no shortage of policy imperatives to address the problems of low basic skills within the workforce and in the poorest communities. Following the publication of the Moser Report on basic skills in March 1999, the Basic Skills Agency was asked to set up a task force to look at how to encourage 3.5 million adults to improve their basic skills. The learning agenda appeared to be shaped by concerns of ‘falling standards’ and ‘illiteracy’ and ways needed to be found to ‘remedy’ the problem, ultimately to create a workforce able to compete in a global economy and informed citizens participating at all levels in society. In 2001 Skills for life: the national strategy for improving adult literacy and numeracy skills was published (United Kingdom. Department for Education and Employment, 2001a). It set out the governments’ strategy to raise standards of literacy, language and numeracy among the adult population. A key strand of this strategy was to provide each learner with access to a high-quality learning experience recognized by national qualifications. By early 2001 a new teaching and learning infrastructure had been developed comprising a set of national standards for literacy and numeracy, core curricula for literacy and numeracy, a standardized screening tool—Fastrack, a set of national tests for literacy and numeracy at levels 1 and 2. A second policy document, Success in adult literacy, numeracy and ESOL provision (United Kingdom. Department for Education and Skills, 2002) places individual learners at the heart of the ‘Skills for Life’ strategy. It sets out a clear statement of entitlement which confirms that all adult learners should expect to have: (a) free access to impartial advice and guidance on how to improve their skills; (b) a confidential report based on diagnostic assessment which identifies their strengths and weaknesses in literacy, language and numeracy; (c) an individual learning plan that identifies realistic milestones and targets; and (d) a relevant programme of learning which has been developed using national standards matching their aims and ambitions to their current abilities and future potential. It is clear that these policy strategies are important and that they underline a political will to tackle the issues. However, there appears to be a central problem, as already pointed out above—the failure of traditional outreach methods in bringing those who have disengaged from learning into meaningful learning provision. One

I.10 Adult Learning and Peer Mediation in the Workplace

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strategy, keenly pursued by the government to strengthen the United Kingdom’s competitiveness and improve the employability and adaptability of the workforce, is making available information and advice about what learning opportunities exist and how to gain access to them. Central to this strategy is the provision of ‘drop-in’ information, advice and guidance centres, several of which are located in the centres of many British cities. While these centres report some success in putting those seeking new learning opportunities in touch with learning skills providers, it is not altogether clear whether this is sufficient to break what is increasingly seen as a vicious intergenerational cycle of learning ‘poverty’ and unemployment. To address this problem, a research team, consisting of members of information, advice and guidance centres, trade-union learning units and members of the academic community, has advanced an innovative experimental research initiative aimed at bringing members of the workforce and of ‘learning poor’ communities into ‘activity settings’. By activity settings, we mean a space in which people engage with each other in meaningful, structured activity (Engestrom, 1999). The activity settings are made up of trade union ‘learning champions’ who recruit workers, like themselves, into a forum for discussing opportunities to learn and advise about gaining access to such provision. The use of trade union learning champions is an important innovation in promoting lifelong learning in the workforce and is recognized as such by the government, as the following quotation from the ‘White Paper on Enterprise, Skills and Innovation’ shows: We are committed as a government to ensuring that union learning representatives can play a part in both the competitiveness of the enterprise and the personal investment and gains for the individual employee from lifelong learning. These representatives, trained through a partnership between the TUC [Trades Union Congress] and government, have been particularly successful in encouraging adults to learn who have not had any education and training since they left school. We will consult on how to give statutory backing to the network of union learning representatives (United Kingdom. DfES, 2001b, p. 3).

Thus, the study proposes that the use of peers who have had experience of engaging in learning opportunities and who are ready to ‘champion’ the idea are more likely to be able to break down resistance to learning. Further, the activity settings will provide a unique opportunity to study the complex nature of adult learning directly, especially such considerations as decision-making, internalization of information and advice, transforming knowledge and externalizing action. The research initiative is discussed here and, whilst no data are available at this time, we feel that the rationale, design and methodology are worth sharing and perhaps testing in other contexts.

2 New Directions for Research into Adult Learning The experimental research proposal discussed here responds to two major concerns. The first is a concern to provide an intervention that will bridge the learning divide, i.e. to (re-)engage disaffected adults excluded from learning and the economy. The second is to develop a better understanding of the nature of adult learning.

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The research builds upon and extends the work of previous research projects funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of the United Kingdom, specifically those within its Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP). In particular, it takes account of the work of Rees et al. on learner identities (1997) and seeks to extend the questions raised by them in respect of creating a learning society. The proposal also draws on the work of the Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education Project (TLCFE) funded under Phase II (Bloomer and James, 2002), which is concerned with transformation at both the level of individuals and at the level of collectives (including both formal and informal structures). The study discussed here seeks to further explore the conceptual issues around ‘mediating learning through interaction and participation in common learning practices’ highlighted by Bloomer and James. There is a good synergy between this and the project under discussion, both in terms of method and the development of theory and its application. The TLCFE is assessing the utility of a range of theoretical constructs (including ‘communities of practice’, ‘learning cultures’, ‘activity theory’) for understanding the authentic practices around learning (see, for example, James, 2002). Further, the work of the ‘Improving Incentives to Learning in the Workplace’ research project of the TLRP is also of key importance to the research discussed here, particularly the data that are emerging on the relationship between hidden abilities (or tacit forms of key competencies) and positive or negative socio-biographical experiences. The study will build on these understandings in developing new insights into how learners’ biographies influence their attitudes to learning. Its aims are simple:

r r r

To increase access to and sustain participation in learning in community and workplace settings through peer mediation. To enhance learning outcomes (basic skills, or ‘new’ literacies) through peer mediation and guided participation. To gain a deeper conceptual understanding of how adults learn in informal and work settings.

3 The Research Problem The project will seek to extend the debate on what constitute basic skills and test a new approach to providing information, advice and guidance through peer mediation—the use of learning champions in workplace activity settings. With regard to the first point, the project contends that conceptions of the literacies needed to develop an active competitive workforce are outdated and do not take account of recent shifts in forms of production. According to Gee et al.: There is now a shift towards forms of production which employ new ways of making goods and commodities, serving more differentiated markets, or niches, through segmented retailing strategies. There is now a great deal more attention paid to the selling environment at every level of production, from design to distribution (1996, pp. vii-viii).

This shift to ‘new ways of working’ has meant new demands in the literacies required ‘to do the job’ (Johnson et al., 2002). Street (2001) argues that in these


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new ‘project-focused’ work orders, members of the team combine to design, negotiate and develop products for sale and distribution. To accomplish this they need to be equipped with such discursive skills as negotiation, persuasion, the ability to present and listen to arguments, develop material for presentation on communication devices, such as slide projectors, multimedia projectors and computer displays. A number of authors (Johnson & Kress, 2003; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 1996; Heller & Pomeroy, 1997) argue further that reading and writing practices are only one form of literacy. To be literate in the current world of work, learners also need control of iconic systems such as those found in the ‘Word for Windows’ environment, with combinations of signs, symbols, boundaries, pictures, words, texts and images. In the public sphere social and community relations are also subjected to radical change (Johnson et al., 2002). The United Kingdom is a diverse and plural society and new literacies and discourses are necessary to help us build stronger communities and to empower individuals to engage more effectively with others in community and society. In respect of the second point, there is a growing body of evidence showing that information, advice and guidance services are making a difference to the lives of individuals (Bysshe et al., 2002). However, it has also become clear that there is not much research on the nature of guided participation and its effects on adult learning (Hughes, 2002). In particular, little is known about how peers and professionals might mediate the ‘biographical experiences’ of learners as they construct meaning within and between a range of formal and informal life experiences. Little is known also about the ways in which learners adopt (internalize) learning gained through interactions with others, and indeed how these are adapted (transformed) and applied to different situations (externalized). Research to date draws attention to the fact that learner identities are shaped through their different experiences of learning. Learning occurs across a range of contexts, such as the formal (traditional education and training institutions), nonformal (learning that takes place alongside the mainstream provision at the workplace, clubs, etc.) and informal (learning processes which are not intentional) (Alheit & Dausien, 2002). It is the cumulative experiences of learners that we are interested in and propose that, through a process of guided participation, these experiences and biographies will be revealed and used as a basis upon which to build new learning experiences. We argue that it is through engaging in shared activity with others that the subjects of the research interpret their experiences and generate biographical meaning (Alheit & Dausien, 2002, p. 11).

4 Research Questions From the theoretical framing of the problem discussed above, the research team proposes to explore the following propositions: Proposition 1: Through eliciting the learning biographies of adult learners, we will develop a better understanding of the personal, interpersonal, situational and cultural factors that promote or inhibit their participation in lifelong learning.

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Proposition 2: Learning dispositions, including motivation, self-image, esteem and self-confidence, are enhanced through guided participation and mediation offered by learning champions. Proposition 3: Learners acquire basic skills and ‘new’ literacies through situated learning, and transform and extend these.

5 Research Design This is an intervention study that sets up activity settings in two contexts: the community and the workplace. It then studies the activity settings. In the main, it is oriented to looking at how people participate in socio-cultural activity (interactions between new learners, learning champions, learning providers, employers, etc.). Through observing and tape recording these interactions we will seek to identify how the participants mediate each other’s understandings of the social world. In particular, we are interested in how participants use their biographies and narratives to achieve this. Because we are studying these interactions over time, we will be in a position to determine changes in individual understandings brought about through guided participation as we study the changing discourses and narratives. Through analysing the continuing discourse, we should be able to identify points in the activity cycle where internalization (adopting information or ways of doing things), transformation (critical self-reflection) and externalization (seeking solutions) occurs.

6 The Intervention 6.1 Establishing Activity Settings In order to explore these propositions, the research adopts an intervention strategy (Cole, 1995; Wertsch, Del Rio & Alvarez, 1995) that is discussed below. Working in collaboration with a range of partners in the post-compulsory sector (the Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) networks, the Trades Union Congress Learning Services, the Learning and Skills Council, the Guidance Council, community education services, workers education associations, amongst others) the project will establish ‘activity settings’ (Engestrom, 1999) in some of the most disaffected communities in the West of England and in a range of workplaces. An ‘activity setting’ is defined as a particular community or workplace setting in which ‘new’ learners are paired or work in groups with more experienced social partners and work out how to manage a new situation on the basis of their own and shared biographies. In the workplace activity settings, the more experienced social partners are Trade Union Learning Champions who will promote the value of learning through offering information, advice and support to their colleagues, particularly those most distant from learning.


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In establishing community-based activity settings, the research project will seek to influence those communities with the lowest levels of participation in education and employment in the West of England. It is worth noting that six out of thirty-four wards in the city of Bristol are amongst the worst deprived (education and employment indices) in England (United Kingdom. Department for the Environment, Transport and Regions, 2000). Here, community learning champions will be trained and deployed. The community learning champion as an enabler or learning friend is an emerging innovation and the research project will serve to test its efficacy in reaching the ‘hardest to reach’ communities. To underscore the importance of this innovation, a community-based organization, The Community Learning Service, has received £1.1 million from the West of England Learning and Skills Council (LSC) to develop a framework to enable disengaged adults and disaffected young adults to take their ‘first steps towards learning’. Part of the remit of the Community Learning Service is to recruit and train community learning champions from these communities and interest groups, which may include single mothers or refugee communities. This organization will work with the research project in deploying and supporting community champions. The project aims to set up activity settings in ten communities and ten small, medium and large companies in the West of England. Twenty community learning champions and twenty workplace learning representatives will be introduced into community and workplace activity settings. These learning champions form the basis of the outreach and support model we seek to study. Each learning champion will recruit up to five disengaged adult learners into the activity setting. Our partners suggest that this is realistic and evidence from the trade unions shows that, typically, workplace learning champions assist eight to twelve colleagues a month. We thus envisage a total of 200 learners recruited through learning champions, participating in activity settings. As new learners engage more and more with learning opportunities, other opportunities will arise in the activity system for them to be provided with more structured guidance in their learning choices and possible employment options. The activity setting will then be expanded to include IAG workers who are trained for this task. The learning champion will, however, continue to meet with the learner on a regular basis, which is once every eight weeks over the two years of the activity cycle.

6.2 Researching the Activity Settings In the activity settings, new learners will be encouraged to share their histories, fears and anxieties about learning. Learning champions will mediate the understandings of new learners by sharing their own biographies and learning histories, as well as providing them with information about new learning opportunities. The interactions between learning champions and newly recruited learners, as well as the interactions between learning champions, new learners and others in the activity settings, such as learning providers or employers, will be recorded and documented over a two-and-a-half year period.

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Every eight weeks, learning champions and new learners will meet more formally. At this time, the learning champion will conduct a semi-formal conversational interview with the learner. The research team will carry out conversational analysis (Sacks, 1992; Potter, 1996) on up to 200 narrative accounts and other evidence of interactions in the activity settings.

6.3 Addressing the Research Propositions and the Nature of Data Proposition 1: Through eliciting the learning biographies of adult learners, we will develop a better understanding of the personal, interpersonal, situational and cultural factors that promote or inhibit learner participation. Research questions: How are learners’ identities shaped by educational and training experiences? How do learners’ biographies influence their attitudes to learning?

The study aims to document the stories of 200 new recruits to learning. The technique we propose to use is broadly known as narrative enquiry. Narrative enquiry is a methodology that places participants centrally in the research process (Bishop, 1996). According to Te Hennepe (1993) their lived experience and their ways of knowing and sharing knowledge brings validity to the research process. Narrative enquiry maintains and respects the integrity of storytellers and the knowledge and culture they represent. It allows the researcher and the researched to co-construct narratives of the research process. According to Glynn (2002), it offers an approach that might highlight how the research process and outcomes may be understood through the agency of the key research participants, rather than through the agency of the researcher alone. The method outlined here is sensitive to capturing the discussions and interactions arising out of guided participation. Bishop (1996) defines narrative enquiry as a process based on a series of semi-structured interviews, which are recorded and transcribed. Transcripts serve as a basis for further enquiry through reflective discussion and collaborative validation. Bishop describes how participants revisit the issue under discussion through spiral discourse. In this study, community learning champions and workplace learning champions will be provided with tape recorders to record the ‘stories’ of the adult learners they are working with as they navigate their way through new learning journeys. The stories will thus be both backward looking (historical) and current. Through the recording, we should be able to derive both quantitative data (number of learning opportunities engaged with, over what period of time, etc.), as well as qualitative information (how good were these experiences? were they different from earlier experiences of learning? etc.).


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Learning champions will record all interactions, including telephone and face-toface conversations, where possible. Where recording interactions are not possible, the learning champions will make diary notes onto their tape recorders. Proposition 2: Learning dispositions including motivation, self-image, selfesteem and self-confidence are enhanced through guided participation and mediation offered by learning champions. Research questions: How can learners’ motivation be maximized? How can learners’ image and self-confidence be enhanced?

6.4 The Story-Line Method During the formal interview conducted every eight weeks during the research period, learning champions will use a semi-structured interview schedule to ask learners to recount their experiences since the last meeting. These discussions will be recorded. Learning champions will use the interview schedule to probe specifically whether learners feel their self-confidence is growing, their self-esteem and selfworth is altering, and whether they are more motivated. At the end of the interview the learning champion will ask learners to evaluate their experiences and events by marking a position on a seven-point Lickert-type scale. Over time, these points will be linked to produce a story line. There are three ideal typical story lines. A progressive line might show an increase in motivation and self-confidence over the two-and-a-half year period. A stability line might show periods where respondents feel there has been no change. A regressive line shows a negative change in dispositions. Advantages of the story-line method include that it is quick and easy to make, and may be perceived by respondents as an interesting and creative mode of selfexpression. Another advantage is that respondents evaluate experiences and events themselves. This can be very difficult with other narrative research methods. A further advantage is that subjective evaluations of experiences and events can be quantified. In order to establish the reliability and validity of story lines, the research team will match the completed story line with a transcript of the narrative in order to detect which events or experiences might have produced a positive or negative change in learning dispositions. Proposition 3: Learners acquire basic skills and ‘new’ literacies through situated learning, and transform and extend these. Research questions: How do learners apply what they have learned and transform knowledge? A central aspect of the research is to gather data on how information is internalized, transformed and applied. Rogoff (1995) uses the term ‘participatory appropriation’

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in contrast to internalization to refer to the process by which individuals transform their understanding of and responsibilities for activities through their own participation. Engestrom (1999) further elaborates on the idea that human beings do not simply soak up new information and knowledge, but actively transform it in the ‘activity cycle’. We will seek to operationalize the concepts of internalization, transformation and externalization by analysing the continuing discourses and conversations in the activity settings. We will use the techniques of conversation analysis (Sacks, 1992). Conversational analysis (CA) is used as an analytic approach to interpersonal engagements in a variety of settings, including conversations in casual, didactic or workplace settings. Central to this concept is the view that talk is a communicative act and situated in a social and cultural context. In discussing the methodological significance and social application of CA, Hutchby and Wooffitt argue that ‘an essential feature of CA is that concepts are developed from, securely rooted in, empirical observations of recorded, naturally occurring talk-in-interaction’ (1998, p. 8.). Speaking of the relation of CA to other forms of discourse analysis, Wood and Kroger write that ‘CA is an extremely rich source of ideas about actions, structures, and devices that can serve as analytic resources’ (2000, p. 200).

7 Additional Data Sets The project will develop a number of additional data sets in collaboration with partner organizations. These data sets will serve as measures of comparison and evaluation and are described below:

7.1 Baseline and Outcomes Surveys A household survey will be conducted by the Learning and Skills Council at the start of the project and will act as a baseline. It will be repeated after three years. It has been agreed that we work with the survey team in identifying questions, including those that give an indication of confidence in applying for jobs, motivation to learn, current uptake of learning and work opportunities, etc., against which we will later contextualize the findings arising from our interventions. The survey is normally conducted as a household survey in which enumerators are employed to interview one in every six households.

7.2 Measures of Literacy and Basic Skills Measures of literacy, numeracy and information technology will be collected through the learning providers. The Fastrack screening tool will be used as a


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Table 1 A summary of the research questions and techniques for data collection Research questions

Techniques

Data collected by

Type of data

Type of analysis

1. How are learners’ identities shaped by educational and training experiences? How do learners’ biographies influence their attitudes to learning? 2. How can learners’ motivation be maximized? How can learners’ image and self-confidence be enhanced? 3. How do learners apply what they have learned and transform knowledge?

Narrative enquiry

Learning champions

Qualitative

Content

Story line

Learning champions

Quantitative and Descriptive qualitative

Conversational Research team Qualitative analysis

Conversational analysis

Measures of comparison

Household surveys

Quantitative

Descriptive; correlations

Basic skills and literacy

Tests

Quantitative

Profiles

Outcomes

Economic modelling

Quantitative

Regression analysis

Additional data sets Learning and Skills Council Adult Basic Skills Strategy Unit Consultant

baseline measure of adult literacy and learners will be asked to take formal tests. This process will be managed by the Adult Basic Skills Strategy Unit.

7.3 Economic Analysis An economic analysis will be undertaken. The proposed economic model is tuned into assessing the intermediate outcomes for individuals involved in the project. This includes enhanced job or further learning search strategies, higher take-up and retention in learning and work opportunities. It also assesses longer-term outcomes for the individual in relation to their communities, such as enhanced quality of life, citizenship and democratic participation in community affairs. Finally, the model looks at longer-term outcomes for the economy, including a reduction in skills, gap shortages and enhanced levels of income.

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The data required to run the economic model will be collected in the West of England area at the time of the first baseline survey, and again in the outcome survey to be conducted towards the end of the project. Individual data, including characteristics of individual learners will be collected within the activity settings. Table 1 provides a summary of the research questions and techniques for data collection and analysis.

8 Outcomes The data sets described above will be subjected, where possible, to a multi-theoretical analysis (Cumming & Wyatt-Smith, 2001). We have already indicated how, through conversational analysis, we will derive data from interactions in the activity settings. These data will be discussed in a fashion that integrates perspectives arising from psychological theories of cognitive development with analyses drawing on theories of ‘learner voice’ or social and cultural capital, or cost-benefit analysis. The multi-theoretical, integrated nature of the analysis reflects the essence of a socio-cultural approach. According to Engestrom (1999), an activity system is a multi-voiced formation. In it we hear the different viewpoints and approaches of various participants. To study it therefore requires a particular methodology that is not reducible to a single technique (Scribner, 1985). Both Cole (1995) and Rogoff (1995) show how multiple, interrelated levels of analysis overcome the limitation imposed by traditional disciplinary divisions. The question is no longer whether a research effort falls into psychology, sociology or anthropology—rather, the desire and need to address complex issues without being hamstrung by traditional disciplinary boundaries or, indeed, the unhelpful boundaries between research and practice.

9 Conclusions This paper argues that there is a significant learning divide in the United Kingdom and that this is helpful neither for its projected economic growth trajectories, nor for its aims to achieve social cohesion. There are several policy initiatives that increase opportunities for learning in the workplace and in the community. The real problem is encouraging a wider uptake. We have argued here that more traditional outreach methods, such as ‘drop-in’ centres, have limited success. We have proposed a more innovative method for engaging (or re-engaging) those who have dropped out of learning and for studying the complex nature of adult learning. Whilst there are no findings to share, we hope that the design experiment outlined here will provide some thoughts for those grappling with similar concerns about how to bridge the learning divide; and to encourage the learning poor to become the learning rich.


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Note 1. Skills gaps are defined in the WESTEC survey as the gaps between the skills currently available within an organization’s workforce and the skills that the organization needs to achieve its objectives.

References Alheit, P.; Dausien, B. 2002. Studies in the education of adults. Leicester, UK: NIACE. Bishop, R. 1996. Collaborative research stories: Whakawhanaungatanga. Palmerston North, New Zealand: Dunmore Press. Bloomer, M.; James, D. 2002. Educational research in educational practice. Journal of further and higher education, vol. 27, no. 3. Bysshe, S.; Hughes, D.; Bowes, L. 2002. The economic benefits of career guidance: a review of current evidence. Derby, UK: University of Derby, Centre for Guidance Studies. Cole, M. 1995. Socio-cultural-historical psychology: some general remarks and a proposal for a new kind of cultural-genetic methodology. In: Wertsch, J.; Del Rio, P.; Alvarez, A., eds. Sociocultural studies of mind. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Cumming, J.J.; Wyatt-Smith, C.M. 2001. A multi-theoretical and multi-disciplinary approach to literacy education and curriculum research. Melbourne, Australia: ACER. Engestrom, Y., 1999. Activity theory and individual and social transformation. In: Engestrom, Y.; Miettinen, R.; Punamaki, R., eds. Perspectives on activity theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gee, J.; Hull, G.; Lankshear, C. 1996. The new work order: behind the language of the new capitalism. London: Allen & Unwin. Glynn, T. 2002. Addressing cultural issues in a collaborative home and school literacy project. (Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the British Educational Research Association: University of Exeter.) Heller, S.; Pomeroy, K. 1997. Design literacy: understanding graphic design. New York, NY: Allworth Press. Hughes, D. 2002. Extending opportunities and building new horizons. Derby, UK: Centre for Guidance Studies, University of Derby. Hutchby, I.; Wooffitt, R 1998. Conversation analysis. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. James, C. 2002. Designing learning organisations. Organization dynamics, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 46–61. Johnson, D.; Kress, G. 2003. Globalisation, literacy and society: redesigning pedagogy and assessment. Assessment in education: principles, policy and practice, vol. 10, pp. 5–14. Johnson, D.; Garrett, R.; Crossley, M. 2002. Global connectedness and local diversity: forging ‘new’ literacies at the point of confluence. In: Claxton, G.; Sutherland, R.; Pollard, A., eds. Beyond the box: the confluence of cultures in education. London: Trentham Books. Kress, G.; Van Leeuwen, T. 1996. Reading images: the grammar of visual design. London: Routledge. Moser, C. 1999. A fresh start: improving literacy and numeracy. London: Department for Education and Employment. (The Moser Report.) National Skills Task Force. 2000. Skills for all: research report for the National Skills Task Force. Sheffield, UK: DfEE. Potter, J. 1996. Representing reality: discourse, rhetoric and social construction. London: Sage. Rees, G. et al. 1997. History, place and the learning society: towards a sociology of lifetime learning. Journal of education policy, vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 485–98.

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Rogoff, B. 1995. Observing sociocultural activity on three planes: participatory appropriation, guided participation, and apprenticeship. In: Wertsch, J.; Del Rio, P.; Alvarez, A., eds. Sociocultural studies of mind. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, H. 1992. Lectures on conversation, vol. 1–2. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. (Series editor: G. Jefferson.) Scribner, S. 1985. Vygotsky’s uses of history. In: Wertsch J.V., ed. Culture, communication and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives, pp. 119–45. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Street, B. 2001 Contexts for literacy work: the ‘new orders’ and the ‘new literacy studies’. In: Crowther, J.; Hamilton, M.; Tett, L., eds. Powerful literacies. Leicester, UK: NIACE. Te Hennepe, S. 1993. Issues of respect: reflections of first nations students’ experiences in postsecondary anthropology classrooms. Canadian journal of native education, vol. 2, no. 2, p. xx. United Kingdom. Department for Education and Employment. 2001a. Skills for life: the national strategy for improving adult literacy and numeracy skills. Nottingham, UK: DfEE Publications. United Kingdom. Department for Education and Skills. 2001b. A White Paper on enterprise, skills and innovation. London: The Stationery Office. United Kingdom. Department for Education and Skills, 2002. Success in adult literacy, numeracy and ESOL provision. Nottingham, UK: DfES Publications. United Kingdom. Department for the Environment, Transport and Regions, 2000. Indices of deprivation for wards in England. London: DETR. United Kingdom. The Home Office. 2002. Community cohesion: a report of the independent review team. London: The Home Office. (The Cantle Report.) Wertsch, J.V.; Del Rio, P.; Alvarez, A. 1995. Sociocultural studies: history, action and mediation. In: Wertsch, J.V.; Del Rio, P.; Alvarez, A., eds. 1995. Sociocultural studies of mind. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Wood, L.A.; Kroger, R.O. 2000. Doing discourse analysis: methods for studying action in talk and text. London: Sage.

Section 2 Education and Training in Informal Economies

Madhu Singh UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, Hamburg, Germany


Chapter II.1

Overview: Education and Training in the Informal Sector Madhu Singh

1 Introduction This section is based on selected contributions to the theme of learning and work. It deals with using work as a means of gaining insights into learning, education and training and pedagogical processes in different cultural and ideological contexts and countries. Two contexts are important. On the one hand, the chapters point to the effects of certain economic trends, such as the increasing importance of knowledge for the economy. The other can be said to be contexts characterized by poverty, precarious work conditions, informal economic activity and rampant unemployment, coupled with social inequalities and exclusion. However, while skills development and human capital formulations are as important for an enterprise as are human development strategies that stress the importance of knowledge for new economic and production thinking, it is equally important to acknowledge the alternative or community perspectives, and to recognize the growing and alarming patterns of economic and political inequality that seemingly underpin the move towards the ‘knowledge economy’. Addressing this integrated agenda means that economic growth must be accompanied by measures addressing social sustainability. And this means recognizing that both the informal economy and formal sector are significant in production; it also means a new role for a government that oversees the relationship between the market and civil society; and that justice depends upon recognition and capability development, as well as equity and redistribution. The discussions on informal and non-formal learning suggest important linkages and shared concerns that hint at possible areas contributing towards bridging the research agendas between the different worlds. Given the supposed economic interlinking underway as part of the globalization process, it is important to find ways and means of overcoming the gaps in the research agendas and to include the absent voices. Whether in developing countries or in the developed countries, sweeping reform programmes are being introduced that predict a growing interrelationship between knowledge, skills and the labour market. Everywhere it is being argued that a

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competent workforce is not only a prerequisite for economic health, but is the most important ingredient in arriving at an appropriate policy mix for economic survival. Underpinning these policy prescriptions is recognition of the changing nature of work and work organization, as well as the interests of those from a more pedagogical and training background. The new emphasis on continuous learning and personal and professional development has led to a mainstream focus on widening provision for those adults and young people with minimal skills and qualifications. Whether young workers or school-leavers are in or out of work, attention has been intensified on the reasons and causes of low or non-participation in training or educational opportunities. In many countries, new partnerships between the State, individuals, employees, employers and communities are assuming greater responsibility for ensuring ‘employability’ in the future. Though education and training remain key areas of attention and concern, they are now being subsumed within a lifelong learning perspective. Lifelong learning has been used to define the importance of learning as opposed to education and training, and its on-going nature, as opposed to its completion when young. Bridges and collaborations between formal, non-formal and informal learning and between enterprises and the training institutions are seen as important and are being announced via new innovative partnership arrangements.

2 Training Needs in the Informal Economy One of the big problems in developing countries is that national technical and vocational education and training (TVET) programmes have little in common with the true needs of the economic sector. The result is that sizeable populations of the educated can be found among the unemployed, the consequence of which is deep social disenfranchisement, most notably among young people. At the same time, there is also a clear lack of appreciation for vocational training among young people, because it is considered to be of low social standing. As a result, the best students choose to follow academic education. Many governments in developing countries have begun to respond to this training deficit with strategies and policies based on a ‘demand-driven’ approach to TVET that stimulates the ‘production’ of trainees with competencies, defined explicitly by the employment sector. In some countries, this has included greater attention to training that occurs in the informal production, service and commercial sectors. Emphasis is being put on raising the quality of training and performance in order to strengthen simultaneously the economic welfare of individual artisans and their families and of the nation. An implicit goal of such a process is the eventual ‘formalization’ of the informal sector, in order to raise the economic and social benefits of the sector.

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3 Overview of the Contributions II.2 Tinkering with the Tinker: Meeting Training Needs in the Informal Sector of Chad, by Joshua A. Muskin Muskin examines the potential of the informal sector to contribute to the readjustment of national TVET strategies and policies, drawing on research conducted in Chad in the mid-1990s. Following other researchers, Muskin has tried to reveal the ‘quality’ of skills required to operate productively in the informal sector, even though the levels of attainment of the collection of generic and technical skills, knowledge and attitudes, vary widely across the many entrepreneurs and trades. The training needs include: fundamental theory; elements of basic design; techniques and basic knowledge; specific products and services; basic business skills, attitudes and habits; organization of operations; fundamental cognitive skills; and basic school-related technical skills. The basic challenge of training for informal sector participation is to prepare both future and current owner-operators with satisfactory competence equally as technicians and entrepreneurs, covering each of these eight categories. Training has to take into consideration the diverging training needs in terms of content, as well as delivery of the ‘low’ and ‘high’ end of the informal micro-enterprise (IME) sector. The analysis yields four broad recommendations for improving training in Chad’s informal sector. The first is that an institutional capacity should exist to assist the informal sector’s members, individually and collectively—particularly through related trade associations—to assess and articulate their specific training needs. The second recommendation is to adopt policies and initiate strategies designed to improve the quality of apprenticeship training. The third one concerns professional skills up-grading for owner-operators. Finally, while training may be a potent catalyst to the sector’s development, other factors, such as credit, material and other inputs, equipment and markets, comprise the individual elements necessary to enable new technological capacity. This capacity must, in turn, transform into greater performance, both in the sector and in the overall economy.

II.3 The Traditional Informal Apprenticeship System of West Africa as Preparation for Work, by William Ahadzie In close association with the pervasive informal sector is the increasing interest in the system of traditional apprenticeship. The interest is not only on the part of academic research and in professional disciplines, but also as an active policy issue. This is not surprising, given that this system has proved to be an enduring and an effective source of skills for many developing countries. The apprenticeship system is an important system of knowledge transfer in the process of human capital

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formation. Equally important is its contribution to how individuals are socialized into the cultures associated with the acquisition of skills in an informal setting. Perhaps a more convincing argument for the reappearance of interest in traditional apprenticeship is the inability of formal systems to deliver the types of skill sets that are required to ensure employability of the ever-increasing new labour market entrants and to contribute to overall poverty reduction. In this chapter, Ahadzie examines apprenticeship as an emerging model for thinking about learning. Apprenticeship entails a learning process in which we not only learn to do something, but we learn also to understand the principles of operation together with that knowledge which informs what we are doing. Without this essential understanding we would be unable to vary the activity. Ahadzie traces the historical development of apprenticeship in West Africa and shows how it has a different trajectory from that of systems in Europe and elsewhere. The source of apprenticeship in West Africa is to be found in the form of institutions that have evolved to solve problems of training in a society where technology is essentially static and where the utmost importance is given to indigenous education, which is concerned with the systematic socialization of the younger generation into the norms, religious and moral beliefs and collective opinions of the wider society. It also places a strong emphasis on learning practical skills. Ahadzie emphasizes the importance of State and non-State actors in removing the constant risks of eviction or police harassment that craftsmen experience, and calls upon improving the efficiency of the basic education system and formulating comprehensive national policies on technical and vocational training. He suggests a reengineering of existing institutional, legal, financial and instructional arrangements and recommends that occupational standards should be developed for the crafts in the traditional apprenticeship system. Moreover, workshops should be identified and developed into centres of excellence and the instructional abilities of craftsmen in the informal sector should be improved. He suggests financial reforms and innovative funding mechanisms. He also argues for undertaking research studies, especially on the transition between acquiring skills and entry into self-employment, on the high mortality rates in micro-enterprises in the informal economy, as well as on the set of skills delivered by each craft. Continuous research on female apprenticeship and institutional and cultural practices should also be undertaken.

II.4 Initiatives to Link TVET to Self-Employment in Ghana, by Robert Palmer In addition to traditional apprenticeship models, there are attempts to provide preemployment skills training through short-term training programmes. These aim to transfer skills for self-employment quickly. Palmer analyses two of these initiatives in Ghana. One is the integrated Community Centres for Employable Skills (ICCES), and the other is the Skills Training and Entrepreneurship Programme (STEP). While these programmes have had an important role to play in Ghana and in other


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countries in the African continent and elsewhere, they have failed for many reasons. Parents and youths continue to prefer academic education; most graduates from these short-term programmes find it very hard to utilize their acquired skills in the labour market; there is often decreasing support from the local community; the training is of poor quality; governments have not supported these programmes with adequate finances and policy and regulatory frameworks. Finally, programmes have been badly managed. Palmer argues that in order for skills acquisition to be more effectively translated into skills utilization, more attention needs to be paid to developing conducive learning environments. Programmes need to be accredited only and when they meet the required standards of good delivery and quality learning and training.

II.5 Criteria for Training Policy in the Informal Sector: Demands and Challenges in Latin America, by Enrique Pieck Poorly educated, unemployed youth—particularly those from socially and economically disadvantaged communities—have become a grave problem in developing countries. Not only is basic education not accessible to many of them, but often the quality of education is so poor that even receiving a full primary education is not a guarantee that one will have acquired basic competencies. Formal basic education has not been providing the skills and competencies needed to prepare school graduates for their incorporation into the world of work. In this context, the articulation of skills development with basic education becomes crucial. While schools can play a positive role for working children and adolescents, the traditional school concepts have so far resulted in their exclusion. The question that arises, therefore, is how young working people acquire competencies and what competencies are crucial for their lives and work. Considerably more young people acquire occupational competencies through an informal apprenticeship than would be possible through government or NGO-run programmes. The Delors Commission Report is also appealed to regarding the necessary shift away from knowledgedominated learning to a focus on the abilities of the learner. In his paper, Pieck proposes a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand, non-formal strategies, such as bridge courses, are needed to prepare children for entry into schools and remedial learning centres which provide pedagogic support to consolidate school performance. On the other hand, many government programmes highlight the need for multiple ways of delivering schooling and regard educational programmes outside the formal school system as suitable for ‘balancing work and education’ and thereby for addressing the reality of work in the lives of poor children. In both strategies, however, the stated intention is to address the question of equivalence with the formal system. The impact of these policy debates and trends has meant that the importance of social as well as economic outcomes is being emphasized in TVET. The focus on technical and vocational learning is being extended to embrace and support community development.

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II.6 Informal Learning at Work: The Case of Working Children in Egypt, by Laila Iskandar In the context of the realities of adult poverty in economies with high unemployment rates, as well as poor-quality vocational education and still poorer returns on basic education, the question arises of what can be done in the context of that reality for working children to make them acquire a measure of learning and equip them with market-based vocational skills, basic educational skills and learning that will help them live in sustainable ways and contribute to the development of their communities. In her chapter, Iskandar explores the case of two learning sites for working children. One is the case of brick factories in Egypt and the other is that of recycling. In both the cases, training and education have been incorporated into traditional economic activities originating from the local cultural and social environment itself. Not only is learning linked to the reality of work, but the learning organization of non-formal education is flexible, community-based and extends to the home and the street; it is social, fluid and involves earning by learning, as well as experience that is filled with dignity and respect, and one that values, for instance, the waste recyclers as individuals. The teaching methods are participatory; learning is experiential; the school environment is democratic and self-financed; learning schedules are flexible; instructors come from the neighbourhood; assessments are individualized; and learning is self-paced. As a consequence of this approach, this type of non-formal education is able to achieve greater learner involvement, ownership and commitment. It is clear from this example that education and training programmes for very poor young people and adults need to offer very clear, concrete and immediate reasons to justify enrolment and ensure perseverance. Iskandar concludes by calling upon educators, policy-makers and the industrial sector to revisit the issue of working children and their learning needs within the present reality of informal workshops that provide a basis for their vocational education. She also suggests that policy-makers should combine the dual role of nonformal education in informal workshops with the provision of basic learning needs, health and occupational safety, business skills, etc. for children and youth in that sector. She advocates a curriculum based on a reading of the popular economy. And, finally, she argues that teachers should be trained to be ‘facilitators of learning’ and that they should be professionals in the non-formal vocational sector of education.

II.7 Informal Learning and Work: From Genealogy and Definitions to Contemporary Methods and Findings, by Peter H. Sawchuk As we develop our educational and training systems for lifelong learning, the distinction between education and training becomes increasingly blurred. Whereas some skills are learned at school, others may be acquired in non-formal adult


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learning programmes, at work or in the local community. Informal learning activities are also gaining in importance. This enlarged view of learning emphasizes the informal acquisition of skills on the job and in social movements of popular education. All this is relevant from the point of view of developing flexible lifelong learning policies for informal economies, in situations where many young people and adults have not received good initial schooling. For the lifelong learner, it is not important whether the learning situation is classified as education or training or whether training should be added to education, or vice versa. What matters for such a learner is—instead—the education of the whole worker, not because it is required for production alone, but because it affects him or her as a unique being with a social and cultural understanding of the world. Work cannot be reduced only to what people do to earn a wage. Work also includes the value that people add to organizations and society more broadly, including individual, social and historical features. The broader notion of work also includes housework, voluntary work and informal learning activities. Work has to be seen in this inter-connected way that penetrates all social spheres. Just as the expanded notion of work has challenged the dominance of paid employment, in the same way informal learning challenges the hegemony of institutionalized formal and structured education. In his chapter, Sawchuk reviews leading models of learning and work, which when taken together demonstrate the basic genealogy of informal learning: (a) direct engagement in the world rather than internal thought alone, as represented in Aristotelian thought; (b) each model demonstrates how the learning it describes is flexible and inclusive of diverse knowledge forms in relation to the original UNESCO imperatives; (c) learning is political—it has to do with control which expresses the spirit of the critiques of the likes of Freire and Illich; and (d) each model attempts to establish the value of, and thus the motivation for, building more clearly articulated assessments of informal learning as represented by the more recent policy initiatives to recognize prior learning. All these non-formalized ways of learning contribute to how we understand informal learning and work today. Finally Sawchuk reviews a major critique of the informal learning concept, before turning to the leading methods of investigating informal learning and work and the key findings they have offered to date.

II.8 New Learning Spaces in VET: The Contribution of Social Partnerships, by Terry Seddon, Kathleen Fennessy and Kathleen Ferguson To promote citizenship and democracy, as well as to rebuild civil society, it is necessary to create spaces and opportunities within society so that citizens may actively participate in it. NGOs, social movements, community development associations and trade unions are taking charge of these spaces and demanding that others be

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created. In most of these places, learning had always occurred but had not been formalized or recognized through the mainstream policies and practices of education and training. Although these new learning spaces have a well-defined relationship with government, they are nonetheless autonomous from the government. They give an opportunity to the participants to negotiate their position actively and deliberately vis-à-vis centralized government and policy processes, as well as in relation to the education and training system and to agencies and community networks. The appearance of a growing number of new learning sites is a reflection and manifestation of a transformation in institutionalized relationships between State, market and civil society. Most importantly, new learning sites are an opportunity for local communities to partner with the government. In their chapter, Seddon, Fennessy and Ferguson look at social partnerships as a type of new learning space that is informed by a community development orientation in education policy. They document the character of social partnerships and their contribution and implications for TVET. They define social partnerships as localized networks that connect some combination of local community groups, education and training providers, industry and government to work on local issues and community-building activities. Social partnerships in TVET are categorized into three different types: enacted partnerships, community partnerships and negotiated partnerships. Social partnerships support learning both at the level of the partnership, where participation in partnership supports an educative process for participants, and at the level of the learning initiative, which supports learning by beneficiaries to enhance their educational and employment pathways. Youth and young adults benefit not only through the promotion of their vocational education and training, but also through engaging in interactions and activities inherent in partnership work. This relational learning develops their self-knowledge, self-awareness and self-management. Relational learning is a fundamental asset for the transitory workforce. They offer a particular kind of pragmatic and experiential learning which challenges and transforms fundamentally the specific and situated learning goals of institutional learning spaces. Social partnerships make a distinctive contribution to TVET, extending beyond the kind of skill formation that characterizes traditional vocational learning to embrace lifelong development as citizen actors. Partnerships are fundamental to moving away from a top-down governmental approach towards multilateral governance. Partnerships are crucial to this governance context because they are sites where skills and other resources can be shared and where experts can engage with community members. It is claimed that localized partnerships benefit industry, governments and communities. Seddon, Fennessy and Ferguson conclude by pointing out some contradictions that are inherent in the concept of new learning spaces. Even if new learning spaces exist outside established education and training institutions, this does not necessarily mean that productive relationships with a local school cannot be realized by social partnerships.


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II.9 Social and Cultural Aspects of Informal Sector Learning: Meeting the Goals of EFA, by Madhu Singh Although much of the attention and energy, especially in partnerships, between workplaces and educational and training agencies are directed at the development and maintenance of initiatives with the enterprise, there are others who are more interested in trying to understand the wider societal linkages and the practice of work and learning. There is a strong move towards situating learning as part of a culturally embedded aspect of human action. In order to understand and study learning, it is necessary to consider the local practices of the learner and to situate these practices against the unfolding lives of learners in different contexts. Such an approach not only opens up appreciation of what counts as learning, but also incorporates concerns about informal and non-formal learning outside the traditional formal system. In her chapter, Singh argues that if vocational training and education are to cater for the informal sector, then they need to take into account the traditions and values of the system of vocational learning in working life and be interwoven with basic education. Education for All (EFA) goals are paramount in this respect. If we are to achieve these goals, the multiplicity of social and cultural contexts in which learning takes place should be also taken into account. Openness to intercultural dialogue is an important condition for meeting the goals of Education for All. At the same time, there should be sensitivity to incorporating foreign experience into existing domestic practices. The very philosophical foundations of various educational theories that are being propagated should be questioned in the light of the diverse social and cultural experience. Acknowledgments The editor responsible for this section would like to thank two of her interns, Evgeny Postnikov from the Russian Federation studying at the International Bremen University, and Anna Philippi from Regensburg University, Germany, for their assistance with editorial work.


Chapter II.2

Tinkering with the Tinker: Meeting Training Needs in the Informal Sector of Chad Joshua A. Muskin

1 Introduction Without wading into debates on cause and effect or on the transferability of models,1 it is widely asserted that where economic development has taken root, national rates of literacy, education and training are relatively high (Cummings & Dall, 1995, p. 5; Lockheed & Verspoor, 1990, p. 1). This occurs, particularly in developing countries, despite the custom of national TVET programmes to train to standards that have little in common with the true needs of the economic sector—in other words, the ‘supply-driven’ approach. The result is educated unemployment co-occurring with many unfilled technical positions or the presence of foreign skilled workers2 (Middleton, Ziderman & Van Adams, 1993, pp. 51–66). Many developing country governments, with their international donor partners, began to respond to this training ‘short-circuit’ in the 1990s with strategies and policies based on a ‘demand-driven’ approach (Middleton et al., 1993, p. 101; Wilson, 1996). They stimulated the ‘production’ of trainees who matched more precisely the worker profiles, in numbers and, especially, competencies, defined by the employment sector. In some countries, this has included greater attention—official or not—to training that occurs in the informal production, service and commercial sectors, albeit following different strategies. This phenomenon, notably the potential of the informal sector to contribute to the readjustment of national TVET strategies and policies, is the topic of the present chapter, drawing from research conducted in Chad in the mid-1990s. Formal TVET tends to be highly selective, a consequence of the few places and the high unit cost. In many countries, this situation results in recruiting graduates who have at least one more degree than that required for enrolment. By definition, this relegates a large portion of a country’s youth to unemployment or underemployment, while technical jobs remain unfilled. The TVET sector continues to suffer from criticism that its programmes are not adapted to the real needs of the workplace, that students are trained in theory but fail in practice and that the graduates lack both suitable workplace behaviours and acumen for independent employment. The study in Chad, as well as similar experiences in other countries, provides strong reasons to look to the informal sector to fill this gap. Quantitatively, the number of ‘spaces’ available is exponentially greater and the cost of training enormously R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 II.2, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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less. And, as training occurs in the workplace, the question of relevance also disappears—while that of quality clearly remains. Certainly, looking to the informal sector to replace formal TVET is ridiculous, but equally certain is the inability of the TVET sector to meet the demands of the workplace. Consequently, it seems legitimate to study the prospects of training within the informal sector as a way of strengthening linkages with the formal sector.

2 Characterizing the Informal Sector The informal sector has long been where the bulk of employment, production and domestic consumption occur in the developing world. Illustrating this point for Kenya, King & Abuodha (1991, p. 10) assert that: The informal sector [. . .] is the ordinary economy in which the bulk of Kenyans gain their livelihood. It is not the informal sector that is somehow special and extraordinary, but the formal sector, which encompasses such a small portion of the economically active population.

Based on United Nations (1996, p. v, 13) figures for all of Africa at the time, the informal sector comprised up to 70% of non-agricultural employment and 34% of non-agricultural gross domestic product (GDP). Birks et al. (1994, p. 22) trace the concept of the ‘informal sector’ in Africa to Keith Hart’s coining of the term in 1965 and to the prominent International Labour Organization study in Kenya (ILO, 1972). (Similar studies at the time occurred in Sri Lanka and Colombia.) After about a decade of relative inattention by donors, governments and practitioners—despite the sector’s unabated vibrancy and growth worldwide and persistent international research (King, 1996, p. 8)—international interest bounded to renewed prominence with Hernando de Soto’s book, The other path (1989). Not without controversy,3 this work captured a consensus view that the micro- and small enterprise sector contributes critically to national economic well-being. In their work Skills acquisition in micro-enterprises: evidence from West Africa, Birks et al. (1994) describe the contemporary strategic interests of the international donor community in the informal sector. Looking at training needs and practices in the urban informal sector settings of four countries, the authors find what many other studies4 have also found: a robust, active, widely varied set of activities and actors. This assessment relates equally to the sector’s production and commercial aspects as to the nature of the training methods and challenges found there. The present chapter aspires to follow in the tradition of this work by Birks et al., adding the particular case of training in the informal sector of the Chad, based on a study conducted for the World Bank in 1996–97. Specifically, the present analysis begins with a brief overview of the informal sector, highlighting its inherent heterogeneity and offering a basic profile of its participants. Turning to its substantive focus, the investigation covers: (a) what one needs to know to operate and evolve successfully in the informal sector; and (b) how artisans acquire information, skills and attitudes, both as apprentices and

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as active entrepreneurs. The chapter concludes with a series of four recommendations offered to raise the quality of training, and therefore performance, in the sector and, consequently, to strengthen simultaneously the economic welfare of the individual artisans and their families and of the nation. An implicit goal of such a process is the eventual ‘formalization’ of the informal sector, with the understanding that such a process must be gradual and natural, as a forced process would jeopardize the integrity, and thus the economic and social benefits, of the sector.

3 The Informal Sector: A Study in Heterogeneity A central obstacle confronted by this and virtually all studies of Africa’s informal sector is the sector’s prodigious heterogeneity (cf. Birks et al., 1994, p. 23). Such diversity may be attributed to a few discrete factors:

r r r r r

the nature of activity: production, service or commercial; the nature of the technologies used: modern or traditional; the number of people: from no or few apprentices or workers to several, and even paid workers; the level of interaction with formal sector institutions: including financial, training and business; and the level and type of education and training, of the artisan/entrepreneur, apprentices and paid workers: from no formal or non-formal education or training to high levels of both.

The different definitions of the sector range from casting the participating firms and entrepreneurs as frequently illicit, unorganized activities (e.g. de Soto, 1989), to their portrayal as small but commonly officially registered businesses (Birks et al., 1994, p. 22; King, 1996; Muskin, 1991). What most descriptions tend to share are their smallness of size, their reliance on limited, mostly rudimentary technology, the local nature of the clientele, a high degree of competitiveness with uncontrolled entry by new participants,5 and apprenticeship as the major means for transmitting skills and knowledge. The present chapter deals with the sector’s heterogeneity in two ways. First, it limits the field by concentrating on the production and service sub-sectors, excluding merchants and petty vendors. This decision is due mostly to the central purpose of researching technical training needs and provision, especially apprenticeship-based, which aspects pertain minimally to strictly commercial activities (Birks et al., 1994, p. 56). As such, subsequent references to the ‘informal sector’ in this chapter should be understood as excluding the informal commercial sector. Second, the chapter includes sector participants across trades with small, medium and large operations and exhibiting varying degrees of formality in their training, organization, finances and entrepreneurial relations. This broad stroke approach is important quite precisely because of the lack of uniformity in defining the informal sector. More strategically, it permits a more functional reflection on what

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an evolution from informality to formality might look like. This last comment requires the strong caveat that such a continuum will likely be very different from one context to another and from one trade to another, as demonstrated by King & Abuodha (1991) in their comparisons of candlework artisans to other trades. In this regard, a broad stroke may also cast some light, even if dim, on what factors are likely to be most context-sensitive.

4 The Context of Chad Based on the 1995 Human development report (UNDP), Chad ranks 162nd out of 174 countries on the human development index. As in many countries, this extreme poverty can be traced largely to a recent history of armed conflict, including both a civil war and subsequent war with Libya that consumed the country before and throughout the 1980s. However, though formally ended in 1990 with the forceful accession to power of Colonel Idriss Déby, the effects of the conflicts endured, afflicting the country physically, socially, psychologically and, of course, economically (cf. Nolutshungu, 1996, p. 297–300; Ouadoua, 1996, pp. 38–40). More directly concerning the vocational training sector, these impacts were visible in the loss of educational infrastructure—none of the government’s vocational training or professional education institutions survived the fighting—a withdrawal from training by the government and private businesses (concerned more with their immediate survival than with long-term growth), and an increased, albeit modest, role for private institutions (mostly non-governmental organizations) in providing vocational training. Beginning with a joint government/donors round-table, held in Geneva in 1985, Chad situated the development of its human resources among its most important national priorities. The participants focused on three spheres of activity—basic education, technical and professional training, and wage-earning work—which constituted together ‘the principal motor of Chad’s potential’. The topic of subsequent round-tables held in N’Djaména in 1989 and 1990 and again in Geneva in 1993, the responsibility for achieving this development fell to a high-level interministerial commission (Comité national pour l’éducation et la formation en liaison avec l’emploi—CONEFE). In particular, the commission was charged with the creation and initiation of a strategy to bring Chad’s education and training policies and programmes into harmony with the priority needs of the employment sector, to which the donor community devoted significant resources (Chad. Ministère du Plan et de la Coopération, 1993).

5 Chad’s Informal Sector and Its Participants Focusing on the informal sector within a formal education and training for employment framework might appear counterproductive. Yet it is highly relevant in Chad where informal economic activities play such a crucial role in the national economy.


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This is true equally at the macro and micro levels. Panhuys (1990, pp. 3–5) attributes this importance to both employment and national income factors, counting in 1988 up to 70,000 individuals working in N’Djaména’s informal sector alone. He contrasts this with an estimated 45,000 workers employed nationwide in Chad’s formal, modern sector. In N’Djaména, Panhuys estimates that the informal sector employs around 70% of the total economically ‘active’ population, placing N’Djaména’s informal sector among the most significant of all sub-Saharan African cities. These workers operate primarily in the commercial sector (63.2%). Of the balance, 27.4% operate in the service sector and 9.4% in production activities. He counts a further 12,300 micro-enterprises, of which 700 are artisanal workshops, 550 service operations, 200 transporters and 10,900 shops. Looking at the financial ‘bottom line’, using figures from 1984, Panhuys reports that the informal sector accounted for 28.4% of Chad’s GDP, of which artisanal production accounted for 5.7%. If one excludes the portion of GDP attributable to agro-pastoral production, the relative importance to national income of the informal sector in 1984 leaps to 62.5% (1990, p. 5). While these figures refer to a date over twenty years ago, both conditions in Chad and trends for the informal sector across Africa (United Nations, 1996; ILO, 1991) offer little reason to believe that the sector’s relative importance has changed significantly. To the contrary, extrapolating World Bank (Webster & Fidler, 1996, p. 12) figures from some years ago—1994—that estimated the informal sector’s contribution to GDP of 66% for all of Africa, one may suppose that the sector’s significance has grown. The research upon which the present chapter is based was performed for the World Bank and Chad’s CONEFE in 1996. The data and analysis derive from a study of a representative sample of 399 informal sector entrepreneurs—also referred to here as ‘artisans,’ ‘tradesmen/women’ and ‘entrepreneurs’—and 1,454 apprentices distributed over Chad’s five major cities (Abéché, Faya-Largeau, Moundou, N’Djaména and Sarh) and operating in eighteen major vocational categories,6 divided among the modern and traditional sectors. The sample included approximately 10% women, virtually all in traditionally women’s trades. While an analysis of differences between women and men artisans must await a future study, Birks et al. (1994) anticipate that significant differences are likely. Looking at tailoring, one of the rare trades (with hairstyling) in which both men and women operate (other than commerce), they note that ‘on average, female tailors are more highly educated than their male colleagues’ (p. 46). Further, women’s entrepreneurial behaviour is distinct in switching ‘between work and domestic duties’ and with an ‘average life of [. . .] enterprises [that] is shorter than that of male tailors’ (ibid.). As regards training, more women have formal backgrounds in another vocation (p. 52) and only 25% of women (versus 75% of men) ‘have apprenticeship experience’, which tend to be shorter than men’s (p. 61). Nevertheless, Birks et al. found ‘relatively little difference in the desire for training by gender, and no significant difference in the types of skills demanded’ (p. 52). These and the other differences point to clear disadvantages for women ‘with respect to [. . .] “more attractive” [economic] activities’ (p. 61), which situation they attribute to

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structural issues of gender that extend well beyond the domain of training and trade. Clearly, more and separate study and analysis are warranted. A general profile of the common owner-operator and apprentice in Chad’s informal sector reveals an endemic poverty both financially and technologically. This situation is immediately obvious in the frequently dilapidated state of the associated infrastructure and the penury and poor condition of the equipment and materials used. This poverty is found also in the low quality of products and services they offer and the artisans’ slim profit margins, also observed by King & Abuodha in Kenya (1991, p. 97). Limited technical ability, as well as the other shortcomings observed, surely trace, at least in part, to the persistently low levels of education, literacy and mathematical ability of the entrepreneurs and their apprentices, as well as by the preponderance of those with little or no formal professional training (see Table 1). For example, of the 349 entrepreneurs providing this information, 26% have no formal schooling and 22% have no more than four years. The average level of schooling attained for the 74% with any formal education was about seven years. Barely 20% of the entrepreneurs reported having prior formal professional training, in this case for an average period of three years. The vast majority have learned their trade entirely through the traditional apprenticeship system, lasting an average of about 5.7 years. Under normal circumstances, one could expect that the apprentices, representing a newer generation, would exhibit more favourable levels of education—a conclusion that Birks et al. (1994 p. 46) derive from their study. This does not appear to be the case in Chad; which distinction may be attributable to the war, as indicated above (cf. Ouadoua, 1996; Esquieu & Péano, 1994). On the contrary, a larger proportion of the 1,454 apprentices surveyed (29%) have no schooling at all, with only 19% having completed four years. The average level of schooling for those with any formal education is 6.7 years, slightly lower than that of their employers. Of the current group of apprentices, the average time they had spent with their employer was 4.1 years, while a full 25% reported having been ‘in training’ in the same enterprise for six years or more. The idea that an apprentice needs over six years to achieve professional competence is highly unlikely—unless the quality of instruction is completely abject. Table 1 Education and training of entrepreneurs and apprentices

Level of schooling achieved None 1 – 4 years Completed primary school (CEPE) Completed junior secondary school (BEPC) Completed senior secondary school (Baccalaureate) Koranic schooling Professional training Yrs of apprenticeship training, average (for former apprentices, average)

Entrepreneurs

Apprentices

Average–7 yrs 26% 22% 26% 15% 3% 35% 20% (3 yrs average) 5.7 yrs

Average–6.7 yrs. 29% 19% 27% 11% 1% 26% (3.8 yrs average) 4.1 yrs 3.1 yrs


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Indeed, the entrepreneurs indicated almost unanimously that apprenticeship training, regardless of their profession, should not exceed three years. The prevalence of such long tenures in apprenticeship training in Chad may be explained by the two factors: (a) it is extremely difficult to launch a new business due primarily to the absence of start-up capital, with few reasonable credit options available to informal sector operators, who lack the requisite collateral and influence; and (b) most apprentices are related to the owner-operator, so their status of apprenticeship after a few years of training might more appropriately be that of family worker. Birks et al. (1994, p. 61) add to these explanations that time spent by a ‘former’ apprentice as a worker may be viewed as a complement to his/her training.

6 Operating in Chad’s Informal Sector: What One Needs to Know Training-needs studies, typically undertaken by economists, have tended to focus on quantitative assessments of the employment sector, calculating the number of openings for specific job categories based on some manner of manpower planning or forecasting methodology. Among other shortcomings, these assessments commonly ignore the particular labour needs and opportunities of the informal sector. In more recent studies (e.g. Birks et al., 1994; King, 1996; King & Abuodha, 1991; Muskin, 1997), researchers looked directly at the informal sector to try to reveal the ‘quality’ of skills required to operate productively along with the methods by which these skills are transmitted, acquired and upgraded. The present study was designed and conducted within this more recent tradition. More specifically, the researchers sought evidence by which to determine the combination of knowledge (savoir), know-how (savoir faire) and affective dimensions (savoir eˆ tre) associated with productive performance and prospects for evolution within Chad’s informal sector. One fundamental limitation facing the study was the common difficulty informal sector artisans have in describing the technical requirements of their respective trades. While they easily explain what they need to know how to do, they are less articulate concerning what they need to know on a more fundamental, functional level as regards the manipulations and tasks they perform daily. (This same conclusion may be drawn from the findings of Birks et al., 1994, pp. 53–54, albeit indirectly, and King & Abuodha, 1991, p. 97.) As such, an artisan’s actions appear to be dictated much more by a combination of rote repetition and trial and error than by a studied, conceptual mastery of the many technical functions that comprise her or his trade. Approximation and aesthetics prevail over precision and consistency, resulting in products and services that are acceptable mostly because they are cheap (cf. Muskin, 1991, pp. 218; Muskin, 1997). The related conclusion is that informal sector entrepreneurs are handicapped in the quality of their work and, consequently, in their prospects for professional evolution;7 although most express overall satisfaction with their level of basic knowledge and skills, at least within the present impoverished national economic environment. This sentiment does not, however,

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prohibit them from asserting a desire to receive training (as shown below)—albeit as a lower priority—in what Birks et al. (1994, pp. 52–53) call ‘generic’ or entrepreneurial skills employed in all trades and in new technologies. Notwithstanding the limited ability of informal sector entrepreneurs to identify explicitly their major training needs, the present researchers revealed by means of a more implicit analysis several technical and operational requirements. Specifically, the researchers uncovered many of the major actions, techniques, tools, equipment and products in order to generate a basic list of the skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary for the mastery of each vocation (see Table 2). The purpose of this inquiry was not to produce an ‘average’ list of training needs, nor to prepare specific job profiles for each trade. Rather, the table represents an illustrative enumeration of what should be mastered for successful vocational performance across trades. Therefore, the analysis benefits particularly from having observed those artisans who appeared to be most accomplished professionally. It should be noted that this list surpasses in both breadth and depth what a similar list compiled for workers in the formal sector would include, where specialization and the high division of tasks is the norm, especially between the production and business dimensions of an enterprise. Similar efforts to articulate basic competencies for successful artisanal performance appear elsewhere, including: Birks et al., 1994; King, 1996, 1977; King & Abuodha, 1991; McLaughlin, 1989, 1979; Muskin, 1997, 1991, among several Table 2 Basic professional skills, knowledge and attitudes for participation in the informal sector Fundamental theory associated with a particular trade, such as electronics, combustion me

chanics, design and basic physics. Elements of basic design by which to represent in two dimensions, in writing and/or verbally

a final product or series of steps in the accomplishment of a product or service, both as a simple rendition and as a creative process. The range of techniques and basic knowledge required to operate the specific tools, machinery and other equipment associated with a particular trade, including their operation, maintenance and repair, as appropriate. Knowledge of the range of techniques and properties associated with the manipulation and transformation of a particular profession’s basic materials and other inputs necessary to create a product or perform a service. Specific products and services, or a variety of qualities, designs and purposes suited to a range of clients of a particular trade, especially more contemporary versions. Basic business skills, knowledge and habits, such as simple accounting, savings, costing, advertising or marketing, negotiations (with clients and suppliers), and strategic partnering (or sub-contracting). Organization of operations, both internal, as regards specific productive activities of a trade and the broader management of an enterprise, and external, as pertains to co-operation with other entrepreneurs from the same or different related trades or areas of economic activity, and interactions with other institutions, including financial entities, again according to production and management-related matters. Fundamental cognitive skills necessary for basic and more advanced problem-solving, including the analysis and diagnosis of a problem or situation, the articulation of a sequence of logical steps and, ultimately, creativity and innovation. Basic school-related academic skills, notably functional literacy and numeracy.


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others. These other studies often dissociate skills, knowledge and attitudes within broader sub-groupings. Birks et al. (1994, p. 53), for example, distinguish between ‘technical’ (or ‘craft-specific’) skills and ‘generic’ (or ‘non-craft’) skills, with the latter group’s referring to ‘basic business skills, knowledge and habits’ and the ‘organization of operations’. Technical skills refer to the theoretical, design, manipulation, material, equipment and product aspects of an artisan’s repertoire, which differ from one trade to another. Concerned more by the technical realm, McLaughlin (1979, pp. 164–68) attributes difference to the ‘nature’ of the skills required by an artisan, proposing a spectrum of skill combinations, ranging from the rudimentary, largely repetitive ‘non-symbolic activity’ (e.g. changing a car tire) to a ‘knowledge component made up of symbolic information’. Such skill requires substantial analytical effort and ‘sophisticated diagnostic skills’, such as fixing a car. However, such heuristic nuances typically escape the awareness of the practising artisan. Rather, he/she is likely not to differentiate between non-symbolic and symbolic knowledge, assigning both types of ability to innate intelligence and persistence (Muskin, 1991, pp. 294, 413). In other words, professional skills and knowledge cannot be learned or transmitted abstractly but derive from a native ability and evolve through practice, practice, practice. This perception is central to the training methods that dominate the sector, as shown in the next section. It also sheds considerable light on why it is so difficult for those who have evolved in the informal sector to move successfully to a more formal, more secure professional status. The levels of attainment of the collection of generic and technical skills, knowledge and attitudes, whether symbolic or non-symbolic, of course varied widely across the many entrepreneurs interviewed, as it surely does for artisans generally. Similarly, the importance of these abilities to an individual’s economic success differs significantly across trades and, maybe more importantly, for individual entrepreneurs with different market aspirations. (This observation reflects the contextspecific orientation of Ashton and Green’s (1996) argument—see note 1—though at the micro-level.) Finally, even complete mastery of one, a group or all of these competency categories offers no guarantee of success by an owner-operator. Rather, he/she may still suffer from poor market performance within Chad’s moribund national economy. This, of course, must be another major consideration for artisans as they consider their own and their apprentices’ on-going training. Still, an entrepreneur’s prospects for succeeding and progressing in his/her vocation are surely extremely slim if he/she does not have adequate control over the full set of professional aspects, both technical and generic, that comprise her/his work.

7 The Provision of Training in the Informal Sector The basic challenge of training in the informal sector is to prepare future and current entrepreneurs with competence as technicians and as entrepreneurs, covering each of the categories presented in Table 2. The level of this competence will ideally suit the individual’s professional aspirations and the public’s demands.

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The gap between ‘actual’ and ‘ideal’ vocational capacities is considerable. This is due to a variety of factors, such as access to technology and training, general market poverty, the national and sectoral policy environment, and individual levels of education and factors affecting information, inputs and markets. While Birks et al. (1994, pp. 52–55) found that ‘entrepreneurs generally desire a blend of technical and managerial’ skills training, the following analysis focuses on the technical dimensions. This research bias is matched by the artisans’ and apprentices’ ignorance of business matters. It is unclear whether this resulted from their own ignorance or to interpreting the researchers’ interests as predominantly technological. Notwithstanding, the study does not completely exclude the business, and many of the training modalities that the respondents described pertain to generic skills. Thus, the acquisition of skills occurs almost exclusively through apprenticeship. Indeed, apprenticeship has been one of the most defining characteristics of the informal sector since its ‘discovery’ in the early 1970s. McLaughlin (1989, p. 6) describes this institution as follows: Apprentices learn by observing the master and more advanced apprentices, by asking questions, and then by attempting to perform the routine themselves. Training is intensively practical; no instruction in a school sense is ever given. Because training tends to focus on the immediate problems of the work itself, apprentices in highly technical trades usually develop little theoretical knowledge [. . .] except when their training is supplemented through a repair manual or personal textbook. This often results in proficiency in assembly, disassembly, and replacement procedures, but rather unsystematic and random diagnostic procedures and unfamiliarity with the most efficient technology for the purposes at hand.

A similar portrayal emerged from the present study. Indeed, this contrast highlights, along with the work of others (e.g. Birks et al., 1994, pp. 56–59; Fluitman, 1989; Muskin, 1991), the diversity in apprenticeship. This divergence might be explained by family links between apprentices and entrepreneurs, which the entrepreneurs claimed to be the case 63% of the time, with another 11% being the children of family friends.8 The actual stages identified in training apprentices were remarkably similar, with distinctions arising from unique technical aspects. In 81% of the cases, the owner-operator claimed full responsibility for instruction, while 9% alleged to assign this role to an assistant. It should be noted that 18% of entrepreneurs had only one apprentice, and over two-thirds (68%) had between one and three. Despite the entrepreneurs’ claim as exclusive trainers, the apprentices indicated that their peers usually played some role in their training, where older apprentices existed. Clearly predominant were ‘hands-on’ training strategies, with the most widely identified method being the apprentice’s observation of work being performed by others. With regards to ‘supervised work’, the actual level of supervision varied depending on the particular stage of the apprentice’s training and the complexity of the task. The relative absence of formal instruction methods, such as technical documents, lessons and complementary training bespeaks bluntly its rote, repetitive, static nature. Clearly theory plays at best a minor—and usually no—role in the training.


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There is a transfer of the motions, the aesthetic and, to a lesser degree, the intuition of a vocation, reflecting the strong valuation of innate knowledge, which cannot be taught but can be practised. What they do not (and generally cannot) transmit is a vocation’s science. Similarly, the rarity of outside training and of practice on mock products reflects a lack of attention to more advanced manifestations of ‘symbolic knowledge’. Ultimately, this translates into inability (and maybe disinterest) of future artisans to innovate. A basic strategy of ‘observe, imitate and repeat, repeat, repeat’ clearly prevails, seemingly attributable more to a lack of mastery of the basic concepts by most entrepreneurs than to a decision to emphasize praxis over theory. The majority appears simply ill-equipped to provide more than a rudimentary, practical training. As a consequence, the next generation of informal sector artisans is destined to be similarly constrained. Despite the image of consistency in the informal sector, neither the government nor the particular trades have developed rules or standards to guide vocational training. In only 39% of the cases did entrepreneurs claim to use set standards in training their apprentices. On the other hand, over 80% of those interviewed affirmed that they would like to see accepted standards applied. The lack of standardized norms pertains equally to the levels of technical knowledge, know-how and competence expected of the trainee at the end of the programme. Artisans either employ intuitive judgement to determine the readiness of an individual trainee, or the apprentice makes this decision independently. The latter scenario may depend as much, or even more, on economic factors as on technical ones. Virtually all of the entrepreneurs say that they use firm criteria to assess an apprentice’s success. Not surprisingly, no theoretical, experimental or creative elements were evoked, let alone business skills. One consequence of this is the wide variation in the length of apprenticeships. This largely anarchic situation results in a broad range of quality in the preparation of apprentices, just as it yields diversity in the products and services they will eventually provide. Given the one admitted commonality of training—the virtual absence of theory and basic technical comprehension—it may be assumed that the range of vocational preparation falls mostly at the low end of the spectrum, between mediocre and barely acceptable (with the marketplace eliminating the unacceptable). However, even given the harshness of this critique, this is not intended as an indictment. Rather, considering the current economic and social context of Chad, most citizens would not be able to afford the greater costs associated with an improvement. The methods the entrepreneurs reported to employ to improve their own performance demonstrate a similar emphasis on praxis over theory. The most common approach is trial-and-error. Artisans tinker (bricoler in French) and persist until all the pieces go back together, the object performs properly or a specific problem is overcome. For artisans, this ‘experimentation’ can result in innovations, but generally there is little motivation to do this given the limited purchasing power of the marketplace. One major exception is when a new technology appears from outside,

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usually imported. In this case, artisans try to acquire some outside source of information or instruction. They rank highly ‘consultation with other entrepreneurs’. When such options are unavailable, the owner-operator must resort to bricolage. The virtual absence of both government and private institutions as sources of training and technical assistance bespeaks loudly both the poverty of the sector technologically and the crucial importance of intervention that the government was pursuing at the time with the World Bank, the International Labour Organization and other donor partners. Indeed, reflecting the findings of Birks et al. (1994, p. 54), Chad’s informal sector entrepreneurs indicated a strong interest in receiving training in innovations and business aspects. It is difficult to affirm whether self-reliance in professional development is due primarily to a lack of interest, of anticipated rewards, of time, of money, of opportunities or of some other factor. However, the findings suggest that the lack of opportunity may be most important given the nearly unanimous (94%) interest evoked by the entrepreneurs in formal technical training. The strength of this interest is evident further in the artisans’ willingness to devote time and money to their own vocational development. Specifically, they indicated they would spend an average of 9.6 months in training (not full-time), with over half (54%) proposing a training of one to six months. Equally strong confirmation appears in the acceptance by 85% of the group to ‘put their money where their mouth is’—ready to pay for formal training. Despite this interest in training, it is important to note that entrepreneurs assign relatively low importance to formal training when compared to other factors, mostly economic (cf. Webster & Fidler, 1996, chapter 3). They placed greatest importance on better access to credit, materials, tools and equipment, electricity and transportation, among others. As a land-locked country with limited natural resources,9 Chad faces both much greater prices for imported goods and has few means by which to substitute for them. The cost of electricity in Chad provides a shocking illustration, which, at the time, was over six times greater than in neighbouring Nigeria (Webster & Fidler, 1996, p. 14). A natural consequence of these higher prices is the importation from neighbouring countries of cheaper (and often higher quality) items. Several entrepreneurs alleged that the government facilitates external competition. Other factors identified included the unregulated, massive entry of new participants into the sector and the extremely low purchasing power of the national population. Clearly training alone offers only a very partial response. Yet, the enumeration of these other factors also underscores the importance of the ‘generic,’ managerial, financial and others skill areas—in addition to the technical ones. Appraising the overall picture of skills acquisition and transfer for apprentices and artisans, the provision of training may be characterized as ‘enclaved’, largely closed off from outside influences. This refers most basically to the widespread absence of complementary training, of other information sources, and new technologies to expand professional expertise. It refers also to a lack of vision, both individual and sectoral, for independent innovation and progress. The obvious result of this sectoral closed-mindedness (whether voluntary or imposed) is strong conservatism, leading to technological and commercial inertia.


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There is little external motivation or capability for the sector’s participants to advance in their methods, resources and performance. Consequently, they remain ‘locked’, as Birks et al. (1994, p. 51) state, ‘into the technologies and ideas of previous generations’. However, the detrimental effects of this attitude seem to be recognized—due to the efforts of the government and NGOs. This evolution is apparent in the eagerness of entrepreneurs to pursue outside technical training. At the time, capturing this self-professed enthusiasm had become one of the priority challenges undertaken by the government, supported by its international development partners. The task is formidable.

8 Implications for Policy and Practice Two basic conclusions seem to emerge from the analysis of the present study. First, the quality of skills and knowledge, and their transfer (by apprenticeship training and professional skills upgrading) in Chad’s informal productive and service sectors is extremely low. This situation constrains both current productivity and profits and the prospects for professional evolution. It shackles the growth of the overall economy, and consequently the broader arena of social development. Second, and more optimistically, apprenticeship training may represents a major approach for creating future producers and service providers in what was, and likely remains, Chad’s most important economic sector. This represents the major message from the study. Interventions to improve training in the informal sector are clearly and strongly warranted as a means to raise overall quality and efficiency. Insofar as such improvements yield better products and services for clients and increased income for entrepreneurs (and higher tax revenues and import-substitution opportunities for the government), they should translate into increased income and welfare beyond the sector as well. This effect should spill over to the formal economic sector, due both to stronger operational linkages with the informal sector (primarily in the form of outsourcing) and to the provision of skilled labourers. Indeed, the study found that approximately 20% of apprentices having completed training ‘graduated’ to wage employment in the formal sector. With higher quality training in the informal sector, and with more reliable standards in assessing completion, the potential to increase this percentage is attractive from the perspectives of both logistics and economics. More particularly, the analysis yields four recommendations for improving training in Chad’s informal sector. 1. An institutional capacity (public, private or, more likely, mixed) should exist to assist the informal sector’s members, individually and collectively to assess and articulate their specific training needs. 2. Policies should be adopted and strategies designed to improve the quality of apprenticeship training. A growing economy demands that apprentices receive better theoretical foundation and a greater mastery of the knowledge, know-how and affective dimensions of their vocation.

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3. Any improvements to apprenticeship training should be matched with efforts to provide professional skills up-grading to the entrepreneurs. Given that the current population of informal sector entrepreneurs will comprise a significant portion of the sector’s operating capacity for many years to come, any sectoral improvements will surely be postponed if this group is not included. 4. These three recommendations imply greater co-ordination and co-operation across the informal sector and within the individual vocational areas. One measure of improved performance is the achievement of greater efficiency. As such, the many members of the informal sector and each vocation may wish to move to greater coherence in the definition of the skills, as well as in the methods by which to attain, transfer, maintain, expand and certify them. The preceding recommendations also suggest the value of further developments in the participation by governmental and non-governmental agencies, as well as the private sector, in supporting the informal sector. This approach may represent the best chance for the informal sector to emerge from its present inertia as it is the most likely way to introduce ‘new blood’ into the system; particularly where international partners are involved.

9 Conclusion Training is clearly a logical place to initiate a process for improving the informal sector, as the sorts of strategic interventions proposed for the sector’s and the general economy’s overall development—technological, organizational, financial—all imply increased capacity on the part of the owner-operator and his/her apprentices. However, as both Ashton and Green (1996, p. 39) and King & Abuodha (1991, p. 97), among others, caution, changes in training and education are only part of a much more complex structural dynamic, with political, cultural, economic, and other dimensions. Without complementary evolution in these strategic domains, the impacts of any education and training reform are likely to be greatly limited, nil or even contrary to those sought. As pertains more directly to the entrepreneurs in Chad’s informal sector, while training may be a potent catalyst to the sector’s development, other factors, such as credit, material and other inputs, equipment and markets, comprise the individual elements necessary to enable new technological capacity and this capacity must in turn transform into greater performance. This dynamic association is one to which the entrepreneurs in the sample were especially sensitive. Without these complementary elements of a comprehensive, integrated strategy, entrepreneurs will likely suffer both from lower motivation and opportunity to pursue further training, as well as from decreased means by which to translate training into economic benefit. ‘Training for what result—for training’s sake or for profit?’, they rightfully asked. Within the informal sector’s and Chad’s overall present context of economic poverty, training without other initiatives would constitute for most the proverbial tree falling in the forest: it is uncertain that it makes a sound if there is no one there to hear it.


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Notes 1. For example, Ashton and Green (1996) assert that it is ‘incorrect to assume a linear and automatic connection between skill formation and economic performance’ (p. 3). For the purposes of the present chapter, the author addresses only peripherally issues of equity and overlooks altogether the informal sector and micro-entrepreneurs. 2. For example, in both Togo and Haiti, there is a strategy of bringing in skilled technicians and production managers from abroad (in Haiti, as far as from the Philippines). 3. The controversy rests primarily with the degree to which the informal and formal sectors are integrated, with Marsden (1990) and King & Abuodha (1991, pp. 72–86) describing stagnation among informal sector firms, with no viable links to the formal sector. 4. Among the many oft-cited works that comprise such studies of the informal sector are: King & Abuodha, 1991; Fluitman, 1989; Haan, 1989; ILO, 1972, 1985; Jarousse & Mingat, 1990; King, 1977, 1989, 1996; McLaughlin, 1979; Moser, 1978; Peattie, 1987; Peil, 1970, 1979; and Rathgeber, n.d. 5. King (1996, p. 184) observes that the assumption of ‘ease of entry’ is not always true: ‘Because of these community [and family] specializations in trade and commerce, it is by no means clear that the informal sector [in Kenya] can be characterized as having “ease of entry”, as was argued by the original [ILO] Kenya Employment Mission in 1972.’ 6. Modern sector jobs fall roughly within ten major categories: barber/hairdresser; welding/metal construction/auto body work; sewing (clothing); electronic repairs; electrical installation/repair; masonry/construction; two-wheel mechanics; carpentry; photography; and auto repair/electrical systems. The traditional sector jobs divide among eight basic categories: jewellery; leather work (tanner, shoemaker, etc.); blacksmithing; pottery; food transformation; basketry/bamboo furniture making; sculpture; and knitting. 7. King & Abuodha (1991, pp. 72–86) describe this same phenomenon in Kenya, referring to an artisan’s ‘technological confidence’, capturing his/her ability and experience with production shifts and machine-making. 8. It should be noted that the data concerning this issue are somewhat contradictory. Nonetheless, the conclusion that most apprentices are related to their master holds true. 9. Both the government and its international partners are hoping this situation will change soon for the better, the result of efforts to exploit significant oil reserves.

References Ashton, D.; Green, F. 1996. Education, training and the global economy. Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar. Birks, S. et al. 1994. Skills acquisition in micro-enterprises: evidence from West Africa. Paris: OECD. Chad. Ministère du Plan et de la Coopération. 1993. Réunion de Suivi de la Table Ronde, Genève III, Sous-secteur Education-Formation-Emploi: Programme d’Actions, Document de Synthèse. N’Djaména: Ministry of Plan and Co-operation. Cummings, W.K.; Dall, F.P. 1995. Implementing quality primary education for countries in transition. New York, NY: UNICEF. De Soto, H. 1989. The other path: the invisible revolution in the Third World. New York, NY: Perennial Library. Esquieu, P.; Péano, S. 1994. L’enseignement privé et spontané dans le système e´ ducatif tchadien. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. (Research report no. 103.) Fluitman, F., ed. 1989. Training for work in the informal sector. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Haan, H. 1989. Urban informal sector information: needs and methods. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. International Labour Office. 1991. The dilemma of the informal sector, report of the DirectorGeneral—Part I. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO.

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International Labour Organization. 1972. Employment, incomes and equality: a strategy for increasing productive employment in Kenya. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. International Labour Organization. 1985. Informal sector in Africa. Addis Ababa: JASPA. Jarousse, J.; Mingat, A. 1990. Training, income and operation of the formal and informal labour markets in Africa: the case of Niger. Dijon, France: CNRS/IREDU/Université de Dijon. King, K. 1977. The African artisan: employment and the informal sector in Kenya. London: Heinemann. King, K. 1989. Training for the urban informal sector in developing countries: issues for practitioners. In: Fluitman, F., ed. Training for work in the informal sector. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. King, K. 1996. Jua Kali Kenya: change & development in an informal economy. London: James Currey; Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. King, K.; Abuodha, C. 1991. The building of an industrial society: change and development in Kenya’s informal (jua kali) sector, 1972 to 1991, a summary report. Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh. (An occasional paper of the Centre of African Studies.) Lockheed, M.E.; Verspoor, A.M. 1990. Improving primary education in developing countries: a review of policy options. Washington, DC: The World Bank. (Draft prepared for limited distribution to the participants at the World Conference on Education for All, Jomtien, Thailand, 5–9 March 1990.) McLaughlin, S.D. 1979. The wayside mechanic: an analysis of skill acquisition in Ghana. Amherst, MA: Center for International Education, University of Massachusetts. McLaughlin, S.D. 1989. Skill training for the informal sector: analyzing the success and limitations of support programs. Washington, DC: The World Bank. (PHREE/89/05.) Marsden, K. 1990. African entrepreneurs: pioneers of development. Washington, DC: International Finance Corporation, World Bank. (Discussion paper, no. 9.) Middleton, J.; Ziderman, A.; Van Adams, A. 1993. Skills for productivity: vocational education and training in developing countries. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Moser, C. 1978. Informal sector or petty production: dualism or dependence in urban development. World development, vol. 6, no. 9. Muskin, J.A. 1991. Primary schooling and the informal economic sector of Côte d’Ivoire. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania. [Doctoral dissertation.] Muskin, J.A. 1997. Becoming an independent entrepreneur in the informal sector of northern Côte d’Ivoire: what role can primary schooling play? International journal of educational development, vol. 17, pp. 265–83. Nolutshungu, S.C. 1996. Limits of anarchy: intervention and State formation in Chad. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia. Ouadoua, O. 1996. La Guerre Civile au Tchad de 1979 a` nos jours et ses conséquences sur les structures politiques, sociales et e´ conomiques. [Unpublished monograph.] Panhuys, H.F. van. 1990. La promotion du secteur informel Tchadien: bilan-diagnostic et propositions d’appui. (Mission report for the International Labour Organization and the Ministère du Plan et de la Coopération, Chad.) Peattie, L. 1987. An idea in good currency and how it grew: the informal sector. World development, vol. 15, no. 7, pp. 851–60. Peil, M. 1970. The apprenticeship system in Accra. Africa, vol. 40, pp. 137–50. Peil, M. 1979. West African urban craftsmen. The journal of developing areas, vol. 14, pp. 3–22. Rathgeber, E. No date. Education and employment in the informal sector: a review of some recent African research. Ottawa: IDRC. [Mimeo.] United Nations. 1996. Demographic yearbook, 1994. New York, NY: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. United Nations Development Programme. 1995. Human development report. New York, NY: UNDP. Webster, L.; Fidler, P., eds. 1996. The informal sector and microfinance institutions in West Africa. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Wilson, D. 1996. Reform of vocational and technical education in Latin America. Washington, DC: Inter-American Dialogue. (PREAL Occasional paper series, no. 2.)

Chapter II.3

The Traditional Informal Apprenticeship System of West Africa as Preparation for Work William Ahadzie

1 Introduction The traditional apprenticeship system in West Africa is gradually beginning to attract increasing interest not only for academic research and in professional disciplines but also as an active policy issue. This is not surprising given that this system has proved to be an enduring and an effective source of skills for much of West Africa. But its resilience is also attributable to its positive association with the equally pervasive informal sector of West African economies. Perhaps a more engaging argument for the resurgence of interest in traditional apprenticeship is the inability of formal systems to deliver the types of skills that are required to ensure employability of the ever-increasing new labour market entrants and to contribute to overall poverty reduction (Fluitman, 2005). This chapter examines the nature of traditional apprenticeship in West Africa from both historical and current perspectives. It focuses on a number of pertinent issues. These include: (a) describing the genre of apprenticeship systems operating in West Africa, both in the formal and the informal milieux and how these interact with each other; (b) the social background of apprentices and craftsmen; (c) the conditions under which apprenticeship occurs; (d) the impact of kinship ties in the functioning of the apprenticeship system; (e) the gender dimensions of apprenticeship; and (f) the factors that inhibit the efficient operation of the traditional apprenticeship system. The bulk of the material in this chapter comes from a review of the existing literature. The remaining part is from a survey on informal apprenticeship undertaken by the author in Ghana.

2 Conceptual Considerations Socialization is a lifelong process (Parsons, 1951, p. 208). Therefore, socialization experienced by a person in childhood is not sufficient to enable him or her to play all the roles expected in later years. Primary socialization creates the basic structure of personality. To this must be added secondary socialization processes that provide the context in which, through imitation, the individual’s role R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 II.3, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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behaviour is influenced (Musgrave 1967, p. 18). Many young people come into apprenticeship already equipped with elements of primary socialization and therefore undergo behaviour change associated with secondary socialization. The socializing process of the apprenticeship system seeks to prepare them for adequate performance of their social roles under some implicit assumptions. These individuals are perceived as moving along normal developmental gradients and it is generally assumed that they are motivated to change and that the essential task is to provide the appropriate learning opportunities. Other conditions in most of their life situations are generally presumed benign and are unlikely to impede their development. This perspective of the conceptual framework is anchored on this explanation. Thus, the concept of occupational socialization involves not only imparting specific job-related skills to a person, but also teaching a set of values and ethics that applies to his or her work and the unofficial rules that new entrants and senior workers in an organization are expected to observe in relating to one another (Calhoun, Light & Keller, 1994, p. 122). Merton (1957, p. 41) had earlier described occupational socialization as the process through which the neophyte is transformed into a regular member of a profession. Oyeneye (1979) provides an illustration of this process of transformation by stating that after a neophyte has been recruited, he/she starts to learn the necessary skills and techniques peculiar to his/her future occupation. Through contacts with senior members in the occupation, colleagues and clients, the neophyte begins to identify himself/herself with the work, developing an occupational self-image. The transformation process is usually conceived in terms of stages along a career path on which the neophyte is evaluated regularly and given increasingly difficult tasks as he/she continues his/her training. Such evaluations are based on the mastery of extrinsic skills and techniques related to the work and a set of intrinsic qualities that the neophyte is expected to show as an aspiring member of that occupation. The process is completed when the neophyte is fully accepted into the community of practice.

3 The Development of Traditional Apprenticeships The historical development of apprenticeship in West Africa shows a different trajectory from that of the systems in Europe and elsewhere. Lane’s (1996) historical account of the English system suggests that apprenticeship in England was regulated initially by guilds and later through legislation. She notes that the most enduring piece of legislation on apprenticeship in England was the Statute of Artificers formulated in 1563 from the rules of the mediaeval craft guilds. The act was intended to control apprentices’ status, training and personal freedom until the term was complete; they were to be dependent on their masters for the essentials of life (food, shelter, clothes) and to live with the master as part of the family. Lane’s (1996) account suggests that the English apprenticeship system collapsed during the late nineteenth century.

II.3 The Traditional Informal Apprenticeship System of West Africa

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The source of apprenticeship in West Africa is to be found in the form of institutions that have evolved to solve the problems of training in a society where technology is essentially static. In discussing the philosophical foundations of what they term indigenous education, Bray, Clarke and Stephens (1986) argue that African philosophy tends to define people in terms of the social context to which they belong. In this sense, one cannot deliver effective education to an individual without establishing a direct link between the goals and content of education and community aspirations (Ocitti, 1993, p. 36). Quoting Durkheim, Bray et al. (1986, p. 103) assert that a great deal of the content of indigenous education consists of moral education. Morality here is a system of rules and actions that predetermine conduct. An essential element of morality is the spirit of discipline, which in turn presupposes the existence of organization and authority. To act morally is to act in the light of a collective interest, since the domain of the moral is indistinguishable from the social domain. Indigenous education, however, has not only been concerned with the systematic socialization of the younger generation into the norms, religious and moral beliefs and collective opinions of the wider society. It also placed a very strong emphasis on learning practical skills. It was not considered sufficient to develop a set of social goals for the education system. The institutions and modes of transmission of knowledge were regarded as equally important. The operation of secret societies is not significantly dissimilar to that of the training of religious specialists and occupational skills. The Fon of Benin and the Creoles, Mendes, Temnes, Konos and Sherbros of Sierra Leone (Bray et al., 1986) have a long history of using secret societies for training. In Benin, priests and mediums are taken into isolated and remote training centres, similar to seminaries and convents in orthodox Christian faiths, and are transformed into new personalities. The transformation involves the learning of a new language or dialect, the assumption of a new name and the shaving of the hair. Bray et al. (1986, p. 106) note that, in addition to religious instruction, the recruits learn practical skills like how to make priestly garments and such items as necklaces, mats and baskets for sale to the common people. They are also given extensive training in the healing powers of herbs, plants and roots. This is intended to make them apply spiritual and material healing principles in the treatment of the sick. A traditional doctor is expected to use not only his familiarity with the healing properties of plants, herbs and roots, but also his knowledge of the spiritual universe that enables him, among other things, to release the hidden powers of the medicine. Training such diviners can stretch over a considerable period of time. Among other things, these cases underscore the inter-generational linkages that the institution of education creates. The transmission of appropriate attitudes, beliefs, rituals, work ethics, skills and communal attitudes makes the institution a force of social integration and cohesion (Bray et al., 1986, p. 112). Such purely traditional forms of education and training are no longer as pervasive as they were many years ago. Processes of social change provoked by colonial experiences have altered the nature of society that allowed such forms of education

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to flourish. In the place of these indigenous training agents appeared the type of traditional apprenticeship systems we find in most West African countries today. These systems have assumed many of the socializing functions of the indigenous educators. Current cultural induction and instructional practices that combine skill training with moral upbringing take their source from the indigenous education systems.

4 The Types and Nature of Apprenticeship 4.1 Formal Training A wide range of training systems in West Africa operate in both formal and informal settings. Acquiring skills in these diverse systems is conditioned by different sets of factors. Formal training systems are largely supply-driven and ‘without knowledge of or concern for labour market realities’ (Fluitman, 2005). They tend to target the wage sector and they are offered mostly at job-entry level; they are essentially pre-service types of training. Other variants include in-service training for workers. Formal training systems are time and occupation-bound as, for instance, a three-year course in masonry in a technical institute. Institutions offering formal training are both government-sponsored and private-for-profit institutions. The current formal training system in West Africa has been unable to deliver the skills in demand on the labour market and therefore has not made any considerable contribution towards eliminating youth unemployment. Its marginal effect on the employment situation derives from a number of factors. First, formal training lacks relevance and has not been able to address the realities of the low absorptive capacity of the wage sector, under-employment and low performance at the work place. Links between training institutions and potential users of skills are weak or non-existent and therefore generate no feedback. Second, organized training is accessible to a relatively small number of those who need it. The limited coverage also means, in effect, that in-service training opportunities do not exist for people in employment to upgrade their skills. An equally important factor that has reduced the effectiveness of formal training in increasing employment rates concerns equity. Access by different social groups is unequal. Disadvantaged groups, such as women and the disabled, encounter social barriers as they seek access to organized training. The generally low educational backgrounds of women and girls places them at a disadvantage in their bid to secure formal training. The fourth point is the low quality of training offered in formal institutions. Achieving quality training requires sufficient qualified instructors, adequate and appropriate training materials and high student participation rates. Even though per capita costs are relatively higher in training institutions than in schools, the figures show a more rapid decline in financial allocations to formal TVET institutions. This affects the maintenance of equipment and the purchase of training materials, leading to the compromising of practical training. Inadequate investments in instructor


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training and in maintaining salaries at competitive levels have caused a migration of staff to industry. All this translates into poorly prepared trainees. Formal training remains a major agency to deliver the manpower requirements of modern industry and to spearhead the drive to bridge the digital divide, as well as for the promotion of information and communications technology. But its impact on the labour market, however, is slight. The gap is filled by the enterprise-based training that occurs in the traditional informal apprenticeship system.

5 The Traditional Apprenticeship System 5.1 Common Features The traditional apprenticeship system accounts for the largest proportion of skills acquisition in the informal sector in West Africa. The World Bank (1993, p. 8) estimates that approximately 55% of informal sector operators acquired their skills from informal apprenticeship. The estimate is 84% for French-speaking West Africa. In spite of linguistic and geographical differences, traditional informal apprenticeship systems in West Africa show similar basic characteristics, as follows:1

r r r r r r r r

Apprenticeship emphasizes a hands-on, practical approach to training. Apprentices learn their craft by observing then imitating the master-craftsman at work. Apprenticeship is offered in traditional trades, such as tin-, gold- or blacksmithing, leather work, weaving, and ‘modern’ trades such as auto-mechanics, carpentry, welding, etc. Apprentices begin work on simple tasks and move on to more complex tasks when basic skills are mastered. Trainees work with master craftsmen for an unspecified length of time that can vary, depending on the context. Training in the informal sector is product specific; apprentices may not learn the whole spectrum of skills associated with a craft, but rather the discrete steps involved in making a product. Because many trainees do not learn a craft completely, they are considered semiskilled at best after completing traditional apprenticeships. Apprentices receive little or no remuneration (some pay a fee to the entrepreneurs), although some are provided with meals and shelter.

5.2 Social Background of Apprentices The system recruits its trainees broadly from low-income groups. For these people, apprenticeship is the best way of achieving self-employment. It also serves as a vehicle for social mobility. This is more evident in the traditional crafts that are situated within specific rural communities of one or two dominant ethnic groups. Closely

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related to the low-income background of apprentices is the matter of educational qualification. Even though the trend points to apprentices having increasing levels of educational qualifications at the point of entry, the general levels are still low. A third of those in apprenticeship dropped out of basic education as a result of many factors, including poverty. It is difficult to claim that the 51% who have completed basic education possess sufficient literacy and numeracy skills to enable them to assimilate types of knowledge that new changes in technology are introducing. Entry into apprenticeship does not follow from success in the basic education system. On the contrary, apprenticeship appears to be responding rather to the weakness of the education system. Articulation between basic education and traditional apprenticeship has become an enforced link instead of an officially formulated one. A weak basic education system, therefore, undermines the rate and quality of knowledge and skill absorption in the traditional apprenticeship system. The importance of education in skill-building was emphasized by the mastercraftsmen themselves. Poor as the quality of educational attainment of apprentices is, education features significantly in the decision of craftsmen to recruit apprentices. Some 64% of entrepreneurs prefer to recruit apprentices who have completed basic education. This is particularly true for modern crafts. What they are essentially looking for is the ability of an apprentice to reason and work out solutions to a problem rapidly with minimal supervision. As basic education becomes universalized, the training system will benefit from recruiting only educated apprentices.

5.3 Age of Apprentices Like that of the craftsmen, the age of entry into apprenticeship is also rising slowly. The upward shift of the average age of entry has not only resulted from both legal and constitutional provisions, but also from changing expectations and cultural practices. The practice of recruiting children at a very early age into apprenticeship has been surpassed by the desire of parents to raise literate children and also by the growing aspirations of children themselves to acquire higher levels of education. Even in the largely traditional Kente weaving setting of Bonwire, where tradition upholds the early introduction of children into adulthood, the emphasis on children acquiring education prior to entering into apprenticeship is becoming widespread.

5.4 Recruitment Processes The recruitment process is a cost-effective system based more on a referral system than on a commercially driven arrangement. In both the traditional and modern crafts, apprentices are recruited mostly through personal contacts. The differences between the methods of recruitment are in the degree of openness. In the traditional crafts, masters tend to recruit apprentices whose sponsors they know, or whom they


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are related to. Craftsmen are wary of the social sanctions that would come in the form of product/service boycott if they accepted a ‘stranger’ apprentice over the one recommended or introduced by a member of the lineage or the larger ethnic group. In contrast, recruitment for the modern crafts operates on more open principles. Recruitment is dictated by factors other than consanguinity and social pressure. The possession of a specified minimum level of education and financial resources are key considerations. As a secondary agent of socialization, the apprenticeship system has evolved practices that initiate novices into the craft and facilitate the internalization of knowledge, attitudes and skills throughout the apprenticeship period. Induction of initiates in some crafts involves a ritual that is characterized by a combination of solemnity, festivity, celebratory activities and legitimization processes. It has assumed the form of a rite of passage offering the young apprentice a transition into adulthood. The mark of religiosity reflects expectations of divine presence in the transfer of skills from the master to the apprentice. That attribute also functions as a means of social control. Consenting to abide by the rules spelt out during the induction ceremony is considered a serious commitment, especially if it is accompanied by invocations expressed in an esoteric language. The process strikes terror into new recruits in the apprenticeship system. Compared to formal training programmes, drop-out rates in traditional apprenticeship are very low. The use of traditional conflict resolution approaches and the fear of stigmatization account for the high persistence rates in this form of skill acquisition. Even in situations where the master has abandoned the induction ceremony in favour of a cash payment from the apprentice, a time is set aside to orientate the apprentice to the demands of training and the expected conduct. For traditional crafts, the induction ceremony presents an opportunity for reaching verbal agreements. And these, by all accounts, are as binding as the agreements made during admission rituals. Inculcating the fear of the supernatural into a neophyte is an attempt to reinforce the forms of religious worldview that the apprentice received during the period of primary socialization at home and in the larger community.

5.5 Contracts and Fees The making of a formal written contract is largely limited to modern crafts where the relationship between the craftsmen and the apprentice is not based on blood ties. The types of written contracts examined during this study are intended to bond the apprentices to the craftsman. They contain no clauses stating the content or substance of training and, in some cases, not even the actual duration of training. A lot of discretionary authority has therefore been assumed by the craftsman. An equally significant weakness of the written contracts for the informal sector is the fact that these documents do not have the type of legal backing that formal sector apprenticeship contracts have. This makes the former largely unenforceable in courts of law. Even if they could constitute the basis of litigation, there are several alternative

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traditional mechanisms that are easily invoked to resolve training disputes, therefore rendering the written contract null and void. Above all, there is the view that the master is infallible. In this sense, the apprentice is obliged in all cases of dispute to submit to the authority of the master. Violations of written contracts as a result of the unassailable position of the craftsman do not make the contract work in the interest of the entire apprenticeship system. Weaknesses in contractual arrangements have resulted in arbitrariness with respect to the charging of fees, the duration of apprenticeship and the substance of training. This study found that the fees charged are a function of several factors, including the type of craft, the disposition or financial expectations of the craftsman, the geographical location of the training setting, and the relationship between the master and the apprentice. It may also be noted that the craft associations are beginning to assume a major role in setting the upper limits for the fees that may be charged. Craftsmen are left with the discretion of charging the full fees or revised rates. Generally, fees for traditional crafts, with the exception of gold-smithing, are lower than those charged for modern crafts. In Bolga and Tamale, most apprentices hardly paid any fees at all. There was rather an up-front contribution that came in the form of the items requested for the induction ceremony. The non-payment of fees is explained by the fact that the apprentices and masters are of the same lineage. The inheritance factor becomes the driver of the training relationship. In these contexts also, the master acts in loco parentis, in the sense that the apprentice stays in the same house with the master and provides household services, as a child would do for his parents. For modern crafts, fee-paying is still widespread. Craftsmen in the modern crafts consider training as a complementary income-generating venture and therefore do not waive the payment of fees. Where the apprentices are too poor to pay the initial deposit, he or she is nonetheless taken in on a mutually agreed payment schedule. The arrangement of providing apprentices with feeding allowances during the entire training period appears to work for the benefit of the apprentice. Alongside the fear instilled in apprentices during the induction ceremony to ensure completion of the apprenticeship, the feeding allowance is another inducement for persistence. The cost of food received by apprentices during the entire training period ultimately exceeds the nominal amount paid as fees. This is especially so when the craftsman has also provided the apprentices with tools. The exact levels of excess for the different crafts have not yet been empirically established but, given the observations made, it can be asserted that the feeding allowance, the tools and even the time expended in instructing apprentices represent a recuperation of the apprenticeship fee by most apprentices. This, in effect, means that it is the craftsman who subsidizes training. If the fees vary, the working conditions are just as diverse. This study has found that the working conditions of apprentices are problematic. Working hours are long and unregulated and therefore give extensive latitude to entrepreneurs to exploit the labour of apprentices. On average, apprentices work close to ten hours per day. For the new apprentice, a lot of the day’s work includes valet and other services for the craftsman and senior apprentices. This reduces the actual time-on-task to about a


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tenth in the first six months when the apprentice is under probation. Much as this may remotely have some justification, it exerts an adverse effect on the duration of apprenticeship and the amount of knowledge that is internalized. There is thus an inverse relationship between the amount of valet services rendered and the level of competence attained.

5.6 The Working Environment The physical working environment also poses health and safety risks to both apprentices and masters. The working environment is totally devoid of any ergonomic considerations, a factor that accounts for the high annual rate of ill health suffered by apprentices. Lack of protective clothing has led to injuries (in some cases, permanent disability) by apprentices. It has also been found that the gender-neutral facilities provided at the workshop inhibit access by girls to non-traditional vocations. The poor physical environment reduces the effectiveness of instruction and therefore fails to enhance optimization of skill acquisition.

5.7 Instructional Approaches The study has found that the instructional process itself does not conform to the sequenced pedagogical approaches that facilitate skill training in the technical and vocational training system. The most common approach to skill acquisition revolves around observation, imitation and later repetition. This closed-circuit approach to training derives from the fact that the pedagogical knowledge of master-craftsmen is in-bred and therefore is incapable of expanding beyond the system’s limits. Apart from the lack of pedagogical skills, the typically haphazard training also derives from the absence of training standards and training guides for most informal sector crafts throughout the sub-region. In Ghana, craftsmen in dressmaking, tailoring, electrical installations, especially those with some level of education, were found to be using a training curriculum that had been adapted from those of the National Vocational Training Institute and the Ghana Educational Service, either by the craftsmen themselves or by their trade associations. The need to train to given standards is motivated by the fact that the apprentices in some of these crafts are encouraged to take trade tests administered by these institutions. The pass rate obtained by those apprentices who take the trade tests suggests some measure of internal quality control. For a training system that is hardly evaluated by external assessors, developing training standards that are amenable to regular review in response to changing technologies will increase its internal and external efficiencies.

5.8 The Socializing Role of Traditional Apprenticeship An important observation is the nature of occupational socialization for apprentices. In traditional crafts, the mechanisms employed are closer to those used for primary socialization, while in the modern crafts the tendency is towards those orientation

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practices used in formal bureaucratic organizations. Occupational socialization occurs in the concrete situation of the workplace, irrespective of the type of craft. Through anticipatory socialization, the apprentices acquire risk-bearing and management skills that are critical to entrepreneurship in the informal sector. Contrary to perceptions of a chaotic work environment in informal sector operations, this study found the existence in the traditional apprenticeship system of undocumented rules, regulations, procedures and patterns of social relationships that provide the means by which apprentices are made to share the common goals of the workshop. The attitudes and values appropriate to the roles and status they will acquire after completing training are obtained in real-life situations and are guided by these unwritten norms of the workplace. How much of it is internalized is dependent on the level of assertiveness of apprentices and on the openness of the workshop environment.

6 The Duration of Apprenticeship Unlike mediaeval Europe, where the Statute of Artificers regulated the duration of apprenticeship, the length of apprenticeship in West Africa is influenced by age, the ability of the apprentice to assimilate lessons and achieve skill competence, the length of the probationary period, the financial status of sponsors and by the specifications in written contracts concerning apprenticeship fees. Therefore, widespread variations in duration exist within and between the trades. In Table 1, the shortest average length of apprenticeship is twenty-eight months recorded for masonry and the longest is for gold-smithing. It took an average of sixty months to complete a full apprenticeship in gold-smithing. In a minority of cases, intelligence and respect for authority have a role to play in when an apprentice completes training. Smart apprentices are graduated within set training times. Apprentices perceived by the master to be of low or intermediate abilities, or who are slow learners, took longer to acquire skills. Usually, such apprentices are made to serve a probationary period of up to six months. During such times, the master’s temperament, the apprentices’ commitment to learn, punctuality and regularity at work are assessed. Good conduct but weak ability extends the length of training for some apprentices. Intelligent ones who exhibit problematic behaviour are either cautioned or eventually expelled before the agreed training

Table 1 Duration of apprenticeship in Ghana Trade

Duration in months

Trade

Duration in months

Weaving Leatherwork Blacksmithing Gold-smithing Gun-smithing Welding

34.3 36 54 60 57.1 39.2

Auto Mechanics Electrical Installation Carpentry Masonry Tailoring Dressmaking

40.1 41.3 36.1 28 30.5 36.1

Source: Ghana Statistical Service, 2000.


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duration is reached. Cases have been noted in which craftsmen have been asked by sponsors of apprentices to extend completion as a result of inability to meet completion costs. The observation here is that where written indentures are absent, the duration of apprenticeship among apprentices learning the same craft can vary greatly. Even where written contracts with fixed training duration are entered into, only a few masters graduated their apprentices within the stated periods.

6.1 The Completion Phase Some mysticism is attached to the disengagement of apprentices from a master. Throughout West Africa the belief is held that craft practice for a newly qualified craftsman would be unsuccessful if he or she did not undergo graduation rites or if he or she absconded without permission. Graduation or passing-out ceremonies, during which rituals are performed, are these days being commuted to a cash payment by some craftsmen or are performed by others without any religious observances. In such instances, they take the form of purely secular celebrations signifying the acceptance of the apprentice into the craft as an independent member. Where it is held, the graduation ceremony is usually a time for feasting and merry-making. It has social significance for the apprentice, but also creates a nostalgic environment for the craftsman himself. Food and drinks are provided by the apprentice and his sponsors for all the invited guests. The guest list includes family, friends, other craftsmen, members of trade associations or craft guilds and the general public. Prayers are offered by any member of the clergy present—imam, guild head or an elder. The high point of the ceremony occurs when the master confers his blessings and well wishes on the new craftsman. At this point the latter is formally ‘freed’ or ‘unbound’ by his master of many years. If he exhibited good conduct and diligence during training, he may receive a gift of working tools and/or a cash donation from his master as a parting gift. These are intended to help him start off as an independent craftsman. Certificates are not given in the traditional crafts, especially where the apprentice is a member of the family lineage. But for modern crafts, it is at this time that the graduate is presented with a certificate. Those who take external trade tests also receive their certificates at this ceremony (if the certificates are ready!). The certificate bears the name of the apprentice, the number of years spent in training, a photograph, his signature and that of his master.

6.2 Beyond Training Two options are open to the newly qualified craftsman: starting out as an independent craftsman; or seeking wage employment. As much as 69.4% of apprentices expressed interest in starting their own business once they completed apprenticeship.

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Almost 19% intended to seek wage employment outside their immediate locality. Some 11% indicated they would stay with their masters for up to two years to ‘master the job’. Of those making up this last group, the bulk (82%) were in automechanics, welding and electrical installation. This is understandable given that the graduating craftsmen may not have learnt how to deal with all the conceivable problems they would encounter in actual practice. The remaining 18% is made up of apprentices in gold-smithing and gun-smithing. The findings, however, show that more than 43% of apprentices continue to serve as journeymen with their masters for average periods of three years. High start-up costs, the unavailability of land and hostile planning policies tend to obstruct the ability of newly qualified craftsmen to set up on their own. A tracer study will yield detailed information about the time taken to transit from graduation to establishment as an independent craftsman.

7 Policy Implications Policy intervention can affect the apprenticeship system externally or affect the training domain. Expanding the traditional apprenticeship system depends on pursuing policies that reduce the costs of training and improve access to credit, raw materials, technology and markets for the craftsmen. These are beyond the immediate control of the craftsmen themselves. The responsibility to formulate such policies falls essentially on State and non-State actors outside the apprenticeship system. Collaboration among all partners will create the appropriate policy intervention for expanding the training system. A major policy intervention that can guarantee the survival of the apprenticeship system is the removal of the constant threat of eviction or police harassment for craftsmen who have violated planning laws in the locations of their workshops. A third policy intervention that is exogenous and yet related to the traditional apprenticeship system is that of improving the efficiency of the national basic education system. It has been argued that adding vocational elements to primary school curricula or ensuring that basic education school-leavers are literate and numerate is the best way of preparing them for further training and also making them ready for the world of work. The second category of policy interventions occurs within the domain of training. Here, the emphasis is on the formulation of comprehensive national policies on technical and vocational training. Existing policies are fragmented and limited in scope. So far, the formal training sub-sector attracts the largest proportion of government support. This supply-driven system is exclusive, inefficient and unresponsive to labour-market needs. A national training policy should be all-embracing. Fluitman (1989, p. 211) states that policy intervention in the apprenticeship system would be successful if it paid attention to:

r r

Addressing the specific needs of the apprentices and master-craftsmen; Promoting a hospitable working environment through reducing all forms of hostility to informal sector operations;


r r r r r r

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Introducing a system and mechanisms that would facilitate co-ordination and linkages between the formal and informal sectors of the economy; Creating opportunities for intended beneficiaries to be part of the decisionmaking process; Promoting the technological advancement of the informal sector, which in turn will drive the apprenticeship system; Supporting the development of training standards for the apprenticeship system; Creating the appropriate legal and institutional structures to support the traditional apprenticeship system; Facilitating access to post-training support that encourages easy start-up of businesses.

8 Recommendations The recommendations here suggest a re-engineering of existing institutional, legal, financial and instructional arrangements in lieu of promulgating an entirely new national policy on the development of the apprenticeship system. The following could be seen as short-term measures. Institutional reforms: The stigmatization of vocational training as being reserved for the academically weak needs to be changed through a sustained civic education campaign. Legislative changes: The existing legislative instrument should be revised to contain clear provisions empowering the National Apprenticeship Council to mobilize resources to encourage, promote and facilitate the formation of functional national trade associations in support of the informal sector; Pedagogy related reforms: The problems of relevance of the curriculum, instructional methods and instructor quality and quantity can be solved in the long-term if current approaches are changed. Occupational standards: It is recommended that, in order to achieve standardization in training across the country, occupational standards should be developed for crafts in the traditional apprenticeship system. Such an approach will eliminate the problems of variable training standards. The stakeholders include industry, employers’ associations and trade associations among others. Some workshops should be identified and developed into centres of excellence in all districts and used to validate training standards. A programme of training in pedagogy should be introduced to improve the instructional abilities of craftsmen in the informal sector. Government regulations on apprentice training should be made available to all craftsmen. Financial reforms: Traditional apprenticeship should benefit from governmental funding. The sources of funding for both the public and private training systems should be diversified through a continuing search for innovative funding mechanisms. A tax-exempt training levy system is recommended for

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national adoption. Resources should be mobilized from both local and international sources for the development of the sector. In-depth studies providing the basis for identifying and assessing the key needs of the sector should be undertaken.

9 The Research Agenda In spite of the findings of this and other studies, a lot remains to be learned about the traditional apprenticeship system. A comprehensive policy on the system will require more detailed information on key aspects of its operation than is currently available. Given the existing emphasis on employment generation, there is a need to undertake studies on the transition between acquiring skills and entry into selfemployment. A tracer study of apprentices who completed training within a cut-off period would be an appropriate approach. Such a study will establish not only the factors that promote or inhibit entrepreneurship, but also give an indication of transition rates between the completion of apprenticeship and becoming a craftsman. The intervening factors will be useful in formulating policy on bridging the time and resource gaps. Closely associated with the above is a study on the causes of the high mortality rates in micro-enterprises in the informal economy. The factors may be exogenous or endogenous. The results will also help in identifying the specific policy initiatives that should be pursued to prevent early exit from micro-enterprises. Such premature deaths reduce training opportunities for young people. A major area of focused study in the apprenticeship system is that of the content of training by trade. It will be useful to undertake a study of the set of skills delivered by each craft. Such a study will aid policy-makers in determining what the shortcomings are and what is needed to offer standardized training for apprentices in the informal sector. It will help in recommending how much the average skill-acquisition time should be. One major area that requires continuous research is that of females in apprenticeship. Traditional apprenticeship is still male dominated and the current conditions under which apprenticeship is offered to girls outside the traditional female crafts are not favourable. Obstacles derive both from cultural perceptions and physical barriers. Studies into the traditional apprenticeship system should not be sporadic and driven by the research interest of individuals. In the face of the need to reach development paradigms that are founded on indigenous institutional and cultural practices, studies into apprenticeship should be undertaken at the institutional level over time. Panel data are required to give a broader picture of the operations of the system.

Note 1. This is taken from <www.adeanet.org/wgnfe/publications/abel/abel3.html>


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References Bray, M.; Clarke, P.; Stephens, D. 1986. Education and society in Africa. London: Edward Arnold. Calhoun, C.; Light, D.; Keller, S. 1994. Sociology, 6th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Fluitman, F., ed. 1989. Training for work in the informal sector. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Fluitman, F. 2005. Poverty reduction, decent work and the skill it takes. In: Beveridge, M. et al., eds. Reintegrating education and skills and work in Africa. Edinburgh, UK: Centre for African Studies. Ghana Statistical Service. 2000. Ghana living standards survey: report of the fourth round. Accra. Lane, J. 1996. Apprenticeship in England, 1600–1914. London: UCL Press. Merton, R.K. 1957. Social theory and social structure. New York, NY: The Free Press. Musgrave, P.W. 1967. Towards a sociological theory of occupational choice. The sociological review, vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 33–46. Ocitti, J.P. 1993. An introduction to indigenous education in East Africa. Bonn, Germany: Institut für Internationale Zusammenarbeit des Deutschen Volkshochschul-Verbandes. Oyeneye, O.Y. 1979. The role of education in development with particular reference to the apprenticeship system in Nigeria’s informal sector. Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham. [Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation.] Parsons, T. 1951. The social system. New York, NY: The Free Press. World Bank. 1993. Ghana 2000 and beyond. Washington, DC: World Bank.


Chapter II.4

Initiatives to Link TVET to Self-Employment in Ghana Robert Palmer

1 Introduction In Ghana the main system for technical and vocational education and training (TVET)1 for self-employment is the traditional apprenticeship system. Then there is the school system with its vocationalized aspirations; the long-standing political and policy concern over the high levels of youth unemployment have led to repeated attempts by the government to make the education system more orientated to the world of work by promoting school-based TVET (Palmer, 2006b). In addition, there have been other attempts, though with less longevity, to provide long-term pre-employment skills training in vocational training institutes (VTIs), short-term skills-upgrading for traditional apprentices and master-craftsmen, and short-term skills training for the ‘unemployed’. The long-term schemes parallel, for example, Kenya’s Youth Polytechnics or the Botswana Brigades, and the short-term schemes parallel any number of short-term emergency initiatives aiming to transfer skills for self-employment quickly. This chapter will analyse briefly some of these initiatives that have attempted to link TVET to self-employment in Ghana, and will assume the following structure. First, we will briefly examine the history of attempts in Ghana to link education to self-employed work by making the school curriculum more vocational. We will note that since the mid-nineteenth century there have been repeated attempts to promote TVET as a major solution to youth unemployment. Second, we examine an example of a long-term (three year) pre-employment vocational training programme; the Integrated Community Centres for Employable Skills (ICCES). We will note that the ICCES programme has remained on the sideline of Ghana’s TVET system almost ever since it was initiated in the late 1980s. Today, the training delivery context of ICCES is poor and graduates’ employment outcomes are disabled through lack of post-training support. Nonetheless, many graduates are working, though usually in low-end informal micro-enterprise activities and often not using the skills they have acquired. Third, we examine an example of a short-term skills training programme; the Skills Training and Entrepreneurship Programme (STEP) which was initiated in Ghana as a result of an unemployment exercise in late 2001 and has provided some


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25,000 people with skills. However, having suffered a series of set-backs it has since been ended ahead of time. Finally, we conclude that one of the key problems faced by graduates of selfemployment orientated TVET programmes, like ICCES and STEP, is that it is often difficult to utilise productively skills that have been acquired through training, and that more enabling environments need to be promoted, especially for informal micro-enterprises in rural areas.

2 The Historical Framework of Linking Education to the World of Work Philip Foster’s classic Education and social change in Ghana (Foster, 1965a) examines over 100 years of educational reforms and showed that in Ghana since the late nineteenth century there have been repeated attempts to promote school-based technical, vocational and agricultural education as a ‘solution’ to unemployment (particularly of young school-leavers). In fact, since the 1847 Education Committee of the Privy Council, there were repeated attempts in British colonial educational policy in Africa to make the school curriculum less ‘bookish’ and more relevant to the world of work. Since the publication of Foster’s monograph in 1965, there have been four further attempts to reorient the education system better towards employment, and particularly self-employment. The 1966 Kwapong Educational Review Committee, the 1972 Dzobo Educational Reform Committee and the 1986 Evans Anfom Committee and, most recently, the 2004 White Paper on Education Reforms all sought to make the school curriculum more relevant to work (Palmer, 2005, 2006b). The underlying assumption of the Ghanaian skills development agenda has been the provision of vocational skills to young people—making them employable, equipping them with the skill and know-how to enter and/or progress in selfemployment and, ultimately, reducing poverty through raised incomes. But there is really very little research evidence to back up this optimism. Indeed, internationally, there is not a great deal of evidence linking skills training with poverty reduction and/or growth.2 For example, the assumption that by orientating the curriculum more towards vocational subjects graduates will be more ‘employable’ and be able to access work opportunities more easily was a main reason behind the vocationalization of the junior secondary school in the 1986/87 reform (Palmer, 2005, 2006b,). Nevertheless, as we note above, there is little evidence to back up this assumption. In a discussion of the vocationalization of the junior secondary school, Akyeampong comments that he: did not find empirical studies conducted in Ghana that support the economic benefit argument of vocationalization of the secondary school curriculum—for preparing students for paid and self-employment. Many simply assume this to be the case—an assumption which is firmly imbedded in the discourse of TVE in Ghana at both school and policy level (Akyeampong, 2005, p. 9).

II.4 Initiatives to Link TVET to Self-Employment in Ghana

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The most recent educational reform in Ghana, as outlined in the White Paper on the Report of The Education Reform Review Committee (Government of Ghana, 2004a), outlines a number of changes to the education system and carries the implicit assumption that something must have gone wrong with Ghana’s education and training system—that is why there are so many unemployed school graduates (Palmer, 2005). Among other things, the White Paper proposes to extend senior secondary school from three to four years and diversify it into four streams: vocational, technical, agricultural and general education (cf. Palmer, 2005). The government, in the planned diversification of senior secondary school level and the attempts at providing skills for youth (e.g. ICCES and STEP), is following the same logic as it has in the past: providing skills to young people will lessen problems of under-/unemployment. Those skills programmes that have been evaluated were externally funded, like the World Bank’s Vocational Skills and Informal Sector Support Project (VSP) (1995–2000), which was focused on skills upgrading for master-craftsmen and traditional apprentices (Palmer, 2007, 2006b). In contrast to these donor-evaluated projects, the majority of Ghanaian programmes that target self-employment creation in the informal sector have not been evaluated in depth. Two such government-funded skills programmes are the ICCES and STEP schemes, which we will examine in more depth below. The employment outcomes of both of these programmes have never been evaluated. The paradox of Ghanaian education is that, in spite of these repeated policy attempts to expand TVET, it remains weakly developed in practice. This has led some to observe that TVET has been neglected by the government. However, Foster (1965a) has argued that, in fact, it is not the government that has placed a low priority on school-based TVET, but the parents and students themselves. As noted, since 1847, there have been numerous white papers and reforms trying to promote TVET. But this has been countered by repeated efforts, on the part of the parents and youth, for a more general curriculum that could better access the emerging, if limited, occupational opportunities in the colonial exchange economy, or later in Ghana’s formal sector.3 While Gold Coast/Ghana educational policy, therefore, has been very much concerned with the development of technical and vocational skills training, public opinion and demand have shaped an education system that, in practice, has remained largely academic. While repeated attempts have been made to promote school-based TVET since the late nineteenth century, there has not been a similar emphasis on TVET delivered in VTIs or in on-the-job traditional apprenticeship training, although some projects have supported VTIs and on-the-job training. Nonetheless, the TVET system—as a whole—in Ghana today remains weak and disconnected (Palmer, 2005, 2006b). We will not discuss any further the many attempts that have been made to promote school-based TVET (promoted in the hope of orientating youth towards manual work), but rather the more recent efforts made at promoting pre-employment skills training in VTIs and short-term skills training for the ‘unemployed’. As we noted earlier, we shall examine two such programmes: the Integrated Community

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Centres for Employable Skills (ICCES); and the more recent Skills Training and Entrepreneurship Programme (STEP). In each case we shall look at the history of these initiatives, their main objectives and scope, the problems that have been experienced and which have constrained the training delivery context, and what evidence there is, if any, on self-employment outcomes from these initiatives.4

3 Integrated Community Centres for Employable Skills Introduced in the late 1980s as part of recent educational reforms, the Integrated Community Centres for Employable Skills (ICCES) is now an agency under the Ministry of Manpower, Youth and Employment (MoMYE) comprising a network of about seventy, predominantly rural, vocational training centres around the country (cf. Palmer, 2006b). The central concept for ICCES has been to ‘train the youth [. . . ] with a view to making them employable, preferably self-employed within and around their own communities’ (ICCES, 1996, p. 5). ICCES offers students a three-year vocational course in traditional trades such as carpentry, masonry, dressmaking and hairdressing, and leads to a National Vocational Training Institute (NVTI) trade certificate. Illiterate/semi-literate ICCES students have the option of taking a non-written competency-based proficiency test with the NVTI. Trade teaching includes both practical and theoretical courses, supplemented by other subjects, principally mathematics, English, agriculture, public education and entrepreneurial skills. ICCES is essentially designed as pre-employment training for the informal economy and it is expected that students will become employed, mostly self-employed in enterprises, upon completion. In 1986 UNICEF supported the Ministry of Education (now the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports) in the establishment of twelve pilot ICCES centres around the country. Support was substantial during the UNICEF period, with this agency providing support for administration, equipment, workshops, transport and follow-up support. After the end of the UNICEF support in 1992, the government, lacking the financial resources to continue the level of support UNICEF had provided, turned over the funding of ICCES to the communities, essentially converting ICCES into a network of community-supported VTIs. The ministry took on a facilitating role, but gave very little financial support to centres. In passing ICCES over to the communities, the government essentially stripped back ICCES from its original form—the provision of training integrated with other support services—to the provision of training alone. In other words ICCES provides an interesting case of a heavily financed donor programme (which included post-training support and provision of tools in twelve pilot centres) that was later stripped of these features by the government, expanded nationwide (handed over to the communities) and has consequently become a quality-starved pre-employment provider offering training alone.


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In 1995 ICCES was moved to the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare (now the Ministry of Manpower, Youth and Employment). By the mid-1990s ICCES was in crisis—community support had dwindled; local artisans (recruited as trainers) were not being paid; and national service (i.e. military) personnel were brought in to fill the gap. In practice, the expected financial support from communities, chiefs and so on was not forthcoming and many centres collapsed. Those that survived had some form of external financing (e.g. the Ghana Education Service supporting Nerebehi ICCES, Ashanti) or had strong community links (e.g. Tetrefu ICCES, Ashanti). By 1998 about forty centres had collapsed. Between 1999 and 2001 ICCES centres around the country were in a very precarious position and, apart from receiving some tools from the directorate, very little government support was provided. Since January 2002 the government has become more involved in ICCES by starting to pay the salaries of instructors (but still with no other support for materials, running costs, etc.).5 ICCES is supposed to have a key role in the current government’s skills drive, with the stated intention of having at least one ICCES centre in all 117 districts of Ghana. Since 1986, ICCES has expanded from twelve to some sixty or seventy ICCES centres around Ghana, but they are still suffering severe quality constraints and have virtually no follow-up support. The practical training at ICCES centres usually takes place in situ at the training centre, but can sometimes involve on-the-job learning. This occurs either when the centre does not have enough material for practical lessons and the instructor takes some trainees away from the centre to help with his private work, or when the centre has an outside contract to work on. Centres are sometimes given contracts, usually by the District Assembly, to build a nearby school classroom block for example. In this case, the masonry and carpentry trainees would get some work experience outside the school setting. However, these contracts are infrequent. These opportunities, however, exclude the female ICCES trainees due to the nature of the work. Unlike traditional apprentices, therefore, ICCES trainees—especially if female—spend the majority of their time learning in an institution, far removed from the on-the-job training experiences apprentices should expect.6 ICCES centres suffer from a number of constraints that hinders the delivery of quality training. We shall note some of these below (see also Palmer, 2006b). The first constraint is lack of financial support from the government and lack of managerial competency on the part of the ICCES Directorate, leading to, sometimes acute, shortages of textbooks, as well as tools and materials for practical classes. As we noted above, since 2002 salaries have been paid by the government. However, remuneration is low and frequently delayed, leading to problems of recruiting and retaining qualified instructors. The government covers the salaries of five instructors per centre, but centres often have more than this number. Infrastructure, equipment and running costs are supposed to paid for by the collection of training fees and through funding partnerships between ICCES and other agencies. However, these funding partnerships are weak (Box 1) and the training fees collected are often insufficient.

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Box 1. Funding partnerships and ICCES running costs Despite being called the Integrated Community Centres for Employable Skills, ICCES as it operates at the moment might be more appropriately called the Independent Community Centres for Employable Skills; centres largely have to rely on their own initiative and skills to generate finance for running costs (other than salaries), equipment and infrastructure. Numerous ICCES centres around the country have received bilateral support from different organizations including: foreign embassy small-grants schemes (principally from the United Kingdom and Japan); the supply of expatriate volunteer teachers (from Britain’s VSO, Japan’s JOCV, SYTO and, formerly, the United States Peace Corps);∗ or other bilateral financing from ad hoc overseas trusts, or Ghanaian/International NGOs (e.g. World Vision). These bilateral partnerships might help to develop individual centres, but do little for the overall development and functioning of ICCES nationally. ICCES remains a very weak and chronically under-funded agency in Ghana. The ICCES Directorate should take the lead in co-ordinating partnership support to ICCES centres, but it lacks the capacity to do this. As a result of lack of guidance, support or training on how to manage relationships with supporting agencies, individual ICCES centres are usually not fully aware of how to manage their partnerships—if they are lucky enough to get them in the first place! Particularly, ICCES centres are usually not aware of the reporting requirements for grants and this has led to a breakdown in the relationships between ICCES and agencies, such as the British and Japanese small-grants schemes, as well as with volunteer agencies such as VSO, JOCV and the Peace Corps. The actual sourcing of partnership support by individual ICCES centres is made worse both through the lack of training of centre managers, and the lack of accessible, easy-to-follow guidelines from the agencies themselves. The precarious, and often ad hoc, nature of the partnerships between individual ICCES centres and various agencies does not go far enough to raise the overall quality of ICCES training provision. ICCES centres provide low-quality training in an unco-ordinated environment. The employment outcomes of ICCES graduates are not known to the government, as there are no evaluations in place at the Directorate, but undoubtedly the weak partnership arrangements do not contribute to quality employment outcomes. ∗

VSO—Voluntary Service Overseas; JOCV—Japanese Overseas Cooperation Volunteers; SYTO—Student and Youth Travel Organisation (SYTO, based in Accra, partners with the British BUNAC—British University North America Club—to send British volunteers for, usually, short-term placements of three to six months).


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Secondly, the rural locations of ICCES makes them undesirable work places for instructors, most of whom are from the larger towns or cities, since there is a general absence of amenities, services, entertainment, infrastructure and housing. Moreover, many of the students at ICCES centres come from poor (farming) backgrounds and sometimes find it hard to pay the fees. This leads to a general deterioration of overall quality since the fees raised are supposed to pay for all running costs—other than salaries. The third problem arises from the fact that ICCES is serving a dual function: it is terminal for many, but the NVTI certificates that graduates leave with can be used to gain entry to further formal education or training. However, pupils place great emphasis on gaining these certificates and hence instructors teach aspects of certain trades more with examinations—rather than self-employment—in mind. Indeed, practical training frequently suffers and often does not receive as much attention as was intended in the design of ICCES. It is passed over in favour of more academic and theoretical subjects useful for the examinations. As we noted earlier, one of the reasons why TVET in Ghana has never developed fully in practice, in spite of repeated attempts by the government, is that students and parents demand more academic subjects. The desire of many ICCES trainees is to undertake further (preferably) formal training after ICCES; hence the focus on passing NVTI examinations. This means that the practical vocational training objective of ICCES is often subverted as a result of pressure from trainees and their parents for more academic and examination-orientated teaching. In one recent survey in 2005/2006 of 162 ICCES graduates, it was found that 42% had studied after ICCES, the majority of whom had undertaken formal City and Guilds training, and a further 20% had pursued apprenticeship training. It is usually the male graduates (who have taken courses like masonry or carpentry) who are most likely to continue their training in formal VTIs to achieve higher certificates, with a view to gaining formal employment, often teaching. The latter pathway—where ICCES graduates pursue apprenticeship training—suggests that the training received at ICCES is not of sufficient practical orientation to allow graduates to become self-employed (Palmer, 2006b). On graduating from ICCES with ‘employable skills’, ICCES trainees receive no post-training support, no assisted access to credit facilities and, generally, have weakly developed enterprise networks. This makes it all the more difficult for many of them to navigate their pathway into the labour market (Palmer, 2006b). With such a disabling training delivery environment, the labour-market outcomes of ICCES trainees are thus very mixed. Nonetheless, new evidence points towards most graduates finding some form of income-generating activity, albeit in low-end informal micro-enterprise activities, including farming. The government has not been able to collect any data on the employment outcomes of ICCES graduates. This has been replaced by anecdotal evidence, observation and assumption. However, a recent study of 110 ICCES graduates who were not in further training showed that 85% were reportedly undertaking some form of paid work. Some 15% were described as ‘not working’, but it is likely that they were assisting on their family farms. About 33% (36 out of 110) of all the ICCES graduates

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were working in informal self-employment (excluding farming), 36% (40/110) in informal wage employment and 14% (16/110) in the formal sector.7 If we assume that those reported as ‘not working’ were actually working on their family farm, a further 16% (18/110) of the group can be said to be working informally. Another 17/110 were reported to be ‘not working’, while only one was actually reported to be ‘working on the family farm’. Informal employment, therefore, accounted for some 85% of all graduates’ work (49% informal self-employment, including farming, and 36% informal wage employment). However, female graduates appeared to be significantly disadvantaged compared to their male counterparts; 40% of females in the study were categorized as ‘not working’8 (compared to 5% of male graduates), with a further 44% of female graduates in informal self-employment (excluding farming) (compared to 28% of male graduates) (Palmer, 2006b). The disabling post-training environment means that many ICCES graduates are unable to use the skills they have acquired; 30% of all graduates (21% of male graduates and 50% of female graduates) were not using their skills in their current employment activity according to Palmer (2006b). These figures assume that those classified as ‘not working’ were indeed working on their family farms.

4 Skills Training and Entrepreneurship Programme Another example of an initiative from Ghana that aimed to link TVET to selfemployment creation is the recent Skills Training and Entrepreneurship Programme (STEP).9 This was very high on the government’s skills training agenda between 2003 and 2005 and followed directly from its unemployment exercise in late 2001. STEP was essentially a short-term (three to nine months) pre-employment vocational training based largely in rural areas and aiming to provide those registered as ‘unemployed’ with the skills needed to become self-employed. The objectives of the STEP programme were:

r r r r

To offer a short (between three and six months) demand-driven competencybased vocational/technical training; To make trainees self-employable, instead of relying on the central government to offer them jobs, which are hard to come by due to budgetary constraints; To stem the drift from rural to urban areas in search of non-existent jobs; To reduce the endemic poverty and create awareness for wealth creation (OforiAtt, 2004).

Very little has been written on the STEP programme to date (mostly internal or consultancy evaluation reports, e.g. Preddey, 2005), and not, to the author’s knowledge, for a wider audience.10 And yet it provides some useful lessons about providing training only—STEP was meant to be complemented by micro-finance, but this has been very slow in becoming a reality. Following the 2001 unemployment census in Ghana, which revealed that most of the unemployed wanted to acquire skills enabling them to become self-employed or


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employable, STEP was initiated—a government-supported training programme. It was intended to reduce poverty by providing employable skills and other assistance (including access to micro-finance) to the unemployed enabling them to become productively employed, mainly self-employed in the informal economy. Funding was made available by allocations from the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Fund for three principal components:

r r

r

Skills training delivered through vocational training providers: As of March 2005, about 25,000 unemployed people have undertaken STEP training through formal public and private training providers. STEP training courses run for three to twelve months in fifty-eight training areas (see Box 2). Skills enhancement for master-craftsmen and skills training delivered through apprenticeship placements: Master-craftsmen go through a few days’ training with Ghana Regional Appropriate Technology Industrial Service (GRATIS) to make them more effective trainers. Skills training is then conducted by attaching up to ten trainees to a master-craftsman to undertake a workshop-based apprenticeship for up to twelve months. Micro-finance component: This component, launched in December 2004, was intended to provide start-up and working capital to enable those trained under the STEP programme to set up their own enterprises. Funding was to be made available from HIPC funds to micro-finance institutions (MFIs) for on-lending to qualified trained STEP graduates. Two MFIs are participating: the Women’s World Banking Ghana (WWBG); and the rural bank network under the Association of Rural Banks APEX (ARB-APEX).

Box 2. STEP training courses

r r

Three-month courses in twelve training areas, including: Bamboo processing; batik tie and dye; bead-making; bicycle repairing; food processing; floral works; hospitality and tourism (ten weeks); printing; rural craft; steel bending; textiles; and soap production. Six-month courses in forty-two training areas, including: Ashanti cloth-designing; auto-body repairs; auto-engineering; autoelectrical; building and construction; beautician; basketry and bead making; cane/basketry; carpentry and joinery; carving; carpentry/furniture-making; cosmetology; dress-making/tailoring; electrical; electronics; food-processing; food-processing technology; food-processing materials packaging; hairdressing; jewellery; information and communications technology (ICT); Kente weaving; leatherworks; machining; painting and decoration; multimedia production; perfumery/detergents/hair-care; plumbing; pottery/ceramics; radio and television; photography and video production; production of concrete; refrigeration and air-conditioning; tailoring and apprenticeship training;

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r

traditional cloth-weaving; traditional footwear-making; textiles+medi printing; weaving; wood processing; welding and fabrication. Twelve-month courses in four training areas, including: Apprenticeship training scheme; draughtmanship and construction; foundry; garment construction.

Source: Preddey, 2005.

There were meant to be three training phases to the STEP programme: phase 1 commenced in February 2003; phase 2 in December 2003; but phase 3 was discontinued. There have been other constraints hindering the outcomes of the STEP programme (Palmer, 2006b): 1. Lack of demand for these types of skills: The STEP programme is highly centralized: skills-needs assessments are conducted at NVTI Headquarters in Accra. There has been no real attempt at establishing demand for skills and product types at the local level, and district assemblies sometimes complain about STEP delivering ‘useless’ courses. There is a danger of market saturation as too many are being trained in similar trades in the same area. 2. Microfinance: Representatives of STEP training providers are unaware of whether any loans had been taken up. WWBG and ARB-APEX view the capacity of STEP graduates to understand the conditions of lending as inadequate. WWBG considers that providing micro-finance to STEP graduates is a social programme and is not commercially viable. STEP borrowers are a higher risk than other borrowers, being new ‘customers’ with low educational attainment. Anecdotal evidence points towards difficulties in STEP graduates accessing loans and, in some cases, the VTIs that provided the training are asked to act as guarantors on loans made. Obviously, VTIs are not in a position to do this. 3. Weak training environment: Many entrepreneurs who were given apprentices to train could not provide a decent training environment, i.e. protective clothing, etc., and were ill-resourced in tools and equipment. In return, the entrepreneurs complained about receiving insufficient funding to adequately train apprentices. The duration of training is not considered long enough, especially in trades like welding and carpentry, leading to the creation of ‘half-baked’ apprentices. Training has been criticized as having a traditional approach to production—one that is not competitive and not productive. 4. Employment outcomes unknown: Except for anecdotal evidence, no one really knows what has happened to the substantial number of STEP graduates since the programme’s inception. The indications, from those who implemented the STEP programme at village-level, have been that STEP graduates feel the programme has helped them to acquire useful skills. However, while the STEP trainees have been able to acquire various useful skills, being able to utilise them in the labour market appears to be proving difficult. Indeed, there is concern that many (if not


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most) STEP graduates are not faring well in the labour market and not using the skills they have acquired. 5. A numbers game between planned and actual people trained, and between the total reach of STEP and total demand: The proposed STEP budget for the second phase provided for 1,000 proven master-craftsmen to undergo skills enhancement so that they could take on 5,000 new apprentices. The actual outcome, according to GRATIS, was that 1,140 STEP apprentices were placed with 120 master craftsmen who had received limited pedagogical training provided by GRATIS from their own resources. The total number trained under STEP to date is about 25,000, a small percentage of the annual approximately150,000 junior secondary school graduates who finished school and cannot enter further formal training. 6. Other problems: STEP suffers from management problems. Post-training support is inadequate. There was a significant risk for the government that the original programme title—Skills Training and Employment Placement—implied that STEP has a large capacity to place unemployed persons in jobs. But STEP was not meant to be a job-creation programme—rather it was meant to empower unskilled or low-skilled unemployed persons to find or create work by themselves. Hence, the title of STEP was changed to Skills Training and Entrepreneurship Programme in the GPRS II. A further issue relates to the delivery of the STEP training, which was done through existing VTIs throughout the country, including ICCES discussed above. In the case of ICCES delivering the STEP programme, registered STEP trainees ‘enrolled’ for the period of their training at a particular ICCES centre. STEP training, which was meant to be kept separate from regular ICCES training, was often delivered by ICCES centres to all the students, regardless of whether they were STEP trainees or regular three-year ICCES students. This cross-over had both positive and negative repercussions. On the one hand, existing ICCES trainees were able to benefit from the STEP training being conducted; e.g. ICCES dress-making students benefited from learning batik or soap-making intended for the STEP trainees.11 On the other hand, however, it is likely that the training quality was reduced as the centres were only supplied by the government with sufficient materials to cover the STEP trainees—and not any extra bodies.

5 Conclusion We noted at the beginning of this chapter that since the late nineteenth century and right up to the most recent proposed education reforms (2004) there have been repeated attempts to make education more relevant to the world of work in Ghana. We also noted that these attempts have failed in the past as parents and youth have consistently preferred academic schooling offering greater possibilities for finding better paid employment. Even in VTIs that are geared towards providing youths with practical skills in an effort to promote self-employment, low-quality training

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environments (due to resource constraints) and youth and parents’ preference for continuing formal education have often subverted the intention of these VTIs and made them more ‘academic’ in nature. Youth and parents are well aware of the occupational realities of the Ghanaian labour market and that most people do actually work in informal micro-enterprises. The problem facing most youth as they graduate from self-employment orientated TVET programmes, like ICCES or STEP, is that while they have acquired skills during their training (even if the quality of the skills taught might be low) most find it very hard to utilise these skills productively in the labour market. Indeed, the environment in which most graduate trainees find themselves is quite disabling.12 In order for skills acquisition to be more effectively translated into skills utilization, more attention needs to be paid to developing policies that enable, rather than constrain or disable, informal micro-enterprises—and especially those in rural areas.

Notes 1. TVET in this chapter refers to school-based TVET, vocational training centres/institutes and on-the-job skills training provided in both the formal and informal sectors. This definition largely corresponds to the government’s Draft TVET policy framework for Ghana (Government of Ghana, 2004b). 2. See King and Palmer (2006b) for a state-of-the-art review of skills development and poverty reduction. 3. This is because parents and students see academic schooling as more ‘vocational’ than vocational education proper (Foster, 1965a, 1965b). For a recent ‘revisiting’ of Foster’s vocational school fallacy, see King and Martin (2002) and Foster (2002). 4. For a general, recent overview of employment outcomes from education and skills training in Ghana, see Palmer, 2006a. 5. Personal communication to the author by the Director of the ICCES, 18 November 2004. 6. Though traditional apprenticeship training is known to have many weaknesses (see World Bank, 2004), on-the-job training does at least help youth develop social and enterprise networks that are crucial to accessing support for subsequent enterprise start-up (Palmer, 2006b). 7. Informal wage employment usually takes the form of informal contracts with formal construction companies. Male graduates in building and construction trades are most likely to get this type of work, paid on either a per-day or per-month basis and typically lasting only part of the year. Construction companies often do not officially register these workers (Palmer, 2006b). 8. Although, as noted above, it is more likely that they were working on their families’ farms. 9. STEP initially stood for Skills Training and Employment Placement Programme when it started in 2003, but was later renamed in the Growth and poverty reduction strategy (GPRS) II (cf. Government of Ghana, 2005) as the government was concerned that those trained under the STEP expected the government to provide them with employment after training (Palmer, 2006b). 10. But see Palmer (2007) for an earlier summary. See Palmer (2006b) for a detailed discussion on STEP. 11. Personal communication from the ICCES/STEP co-ordinator for the Ashanti Region, May 2004. 12. For a discussion of the types of enabling environment that enable or disable education and training outcomes, see King, Palmer & Hayman (2005) and King & Palmer (2006a). For a review of education, training and poverty reduction outcomes in the context of the enabling/disabling environments in Ghana, India, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and South Africa see Palmer et al. (2006).


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References Akyeampong, A. 2005. Preparing students for work in Ghana: is vocationalization of secondary education working? (Paper presented to the eighth Oxford International Conference on Education and Development, ‘Learning and Livelihoods’, 13–15 September 2005, New College, Oxford, United Kingdom.) Foster, P. 1965a. Education and social change in Ghana. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Foster, P. 1965b. The vocational school fallacy in development planning. In: Anderson, C.; Bowman, M., eds. Education and economic development. Chicago, IL: Aldine. Foster, P. 2002. Commentary: the vocational school fallacy revisited—education, aspiration and work in Ghana, 1959–2000. International journal of educational development, vol. 22, pp. 27–28. Government of Ghana. 2004a. White Paper on the report of the Education Reform Review Committee. Accra: Vice-President’s Office. Government of Ghana. 2004b. Draft TVET policy framework for Ghana. Accra: Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. Government of Ghana. 2005. Growth and poverty reduction strategy (GPRS II). The coordinated programme for the economic and social development of Ghana (2006–2009). Accra: National Development Planning Commission. Integrated Community Centres for Employable Skills. 1996. Integrated Community Centres for Employable Skills ICCES: background information. Accra: ICCES Directorate. [Mimeo.] King, K.; Martin, C. 2002. The vocational school fallacy revisited: education, aspiration and work in Ghana, 1959–2000. International journal of educational development, vol. 22, pp. 5–26. King, K.; Palmer, R. 2006a. Skills development and poverty reduction: the state of the art. Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh. (Post-basic education and training working paper, no. 7.) <www.cas.ed.ac.uk/research/projects.html> King, K.; Palmer, R. 2006b. Education, training and their enabling environments: a review of research and policy. Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh. (Post-basic education and training working paper, no. 8.) <www.cas.ed.ac.uk/research/projects.html> King, K.; Palmer, R.; Hayman, R. 2005. Bridging research and policy on education, training and their enabling environments. Journal of international development, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 803–17. Ofori-Att, A. 2004. (Keynote Address by the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Manpower Development and Employment on the second Graduation Ceremony of STEP Programme at the City Educational Complex, Bohyen, Ghana, 17 March 2004.) [Unpublished document.] Palmer, R. 2005. Beyond the basics: post-basic education and training and poverty reduction in Ghana. Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh, Centre of African Studies. (Post-Basic Education and Training, working paper series, no 4.) <www.cas.ed.ac.uk/ research/projects.html> Palmer, R. 2006a. Education, training and labour market outcomes in Ghana: a review of the evidence. Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh. (Consultancy report for a DfID-funded research project.) (Improving the Outcomes of Education for Pro-Poor Development, working paper, no. 1.) Palmer, R. 2006b. Tinker, tailor, farmer, trader: skills development, the enabling environment and informal micro-enterprise in Ghana. Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh, Centre of African Studies. [Doctoral thesis.] Palmer, R. 2007. Skills for work? From skills development to decent livelihoods in Ghana’s rural informal economy. International journal of educational development, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 397–420. Palmer, R. et al. 2006. Educating out of poverty? A synthesis report on Ghana, India, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and South Africa. Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh, Centre of African Studies. (Draft report for DfID.) Preddey, G. 2005. Skills Training and Employment Placement (STEP): the programme document and performance appraisal, and proposals for enhancement. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO, Skills and Employability Department. World Bank. 2004. Skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank.


Chapter II.5

Criteria for Training Policy in the Informal Sector: Demands and Challenges in Latin America Enrique Pieck

1 Introduction The concepts ‘literacy’ and ‘schooling’ raise a number of questions concerning their relative importance, ranging from what is understood by literacy and schooling to what their purpose is in today’s world and what their relationship is to the labour market. What are the benefits of schooling? To what extent does school prepare one for life? What are the implications of not being schooled or literate in this modern world? Schools are supposed to impart a variety of basic skills that will allow individuals to function adequately, both socially and in the market place. To what extent have schools accomplished this? These are some of the questions addressed in this chapter on educational and training issues in the Latin American context.1 The focus is on several pivotal questions. If the lowest schooling levels and early insertion in the labour market occur in the lower-income sectors, how well-prepared are these sectors to function adequately in the labour market? In terms of basic skills training, what are the challenges that face the formal school system and training and vocational institutions? What educational and occupational strategies have been implemented to help youth, adults, women, peasants, indigenous populations, migrants and other disadvantaged segments of the population to become productively integrated into the labour market? What lessons have we learned from them? In order to address each of these basic questions, this chapter has been divided into several sections. A brief introductory overview of a number of educational indicators in Latin America is followed by the challenges that skills training initiatives must address in this region. A third section briefly outlines the trend that has accompanied the recent concern with making occupational training programmes available in deprived sectors, with special emphasis on young people. In closing, this chapter addresses the pivotal issue, namely key considerations for the formulation of productive insertion policies inspired by lessons and contributions emerging from various projects undertaken in the region.


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2 The Shreds of Literacy and Schooling in Latin America Despite the important progress made in the 1990s, education in Latin America is still a rather depressing affair. While basic education coverage has been recognized as near universal, important gaps in universal coverage still remain, particularly in rural areas. At present, education systems seem more concerned with the quality of education and ensuring its relevance and capacity to deliver the skills that are necessary to fare well in life. However, statistics are not encouraging in this area. Brunner (2000), who synthesizes the educational problems affecting the region, helps us to gain some perspective and reflect upon the challenges that have yet to be met. Some of the typical problems are as follows:

r r r r r r r r r r

At the regional level education lags behind, is underdeveloped or partly developed in the best of cases. In some countries coverage is incomplete and exclusion is high. The capacity to compensate for the cultural deficits of children and youth from underprivileged homes is weak. High repetition and drop-out rates translate into substantial wastage. Learning outcomes are poor. There are limited human resources and educational materials, which are usually mismanaged and/or misused within the system. Articulation mechanisms among and between the various levels of the education system and its environment are weak, particularly when it comes to the labour market. The educational level of the labour force aged 25 or older is mediocre (averaging five years) and 14% of the population is still mired in illiteracy. There are marked differences in education between the richer 10% (eleven years or more) and the poorer 30% (fewer than four years) of the population. The generation of knowledge aimed at improving the teaching/learning processes and promoting public policies for the sector is weak.

In light of a substantial increase in educational coverage in a large number of countries, the percentage of the population currently accessing the middle level of education—a level that in many countries represents the upper threshold for most—has also risen.2 The implications to be drawn from this fact seem fairly straightforward. Since this level frequently represents the last rung on the educational ladder, at least in terms of the lower socio-economic sectors, the challenges it poses and the support it calls for are quite evident. Research conducted in Mexico has revealed that while 12% of non-poor youth between the ages of 20 and 24 have completed tertiary education, in the case of disadvantaged youth this figure drops to 7.3% (Pieck, 2000). The challenge therefore lies essentially in providing basic skills training that facilitates successful performance in the workplace and in reinforcing this middle level through training focusing on minimal occupational skills, which would help to improve early insertion in the market place. Clearly, investing in human resources training while the individual is still in the second cycle of formal education makes considerably more sense than investing later in

II.5 Criteria for Training Policy in the Informal Sector

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compensatory education (ECLAC, 2000b, p. 109). Research findings on functional literacy levels point to the lack of quality that is evident in the delivery of basic and secondary education. Some have gone so far as to claim that completion of the school cycle does not necessarily guarantee that the individual will have a real mastery of reading, writing and mathematical skills, which means that the teaching imparted at schools is insufficient to cope with the demands imposed by the school’s own environment (Infante, 2000, p. 181). What, then, is the good of receiving an education? What problems prevent the education system from fulfilling its primary mission, namely delivering minimal basic skills? Additionally, if no guarantee can be given that schools do perform this basic function, what can we expect from sectors of the population that do not have access to education, or those that are forced to resort to a marginal source of education of dubious quality?

3 Educational Equity and Productive Insertion Seen from the perspective of equity, students from lower-income families tend to exhibit the lowest levels of academic achievement. In the context of the existing relationship between education and the replication of poverty, studies show a positive correlation between the education of parents and that of their children. In other words, the likelihood of acquiring or not acquiring adequate minimal education is closely linked to the parents’ educational background and income level in poor households. It has been found that parents of 80% of urban youths have completed less than ten years of schooling; in fact, between 60 and 80% of these adults fall short of the basic educational threshold required to access well-being levels (ECLAC, 2000b, p. 101). What, then, are the chances for individuals to forge ahead? Today only 20% of young people whose parents did not complete primary education finish secondary education. However, among individuals whose parents completed at least ten years of education, this percentage rises to more than 60%. Data from another regional research project (Gallart et al., 1996), conducted in five Latin American countries, point to the impact of poverty on the academic achievements of young people. The data highlight that the attendance rates, the average school years completed and the percentage of individuals with secondary education are substantially lower among the poor than the non-poor. Attaining seven years of basic education is no small achievement in the region. However, here again the differences between the poor and the non-poor are dramatic: approximately twice as many disadvantaged individuals have failed to complete more than six years of education. The poor also bear the brunt of unemployment, experiencing double or more than double unemployment rates. One of the major challenges is to facilitate the productive insertion of groups living in deprived areas. This requires that one reflect on the restrictions that currently exist in the formal labour market and question the extent to which the

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formal education system prepares an individual for the world of work and the relevance of the skills acquired. It also evokes the traditional concern with the classic incoherence between the supply of education and the demands of the labour market. A glance at the relationship between education and work reveals that a large portion of the gainfully employed population is not sufficiently educated to move beyond the income levels associated with the lower occupational categories. Also, even if educational inequities are high among social strata in the region, they are nevertheless lower than inequities regarding income levels (ECLAC, 2000a). An important question is how much schooling is needed in order to ensure a productive insertion that allows one to break away from the poverty cycle and move beyond the lower levels of occupational income? According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), ten years of schooling represents the minimal threshold required if education is to play a significant role in breaking this cycle. Based on estimates prepared by ECLAC, it takes twelve years of education to have a 90% chance of staying out of—or moving beyond—poverty (ECLAC, 2000b, p. 105). However, as pointed out earlier, achieving seven years of basic education in the region is already no small achievement (Gallart et al., 1996). Where does hope lie for these populations? From the above it can be said that, in connection with the question of basic skills, the warning lights are flashing for the underprivileged segments of the population. This draws attention to the acute problems in the education system that prevent schools from assisting individuals, especially those from lower income groups, in acquiring basic skills. It also highlights the fact that there are large segments of the population that never go beyond basic education and groups that are already part of the educational gap, having dropped out of school, or exhibit critical deficits in basic skills acquisition and, thus, find themselves in dire need of the skills that would ensure their insertion into productive activities. It has become painfully clear that the limited access of lower income groups to good quality instruction has restricted access to better paying jobs. It has also become clear that there is a need to formulate training, occupational and educational strategies to compensate for the educational deficits characteristic of these groups. How are we to deal with these challenges? What strategies should be used?

4 Two Orientations Guiding Skills Training Policies The desire to impart critical basic skills implies that one must first distinguish between two groups: (a) those who are already part of the formal education system; and (ii) those who are not part of that system—that is, those who have dropped out and lag behind others from an educational point of view. Regarding the educational needs of the first group, the focus needs to be on basic skills and those abilities derived from the processes of globalization and technological development. Regarding the second group, it is necessary to update basic skills and impart occupational


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training, since it is ultimately—though not solely—the labour realm that determines the educational demands and needs of this group. For those attending school, especially for more vulnerable groups, the challenge is to establish a set of measures at the basic level of education. In recent years, a number of programmes aimed at enhancing the quality of education have been formulated as a strategy to rid the education system of inequality and inequity. Many of these strategies have been guided by a positive discrimination—giving more to those who have less—as a means of equalizing the educational status of large groups of the population. In this field of education various initiatives have been undertaken by private stakeholders, popular education movements and NGOs, as well as by governmental institutions. The strategies adopted reflect the different ways the problem has been perceived. While some programmes have attempted to compensate for the impoverishment under which schools in lower income areas operate by upgrading their infrastructure, equipment and materials, others have been geared towards the teacher as a way of spurring better educational practices; still others have sought to incorporate curricular innovations; finally, there are those that favour economic support initiatives (scholarships, school breakfasts and so forth) intended to mitigate the dearth of resources afflicting these groups and to help prolong the permanence of the student population in the education system by lowering repetition and drop-out rates (Jacinto, 1999). On the subject of quality and equity of the education system, it may be said that educational reforms may prove insufficient if limited exclusively to the internal curricular, administrative and financial aspects of a school. To assess their real impact and counteract the negative effects produced by poverty, wider links to social policies are needed (ECLAC, 2000c). Given the economic needs of lower income households, improving the quality of education alone is enough neither to keep young people from dropping out nor to prevent them from repeating. Basic education initiatives seek to counteract the condition of exclusion and neglect that has been imposed on some groups of the population living in poverty. Experiences such as Fe y Alegr´ıa (Faith and Happiness), Colombia’s Escuela Nueva and the educational activity of Mexico’s Consejo Nacional de Fomento Educativo (CONAFE) represent alternative and compensatory modalities intended to offer these segments of the population a higher quality of educational provision and expand coverage in isolated areas. For those who have dropped out of the formal education system, lack of literacy and schooling problems surface as severe deficits when it comes to the use of basic skills. Again, this condition affects essentially disadvantaged groups that face a different set of challenges regarding their integration into the labour market. Productive integration into the market represents a major and immediate challenge and entails in turn the provision of basic skills and occupational training. Therefore, any mention of schooling and literacy points to the need to educate members of these groups in life-skills; that is, in abilities that bear specifically on work. With regard to this group, initiatives have been advanced in the realm of nonformal education and training programmes and within vocational training institutes. The major task of these educational modalities is to facilitate the successful insertion

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of young people and adults from lower income groups into productive activities. What has been done in this area? To what extent have occupational training strategies focused on the lot of the underprivileged?

5 In Search of Training Strategies for the Disadvantaged Training programmes designed to meet the needs of young people and adults from lower income populations are not plentiful (King, 1988). These sectors have traditionally been excluded from such programmes. While vocational training institutes have neglected these sectors in their programmes, adult education has failed to incorporate the work component into its activities. With very few exceptions, and apart from a new-found concern on the part of some institutions to bring occupational training closer to the poor, this kind of training has become a veritable ‘no man’s land’ in underprivileged sectors (Pieck, 1998). Occupational training initiatives have been targeted primarily at the formal sector of the economy, forgetting that vast numbers of Latin Americans live in poverty (40% in Mexico, 80% in Honduras, to mention just two instances) and engage in some kind of economic activity, essentially in the informal sector. However, past failures have shown that programmes are urgently needed that are suited and responsive to the necessities and characteristics of the contexts of disadvantaged sectors (Leonardos, 1999; Pieck, 2000). Unfortunately, as pointed out by Bennell (1999), the role that technical and vocational training may play in eradicating poverty has been underestimated within the framework of social strategies adopted by developing countries, even if rhetoric acknowledges technical training as an essential component of public policy. In recent years—perhaps to counteract the structural adjustment programmes that typified the past decade—greater interest in developing programmes for these vulnerable groups has been evinced. These programmes range from those of an essentially compensatory nature to the more comprehensive initiatives that aim to incorporate these populations into their national development plans.3 In time, the lessons learned have overcome narrow-minded views whose only strategy was to rely on mere training, the idea being that technical courses would have the necessary power to link the population to their labour world. These traditional occupational training projects have raised questions about the short-sightedness of training strategies, both in terms of programme design and objectives, especially in the context of volatile markets. Another matter of concern is the need to acknowledge that the demand for qualifications through training programmes has become insufficient as the sole criterion of positive discrimination, particularly in markets where the greater complexity of production technologies does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with higher qualification requirements (Valdés, 2001). The need to think of professional training in a broad sense and not simply as occupational training alone has emerged from both past successes and past failures. Growing importance is being attached to focusing on cultural issues. Emphasis is being placed on teacher training and on the need to design comprehensive curricula. Part of this new-found holistic approach derives from the need to integrate the


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objectives of occupational and social inclusion. In the past, there was a tension between concerns of occupational objectives and those associated with housing, health, education and other social welfare concerns that are crucial for the success of training and productive strategies. There is a need to adopt a comprehensive approach to the actions undertaken and to establish co-ordination mechanisms among the various levels and stakeholders.

6 Some Criteria for Policy Design Some criteria can serve as guiding principles for developing training policies in deprived sectors. The following considerations are derived from experiences in various countries in Latin America.

6.1 Diversity, Equity and Quality The different kinds of populations, their cultural and social diversity and the nature of their learning demands require a more accurate definition of what is commonly understood by ‘disadvantaged groups’. Diversity in the types of training intervention is necessary. In recent years, the importance of addressing the heterogeneity of the population making up the underprivileged sectors has been pointed out repeatedly. While some initiatives carried out by the government and non-governmental organizations have used focal strategies as a key criterion in the elaboration and development of programmes, a more global, longer-term strategy is needed that includes structured plans and actions, as well as a clear view of the target population and the features each programme should include in order to respond adequately— both in the long and the short terms—to the educational needs of disadvantaged groups, be they peasants, migrants, rural women or urban youth. It implies the need to enrich the programmes with a view to maximizing their impact on each of the target groups. Furthermore, it demands a clear understanding of requirements based on the needs and characteristics of the subjects and their environments. Clearly, a programme aimed at the occupational training of disadvantaged urban youth will require educational re-insertion and comprehensive vocational training strategies, complementary social programmes in fields such as health and recreation, as well as in work-support programmes. Likewise, programmes aimed at attaining the productive insertion of indigenous women will need an accurate description of their contexts and potential, their age range and the nature of their expectations. It also requires the co-ordination of these programmes with their daily activities. Educational policies thus conceived fall within the realm of positive discrimination and are underpinned by differential strategies (Schmelkes, 1996). In other words, they should take into account approaches that offer the lower income population a chance to access a quality educational supply that is sensitive to their needs

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and interests, while granting them an opportunity to advance by means of higher education and occupational training initiatives. In this way underprivileged segments of the population would benefit from multiple educational opportunities through access to: (a) diverse programmes and alternatives in the various contexts; (b) the possibility of moving freely among them; and (c) viable mechanisms to advance to higher levels of education.

6.2 Education and Training: Everywhere, Anytime Permanent education implies the establishment of education and training systems that favour lifelong strategies and are linked to the development of educational and training paths at various levels. It points to the necessity of filling a number of voids within the system—for example: by creating vocational training and general education paths beyond the compulsory stage; introducing work-related experiences at the compulsory stage; designing modular systems so that courses given at different levels and through modalities of education and training may be combined; establishing secondary education that allows for technical and academic achievement; and opening diversified paths to higher education that interconnect with other systems and levels. Of crucial importance here is the development of technical education, an issue undoubtedly still unresolved in numerous countries and calling for the incorporation of important components of occupational training and culture into mainstream education. It suggests the importance of generating flexible and diverse articulations between the formal and informal sectors that are sensitive to the educational and occupational trajectories of underprivileged groups. Proposals of this sort are urgently needed in the region, particularly where vast segments of the population lack basic skills training and where the last years of basic education are nowadays the upper threshold in a large number of countries before people join the labour force.

6.3 Two Dimensions, Two Strategies Concern for formative strategies, such as basic education aimed at productive insertion, needs to be seen in the context of the dichotomous world where globalization and polarization coexist. There are two essential dimensions to the problems that socially disadvantaged groups have to confront: (a) international competitiveness and globalization; and (b) social integration and exclusion (Gallart et al., 1996; Jacinto & Gallart, 1998). On the one hand, the mutations of the labour world resulting from the advent of new technologies and production patterns demand that special emphasis be given to an education that promotes skills and aptitudes facilitating both insertion into the labour market and social mobility. On the other, spiralling unemployment, a precarious labour market and endemic poverty levels point to the essential task of developing the skills that will allow men and women to become productive members of society. In developing countries, it is not just a


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question of finding work but also one of guaranteeing sustenance and sustainable livelihoods to all concerned. In view of these two scenarios, the tasks that fall to technical and vocational training and education in underprivileged sectors should focus on: (a) adapting and responding to the various contexts and needs of marginalized sectors by making available relevant and high-quality education; and (b) facilitating access to new skills and technological literacy in order to promote employability among low-income sectors and to prevent the emergence of further social exclusion processes. On the one hand, the idea is not to keep underprivileged groups from accessing new skills. Rather, they should be given the opportunity either to join the formal labour market or to continue on to higher levels of education. On the other, every effort should be made to offer lower income groups the tools they require to facilitate their productive insertion by providing them with highquality basic education and training that is congruent with local needs and labour characteristics.

6.4 Catering to the Impoverished Sectors: What Does it Entail? While most training programmes reflect the demands of the formal economy and market, attention must be paid to the fact that a large percentage of people, particularly the young, eventually settle in the informal sector of the economy. This sector calls for a very specific type of learning that training programmes will have to confront. Among the underprivileged segments of the population, the labour world takes on a specificity of its own that will ultimately define the characteristics that any programme should have if it wishes to meet the training needs of this sector. Work acquires a specific meaning in poor areas, especially in rural areas, where it is closely linked to the physical environment and to survival strategies. In this distinct setting, productive insertion demands relevant training programmes capable of satisfying their particular economic survival (Pieck, 2000). This type of strategy, particularly when directed at a population’s underprivileged groups, makes necessary a reformulation of the notions of work, employment, employability and productivity. These terms do not necessarily follow the logic of the formal labour market, nor do they imply that the skills being promoted are necessarily linked to the technologically oriented sectors. The strategies must consider the characteristics and needs of specific groups, and programmes must heed the nature and features of their contexts—as well as the particular training needs of the populations living in impoverished areas. Clearly, at this level quality becomes directly equated with the relevance of the contribution the programmes make to the specific needs of the various population groups. In other words, the success of a programme will be contingent upon how relevant the acquired skills actually prove to be in the workplace and whether individuals use these skills in economically productive ways (McLaughlin, 1990).

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6.5 Problems Associated with Small Business Endeavours On the subject of promoting small businesses in the informal sector, some reservations are in order, since training in the informal sector raises some questions worth reflecting upon. One of them has to do with the reproduction of self-employment under precarious conditions. We are well aware of its limitations in terms of age, work experience, lack of capital, limited social networks, etc., which often translate into high-risk and unrealistic ventures for low-income youths (Ram´ırez, 2000; Messina, 2001). Be that as it may, it is important to recognize that, given the restrictions of the formal labour market, a large number of young people will enter the informal sector one way or another. This implies that training programmes need to incorporate curricular elements designed to impart interdisciplinary skills that are common to both the formal and the informal markets. In the case of adults, where there is a greater chance of finding technical skills and practical experience, training programmes must adopt on-the-job training strategies and be closely linked to the particular needs of the economic/productive activities of that sector of the population (Vielle, 1995). A training strategy thus conceived has the capability of responding to the actual concerns of the people, a feature not too often found in training programmes.

6.6 The Integral Dimension of Every Economic/Productive Activity The integral dimension of any productive insertion endeavour is an essential component of any occupational training strategy. Meeting a project’s immediate demands (e.g. loans, specific courses) will not accomplish much in the absence of a diagnosis that can provide a holistic solution to the problems affecting the various projects of a specific population. In this regard, addressing these projects from the point of view of dimensions, such as organization, production, commercialization, technical processes, accounting systems and division of labour, regardless of the magnitude of the particular business endeavour, is of paramount importance. In some cases, support may come to small operators in the guise of technical assistance, in others it may translate into accounting services for projects under consolidation. As a result, technical training becomes a training/consultantship effort, which approaches potential projects from an integrative perspective. That is to say, it does not merely offer an immediate response to a project’s technical or economic need but emphasizes the way in which the support or funds are being efficiently used. In other words, it becomes a response based on an integrated analysis of the economic and productive activity, and results in an improvement plan designed to contribute solutions capable of steering any business pursuit in the direction of an economic development project. The integrated perspective of training programmes evinces the insufficiency of technical training initiatives and funding strategies, taken as isolated components. This basic premise—an integral view of projects—has been conspicuously absent from the development of technical training programmes aimed at deprived sectors. This has resulted in an educational supply that elicits no interest beyond the boundaries


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of the course itself and, on occasion, appears irrelevant and apathetic to the impact of the promoted courses.

6.7 Articulation of Training with Basic Education A key consideration in occupational training for deprived sectors is the importance given to basic education conceived as a pre-requisite for occupational training and as the cornerstone of lifelong education. Basic education is the chief guarantee of the skills demanded by employability. In this regard, it is important that occupational training programmes include school re-insertion strategies, especially when one considers the deficits exhibited by youths from vulnerable sectors. It is important to articulate occupational training initiatives with basic education and to devise plans that create linkages between the different educational strategies and schools, so that students who are undergoing training may, at the same time, complement their basic education. In this respect, articulation strategies between both systems are indispensable. While this is a foremost preoccupation of the literature and research, much of the road still remains untraveled. Few undertakings have cared to incorporate basic education components into their curricular strategies and plans. In other instances, this has been accomplished through informal institutional agreements whereby students fill in their basic education voids while involved in occupational training programmes. Building bridges between initiatives by both types of institutions—educational and training—are essential to the drafting of such agreements.

6.8 The Necessary Confluence between Sectors Among the training strategies aimed at underprivileged groups, the co-ordination of programmes with institutions from different sectors is currently considered a sine qua non. In fact, it is the driving force behind the manifold possibilities of technical training. It is through co-ordination activities with institutions concerned with finance, organizational matters and commercial activities that the knowledge acquired through training will lead to productive insertion and the creation and development of small business endeavours. This crucial factor guarantees that the various programmes will have a positive impact on the expansion of economic activities and help in turn to improve the target population’s living conditions. The importance of addressing the training of deprived sectors from an inter-sectoral perspective is supported by the basic premise that training in and of itself is not enough, and through the recognition that the promotion of social inequality is not restricted to the educational domain. Thus, the importance of dealing with problems from various fronts (Valdés, 2001) is highlighted. Along these same lines—and on the assumption that any educational process will be intertwined with various dimensions—integration becomes an indispensable component of training policies. Integration also points to the importance of

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acknowledging that the inherent complexity of the groups involved requires a multifaceted approach whereby health, housing, recreation and so forth are also taken into account, since training alone or simple insertion in the labour market will neither guarantee social insertion nor the outcomes that training programmes anticipate. A case in point is the design of occupational training programmes aimed at marginal urban youths relying on co-ordination efforts with social programmes to ensure that the curriculum will also contribute to the resolution of social and cultural issues. It is not simply a matter of integrating them into technical training courses, but one of seeking the participation of different sectors and organizations in the fields of education, labour and health. This becomes indispensable just as much as the creation of links to women, youth and peasant organizations, trade unions, etc. The idea is to formulate joint strategies and offer integral answers to problems that must necessarily be dealt with from various fronts.

6.9 Tensions between Efficiency and Equity A distinct tension found in programmes is that generated by efficiency versus equity. The process of selecting young people who will participate in training and support programmes represents a typical case. It is a common practice that the filters used in the selection process—for the sake of the efficiency of the programme—place priority on youths who are not necessarily from the poorer sectors (Messina, 2001). Thus, it is not unusual to find that the rational criteria adopted by institutions, programmes and funding agencies are at cross-purposes with the guidelines for integrating disadvantaged young people. The rationales run counter to each other and call into question the scope and objectives of equity promoting programmes.

6.10 Practical Innovations: Upgrading Non-Formal Education While non-formal education programmes contribute to alleviating the harsh economic conditions that prevail in these communities and may prove interesting to some target groups (such as women), the marginal nature of these programmes has prevented them from both acquiring the required level of quality and becoming legitimate sources of occupational training. An interesting feature of these programmes is that they lie on the borderline separating what constitutes occupational training from what does not—a fact that may lend the efforts needed to cross from one side to the other a certain amount of appeal and viability. All this should be part of a strategy intended to advance occupational training in these sectors starting from what is already there. It could be argued, however, that innovations in the field of vocational and technical training and education could simply entail: (a) rethinking non-formal educational programmes; (b) relying on local support; and (c) joining efforts through the combination of complementary services (Leonardos, 1999). This could well be the case of non-formal education in deprived areas—a marginal modality and the only training


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alternative in rural areas that is being imparted to low-income groups, involving courses of a domestic nature (cooking, handicrafts, beautician) or trades (carpentry, blacksmithing), and are imparted to low-income groups usually in rural areas. Raising the quality of these programmes demands inter-institutional collaboration involving the revision of learning programmes, curricular models, teacher-training initiatives and an improved infrastructure. This would facilitate the improvement of the profiles of graduating students and the generation of links that ensure continuous technical training, as well as the development of productive activities backed by financial, business, organizational and marketing assistance. These could be valid alternatives that reach out to those living in that ‘no man’s land’ represented by today’s occupational training efforts in the poorer regions (Pieck, 1998; Bennell, 1999). Through their relationship with various institutions—health, early and basic education, nutrition, etc.—these programmes, rather than serving a merely social and political function, would take on real significance as a legitimate, relevant and useful educational supply, especially for rural and marginal urban women (Pieck, 1996).

7 Conclusions This review of some experiences and indicators for designing educational and training programmes for disadvantaged segments of society suggests a set of considerations in connection with sine qua non aspects of policy formulation and with the myths surrounding such programmes. We have seen that basic education or enhancing the quality of training courses is simply not enough. Neither the mere delivery of technical training courses nor the positive discrimination criteria that ignore contextual variables is alone sufficient. The lessons learned make it clear that an integral approach is indispensable. They highlight interventions in different sectors, and articulations among the different systems and sub-systems. They also imply a greater appreciation of the role played by occupational training in responding to such antithetical needs as modernization and poverty. They also stress the importance of taking into account the nature of and needs inherent in impoverished environments, as well as the urgent need for programmes to be relevant—particularly when the educational supply is being directed at deprived areas. Perhaps one of the vital elements of these initiatives is the importance of combining the context with the learning needs. The inescapable conclusion is that occupational training in these sectors requires intervention mechanisms different from those intended for the formal market. Finally, the evidence of deficits in basic skills and the resultant lack of employability make it mandatory that any occupational training programme includes articulations between technical and basic skills as part of its curriculum. Likewise, they emphasize the importance of developing links between educational and technical training systems, as well as between formal and non-formal modalities, in order to respond to flexible and shifting itineraries characteristic of a population that moves

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between one system and another, a population that has no other way of harmonizing its own educational and labour trajectories. Clearly, what is needed today is a strategy capable of reconciling policy in the fields of education, occupational training and employment. Today’s problems suggest the need for occupational training councils that would include the following among their key functions: (a) orienting and co-ordinating the initiatives of the various institutions that relate to this field; (b) setting up links between institutions of the various sectors (NGOs, the private sector, public organizations); and (c) helping to design methodologies and strategies capable of meeting the training needs of the informal sector. This strategy would seek to quantify the conception and practice of occupational training on the basis of the confluence of actions and actors who at present neither identify themselves with this activity nor are part of it.

Notes 1. Some parts of this chapter were originally published in Singh, 2005. 2. The middle level is that level of schooling that follows the completion of an average of ten years of formal education. 3. Some examples of this type of initiatives are Honduras’s Programa de Educación para el Trabajo (POCET); Costa Rica’s public workshops organized by this country’s Instituto Nacional de Aprendizaje; Uruguay’s training centres; and Colombia’s SENA initiatives.

References Bennell, P. 1999. Learning to change: skills development among the economically vulnerable and socially excluded developing countries. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. (Employment and Training Papers.) Brunner, J. 2000. Globalización y el futuro de la educación: precisiones, desaf´ıos y estrategias. (Paper prepared for the Seminar on Educational Prospects in the Latin America and Caribbean Region, Santiago, Chile, 23–25 August 2000.) Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. 2000a. Panorama social de América Latina 1999–2000. Santiago: ECLAC. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. 2000b. Equidad, desarrollo y ciudadan´ıa. Santiago: ECLAC. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. 2000c. La brecha de la equidad: una segunda evaluación. Santiago: ECLAC. Gallart, M.A. et al. 1996. Adolescencia, pobreza y formación para el trabajo. In: Konterllnik, I.; Jacinto, C., eds. Adolescencia, pobreza, educación y trabajo, pp. 95–130. Buenos Aires: Losada/UNICEF. Infante, I. 2000. Alfabetismo funcional en siete pa´ıses de América Latina. Santiago: UNESCO/OREALC. Jacinto, C. 1999. Programas de educación para jóvenes desfavorecidos: enfoques y tendencias en América Latina. Paris: IIEP/UNESCO. Jacinto, C.; Gallart, M.A. 1998. Por una segunda oportunidad: la formación para el trabajo de jóvenes vulnerable. Montevideo: Cinterfor/RET. King, K. 1988. Training for the informal sector in developing countries: issues for practitioners. Adult education and development, vol. 30, pp. 18–30.


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Leonardos, A.C. 1999. Non-formal vocational training programmes for disadvantaged youth and their insertion into the world of work: towards a framework for analysis and evaluation. Paris: IIEP/UNESCO. (IIEP Occasional papers.) McLaughlin, S. 1990. Skill training for the informal sector: analysing the success and limitations of support programs. In: Turnham, D.; Salome, B.; Schwarz, A.D., eds. The informal sector revisited. Paris: OECD. Messina, G. 2001. Modelos de formación en las microempresas: en busca de una tipolog´ıa. In: Pieck, E., ed. Los jóvenes y el trabajo: la educación frente a la exclusión social, pp. 401–28. Mexico: UIA/IMJ/Cinterfor-ILO/UNUCEF/Conalep/RET. Pieck, E. 1996. Función social y significado de la educación comunitaria. Mexico: UNICEF/El Colegio Mexiquense. Pieck, E. 1998. Educación de adultos y formación profesional: incidencia y posibilidades en sectores de pobreza en América Latina. In: Jacinto, C.; Gallart, M.A., eds. Por una segunda oportunidad: la formación para el trabajo de jóvenes vulnerables, pp. 187–224. Montevideo: Cinterfor/RET. Pieck, E. 2000. Educación de jóvenes y adultos vinculada con el trabajo. In: OREALC/CEAAL/CREFAL/INEA, eds. La educación de personas jóvenes y adultas en América Latina y el Caribe: prioridades de acción en el siglo XXI, pp. 102–42. Santiago: OREALC/ CEAAL/CREFAL/INEA. Ram´ırez, J. 2000. La formación laboral de jóvenes pobres desempleados: necesidad de una estrategia consistente y de un marco institucional sostenible. Bolet´ın Cinterfor/ILO, no. 150, September–December. Schmelkes, S. 1996. Hacia la equidad: innovaciones en el medio rural en América Latina. In: Consejo Nacional de Fomento Educativo, ed. Encuentro Latinoamericano de innovaciones educativas en el medio rural, pp. 23–40. Mexico: CONAFE. Singh, M., ed. 2005. Meeting basic learning needs in the informal sector. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Valdés, T. 2001. Empezar a trabajar en sociedades sin empleo: apuntes para la orientación de los perfiles profesionales de inserción. In: Briasco, I., ed. Pol´ıticas para grupos desfavorecidos: recomendaciones para la acción, pp. 21–24. Madrid: OEI. Vielle, J.P. 1995. El trabajador del sector informal como sujeto de la educación de adultos: un intento por redimensionar la categor´ıa de ‘pobre’ en la perspectiva de una estrategia renovada de educación para el trabajo. In: Pieck, E.; Aguado, E., eds. Educación y pobreza: de la desigualdad social a la equidad, pp. 373–96. Mexico: UNICEF/EI Colegio Mexiquense.


Chapter II.6

Informal Learning at Work: The Case of Working Children in Egypt Laila Iskandar

1 Introduction When poverty is widespread in urban pockets and severe in rural areas, unemployed and under-employed adults seek solutions to macro-economic changes in several ways: they have to survive for long periods without income; send their children out to work; pull girls out of school; seek assistance from religious institutions; and lean on family relationships (if they have maintained them). Female-headed households are more exposed to deprivation and, therefore, are more likely to send their children out to work. Recent studies refer to the need for a multi-dimensional approach to respond to the particular needs of working children. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that the worldwide number of child labourers between the ages of 5 and 17 is 256 million. Out of these, 171 million work in hazardous occupations, while 110 million are below the age of 12 (www.ilo.org/childlabour). These data distinguish between working children and child labour, to accommodate the reality of children in low-income countries and in economies in transition. They point to the need of going beyond aggregated statistical data in order to understand working children and their families. While poverty in the South is an overarching reason for child labour, other reasons also account for the phenomenon: the declared and hidden costs of education, as well as income lost when children do not work. In cultures where child labour is accepted and where social protection policies do not exist for families in financial and economic distress, greater numbers of children go out to work.

2 How to Engage Working Children with Learning? The debate around working children in the South and their learning needs has continued among practitioners in the field of education and development, who may have been playing a catalytic role in that field. They are now poised to transfer lessons learned and influence policy decisions springing from their understanding that Egypt’s working children today will be Egypt’s working youths and adults in R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 II.6, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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the next decade. Hence, the need to invest in them as Egypt’s human capital while eliminating barriers to their full development. The debate centres on the following points:

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While countries have legislation against working children and in favour of compulsory basic education, the reality is adult poverty in economies of the South with high unemployment rates, as well as poor vocational education and still poorer rates of return on basic education. What can be done in the context of that reality for working children to make them acquire a measure of learning and equip them with market-based vocational skills, basic education skills, and learning that will help them live in sustainable conditions and contribute to the development of their societies?

3 Creating Social Partnerships and Enlisting Community Support So far, we have witnessed the introduction of only fragmented and partial solutions, which point to the urgent need for learning from concrete actions in communitybased experiments relying on a reading of the context in which these actions have been carried out. NGOs have been implementing projects that address the learning needs of working children directly in the neighbourhoods providing employment opportunities for children in local workshops. Some children are employed in particularly hazardous occupations, such as leather tanning, pottery making (i.e. kilns), car repairs and garbage collection. While designing models for non-formal learning, NGOs have also provided alternatives that improve the working and living environments of these children. The context of poverty dictates an approach recognizing that children cannot be forced out of employment when their parents are unable to be gainfully employed. A common vision and understanding should recognize that separate actions cannot provide fragmented solutions to unrelated phenomena. In most cases, the symptoms testify to the existence of serious socio-economic problems, deeply rooted in the lives of vulnerable and deprived children and youths. Approaches tested in Egypt have shown that some mechanisms can work effectively; they are described below (Ministry of Social Affairs/World Bank, 2004). Non-formal learning for working children is effective when community support exists. This support can help in, for example, offering literacy classes or establishing one classroom schools. The local council (municipality) and locally elected members of parliament can actively work towards obtaining and officially providing health care for working children through government health clinics. They can establish programmes in youth clubs, combined with vocational training. In collaboration with community leaders and the local city council, working children who were not enrolled in school or who have dropped out are supported in acquiring official documents (e.g. birth certificates) so that they can then be enrolled in formal schools. Community leaders endorse the call to avoid children being employed in hazardous occupations. Local mosques also advocate this message.

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Another important measure is collaborating with local workshop owners to influence working conditions so that children are prevented from undertaking hazardous work. For this reason, contracts with workshop owners include clauses to guarantee the provision of safe working conditions for children. Another solution to protect children is to provide them with alternatives. They may, for instance, be given safe jobs within the same workshop or may be withdrawn from one workplace altogether and given training in safe occupations. Job training takes place in local workshops specifically designed to employ children in these new, safe occupations after their apprenticeship periods have ended. This model requires that alternative workshops should be established and equipped, if they do not already exist in a particular neighbourhood. Families receive financial compensation for withdrawing their children from hazardous occupations, while comprehensive educational programmes are designed for these children. It is important to work closely with the parents of working children by, for instance, conducting awareness campaigns and providing parental education. Other measures include recreational field trips for working children and their families, which combine activities with parental guidance and education. Collaborating with neighbourhood schools is also important as it helps to: (a) train teachers in local schools to use child-friendly teaching methods; (b) train social and psychological counsellors to support children who are experiencing difficulties in education and are unable to pay school fees; (c) provide alternative education in one-classroom schools; and (d) extend social outreach services to vulnerable and deprived families. Activities undertaken by NGOs are of fundamental importance in improving the situation of working children: 1. Networking with influential supporters, such as local members of parliament, the under-secretaries in the Ministry of Health, the head of the local administration, the head of the local council, and the directors of the local departments of youth, social affairs and labour. 2. Informing the mass media about the phenomenon through orientation sessions, press conferences and special workshops, and therefore receiving support from journalists. 3. Establishing community committees and recruiting community leaders to consider measures for tackling local needs and problems and for mobilizing community resources. 4. Establishing a network of partners to support efforts for training in, for example, public and/or private training centres and industries. At present, no formal mechanism exists at local community level for the design or provision of learning opportunities for working children. A large number of community-based models exist that are worthy of consideration for replication and up-scaling at the national level. The proposed Community and Institutional Development (CID) model (see Fig. 1) accepts the current economic context which obliges children living below the poverty line to work, and introduces learning for the marketplace integrated with learning for life-skills and basic education. This

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THE BUSINESS

THE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

Learning linked to the market – vocational and business skills

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Life skills - community learning

Standardization Quality control Prices and wages Design Diversification Creativity Customization Exclusivity Sales policies Marketing strategies

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Justice Build on existing skills Linking the rich to the poor Conscientization options Income generation Social well-being Health and hygiene

THE SCHOOL Basic education needs

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Learning by doing Individualized instruction Literacy Hygiene Critical thinking Problem solving Socialization Recreation Excellence Co-operation

Fig. 1 The design of CID’s non-formal ‘schools’ Source: Adapted from Iskandar, 1994.

model draws on resources at both central and community levels that can be mobilized and integrated into a cohesive system. CID has been working with communities where there are a large number of working children. Typically, their way of life has the following features: (a) a high incidence of work-related injuries; (b) they come from families where their siblings work as well; (c) earnings are handed to their families thus pooling resources and contributing to the family income; (d) they are illiterate; (e) they would like to participate in recreational and sports activities; and (f) they suffer from malnutrition and stunted growth.


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4 Exploring New Learning Sites: The Case of Brick Factories Brick manufacturing is an ancient activity in Egypt, particularly in Upper Egypt. There are nearly 2,000 brick factories in Egypt (Environmental Management and Technology Fund/Egypt Environmental Initiatives Fund, 2002).

4.1 Working Conditions in the Brick Factories The location of kilns is determined by the proximity of the factories to the clay source, water and workers. The employees lack education and suffer from poor health and hygiene facilities, lack of social protection and occupational hazards. Brick factory workers usually come from villages in Upper Egypt—the South— where a declining economy, increasing family size and static land holdings have forced many people to migrate. Poverty in the rural governorates of Upper Egypt encourages a large number of migrant workers and their children to work in the brick factories of greater Cairo. Their skill in brick-making already acquired in their villages of origin is an asset in finding employment in urban brick-making factories. Families send their children north with older brothers, uncles or neighbours seeking work. Most of the work in brick factories requires little or no extra training, which means that there is always room in any given factory, on any given day, for wandering day labourers searching for a livelihood. Thus, the brick-making industry in Egypt has come to be a sort of guaranteed last resort for children, men and youths seeking work. Their market is the low-skilled and unskilled sector. Employment regulations in this branch of the economy are informal—to say the least (Community and Institutional Development, 2003a). These children are not enrolled in schools and will become illiterate workers in adolescence and adulthood. They are thus in dire need of non-formal educational opportunities in order to break the cycle of poverty from perpetuating itself in the next generation. Working conditions in brick factories are harsh and take their toll, especially on children. The long hours of exposure to the scorching sun, the poor quality of drinking water, poor sanitation and poor nutrition result in ill-health for all workers. The absence of clinics nearby and affordable primary health care further exacerbate the situation of workers, particularly children. Most brick factories are far removed from clinics leading to a slow response to emergencies, accidents and injuries. Water consumed by the workers is delivered by water merchants in containers that are often rusted and in poor hygienic condition. Water supply is irregular and sometimes workers have to wait half a day without water. This has an impact on children’s occupational health as they are exposed to long hours of work under the scorching sun. The absence of sewage networks in both rural and urban homes has resulted in people building pit latrines in an unsupervised manner with inevitable insanitary conditions. Children, women and men often lack many essential legal documents, which means that they cannot benefit from any form of social assistance or health insurance.

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Brick production is fraught with occupational hazards resulting from careless practices in the handling of bricks, donkey carts, machines and kilns. On-site accidents or health problems of varying degrees of severity are quite common, often resulting from unsafe practices or the heavy weights carried on workers’ backs leading to deformation of the spine, kidney stones (or gallstones) and heat stroke. Children inhale dust and smoke from the kilns, leading to respiratory problems. Cuts are common injuries as workers are required to handle the fragments of broken fired bricks with their bare hands. Cuts and bruises are typical of barefoot workers who walk over debris on the ground. Children frequently fall off stacks of bricks or the back of a truck, but the greatest numbers of accidents that happen to children involve donkey carts. A fully-loaded cart can cause serious injury if it runs over a child. Donkeys kick and bite and are notorious for unpredictable behaviour. The link between animal health and human health is strong and greatly impacts children’s health, as they have to deal with donkeys more than any other group of workers. Thus, veterinary care of animals should be considered a priority as sick animals can infect workers, spread skin diseases and delay production. Animal pens are in need of attention too. Migrant workers in the factories live in clusters of dusty and untidy overnight rooms, each housing approximately eight to twelve people with uneven floors and poor ventilation. Toilet facilities consist of an empty room with what would have been a pit for a latrine (if it had ever been completed).

4.2 Learning for Children in Brick Factories The learning model for children working in brick factories revolves around a rightsbased approach focused on improved living and working conditions for working children and youths. It integrates non-formal learning around health, literacy, brickmaking skills, construction skills, life-skills, business skills and advocacy for working children’s rights. A non-formal learning programme, therefore, cannot be limited to basic education in the traditional sense or to life-skills. It must link the vocational aspect of brick-making (in this instance) to all aspects of learning and advocacy for working children’s rights. The curriculum has to offer lifelong learning opportunities in the context of the brick-making trade: all the years invested in brick-making know-how would be lost if working children were pulled out of the factories and directed to school learning that is totally unrelated to the market place. Obviously, education and development practitioners do not deliberately plan to be concerned with children who are working. Yet, the fact that these children are encouraged to enter the brick-making trade by their parents, and the certainty that they will not learn any other trade in a better way in vocational schools, presents a strong argument for providing them with onsite learning opportunities. Their life chances will also be improved if this education is carried out before they reach adulthood. An innovative approach to the design of learning links engineering technology transfer with environmental learning and life-skills for children, youths and adults.


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It considers the engineering and vocational aspects of the production process indivisible from the content of non-formal learning. In the specific case of brick-making in Egypt, the non-formal learning model is linked to a technology transfer from the use of oil fuel in the kilns to a cleaner energy source—natural gas. This is part of a Climate Change initiative that strikes deep into the heart of local brick-making communities—it provides a model of how Kyoto can be brought all the way to Cairo. The following strategies have been proposed for the implementation of nonformal learning: 1. Use of a rights-based approach. Factory owners are informed that they have a primary responsibility towards their workers, being answerable for the present conditions in which they live and work. While not threatening to penalize owners for employing children, the former must be made to recognize their responsibility towards the education of the children working in their factories. They are thus enjoined to partake in the vocational upgrade of learning inside their factories. They must therefore address some of these inequities and conform to human rights standards through contributing financially to these inputs. 2. Establish a potentially replicable model that can be extended to all brick factories in the region and possibly in all of Egypt. It focuses on community mobilization strategies through training and/or education and leads to advocacy. 3. The design of the non-formal learning programme ensures children’s access to rights and social protection networks. 4. Design of the learning model is based on a developmental as well as an educational approach: community-based initiatives inside factories form the core curriculum. Participation/inclusion is observed by enabling the voices, interests and initiatives of those living in poverty. They participate in upgrading their physical space, as well as organizing interventions. They are engaged in this way as stakeholders as well as learners in the development, implementation and evaluation of initiatives that are meant to help them. At every step the principle of local ownership of initiatives by brick factory workers is observed and strengthened. 5. Ensure that learning strengthens communication and information flows to children to create an environment where dialogue, negotiation and consensus are reached. 6. Build the curriculum on the existing and long-standing experience of other community-based organizations and initiatives in the area of curriculum design, teachers’ guides, learners’ workbooks, etc. It integrates vocational learning relevant to brick making and relevant to the technological conversion from the use of oil as a fuel to natural gas. The outcome of implementing these measures will become a model for improved living and working conditions for workers in other brick factories (children, young people and women) integrating non-formal learning around health, literacy, lifeskills, business skills and advocacy skills. This will result in learning and teaching materials/manuals for brick-factory children. Teachers are trained from among the young people working in the brick factory.

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Non-formal vocational education is, therefore, offered to working children within their present context. It not only improves their knowledge of trade and vocational skills but also intends to break the cycle of deprivation for future generations through formal basic education. It is proposed as a national vocational policy in contrast to vocational education at present dispensed through formal structures and leading to the acquisition of skills of inferior quality unrelated to the job market.

5 New Learning on Recycling Sites Mokatam recycling neighbourhood records an estimated 500 recycling workshops employing children and youths (ICED, 2005) (Fig. 2). These workshops purchase locally produced recycling equipment and provide workers with vocational skills linked to the market, which is fraught with occupational hazards. As in the previous case, the non-formal learning models used in the recycling sector do not seek to remove working children from such situations. Rather, they seek to protect children from the most dangerous work, promote their contribution to the environmental benefits accruing from recycling, increase the vocational learning offered in the recycling workshops, augment the income opportunities offered by such a sector, and add the basic education and development learning that empowers working children to becoming full citizens in their society and economy. Every one of these workshops is a vocational training centre in its own right. While aspects of occupational safety are missing and courses are not presented in ways that lead to structured, self-paced, individualized lessons, learning processes can be converted into such programmes. The point is that they provide an immense base of vocational learning for working children and youths in a trade that is not offered in any vocational training institute. Furthermore, this trade has multiple benefits as it recycles materials from the entire nation and performs actions that are positive for the environment, reducing the need for landfill and the danger of materials being left exposed in open dumps. The educational solution proposed has been implemented at the community level in Mokatam’s rag recycling and paper recycling ‘school’ for girls and women, and plastics recycling ‘school’ for boys (Iskandar, 2002). It combines informal education for working children and young people deprived of a formal education and creates a curriculum focusing on education for sustainable development. It is based on the assumption that children working in these sectors are perfectly able to learn and that this rich reservoir of knowledge about labour markets, trading, credit, local technology, survival strategies, social capital, community solidarity, etc., should be the basis for designing non-formal content and a curriculum. This knowledge is owned by the vast number of people involved in this sequence of waste collection and recycling. For them, waste is a valuable resource and a major means of livelihood. Conversely, waste management has traditionally been perceived as a technology, management and engineering issue. Keeping towns clean is viewed as a challenge, rather than as an opportunity to employ thousands of rural migrants and unemployed


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Fig. 2 Waste Recycle Facilities Manshiet Nasser-el Mokatam Source: Community and Institutional Development.

and unskilled workers who flock to urban centres on a daily basis. Municipalities in the South have spent millions of dollars introducing capital intensive, culturally unsuited technologies transferred from countries of the North. Few officials have been able to perceive it as a people-centred issue or a non-formal learning opportunity for the masses of unemployed, unskilled and illiterate populations of the South. On the contrary, waste management in the cities of the South is a highly people-centred issue. It is a rich field for designing non-formal learning for the vast numbers of urban poor and justifies a second look from planners, officials and decision-makers (Iskandar, 2005). Since only the poorest of the poor engage in this work, it is better for governments to improve their standard of living and maintain their learning in the non-formal sector of education rather than destroy their livelihoods. In this way, we would be making the first attempts to break the cycle of poverty perpetuated across generations while addressing the out-of-school learning needs of working children in the informal sector—not just the recycling sector—in an innovatory manner. With the help of the appropriate ministry and the support of the municipal authorities, this sector can provide enormous non-formal learning opportunities. These actors are crucial in turning the learning from recycling into ‘decent work’ based on guidelines of the International Labour Organization (Anschutz, Scheinberg & van de Klundert, 2006). Once more, community-based initiatives have successfully engaged recyclers in income-generating activities that have been rich in learning content focused on

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product-based recycling, marketing and sales, business maths, community credit systems, vocational skills revolving around locally produced recycling machines, maintenance of machinery and upgrading of technical vocational skills (Community and Institutional Development, 2003b). Although the informal sector has played a crucial role in turning waste into a resource and providing a non-formal learning opportunity for the largely unskilled and illiterate population of working children and youths, there is a new wave of privatizing waste management in the urban centres in the South. This jeopardizes a whole world of learning as learners in that sector are now being made redundant by powerful interest groups. This policy clearly demonstrates the failure of policymakers to connect their macro-economic actions and the potentially huge opportunities to transform the informal economy into an equally huge vocational sector while providing education for the working children of marginalized workers. This is an opportunity to overcome child labour for the next generation. The Mokatam recycling schools for girls and boys vindicate this view because mothers can send their children to that ‘school enterprise’. Indeed, they even seek early childhood care in the neighbourhood for their pre-school children. Policy implications can be summarized in the following way. Maintaining access by the poor to work in recycling is in essence the same thing as maintaining access to learning opportunities. Privatizing this work to multinational companies using new machinery, therefore, takes away access to this critical learning resource. This means that non-formal learning is not an isolated sector with no connection to any others. In fact, non-formal learning is a vibrant sector wherever there are working children. Before they make decisions that may seem to have little or no impact on education, policy-makers need to review their perception of the various sectors of the economy and revisit the potentially strong learning content that can be generated by various industries, sectors and trades. Using appropriate labour-intensive and semi-mechanized technologies increases vocational learning opportunities for the poor, while importing high-tech machines would take away learning channels for the illiterate and unskilled in the informal economy. Mergers, which tend to consolidate enterprises, further destroy vocational learning opportunities for working children and young people. Politicians need to research how to protect market aspects of the informal economy, which includes more actors and responsive markets than formal ones. Since so many learning and employment opportunities are provided to the poor through vocational skills in the informal market, policy measures need to look seriously at how to dignify work in that sector and teach young workers aspects of occupational safety. Evictions and forced relocations of workers destroy social capital and community learning. Upgrading living, housing and working conditions provides a wealth of opportunities for non-formal and lifelong learning in areas of health, credit, rights, vocational and technical skills, community organization and business skills, among other things.


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6 Raising Some Crucial Questions

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Would it not be better for non-industrialized countries to design economic systems based on the education and development aspects of the economy, instead of just on the macro-economic indicators of income and growth? Would it not be better for policy-makers to view informal sector workshops as vast and potential fields for vocational training and adopt incentives for workshop entrepreneurs to enrol the children in their workforce into non-formal learning, instead of harassing them unsuccessfully with laws that are not enforced? Would it not be more effective to design non-formal vocational education programmes that take place in the workshops of the informal economy, rather than import expensive donor-driven vocational programmes based on high-tech economies that target a pitiful handful of learners when compared with the masses of workers in the informal economy? Would it not be better for non-industrialized countries to design systems based on socially constructed models of production, engaging working children in vocational learning within the context of traditional systems, rather than importing irrelevant economic development models from the North? How can we educate policy-makers to take non-formal education seriously and appreciate the critical role it plays in education for sustainable development, as well as its inextricable links with all aspects of the economy?

7 Conclusion In conclusion, we invite educators, policy-makers and the industrial sector to:

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Revisit the issue of working children and their learning needs within the present reality of informal workshops to experience a paradigm shift in how these workshops can be made into potential vocational education training centres; Examine the informal and popular economy with a view to understanding the way it is organized to respond to markets and also its ability to meet employment generation needs for vast numbers of the urban poor. It does so in a way that the formal economy has been unable to satisfy for the past few decades in the countries of the South. Encourage the redesign of national policies towards working children to combine a dual role for non-formal education in informal workshops and thus provide these children and young people with basic learning needs, health and occupational safety, business skills, etc. Plan for a curriculum design in the non-formal sector of education based on a thorough understanding of the distribution of working children in specific sectors of the informal economy, e.g. agriculture, brick-making, metal-working workshops, recycling, leather tanning, etc. Train teachers to be ‘facilitators of learning’, to establish teachers’ credentials and the professionalization of educators in the non-formal vocational sector.

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References Anschutz, J.; Scheinberg, A.; van de Klundert, A. 2006. Addressing the exploitation of children in scavenging: a thematic evaluation. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO/IPEC. Community and Institutional Development. 2003a. Baseline report on socio-economic conditions of brick factory workers in Arab Abou Saed, El Saff District, Giza, Egypt. Cairo: Egyptian Environmental Initiatives/Fund Canadian International Development Agency. <www.cid.com.eg/> Community and Institutional Development. 2003b. Final report on youth against exclusion. Paris: UNESCO. Environmental Management and Technology Fund; Egypt Environmental Initiatives Fund. 2002. Operational manual for clay brick manufacturing in Egypt. Cairo: Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs. International Center for Environment and Development. 2005. Integrating community based waste management. Cairo: ICED. (Report submitted by Community and Institutional Development on the Business Development Component of the Italian Debt for Development Programme.) Iskandar, L. 1994. Mokattam garbage village. Cairo: Community and Institutional Development. Iskandar, L. 2002. Ecological education in the living environment. In: Hautecoeur J.-P., ed. Ecological education in everyday life, Alpha 2000, pp. 21–43. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, and UNESCO Institute for Education in collaboration with the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. Iskandar, L. 2005 (Paper presented at the tenth Sardinia International Landfill Symposium, Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy, 3-7 October 2005.) [Unpublished.] Ministry of Social Affairs; World Bank. 2004. Social Protection Initiatives Program implemented among seven NGOs in Egypt. Cairo: Ministry of Social Affairs.

Chapter II.7

Informal Learning and Work: From Genealogy and Definitions to Contemporary Methods and Findings Peter H. Sawchuk

1 Introduction Informal learning and work is a topic that over the last decade or so has exploded onto the research scene. It is increasingly the subject of myriad large and small-scale empirical efforts, as well as policy and practice across governments and a range of organizations. In this chapter I review the key issues relevant to developing a comprehensive understanding of informal learning and work. To do so, I present a brief history of the origins of the informal learning concept arguing that key principles— namely, the importance of personal experience, flexibility, local/indigenous knowledge, control/power and learning recognition—embedded in this genealogy still inform scholarship today. Following this, I review leading models of learning and work (from Livingstone, Eraut and Illeris) endorsing an eclectic range of theoretical points of emphasis which sees formality and informality as a continuum and not dichotomous categories. I take some time to review a major critique of the informal learning concept, before turning to a review of the leading methods of investigating informal learning and work and the key findings they have offered to date. Before getting started, however, it is important to begin with a brief discussion of the concept of work itself.

2 Expanding Concepts of Work Although history shows work has had a range of meanings, today, under capitalism, work is regularly considered to be what people do for a wage; and, thus, as Williams (1983, p. 335) points out, work in this common-sense meaning actually refers to a specific social relationship. However, as David Livingstone and members of the Centre for the Study of Education and Work (CSEW) at the University of Toronto have perhaps most persistently articulated, this common-sense approach is inadequate for fully understanding both the creation of value that human beings add to organizations and society more broadly and it is inadequate for understanding the character of paid work in terms of its full range of features (individual, social and historical). In other words, learning that takes place within and beyond the R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 II.7, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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paid workplace is deeply interwoven and mutually constituting. Livingstone (e.g. 1998, 2005; Livingstone & Sawchuk, 2004) argues that in the same way informal learning has emerged to challenge the hegemony of ‘formalized education’, so too must an expanded notion of work challenge the hegemony of paid employment as constituting work-based learning: The main reason for the change in thinking about ‘work’ is that with the expansion of commodity production and wage labour into more and more service areas of life, it becomes harder to ignore or deny that those still performing similar domestic and community services without pay are doing important work. The increasing participation of married women in paid employment puts pressure on them to do less domestic labour, on their partners to do more and on both of them to recognize and renegotiate divisions of this labour. Declining time for and interest in volunteer work beyond the household has also accentuated the centrality of this sort of labour for sustaining community life (Livingstone, 2005, p. 977).

What researchers like Livingstone (2005), Eichler (2005), Schugurensky and Mündel (2005) have recently articulated, supported in some ways by ‘social capital’ perspectives of the likes of Putnam (2000) and in particular by the seminal work of Waring (1988), is what many, though not all, of us know: that housework and voluntary work and the myriad, unrecognized informal learning activities that support them are work, albeit unpaid; vital to society on their own, and overlapping with the world of paid work as well. In Canada, for example, Jackson (as cited in Livingstone, 2005) establishes that the monetarized value of housework was between 31% and 46% of the country’s gross domestic product. But this is not simply a question of credit and, in some sense, social justice. I argue that even where we confine ourselves to discussions of paid work, an awareness of all forms of (paid and unpaid) work allows us to see the interconnections, or overlapping and interpenetrating effects that multiple social spheres produce. Before moving on to review further research on informal learning and work in conceptual and then methodological terms, however, it makes some sense to try to understand a bit more about the origins of informal learning.

2.1 Genealogy of Informal Learning and Its Significance for Work Informal learning as a concept applied to paid work has in fact only emerged in the last decade and a half. Nevertheless, this emergence has been a long time coming. It has its roots in both political and intellectual projects. In this section, I will demonstrate that most, though not all, of the themes that orient scholars of informal learning and work today have origins in specific historical periods and contexts. To begin, it is not hard to argue that the history of informal learning is connected to the history of epistemology from Ancient Greece to the early twentieth century. For example, Andersen, Boud and Cohen, (1995) outline in their discussion of Aristotle’s argument for the role of experience over ‘pure thought alone, uncontaminated by the world’; John Locke’s extolling of experience as that which teaches what reason cannot; John Stuart Mill’s positive distinction between formal instruction and self-education; and John Dewey’s faith in the organic connection

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between education and personal experience. Without further detailing their discussions of Maria Montessori, Kurt Hahn and A.S. Neill, we see that the distinction between ‘pure thought’ and education as opposed to learning through experience has a long history. In the contemporary context, according to Colley, Hodkinson and Malcolm (2003), the notion of ‘informal learning’ is largely rooted in the term ‘non-formal education’. Beginning as part of UNESCO’s 1947 report dealing with developing countries, non-formal education was positioned, at that time, as a partial solution to achieving capitalist economic development, liberal democratic order, a modern State and rising standards of living. They point out that non-formal education was seen as an alternative to the massive State formal schooling infrastructures of advanced capitalist countries. Moreover, it was thought to be flexible and responsive to the population, integrating local/indigenous forms of knowledge. Colley et al. (2003) go on to address further developments past the immediate post-Second World War period, including the work of the famous literacy educator Paulo Freire (1973) in South America (i.e. the slums of São Paulo). His work articulated the direction of a whole movement of popular adult education that was highly politicized, aware of power relations, sided with the poor, underprivileged masses, and linked to the distinction between formal ‘banking’ education models and less formalized learning vis-à-vis ‘conscientization’. At about the same time, parallel concerns arose in scholarship as diverse as Illich’s De-schooling society (1971) and Tools for conviviality (1973) and Allen Tough’s seminal studies of ‘self-directed learning’(1967, 1971). In both cases, the issue of control is highlighted (though political elements were obviously dealt with quite differently). These politicized elements of the historical origins of informal learning were, of course, not without their contradictions. Partially in response to these earlier periods, there emerged in a number of countries around the world an interest in recognizing the full range of formal and non-formal education that people undertook. Notably, paid work became ratified as an important element of the conversation. This is expressed, for example, in the British context through the National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) system in 1987. Elements of the non-formal education critique, already partially resident in vocational and apprenticeship programming, had become established at the policy-level of State training systems (cf. Foley, 1995 [Australia]; Bjørn˚avold, 2000 [Europe]). These key periods and elements are not merely interesting points of history. While unevenly articulated in scholarship, all contribute to how we understand informal learning and work today. As the saying goes: ‘we may be through with history, but history isn’t through with us’.

2.2 A Comparison of Models In a series of articles published since the late 1990s, driven by both the need to understand the nature of informal learning in relation to other forms of learning and

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an interest in generating aggregate estimates of levels of activity across the Canadian population, Livingstone eventually offered this set of definitions (e.g. 1998, 1999, 2005): When a teacher has the authority to determine that people designated as requiring knowledge effectively learn a curriculum taken from a pre-established body of knowledge, the form of learning is formal education, whether in the form of age-graded and bureaucratic modern school systems or elders initiating youths into traditional bodies of knowledge. When learners opt to acquire further knowledge or skill by studying voluntarily with a teacher who assists their self-determined interests by using an organized curriculum, as is the case in many adult education courses and workshops, the form of learning is non-formal education or further education. When teachers or mentors take responsibility for instructing others without sustained reference to an intentionally-organized body of knowledge in more incidental and spontaneous learning situations, such as guiding them in acquiring job skills or in community development activities, the form of learning is informal education or informal training. Finally, all other forms of intentional or tacit learning in which we engage either individually or collectively without direct reliance on a teacher or an externally-organized curriculum can be termed self-directed or collective informal learning. In the most expansive conceptions of human learning, self-directed learning may be seen as coterminous with life experience itself (Livingstone, 2005, pp. 980–981).

He summarizes this definitional system in a figure, reproduced here as Table 1. Table 1 Livingstone’s agency and knowledge structure dimensions of learning model (from Livingstone, 2005, p. 981) Primary agency Learner(s)

Teacher(s)

Knowledge

Pre-established

Non-formal education Further education

Formal schooling Elders’ teachings

Structure

Situational

Self-directed learning Collective untaught learning

Informal education Informal training

The Livingstone model emphasizes issues of agency or control against the mediation of learning (in all forms) by knowledge/skill artefacts (e.g. curriculum, lessons, tricks-of-the trade, etc.) that are primarily established either in the situation of learning itself or imported from elsewhere. Informal learning and informal education are largely defined, in this model, in terms of the character of the knowledge form or structure as ‘situational’ (as opposed to ‘pre-established’). He includes amongst these both taught and untaught learning carried out either in self- or collectivelydirected ways or with the guidance of an expert other (e.g. mentor, teacher, coach, etc.). This model, while useful for introducing us to the concept of informal learning, is but one of many competing models. Indeed, like all available models it has generated criticism (e.g. Colley et al., 2003). Here I contrast it with the model offered by Eraut (2004) (see Table 2). Eraut’s model, like Livingstone’s, provides an overview


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Table 2 Eraut’s typology of informal learning Time of focus

Implicit learning

Reactive learning

Deliberative learning

Past episode(s)

Implicit linkage of past memories with current experience.

Discussion and review of past actions, communications, events, experiences.

Current experience

A selection from experience enters episodic memory

Future behaviour

Unconscious expectations

Brief, nearspontaneous reflection on past episodes, events, incidents, experiences. Noting facts, ideas, opinions, impressions; asking questions; observing effects of actions. Recognition of possible future learning opportunities

Engagement in decision-making, problem-solving, planned informal learning Planning learning opportunities; rehearsing for future events.

Source: Eraut, 2004, p. 250.

of what he terms the formal/informal continuum, but unlike Livingstone it places in the forefront issues of time and levels of cognitive information processing from unconscious and implicit processing to conscious, goal-directed problem-solving. In Eraut’s basic model issues of control figure less prominently, while his assessment of the range of information processing is much more nuanced than Livingstone’s. Eraut’s model, modified from his earlier work (2000), demonstrates the many dimensions of informal learning involving different functions of memory, reflection, discussion, engagement and planning. On an individual basis, the model offers a coherent orientation to the full range of cognitive (conscious and unconscious) responses embedded within the informal learning process. The Livingstone and Eraut models both contrast with another approach in the field. Illeris & Associates (2004) offer a model directed specifically at the range of learning that takes place in, through, or in some other way related to the paid work process. Their collective approach is summarized in Figure 1 (reproduced from Illeris & Associates, 2004, p. 31; drawn from the work of Jørgensen & Warring). Neither as direct in addressing issues of control, nor as explicit in addressing the different types of cognitive information processing, the Illeris and Associates model is however particularly strong in its emphasis of broad mediating factors that shape all learning. Specifically, the model suggests that learning at work is mediated by three key classes of factors (technical-organizational, social-cultural and individual) that are always in tension and mutually acting on one another. Technicalorganizational learning environment factors include the division of labour, autonomy and application of qualifications, and the organization of opportunity for communication/interaction. In the Illeris model, social-cultural learning environment factors refer to such items as communities of interest/practice, workplace culture, political dimensions of work and labour relations, and so on. Finally, individual employee learning potential expresses both cognitive and socio-emotional

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P.H. Sawchuk Individual Level

INDIVIDUAL LEARNING POTENTIALS

COGNITION

PSYCHODYNAMISM

WORK IDENTITY

THE TECHNICALORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT Social Level

WORK PRACTICE

THE SOCIALCULTURAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

WORK

Fig. 1 Learning in working life Source: Illeris & Associates, 2004, p. 67.

(psycho-dynamic) dimensions as they relate to individual skills/knowledge, individual education/training, motivation and life-history, factors that integrate learning across paid work and other social spheres. The triangular connections between points as well as the arrows emphasize how these factors mediate one another. Taken together, these models offer distinctive examples of the three basic orientations that make up the scholarly work on informal learning and work today. Indeed, again when taken together, these models demonstrate remarkable continuity with the basic genealogy of informal learning we began with in the previous section:

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Direct engagement in the world rather than internal thought alone as represented in Aristotelian thought; Each model demonstrates how the learning it describes is flexible and inclusive of diverse knowledge forms in relation to the original UNESCO imperatives; Learning is political—it has to do with control which expresses the spirit of the critiques of the likes of Freire and Illich; And, finally, each model attempts to establish the value of, and thus the motivation for, building more clearly articulated assessments of informal learning as represented by the more recent policy initiatives to recognize prior learning.

Informal learning at work is the product of the interaction of all of these factors over time producing skills, knowledgeability and expertise leading to accommodation, co-operation as well as intransigence, resistance and revolt. Across the three models it is important to heed the clarification that Colley et al. (2003, p. i) have made in their seminal effort at comparative integration: Learning is often thought of as ‘formal’, ‘informal’ or ‘non-formal’. This report suggests that these are not discrete categories, and to think that they are is to misunderstand the


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nature of learning. It is more accurate to conceive ‘formality’ and ‘informality’ as attributes present in all circumstances of learning.

2.3 The Challenge to Notions of ‘Informal Learning at Work’ I will return to the situated/socio-cultural approach to learning again in the following section, but here I wish to emphasize its role in a powerful critique of informal learning that has emerged from one of the leading voices in work and learning analysis today, Stephen Billett. Situated/socio-cultural approaches to learning, broadly speaking characterized by the works of Scribner (1985), Lave and Wenger (1991), Engeström & Middleton (1998), Wenger (1998), are summarized in many ways by the work of Billett (e.g. 1995, 2002; Billett & Somerville, 2004). In particular, his work in Billett (2002) lays out the most direct confrontation of the informal learning at work question where he rejects the adequacy of the concept altogether. He shares with Eraut (2004) and Colley et al. (2003) a resistance to seeing informal and formal learning as categories. Billett, however, goes further to argue that describing learning through work as being informal is ‘negative [i.e. it indicates what it is not rather than what it is], inaccurate and ill-focused’ (p. 58). All learning, whether it is in a school or a workplace, is participatory and goal-directed; to arbitrarily establish boundaries of informality/formality expresses what he terms ‘situational determinism’. Importantly, drawing on, amongst others, the work of Lave (1990), Billett goes on to say that ‘although not intentionally stated in a syllabus, the pathways of activities in workplaces are often inherently pedagogical, as well as focusing on the continuity of practice through learning’ (Billett, 2002, p. 59). Certainly, there is much that is correct in the Billett (2002) position, particularly as it might apply to those analysts rushing to categorize and measure different species of learning, such as in the international lifelong learning policy community. Likewise, the concept of mediated practice, which is central to Billett’s critique, as I also argue in Sawchuk (2006), does, in fact, help overcome the structure/agency problem. However, this does not necessarily mean the demise of the concept of formality/informality. Clearly, there are different social arrangements within organized instructional and non-taught learning situations (Sawchuk 2003a). Moreover, the origin of knowledge/skill artefacts (i.e. imported from the outside or indigenous to the social group or situation) matter. In addition, we might also note that formal/informal distinctions may be linked to socio-political relations of institutional legitimacy/illegitimacy. That is, in keeping with the knowledge/power thesis of the Livingstone model (see also Livingstone & Sawchuk, 2004), relations of legitimacy/illegitimacy are always a function of communities of interest as ratified through their linkages with (dominant or insurgent) societal institutions. While certainly not all informal learning is illegitimate and linked to insurgent, oppositional communities, just as certainly we know that there is no formal learning that is not legitimated from the perspective of some organized, articulated political project. Thus, as always, power matters, and formality/informality may be a portal into recognizing such relations.

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3 Methods and Key Findings for Studying Informal Learning and Work 3.1 Case Studies, Ethnography and Interview Research Case study, ethnographic and interview research are by far the most prevalent forms of research carried out on informal learning and work. This is to be expected since the term informal learning has not been around very long and, in this context, research will tend to be inductive and exploratory as opposed to deductive and based in hypothesis testing. Colley et al.’s (2003) review of case studies summarizes major findings. In terms of definitions, the authors conclude that the characteristics of formality and informality are present in all learning situations in one way or another and meaningful conceptualization might revolve around the balance of these characteristics rather than the analytic isolation of them. Importantly, emancipatory or oppressive processes or outcomes are not exclusively linked with any type of learning. Likewise, Eraut (2004; Eraut et al., 2000) provides a review of research methods to do with informal learning and work. They remark, similar to Colley et al. (2003), that interview studies are the most common. Eraut notes that interviews on the subject of informal learning and work are not, in fact, particularly easy to conduct. To begin with, interviewees do not regularly recognize their informal learning, the resultant skill/knowledge is ‘either tacit or regarded as part of a person’s general capability rather than something that has been learned’, and that learning discourse is dominated by ‘codified, prepositional knowledge’ (Colley et al., 2003, p. 249). According to Eraut (2004), interview research on informal learning has made use of a variety of organizing ideas including: self-directed learning projects (e.g. Tough, 1971); key lifetime events (e.g. McCall, Lombardo & Morrison, 1988); recent life-changes (Fox, Mazmanian & Putman, 1989); and critical situations that called for new learning (Slotnick, 1999). To these we can add the learning life-history (Livingstone & Sawchuk, 2004) and the biographical approaches (Dominice, 2000; Doray & Bélanger, 2002) which, like the approach in Eraut’s own studies, do not necessarily seek out extraordinary events but rather focus on on-going agency in context. This list is far from exhaustive, but it should be clear that there are those methods that seek to analyse informal learning and work based on breaks in routine (e.g. critical incident) or through the flow of everyday life with or without such breaks. Either way, though the quality of analysis varies, illuminating one typically leads to a better understanding of the other. The political dimensions of interview and ethnography research on informal learning and work is brought out perhaps most coherently in Livingstone & Sawchuk (2004, Chapter 1), where it is added that in the case of interviewing manufacturing and services workers specifically (Eraut’s own studies have focused on professionals), there are a range of political and cultural issues at play. Moreover, in Sawchuk (2003b, pp. 23–25 and Chapter 6), it is demonstrated that the language of learning and education—including informal learning and work specifically—is


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used very differently across social groups. Together, these effects are referred to as a hegemonic/historic block of presumptions (universalism, individualism, pedagogical, cognitive) that, in particular, pervade interviewee’s accounts of their own informal learning at work making it difficult to assess accurately.

3.2 Survey Research Disturbingly, Colley et al. (2003), as well as Eraut (2004) appear to suggest that survey research may not be particularly useful for the study of informal learning at work. At the very least, they each argue that it is premature to measure informal learning before a better understanding of the concept is established. Despite these misgivings, as Livingstone (2005) has noted, there have been a number of attempts to assess informal learning and work using survey methodologies. In reviewing survey methodology from recent studies in Finland, the United Kingdom and Canada, Livingstone notes that most questions of informal learning appear to follow after those addressing initial schooling. Moreover, the surveys he reviewed also tended to dichotomize learning in organized courses and learning done on one’s own. Together, Livingstone argues, these factors may produce a bias toward under-reporting, as respondents are made to pre-framed activity in terms of its formal characteristics. He goes on to criticize many survey studies for producing superficial rather than deep accounts of informal learning. Nevertheless, internationally, we can see from the reviews produced by Livingstone (2005) that there are many important findings that survey research on informal learning and work has yielded, for example:

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though content may differ, there is no significant difference in the incidence of informal learning activity across social groups; there is no strong relationships between the amount of time spent on informal learning and prior educational achievement; though school drop-outs may discourage students, they are not discouraged learners when informal learning is taken into account; a person’s age had little impact on the amount of informal learning that they do.

Livingstone notes that, in the last decade, the most extensive surveying of informal learning has been conducted in Canada. These include the 1998 New Approaches to Lifelong Learning (NALL; n=1,562) and the much larger 2004 Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL; n=9,063) surveys (Livingstone, 1999; and Work and Lifelong Learning, 2005 respectively). A summary of the comparison between the two surveys in WALL (2005) shows job-based, housework-based, volunteer work-based, and general interest informal learning dropped in Canada since 1998 resulting overall in a 4.1 hours per week difference (16 hours per week in 1998 versus 11.9 hours per week in 2004). This difference was linked to rising total paid work hours. Presumably the critique of authors such as Colley et al. (2003) is related to the lack of clarity in the relationship between how people understand and articulate their

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responses (i.e. how they interpret the questions unevenly across the sample) and the actual changes in behaviour, though the comparative dimension (1998 versus 2004) at least partially deals with this source of variance. My point here is that, certainly, findings like this are relevant to the study of informal learning and work. Surveys can set the stage for furthering the cycle of inductive/deductive research on informal learning and work. Clearly, they produce results (e.g. the drop in total hours per week or that hours per week reported tend to be comparable across socioeconomic groups, etc.) that demand explanations, and thus contribute to a broader social scientific knowledge-building process.

3.3 Micro-Analysis Finally, we turn to what I will refer to here as situated micro-analytic approaches to the study of informal learning and work. For this it is important to note that each of the approaches looked at up to this point has tended to presume rather than empirically demonstrate the inner workings—that is, the active process—of informal learning at work. That is, how exactly do we know ‘informal learning at work’ when we see it? Interview researchers rely on interviewee’s accounts of his or her informal learning, and as such the data is an expression of discourse and not the actual informal learning practice itself. Even most ethnographic research employs what ethno-methodologists have called glosses for actual practices of informal learning. As Jackson (2005; see also Suchman & Jordan, 1990; Barab & Kirshner, 2001; Sawchuk, 2003a, 2003b) has pointed out in her discussion of research methods and informal learning at work, there is a very real need to clearly articulate ‘what constitutes the actual’ of informal learning at work. Generally speaking, while situated micro-analytic approaches take these matters seriously, at the same time they have tended to eschew the term learning itself. The traditions from which they originate—including pragmatics, communications, ethno-methodology, conversation analysis, cultural or socio-cultural (i.e. non-experimental) psychology, symbolic interactionism and anthropology—tend to use terms like speech-exchange systems, distributed cognition, participatory accomplishments, and perhaps above all the term social practice. At the conceptual level, clearly these approaches have had influence on scholars of informal learning and work (e.g. Fenwick, 2001; Billett, 2002, etc.), however, rarely has this influence extended to the use of micro-analytic methods. As Engeström & Middleton (1998) and Luff, Hindmarsh and Heath (2000) note, typically fine-grained analysis is done on strips of recorded interaction and talk in natural settings within situated microanalytic research. These settings have included airline cockpits, airport control towers, subway control centres, court-rooms, child development centres, purchasing offices, banks, science labs, and just about any other setting imaginable; wherever, it seems, quality recorded data of actual participatory events can be accessed. Analyses of this type have discovered the local invention and reproduction of mindful practice on the individual and collective levels; how expert practice comes about on an everyday basis. Much of the research is interested in the role of work and


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technological design; how everyday environments actually shape communication and cognition at work; how, for example, the use, misuse and alternative uses of computer artefacts leads to the reproduction as well as change in workplace cultures; how interaction at work is either organized or dis-organized by changing goals and objects of work; and so on.

4 Conclusion I began this chapter by noting the importance of expanding our conception of work. This expansion was in many ways expressed in the three key models of work and learning discussed in which past learning and broader areas of social life necessarily shape practice in the paid workplace. The models exemplified issues of power/control, broad processes of cognitive information processing including socioemotional and unconscious elements, and how informal learning is mediated by technical-organizational and socio-cultural spheres. Indeed, collectively these models express similar features established historically in the emergence of the informal learning concept. Minimally, what we can note is that people come with learning histories, and workplaces are embedded in broader institutional networks that are economic, cultural, political and historical. Finally, we saw that there are a range of different methods and epistemological matters to consider when addressing issues of informal learning and work. Too frequently, the full range of methods and conceptual approaches are foreclosed by individual researchers. Reversing this trend undoubtedly will serve analyses of informal learning and work into the future.

References Andersen, L.; Boud, D.; Cohen, R. 1995. Experience-based learning. In: Foley, G., ed. Understanding adult education and training, 2nd ed., pp. 225–39. Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Barab, S.; Kirshner, D. 2001. Guest editors’ introduction: rethinking methodology in the learning sciences. The journal of the learning sciences, vol. 10, nos. 1–2, pp. 5–15. Billett, S. 1995. Workplace learning: its potential and limitations. Education and training, vol. 37, no. 5, pp. 20–27. Billett, S. 2002. Critiquing workplace learning discourses: participation and continuity at work. Studies in the education of adults, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 56–67. Billett, S.; Somerville, M. 2004. Transformations at work: identity and learning. Studies in continuing education, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 309–26. Bjørn˚avold, J. 2000. Making learning visible: identification, assessment and recognition of nonformal learning in Europe. Thessaloniki, Greece: CEDEFOP. Colley, H.; Hodkinson, P.; Malcolm, J. 2003. Informality and formality in learning: a report for the Learning and Skills Research Centre. Leeds, UK: University of Leeds. Dominice, P. 2000. Learning from our lives: using educational biographies with adults. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Doray, P.; Bélanger, P. 2002. Changing working conditions, lifelong learning and biography in a new economy. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto, Centre for the Study of Education and Work. (WALL Working paper series.)

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Chapter II.8

New Learning Spaces in TVET: The Contribution of Social Partnerships Terri Seddon, Kathleen Fennessy and Kathleen Ferguson

1 Introduction In our times of rapid technological, economic and cultural change, new learning spaces are emerging as a significant aspect of international public policy. They include workplaces, small businesses, community settings, private and community training providers, learning networks, and even commercialized units within public education and training. These new learning spaces are distinctive because they are not simply positioned and co-ordinated as an extension of centralized government and established educational providers and institutions (or ‘old’ learning spaces) but are in a definable relationship with the government as a consequence of deregulatory trends and decentralized governance that is apparent on a global scale. While undoubtedly influenced by State policy and resource imperatives, the defined relationship with government means that new learning spaces have some kind of autonomy from the government. They create a space for their participants to consciously negotiate their relationship to centralized policy processes and mainstream education and training provision, and to other agencies and community networks. In this respect, the emergence of new learning spaces is a manifestation of shifting institutionalized relationships between State, market and civil society that, in principle at least, enables communities to work in partnership with the government. This chapter provides a window on new learning spaces in Australia by focusing on the contribution that ‘social partnerships’ make to technical and vocational education and training (TVET). These social partnerships operate as learning networks by linking localized groups with external organizations operating across different scales (global, national, regional, local, city, workplace, family) to form decentralized and potentially powerful networks for tackling localized social and economic issues. They provide distinctive opportunities for active, collaborative learning at the local level and link communities of learners with networks of external educational and employer bodies. In this way, they consolidate an area-based capacity for action and decision that has been harnessed to address issues of social exclusion and deprivation, and community building through improved economic and educational development (Green, 2002; Green, Wolf & Leney, 1999; Geddes, 2005, p. 18; Smyth, Reddel & Jones, 2005). R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 II.8, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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We begin by considering new learning spaces in general and the conditions that have privileged learning and led to the diversification of sites in which learning is supported and recognized. Our argument is that new learning spaces are an effect of deregulatory agendas in education and training, and the specific kinds of new learning spaces reflect the way education and training have been co-opted into the economic and social development agenda. We then focus on social partnerships—a specific type of new learning space. Drawing on our research into the way social partnerships in TVET have been formed and developed in the Australian context, we document different types of social partnerships, how they are framed, formed and maintained, and the kinds of learning that are supported through them. The final section of the chapter comments on the contribution of social partnerships to TVET.

2 Approaching New Learning Spaces Our point of departure in analysing ‘new learning spaces’ is the pattern of centralized education and training that developed throughout the twentieth century in Australia. The broad parameters of this history of education are similar in many countries around the world. In Australia, this institutional design emerged in the late nineteenth century when the previous mix of voluntarist and market-based educational provision was brought within the domain of government through the formation of public education systems. This shift in co-ordination progressively formalized learning in specialist education and training institutions with a dedicated bureaucracy and professionalized workforce. The partnership between State, bureaucracy and professional workforce established an institutional distance between the worlds of education and the worlds of work and family life. All children were compelled by law to attend school and for most children this meant attending local public schools that structured learning in increasingly distinct pathways (sometimes offering particular work-related learning, e.g. professional education, technical education) to work and adult life. This centralized educational design accomplished important learning achievements, but also institutionalized selection and sorting processes in terms of educational outcomes. Post-1945, this structure of learning diversified to accommodate different social groups (e.g. extending technical and university provision, increasing the proportion of the age group in education, attending to cultural diversity). From the mid-1980s, the character of this diversification began to move away from the assumption that centralized public education was the primary principle in educational design. Instead, there was pressure for diversification that recognized learning in sites other than institutionalized education and training (e.g. in workplaces, communities, families), affirmed private educational provision and actively deregulated existing education and training institutions and workforces along business lines through the implementation of corporate managerialism. These trends were partly driven by broad changes in work and society, but also by fiscal pressures

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in an education system that provided for more and more people. These drives were accompanied by policy/public rhetoric that affirmed the importance and benefits of learning sites beyond schools, technical and further education (TAFE) institutes, and universities. These ‘new learning spaces’ were acclaimed as being more flexible, friendly and more able to provide localized solutions to problems of school-to-work transition, work-related learning and adult retraining for work than the centralized public education system with its mix of education and training institutions. These learning spaces appeared ‘new’ in contrast to the ‘old’ learning spaces forged, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as liberal (and later social) democratic government built a centralized collective capacity to organize and co-ordinate learning across nation-States. In practice, they were mostly places where learning had always occurred but had not been formalized or recognized through the mainstream policies and practices of education and training. In workplaces, community settings, families, churches and popular movements (e.g. political or environmental movements), learning had always been one dimension of the activities. Mostly, this learning was not the primary focus of the setting but occurred in an incidental and embedded way as part of being a worker, or a member of a community, church or family. Sometimes there was explicit instruction, for instance in workplace training or religious education, but this focused learning was generally oriented towards the induction of participants into that community, its place and culture. Such learning did not lead to credentials or structured learning pathways that gave access to particular education and employment opportunities or career mobility but, rather, helped to socialize and consolidate people’s membership and sense of belonging within localized networks and to build social capital. Despite their prior existence and their distinctive contribution to socialization, these new learning spaces have taken on features of a more focused and reified approach to learning. In some cases, existing patterns of embedded learning have been brought within the formalized qualification structure that publicly recognizes and accredits competency. For example, young people working in their family’s business or farm can have their skills acknowledged to obtain a nationally recognized qualification, transferable across Australia, within the Australian Qualification Framework. In other cases, enterprises and community agencies have become formally accredited as providers and have delivered training programmes leading to national TVET qualifications. Sometimes, dedicated groups have arisen to provide specific training programmes in a niche market. Taking advantage of shifts in the regulation and funding of learning, such groups have formed small-scale private or not-for-profit training providers that support particular learning pathways (e.g. offering training in particular industries, providing language instruction to international students, assisting older community members to develop computer skills). Existing education and training institutions have also participated, forming commercial units and being accredited as training organizations, as a way of addressing shortfalls in public funding for public education, or providing particular community services. For example, the Methodist Ladies College, one of Victoria’s most

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prestigious private schools, is a registered training organization (RTO) and offers community education programmes to local residents. Equally, in many state schools the school council or parents and friends committee has argued for community education activities and courses run through the school. The generalization of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the Internet mean that new learning spaces exist, increasingly, not only as tangible places of face-to-face learning but also as technologically mediated spaces where learning occurs via webbased training, discussion forums, web logs and games. Our point is that new learning spaces are a historically-specific development arising as an aspect of wider social, economic and cultural changes. The interactive effects of globalization and the ICT revolution, economic restructuring that drives privatization and deregulation, and economic integration that is liberalizing markets for capital, labour, goods and services provoke their emergence and shape their character. Their significance is disputed as analysts and activists debate the practical implications of globalization and the best way of assessing impact (either using aggregate measures at national or global level or impact on particular groups of people at the local level). These debates become controversial as policy and practice is questioned by sceptics who argue that the concept of globalization is being used ideologically to drive change in ways that support aggressive right-wing capitalism (Held & McGrew, 2003). In education, these contradictory developments have privileged partnership with the government and active choice-making and self-management by individuals and groups. These trends are advocated by global policy agencies, like the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Bank and UNESCO, and by national governments as supporting mature service delivery (OECD, 1994a, 1994b). While market mechanisms were initially emphasized throughout the 1990s, especially since the Asian and other financial crises, resurgent interest in poverty and its conceptualization and measurement have begun to shift the policy focus. Concerns about growing global poverty and the limitations of structural adjustment programmes in developing countries have been complemented by concerns about economic reform and the widening gap between rich and poor in developed countries. This is drawing greater attention to the contribution of education and training in social cohesion (Stegliz, 2002; OECD, 2005). Poverty, it was argued, is not one-dimensional but requires action on: (a) income and basic needs amongst the poor; (b) human development focusing on health, education, longevity and other human capabilities of the poor; (c) social inclusion addressing social dialogue, political participation and a voice amongst the poor; and (d) jobs necessary for growth and sustainable livelihoods. Addressing these integrated agenda means that economic growth must be accompanied by measures addressing social sustainability. And this means recognizing that: (a) both the informal economy and formal economy are significant in production; (b) government governs in relationship with the market and civil society; and (c) that justice depends upon recognition and capability development as well as redistribution (Chen, Vaneck & Carr, 2004, pp. 5–6; Fraser, 1995; Sen, 1999).


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The effect of these policy debates has reshaped, in small ways, the image of the good society that sits behind public policy processes from those established in the heyday of market reform. In TVET, the importance of social as well as economic outcomes is being reaffirmed. The focus on technical and vocational learning, which became narrowly employment-related through the 1980s and 1990s, is being extended to embrace and support community development as a critical policy lever in realizing development goals. This community focus acknowledges the contributions of families, communities, public enterprises and firms to global productivity, as well as the need to mobilize these resources by building local capacity for action and decision-making that addresses economic development, jobs and growth, supports human development, and facilitates social inclusion and participation, particularly amongst those who are ‘at risk’. These discursive shifts have begun to reframe TVET, acknowledging the way learning is integral to sustainable work, life and citizenship.

3 Social Partnerships and TVET Social partnerships can be defined as localized networks that connect some combination of local community groups, education and training providers, industry and government agencies to work on local issues and community-building activities. Within the Australian context, social partnerships in TVET can be broadly categorized into three different types, according to their origins and purpose (Seddon & Billett, 2004; Billett, Clemans & Seddon, 2005). These are:

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Enacted partnerships. These partnerships are initiated by external agencies but their goals are congruent with those of the local community. For example, the Commonwealth-funded Enterprise and Career Foundation (ECEF) was established to promote school-to-work transition by providing schools in the partnership with support and funding. This arrangement developed interdependencies between partners and was thus valued both by local and government participants. In Victoria, Local Learning and Employment Networks (LLEN) were established by the government to facilitate partnership between local community agencies in providing education and training services for young people, especially for youth outside the school system who were disengaged or at risk. Community partnerships. Originating in the community, these partnerships connect with external agencies to secure the support and resources needed for addressing specific local problems. Negotiated partnerships. This type of partnership is longer-standing than either the enacted or community partnership models described above, which have developed relatively recently in response to specific concerns at the local level. Although negotiated partnerships also address local concerns, they are formed between partners with reciprocal goals to secure a service or support from outside the community. This requires effective negotiation of the partners’ differing interests and agendas as the following examples demonstrate.

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Social partnerships in TVET are formed to address local capacity-building. They commonly develop particular learning initiatives to support learning by specific groups of identified beneficiaries. Yet, through the work of building the partnership and designing and negotiating learning initiatives, participants gain new skills and the ability to deal with issues of concern to the community. Social partnerships support learning at two levels: (a) at the level of the partnership, where participation supports an educative process for participants; and (b) at the level of the learning initiative, which also supports learning by beneficiaries to enhance their educational and employment pathways. Where beneficiaries learn as a consequence of designed work-related learning experiences, participant’s learning-through-participation diversifies learning outcomes beyond specific work-related knowledge, skills and dispositions, and potentially enlarges an individual’s capacity for civic engagement and active citizenship.

3.1 Framing Social Partnerships Since the 1980s, decentralization has shaped educational delivery, representing a paradigm shift from centralized and hierarchical authority residing in the government to more horizontal decision-making and localized governance. More recently, governments have adopted whole-of-government approaches that bring different departments together across portfolios within particular geographic areas to address intractable social problems and to promote social and economic development. In Australia, these area-based social partnerships in education are commonly targeted at youth and young adults who are considered ‘at risk’ of becoming marginalized or excluded from social participation because they have not found a place within either formal education or structured training, or gained employment. Early school-to-work programmes were essentially top-down government-funded initiatives that focused on encouraging local communities to assume greater responsibility for shaping vocational training opportunities for young people. Government departments in education and training worked with schools and TAFE providers to develop structured programmes and credentials. These programmes were based on the old democratic welfare-state partnership model, which meant that social welfare provision was the responsibility of bureaucratic government, organized capital and labour. These old forms of partnership emphasized shared institutional goals and ways of thinking. Within the partnership, consensus was assumed and any conflict was resolved by administrative provisions or through recognized industrial relations processes and procedures. Social partnerships, on the other hand, bring together a coalition of stakeholders to provide access to vocational education and training that may or may not be provided by or within organized TVET agencies. These partnerships presume individualism and self-regulation, whereby social obligation is mediated through individual choice, consent and personal accountability. The assumption is that individuals are actors, not passive subjects, and that they have the capacity to make a tangible difference to social life. Social partnerships emphasize local solutions and focus on


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supporting networks through which individuals collaborate to provide opportunities that not only meet immediate local needs but also potentially enable beneficiaries to engage in the wider world. Formed to address local concerns, their longevity is directly related to the achievement of short-term goals and specified outcomes. The shift towards local decision-making means that new social partnerships are pluralist in character and also transient by nature. In this scenario, the government’s role is redefined as a facilitating rather than a controlling agency. The government continues to steer policy and practice less by command and more by creating contexts within which decisions about vocational education and training are made. Instead of being accountable to the sovereign and unifying authority of the State, new social partnerships encompass multiple voices and interests, and are based on a mix of tacit understandings and contractualized agreements, more than formally defined obligations that are lived on a day-to-day basis. This is a decision-making situation that is described as ‘governance’ rather than government (Jessop, 1998; Rhodes, 1996). In these respects, new social partnerships are both more singular and complex than older forms of either voluntary organization or government partnership. They entail a deliberate negotiation of different interests in the construction of partnership capacity for action and decision-making. This partnership formation and maintenance is an achievement realised through distinctive practices of partnership work which achieve shared goals agreed by members of the partnership and also support learning through participation by those who become involved.

3.2 Constructing Partnership Capacity In Victoria, thirty-one LLENs were established between 2001 and 2002 in response to a government inquiry into post-compulsory education (Kirby, 2000). The LLENs were expected to revitalize localized, co-operative approaches to vocational education and training, and to help realize the government’s objective of retaining young people in education or training until they completed Year 12 or its equivalent. Although the LLENs had very different experiences in their early stages of partnership building, they now form an important part of education and training provision. They have strengthened links between education and training providers, increased collaborative planning and delivery, engaged industry and community partners and attracted resources, including funding, to support disengaged or ‘at risk’ youth (Victorian Learning and Employment Skills Commission, 2005, p. 4). The LLEN were initiated by the government and formed according to a central design: they are incorporated bodies separate from the government but reliant upon it for policy direction, support and some funding. The Victorian government defined the boundaries for the geographic distribution of the LLENs across the state and stipulated governance requirements. Having a modest budget, the LLEN depend upon local volunteer support. Rather than actually providing vocational education and training, the LLEN acts as a brokering agency, forming networks and connections between employers, schools, TVET providers and other

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community agencies, to better address the learning needs of young people, particularly for local youth who might not complete secondary schooling. The establishment of LLENs brought a new organization into the prevailing framework of increasingly decentralized educational provision and area-based networks of youth, education, training and employment agencies. It left the LLENs in a somewhat ambiguous situation and existing providers sometimes viewed them suspiciously. To address this positioning and realize their purposes, LLEN organizers had to work hard to build relationships of trust and collaboration amongst local agencies. Inevitably, the insertion of a new social partnership into an existing set of relationships engendered tensions for the individuals involved and between participating agencies, which invariably competed for scarce resources (funding and volunteers) even though they shared a commitment to working with young people. Learning how to navigate conflicting interests and agendas for the good of young people distinguished the LLENs both as new social partnerships and learning spaces in TVET. The process of LLEN development entailed the construction of a capacity for action and decision-making amongst multiple interests. Other social partnerships have different genesis to the LLENs, but the process of building capacity to realise a set of concerns or goals that have to be identified, agreed and met collectively is common to them all. The formation of social partnerships depends upon constructively collaborating with others to secure resources, align needs and accomplish goals. This capacity development encompasses more than organizational development because it must also engage with the overall context within which the partnership and its participants interact and operate. Participants typically describe this process of capacity development as building trust in others as a basis for effective engagement and participation. We have called this process of building relationships of trust to construct capacity for action and decision-making ‘partnership work’. Partnership work is the interactive and collaborative process of working together to identify, negotiate and articulate goals, and to develop processes for realising and reviewing those goals. Effective partnership work embraces and harnesses the contributions of local partners and external agencies, their interactions and transformations in collective work. These processes of working together allow communities to identify and represent their needs and to secure quality partners and partnership arrangements that will enable them to achieve their objectives. They also allow the government and non-governmental agencies to understand and respond to local needs, to utilize local resources and enhance capacity for local governance. Our research on Australian social partnerships has identified five dimensions of partnership work. These are: 1. Cultural-scoping work involving identifying, reviewing and refining the partners’ interests and concerns, and developing a framework for collectively realizing goals, identifying achievements and renewing commitment. 2. Connection-building work, which involves building trust and commitment, encouraging participation, and developing processes that are inclusive and respectful.


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3. Capacity-building work with partners in developing the infrastructure, resources and skills needed to achieve collective goals. 4. Collective work, which involves constructing consistent, transparent and workable procedures for partnership and developing effective communication and leadership. 5. Trust-building work, which means establishing effective processes for engaging and informing partners, and encouraging co-operation and collaboration. As an executive officer at a Victorian LLEN observed, it takes a ‘lot of work’ to build relationships of trust and get ‘everything right’. Constructing a social environment where people feel at ease and able to contribute involves hard, labour-intensive work that makes considerable demands on people’s interpersonal skills, their capacities for cross-cultural communication, and their willingness to engage in emotional labour. In this way, partnership work is never complete. Participants must continue to work at building relationships and realising outcomes if trust is to be maintained between the partners. This ongoing work is commonly sustained for a while but then undercut because resources become scarce, people move on and skills are lost. The formation and maintenance of social partnerships is a significant social achievement, through which volunteers and paid employees construct local capacity for action and decision-making in a governance context. The examples illustrate that this work is rarely straightforward, but it can achieve outcomes and participants commonly report a sense of being energized through their involvement. In practice, the actual capacity developed by social partnerships is inevitably variable. It is limited by the knowledge, skills and experiences of participants, the sustainability of funding and other resources, the endurance and energy of volunteers who often do partnership work in addition to their main job, and the willingness of partners, including the government, to endorse the process of working together. It is also affected by the prevailing ethos of competition that exists between many agencies and the patterns of conscious or unconscious inclusion and exclusion that prevail. Yet, despite these challenges, social partnerships act as one type of new learning space, supporting localized learning initiatives for specified beneficiaries and also providing a context for self-reflective and dialogical learning through participation.

3.3 Learning through Participation By their very nature, social partnerships in TVET are sites for work-related learning that aim to improve the life chances of the partnership’s beneficiaries, whether disengaged youth or adults undertaking vocational education and training. In addition to these explicit educational objectives, social partnerships are also spaces in which participating partners engage in new learning through the interactions and activities inherent in partnership work (Fennessy, Billett & Ovens, 2006). This relational learning is described by participants in terms of:

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developing self-knowledge, self-awareness and self-management; nurturing democratic values: trust, respect for others, civic and personal ethics, intimacy, care, empathy and tolerance; improving interpersonal and social skills: observing, listening, interacting, planning, experimenting, problem-solving, negotiating and appraising; understanding personal/local needs in the context of broader social, political and economic processes and systems; adapting and using social and political procedures/processes for local benefit; and developing resilience: the capacity to remain committed and to adapt to changing circumstances.

While these kinds of learning are important for securing a social partnership’s procedural goals, they are also distinctive. Within and through a partnership’s interconnected contexts, participants construct meaning through their relationships with others. This process of learning through partnership work engages participants in developing attitudes, values and skills that can build social capital and democratic citizenry. The pursuit of shared goals develops reciprocity, which in turn creates a web of networks founded on shared values that can build social trust (Putnam, 2000; Field, 2003). In partnerships, participants learn how to exchange views and tolerate diversity, and to respect sameness and difference in others. This learning process has the potential both to enrich individuals and enhance their collective capacity for civic commitment and action. Like other forms of deliberate civic education, partnership learning can encourage future civic engagement by reinforcing respectful egalitarianism and by shaping skills in co-operation, negotiation and dissent (Gastil, 2004; Martin, 2003). Conversely, if participants fail to build relationships based on trust and mutual respect, democratic behaviours and values may be discouraged rather than fostered. Our research into Australian social partnerships suggests that this relational learning supports learning outcomes that traditional educational institutions do not generally emphasize. By fostering learning about the self and the self in relationship to others, and encouraging learning through active engagement with others, the social partnerships in our studies became transformative learning spaces for participants. Specifically, these new learning spaces seemed to help participants to position in ever-expanding and intersecting networks so they learned ‘how to be’ as much as ‘how to do’ (Bauman, 2002, p. 40). They supported personal and cognitive learning that extended beyond the individual or personal to wider cultural and social levels. Emphasizing contextual and embedded learning, the social partnerships developed enhanced individual competence and agency, and brought about collective learning, which is more complex than the aggregate of individual learning processes (Delanty, 2003, p. 601). This learning increased capacity for action and responsibility, and helped participants develop a perception of self as a social actor shaped by their relations with others. And by enlarging capacity for action and sense of responsibility, relational learning facilitated the individual’s active participation and may


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encourage the collective cultural learnings that underpin citizenry and strengthen civil society. Forming cohesive and inclusive learning spaces, the social partnerships we researched valued collective rather than individual performance (Billett et al., 2005). For many participants they provided a respectful and supportive setting through which people could find a sense of belonging. However, they could also be exclusionary and insular spaces. By valuing ‘we’ so highly, participants established a strong sense of ‘us’, as opposed to ‘them’ outside the partnership’s boundaries or networks. Participants need to consciously develop self-awareness and empathy to nurture the partnership as an inclusive learning space. One participant expressed this as ‘walking the talk’ and displaying ‘profound grace’ towards one another. Another reflected that it took time and patience to foster the mutual respect implicit in being willing to tolerate opposing views. The shared process of learning about relationship shapes social partnerships as collaborative and co-operative learning spaces. Participants described it as an energetic and empowering process of working together and building trust. Learning was neither didactic nor incidental, but instead it was embedded in the process of ‘coming to a common view’. As a citizenship learning process, this builds the individual’s self-esteem, self-respect and autonomy. The collaborative process of working together serves to encourage flexibility, helping participants to become more pragmatic and capable of adapting external policies to local needs. Participants explained that it allowed partners to develop workable solutions and to realise that there was ‘no set way to solve problems’. As a learning domain, social partnerships, like other forms of civic engagement, can endow individuals with affective capacities that enhance readiness for learning, including formal education. By building self-awareness, a sense of belonging and identity, partnership work can empower the individual and strengthen personal agency. By building a sense of community, it can generate collective learning, which may then transfer into a process of social or cultural change.

3.4 Partnerships Contributing to TVET Contemporary policy acknowledges that there has been a shift from top-down government towards multilateral governance. In this context, the government remains the locus of power, only intervening to add value, but policy becomes the domain of chosen experts and those in community consultation (United Kingdom. Cabinet Office, 2000, p. 7). Partnerships are fundamental to this governance context because they are sites where skills and other resources can be shared and where experts can engage with community members. Each partnership constitutes a distinctive, localized nexus in which diverse knowledge flows converge. They are places where knowledge-sharing strategies can generate innovative ideas, shared understandings and agreed solutions to intractable problems. If partnerships vary in their roles, mix of interests and efficacy, their specifically local nature is central to future planning strategies (OECD, 2001).

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It is claimed that localized partnerships benefit industry, governments and communities (Nelson & Zadek, 2000). They create value for industry by enhancing community and client networks, boosting information sharing, publicizing corporate goals and products, and permitting intelligence gathering by firms, especially in relation to recruitment. There are financial benefits because greater cohesion means better productivity, and less time and resources spent on managing disputes. For governments, partnerships present the challenge of moving from a ‘command and control’ state to a more complex, enabling position, which offers greater political legitimacy through consultation. Such ‘joined-up governance’ emphasizes dialogue and sustainable outcomes, and partners become more committed to projects they were instrumental in effecting. For communities, partnerships are seen to endow a sense of ownership by building trust amongst diverse groups and enabling local control. Competency gained through managing local affairs assists communities and individuals to interact with corporations and government with greater personal ownership and collective capacity. Local groups become active agents capable of exerting their influence over the political actors working alongside them. In this way, partnerships are seen to support the kind of personal development and skills acquisition that build civic processes (Kosky, 2002). The extent to which social partnerships actually realize these policy claims is disputed. One set of concerns relates to the complexities of partnership work and the difficulties in realizing goals and aspirations. Research shows that the challenge of negotiating shared goals amongst many different partners and building capacity for action and decision-making is compounded by funding and accountability frameworks, and by the expectations of host organizations. Cultural difference, patterns of tacit knowledge, disputes about professional expertise, factionalism and protective self-interest can undermine effective partner relations. Inexperience in governance, lack of constructive feedback and no effective policy-making structures can reduce the capacity of partnerships to operate successfully and achieve their goals (Seddon & Billett, 2004, p. 20; Clegg & McNulty, 2002; Jones & Bird, 2000; Rees, 1997). Some critics argue that area-based initiatives such as social partnerships have never worked in a consistently effective and sustainable way (Power, Rees & Taylor, 2005). They are intrinsically problematic because they tend to work in opportunistic and pragmatic ways, and are vulnerable to the effects of short-term funding and participant burnout. Other commentators maintain that social partnerships, as well as addressing some kinds of social inclusion, create social exclusion. For example, by targeting individuals to reduce exclusion in areas of high unemployment and low literacy, particular groups may be stigmatized and a culture that depends upon those most in need being obliged to demonstrate their deserving status may be fostered. Policy intervention can then become a means of disempowering the local community (Gibson & Cameron, 2001, p. 12; Peel, 2003). The parameters of funding schemes can also accentuate exclusion. For instance, a partnership required to report particular performance targets may optimize success by enrolling learners who do not have severe social or learning disabilities. In any case, a partnership’s capacity to orchestrate or provide services is inherently constrained, which inevitably means that potential beneficiaries or potential partners may not be included. While


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partnerships create a sense of agency among participants, actual empowerment only happens when people feel able to change their lives. For some critics, social partnerships are mostly associated with reduced state responsibilities, shedding influence and activity to local interests, rather than with the emergence of new local governance structures. It is argued that, as instruments of neo-liberal governance that promote self-governing, responsible neo-liberal subjects, social partnerships are used by the state to manage the disruption and social breakdown accompanying deregulation, privatization and the erosion of the welfare state (Geddes, 2005; Whitty & Power, 1997; Lawn, 2001; Robertson & Dale, 2002).

4 Conclusion Our own sense is that social partnerships are inherently contradictory new learning spaces. They are clearly deregulatory in their effects because they do provide means of organizing learning activities beyond established institutions of education and training. They undercut the traditional universalistic ethos of public education by enabling particular learning support for targeted groups. Yet, our research shows that they can also form productive relationships with local schools, TAFE institutes and universities, bringing agencies together to support skill formation and other personal, relational and civic learning amongst particular groups of young people and adults, and in ways that enhance the range of provision to accommodate multicultural diversity. The linking up of different agencies can be particularly productive, leading to shared understandings of the commitments and constraints in agencies, which can enable resource sharing and innovative problem-solving. Partnerships are, by their nature, highly localized and reach into local community networks, feeding information flows, supporting consultative processes and legitimizing policy initiatives and local implementation. These features benefit industry, government and the community, and can enhance community capacity-building. Yet, partnerships are also a policy device that can be used by government to show that something is being done. They are a means of addressing local concerns and advancing social as well as economic outcomes, but they are also a cheap and smallscale option. While promising forms of associational democracy, they tend to privilege some voices over others. They are not always able to address the construction of an appropriately horizontal communication and policy structure to support local governance. Ultimately, social partnerships do construct and consolidate social exclusion as well as social inclusion. This is true of every policy instrument. Even the ostensibly universalistic public education systems have served some more than others— confirming disadvantage as well as addressing it. Social partnerships do seem to encourage individuals to become deeply committed to a group and its cause while the partnership functions. At its best, the affective, relational learning that individuals experience develops understanding of self and other, and fosters a sense of belonging and community. At its worst, this sense of belonging may endorse

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exclusionary attitudes and behaviours, if partnership work is not guided by democratic procedures, if participants lack respect for difference, and if trust is absent or remains undeveloped. This tension between inclusion and exclusion is problematic for participants, but learning how ‘to be’ in a network of relationships and within shifting boundaries is an inherent part of partnership learning. As an educative process, partnership work has the potential to enlarge the individual’s sense of self as a member, as a citizen, and increase their capacity for civic engagement and active citizenship. Relational learning developed through participation in partnerships is transferable to other group-learning contexts. It is a fundamental asset for the transitory volunteer workforce that many social partnerships rely upon. It is this kind of learning, rather than the procedural or declarative learning associated with the designated outcome of a partnership arrangement in vocational education and training that distinguishes social partnerships as distinctive new learning spaces. They offer a particular kind of pragmatic, experiential relational learning that challenges and reformulates the specific, situated learning goals of traditional learning spaces. In this way, social partnerships make a distinctive contribution to TVET, extending beyond the kind of skill formation that characterizes traditional vocational learning to embrace lifelong development as citizen actors. Acknowledgments This chapter draws upon material and ideas developed within a larger research team, which also includes Stephen Billett, Allie Clemans and Carolyn Ovens. We also thank the Australian Research Council, the National VET Research and Evaluation Program, and the Department of Education and Training Victoria for their support in funding the projects that inform this chapter.

References Bauman, Z. 2002. Society under siege. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Billett, S.; Clemans, A.; Seddon, T. 2005. Forming, developing and sustaining social partnerships. Adelaide, Australia: National Centre for Vocational Education Research. [Unpublished report.] Chen, M.A.; Vaneck, J.; Carr, M. 2004. Mainstreaming informal employment and gender in poverty reduction. London: Commonwealth Secretariat and International Development Research Centre. Clegg, S.; McNulty, K. 2002. Partnership working in delivering social inclusion: organisational and gender dynamics. Journal of education policy, vol. 17, pp. 603–07. Delanty, G. 2003. Citizenship as a learning process: disciplinary citizenship versus cultural citizenship. International journal of lifelong education, vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 597–605. Fennessy, S.; Billett, S.; Ovens, C. 2006. Learning in and through social partnerships. Australian journal of adult learning, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 9–27. Field, J. 2003. Civic engagement and lifelong learning: survey findings on social capital and attitudes towards learning. Studies in the education of adults, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 142–56. Fraser, N. 1995. From redistribution to recognition: dilemmas of justice in a post-socialist age. New Left review, no. 212, pp. 68–93. Gastil, J. 2004. Adult civic education through the national issues forums: developing democratic habits and dispositions through public deliberation. Adult education quarterly, vol. 54, no. 4, pp. 308–28.


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Geddes, M. 2005. International perspectives and policy issues. In: Smyth, P.; Reddel, T.; Jones, A., eds. Community and local governance in Australia, pp. 13–34. Sydney, Australia: UNSW Press. Gibson, K.; Cameron, J. 2001. Transforming communities: towards a research agenda. Urban policy and research, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 7–24. Green, A. 2002. The many faces of lifelong learning: recent education policy trends in Europe. Journal of education policy, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 611–26. Green, A.; Wolf, A.; Leney, T. 1999. Convergence and divergence in European education and training systems. London: University of London Institute of Education. Held, D.; McGrew, A. 2003. The great globalisation debate. In: Held, D.; McGrew, A., eds. The global transformations reader, pp. 1–50. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Jessop, B. 1998. The rise of governance and the risks of failure: the case of economic development. International social science journal, vol. 50, no. 155, pp. 29–45. Jones, K.; Bird, K. 2000. ‘Partnership’ as strategy. British educational research journal, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 491–506. Kirby, P. 2000. Ministerial review of post-compulsory education and training pathways in Victoria. Melbourne, Australia: Department of Education, Employment and Training. Kosky, L. 2002. Knowledge and skills for the innovation economy: a statement by the Minister for Education on the future directions for the Victorian vocational and education training system. Melbourne, Australia: Department of Education and Training. Lawn, M. 2001. Borderless education: imagining a European education space in a time of brands and networks. Discourse, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 173–84. Martin, I. 2003. Adult education, lifelong learning and citizenship: some ifs and buts. International journal of lifelong education, vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 566–79. Nelson, J.; Zadek, S. 2000. Partnership alchemy: new social partnerships in Europe. Copenhagen: The Copenhagen Centre. <www.copenhagencentre.org/> Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 1994a. Apprenticeship: which way forward? Paris: OECD. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 1994b. Vocational training in Germany: modernization and responsiveness. Paris: OECD. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2001. Governance in the 21st Century. Paris: OECD. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2005. Emerging education policy issues in OECD countries: meeting of OECD Education Chief Executives. Paris: OECD. <www.oecd.org/document/10/0,2340,en 2649 33723 35378698 1 1 1 1,00.html> Peel, M. 2003. The lowest rung: voices of Australian poverty. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Power, S.; Rees, G.; Taylor, C. 2005. New Labour and educational disadvantage: the limits of area-based initiatives. London review of education, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 101–16. Putnam, R. 2000. Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Rees, G. 1997. Vocational education and training and regional development. Journal of education and work, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 141–49. Rhodes, R.A.W. 1996. The new governance: governing without government. Political studies, vol. 44, pp. 652–67. Robertson, S.; Dale, R. 2002. Local states of emergency: the contradictions of neo-liberal governance in education in New Zealand. British journal of sociology of education, vol. 23, pp. 464–82. Seddon, T.; Billett, S. 2004. Social partnerships in vocational education: building community capacity. Adelaide, Australia: National Centre for Vocational Education Research. Sen, A. 1999. Development as freedom. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Smyth, P.; Reddel, T.; Jones, A., eds. 2005. Community and local governance in Australia. Sydney, Australia: UNSW Press.

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Stegliz, G. 2002. Globalisation and its discontents. London: Allen Lane/Penguin. United Kingdom. Cabinet Office. 2000. Wiring it up: Whitehall’s management of cross-cutting policies and services. London: Cabinet Office, Performance and Innovation Unit. Victorian Learning and Employment Skills Commission. 2005. Review of the local learning and employment networks, June 2004. Melbourne, Australia: Department of Education and Training. <www.vlesc.vic.gov.au/vlesc/news publications/ publications.htm> Whitty, G.; Power, S. 1997. Quasi-markets and curriculum control: making sense of recent education reform in England and Wales. Educational administration quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 219–44.

Chapter II.9

Social and Cultural Aspects of Informal Sector Learning: Meeting the Goals of EFA Madhu Singh

1 Introduction Statistics reveal that in most of the developing world more than 50% of the population is engaged in unorganized work, in household production and service organizations that constitute the so-called informal sector. The informal sector is characterized by micro-enterprises that require small investments, often combine a household with production, and enjoy minimal State regulation because of the high cost of legislation. The establishment of one’s own enterprise represents a viable opportunity for overcoming poverty and providing work to others (Sethuraman, 1976). The ILO World employment report says that the majority of new jobs in developing countries are being created in the informal sector, which employs about 500 million workers (ILO, 1998). A lack of skills for a large section of the labour force, as well as a lack of sufficient job growth in the formal sector of the economy, has resulted in growth for the informal sector. The informal sector is making an enormous contribution to national economies, but remains a weak area for governmental policy. In the field of education, people in the informal sector are characterized by low levels of formal schooling, high drop-out rates from school and lack of access to tertiary education. This is particularly so in the case of women, who make up almost two-thirds of all those employed in this sector. In this chapter, it is argued that if vocational training and education is to cater to the informal sector, then it needs to take into account the traditions and values of the system of vocational learning in working life and be interwoven with basic education. Education for All (EFA) goals are paramount in this respect. But if we are to achieve these goals, the multiplicity of social and cultural contexts in which learning takes place should also be taken into account. Firstly, in this chapter the key characteristics of the informal sector are discussed in the light of various socio-cultural contexts. Secondly, the framework of EFA is suggested as a prerequisite for responding adequately to the needs of learners in the informal sector. Thirdly, the pathways to integrating TVET and EFA are suggested and concrete policy recommendations are drawn. A brief conclusion summarizes the main points.


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2 Informal Sector Learning Vocational training and education of people working in the informal sector have long been neglected. The colonial power’s legacy in the field of technical and vocational education in many developing countries prevented vocational education from reflecting local approaches (Crane, 1965; Watson, 1994). Vocational education failed to support local socio-economic development, especially in the informal sector. Multilateral assistance to vocational and technical education in developing countries has often concentrated on physical facilities for formal technical vocational schools and to the diversification of secondary education through the integration of pre-vocational education in general education (World Bank, 1991). Local cultures have been totally disregarded in the transfer of technologies. Technical assistance has also completely overlooked the problems that have arisen in many developing countries because of massive migration from the countryside to the cities and the growing informal sector. The vocationalization of the rural curriculum has not been made attractive enough to promote a demand for vocational education in rural areas. Rather, it has been used to stabilize traditional agricultural life by providing a ‘second chance’ solution to the problem of students who drop out of school without occupational skills (Grubb, 1985). What is more, the issues of diversification and vocationalization of secondary education have been dealt with in purely economic terms (earning opportunities, better jobs and higher technical fields). Since the mid-1980s there have been some attempts by international institutions, churches, foundations and other sponsors to provide vocational training in order to prepare young people for work in the informal sector (Fluitman, 1989). The discussion on vocational training and education for special target groups from the informal sector has particularly engaged agencies involved in development co-operation, many of whom are now modifying their sector concepts in the light of the expanding informal economy (NORRAG, 1996; Lohmar-Kuhnle, 1992). However, the tendency up to now has been one of promoting State-sponsored vocational education and training for the formal and modern sector and a project-oriented approach for the informal sector. As a result, formal vocational training and education continues to cater to only a very small sector of the economy (Boehm, 1997) and does nothing to meet the learner’s needs for basic education. However, one must not forget that this issue should not be regarded solely as a means of improving the macro-economic climate of a country, but also as an important way of bringing personal enrichment to informal workers in terms of creating awareness about one’s own choices and opportunities. For this reason, integrating basic education and vocational training in a holistic way appears to be crucial. Despite the growing acknowledgement of this fact, the issue of integrating basic education with vocational training has not been given due attention so far. Moreover, overall trends point to the fact that public technical and vocational education institutions have often not had a good record in efficiency and flexibility and are sometimes far removed from local cultural and social—as well as market—realities. One of the major obstacles here is the absence of a linkage between vocational education and the country-specific patterns of basic education. Therefore, placing

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particular training programmes within a broader framework of basic education provided through informal learning (e.g. literacy classes at the work place) should be seen as one of the ways to overcome this obstacle. To sum up, it is necessary to learn from the informal sector, especially as we are living in a time of major changes in the context of a more competitive global economy. The resulting concerns are not simply ones of employment but also of attaining secure livelihoods and the right to work for all (Lawrence, 1998). There is a whole sector of people outside the formal labour market who neither have access to regular jobs at present, nor the promise of permanent jobs in the future, nor are finding other solutions to the problem of work. Their learning needs too must be given due consideration. But that should be done while keeping in mind the variety of socio-cultural contexts in which learning takes place so as to reach every learner. The next section looks at the patterns of socio-political and cultural differences that exist in the informal sector and how they affect the basic educational needs of learners.

3 Social and Cultural Contexts and Basic Learning Needs The basic learning needs of people in the informal sector are influenced by the actual socio-economic and political conditions operating in the informal economy. The informal sector is highly heterogeneous, including production units providing different services in a wide range of economic activities. Typically, three categories are distinguished in the informal sector (ILO, 1998, p. 167): (a) the small or microenterprise sector is the strongest and most dynamic sub-sector; (b) the householdbased sub-sector, where most of the activities are carried out by family members; and (c) the service sector, which comprises domestic helpers, street-vendors, etc. Basic learning needs of individuals and communities differ according to their perceptions of these needs. Often the very poor and illiterate communities involved in the informal economy are excluded from information and knowledge since their learning needs are assumed to be limited in scope. Participants in the informal sector in developing countries are very likely to be poor and have low literacy rates and skill levels. While young people and adults at the ‘upper end’ of the informal sector may have some degree of education (a minimum of primary or secondary education), those in the ‘lower end’ are often illiterate. In the Asian and Arab contexts, the majority of young people and adults acquire the essential skills for performing an informal sector activity outside the school system. This generalization cannot be made for the Latin American context, however, since there the system offers more than four years of schooling to more than 50% of the population (Córvalan, 1997). Existing data indicate that children, youth and adults in the informal sector have unmet basic learning needs. Such needs vary according to age, gender, context and culture. Women need to be singled out as a specific target group in the informal sector, as they are over-represented. In Asia and Africa their share in the informal sector is estimated to be typically 60–80%. This is an underestimation, however, since unpaid family help and home-based workers have been excluded from this

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calculation, and it is in these categories that women make up the largest percentage. In Latin America, self-employment generates nine out of every ten new positions for women, but since they require few qualifications, these positions are also marked by greater instability in employment and a lack of social protection. Silveira and Matosas (2005) found that in Latin America 49.7% of female employment was informal while for men the figure was 43.8%. Domestic work accounts for 22% of the new jobs for women generated between 1990 and 1998. Women are under-represented as employers in the micro-enterprise sector. However, the authors also point out that a number of new fields—such as new technological services, phone sales, consultancies, Internet, out-sourced manufacturing, small-machine assembly and many other activities that have to do with the transfer to the productive field of many domestic activities—have been added to the traditional tasks of clothing and textile services, and these generate new educational and training requirements. The informal sector is also the predominant employer of child labour in developing countries. Conservative estimates suggest that 20 to 30 million children work in South Asia alone. Iskandar (2005) points to the existing economic factors that instigate child labour in Egypt: female-headed households are often among the most vulnerable and rely largely on child labour as a source of income. Therefore, the only realistic way for working children to attain literacy and other basic education skills is to receive proper training at the work place. The informal sector also tends to be exposed to a high degree of injury, although there is little or no formal health insurance mechanisms. When layoffs occur in the formal sector in urban areas, the poor, who are most likely to lose their jobs first, go to swell the ranks of the urban poor in the informal sector. The growing number of drop-outs from the school system makes up the pool of cheap labour; they are absorbed in the informal and domestic sectors, where the terms and conditions of work are extremely limited. By their very nature, informal enterprises are especially vulnerable to dynamic changes in the economy, such as changes that result in technological redundancy. Given the absence of formal safety net mechanisms, informal sector households must find ways to reduce vulnerability by tapping into informal group-based networks that have been developed over the years. Overwien (2005) argues that there is a close connection between these social networks and the existence of social movements and learning processes that can support productive potential through cooperative economic activities. He says that the learning processes linked with such social networks have been neglected in earlier investigations. However, in recent studies researchers have begun to trace the links between educational approaches imposed by the government and a practical approach based on people’s need to survive. In general, the literature has tended to view the informal sector in developing countries as a fallback option to gain a livelihood by those who cannot participate in the formal sector. While such a view has some basis, it ignores the growing evidence that certain people prefer to work in the informal sector. First, informal sector jobs can offer flexibility in participation and, second, for many it offers the


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promise of higher returns because in most developing countries certain markets are inadequately serviced by formal enterprises, such as small repair services for all kinds of mechanical and electrical devices—from watches to cars. While it is important to bear in mind this dual picture of the informal sector, the fact remains that overwhelming numbers of the poor are concentrated in this sector. Their work in the informal sector by no means enables them to escape from poverty (Singh, 2005).

4 EFA and the Needs of Learners in the Informal Sector As already been mentioned, vocational education is usually guided by the logic of improving the country’s macro-economic indicators. But it should not be forgotten that very often learners in the informal sector lack not only useful occupational skills but also basic education. Vocational training as such does not deal with learners’ basic educational needs. What is lacking here is a more learner-oriented approach. As many observers have pointed out, today educational planners proceed from the objective needs and not from the potential of the learner. Learning is perceived as one of the ways to make the labour force more useful (cf. Overwien, 2005, p. 45). Therefore, it seems to be highly important, first, to meet the new goals of EFA that emphasize the significance of basic education; this would not only enhance vocational training in the informal sector but also create an additional incentive for further learning and a chance for smoother entrance into the formal system of education. The Jomtien Declaration on Education for All (WCEFA, 1990) introduced the concept of ‘basic learning needs’, which refers to the basic needs of individuals, groups and societies. It identified seven areas of basic learning needs common to children, youth and adults: surviving; developing one’s full capacities; living and working in dignity; participating fully in development; improving the quality of life; making informed decisions; and continuing to learn. The Dakar World Education Forum (2000) alluded to the Delors Commission’s four pillars of learning—learning to be, learning to do, learning to know and learning to live together—and in addition reaffirmed that education should be geared to tapping each person’s talents and potential, as well as developing learners’ personalities, so that they can improve their lives and transform their societies. The UNDP’s notion of basic learning needs is related to human development goals. According to it: ‘The most basic capabilities for human development are to lead long and healthy lives, to be knowledgeable, to have access to the resources needed for a decent standard of living, and to be able to participate in the life of the community’ (UNDP, 2001, p. 9). The Memorandum on Lifelong Education of the Commission of the European Communities states (2002, p. 5): ‘The knowledge, skills and understanding that we learn as children and as young people in the family, at school, during training and at college or university will not last a lifetime.’ It mentions that high-quality basic education for all is an essential foundation, as well as learning-to-learn skills and a positive attitude towards learning. According to CONFINTEA-V, the fifth International Conference on Adult Education (Singh, 1998b, p. 2):

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The objectives of youth and adult education, viewed as a lifelong process, are to develop the autonomy and the sense of responsibility of people and communities, to reinforce the capacity to deal with the transformations taking place in the economy, in culture and in society as a whole, and to promote coexistence, tolerance and the informed and creative participation of citizens in their communities, in short to enable people and communities to take control of their destiny and society in order to face the challenges ahead. It is essential that the approach to adult learning be based on people’s own heritage, culture, values and prior experiences and that the diverse ways in which these approaches are implemented enable and encourage every citizen to be actively involved and to have a voice.

Literacy is a foundation and remains at the heart of both the most basic and the most sophisticated competencies. But the concept and scope of literacy have changed over the past decades. The renewed vision of literacy emphasizes it as a social responsibility and that it is acquired in broader socio-economic interventions: literacy goals include literacy acquisition, development and effective use, and literacy can only be made sustainable by creating literate environments and literate societies. The international community no longer sees these basic learning needs as compartmentalized but as part of the broader aim of learning and the lifelong learning process, where basic learning is embraced as a social and cultural practice shaped by the context of daily life. Education today is seen as having two main objectives: ‘education for living and education for making a living’ (Nathan, 2005, p. 129). That is why the need to integrate vocational education and EFA seems to be indispensable. Vocational training in the informal economies has already been given a considerable amount of attention. This chapter argues that proper attention should be given to individuals and their learning needs. As has been correctly pointed out by many observers (cf. Nathan, 2005), the success of training depends a lot on a broad foundation of basic education. This would also strengthen vocational education as individuals who possess basic educational skills can situate themselves better in the labour market. It has been noticed (cf. Silveira & Matosas, 2005) that any working activity nowadays requires that an individual should be able to determine his/her course of action, to make use of his/her own resources and capabilities and be aware of his/her own limitations. Indubitably, such an individual is unthinkable without having basic educational skills. That is why the purpose nowadays is to marry vocational training in the informal sector with the goals of EFA to tackle the learners’ needs more efficiently and to enable them to engage more fully in the learning process. This should be the rationale behind educational planning in the informal sector. This goal, in turn, needs to cater to the requirements of local development and be based on an understanding of the kinds of competencies people in the informal sector want, need and utilize, the socio-economic and cultural contexts within which they work, and how they cope and what skills, capabilities, attitudes and values are required in order to sustain their livelihood strategies. It is believed here that the concept of EFA is more sensitive to the socio-cultural contexts in which learning takes place as it acknowledges the existing cultural and linguistic diversity, stresses the importance of local knowledge and traditions, and emphasizes education through intercultural dialogue.


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5 Pathways to Reconciling TVET and EFA The aim of the present chapter is to outline the measures needed to integrate vocational training with the EFA goals and then draw some policy recommendations to put the new integrated model in practice. As has been discussed earlier, openness to intercultural dialogue is an important condition for meeting the goals of EFA. It has been noted that EFA, due to its essence, is the concept responsive to a variety of socio-cultural contexts and, thus, has an added value in the pursuit of cultural openness by different governments. Nonetheless, the major finding that needs to be taken into account in the course of policy formulation is the need to remain sensitive to incorporating foreign experience into existing domestic practices. The very philosophical foundations of various educational theories that are being propagated should be questioned in the light of the diverse social and cultural experiences. As Elias and Merriam have poignantly described it: To understand adequately a philosophy of education then, one must analyze it within the context in which it originated and developed. This does not mean that the particular theory cannot be adapted to other cultural situations with some degree of success. But there are problems with these attempts at application to differing cultural contexts (2005, p. 12).

The research conducted in the area of informal sector learning should be closely associated with the participation of people actually employed in the informal sector so as to have a clearer picture of what their needs are with regard to basic education. People employed in the informal sector represent a very heterogeneous group and their needs for vocational and basic education will certainly vary accordingly. In order to reach every learner we need more elaborated methodologies that would emphasize such techniques as: (a) survey research and in-depth interviews allowing for a thorough investigation of individual preferences; (b) micro-analytical approaches demonstrating what actually constitutes informal sector learning; and (c) action research that aims at the exploration of new forms of learning, such as self-directed learning, key lifetime events, critical situations, etc. Learning from the periphery is another crucial component that needs to be taken into account for the successful integration of vocational training and basic education. The whole variety of local approaches to vocational education and training should be given due attention when implementing the EFA goals. The central design of new educational strategies needs to be augmented with local knowledge, traditions and languages to make basic education more attractive for those employed in the informal sector in order to meet the goals of EFA. Equally important is the development of informal institutions and organizations as they focus attention on people’s empowerment and the active participation of individuals in their communities. The input of informal organizations in informal sector learning will increase awareness about the importance of the social and cultural context as people’s direct participation in those institutions promotes communication and mutual learning. In this way learning becomes a part of the fabric of everyday life closely associated with the social practices exercised in everyday situations.

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Informal institutions and organizations, being community-oriented, well-disposed and participatory, promote and strengthen social partnerships among different stakeholders and orient people in the informal sector towards direct engagement in the design of learning strategies and educational policies so that they may define their basic learning needs and their preferences may be taken into account. Finally, it needs to be recognized at the State level too that a bridge has to be built between formal education and vocational training for skills development. Politicians should realize that there is no successful work performance detached from literacy and basic education skills, and that adequate educational programmes need to be designed having this rationale behind them. Education systems need to be open to the informal sector, so as to release its economic potential and satisfy people’s needs for learning in a broad sense.

6 Conclusion This chapter has discussed key issues concerning informal sector learning and tried to relate them to the institutional, economic, social and cultural influences operating in peripheral economic sectors. These sectors have been neglected by both official and international vocational education and training programmes. It has proposed a vocational educational strategy oriented towards a conception of the individual as a whole, and her or his social and cultural context. It has sought to relate systematic learning, based on prior competencies, to the positions individuals occupy within society’s structures and to institutional and cultural influences. First, the concepts of teaching and learning that have relevance for the informal sector, as well as the social and cultural contexts of vocational learning, were examined. Then, it was argued that meeting the goals of EFA is an important prerequisite for responding adequately to the needs of learners in the informal sector. Based upon these arguments, recommendations for the design of adult vocational training and education systems that would integrate TVET and EFA were proposed. It has been argued that our present notion of vocational education and training institutions preparing human capital is too narrow an approach to training. It concentrates too heavily on individuals in educational institutions and in this sense it ignores the wider social context within which much learning takes place, and puts too much emphasis on vocational training at the expense of basic educational skills. Therefore, integrating EFA and vocational training would be an effective way to achieve the goals that are behind any educational practice: personal development in terms of creating awareness about one’s own choices and opportunities, empowering, and valuing human rights. This, in turn, should contribute to the unveiling of a new, genuine humanism, which is not hegemonic, rhetorical or concentrating on absolute truths, wielded by victors or representatives of some cultures, but oriented toward the recognition of a multiplicity of lived experiences, various forms of knowledge and cognitive justice.


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References Boehm, U. 1997. Diversified system development in vocational training aid: curricular consequences. Education, vol. 55/56. (A biannual collection of recent German contributions to the field of educational research.) Commission of the European Communities. 2000. A memorandum on lifelong education. Brussels: European Union. Córvalan, O.V. 1997. Introduction: comments for the reader on ‘Education and training for the informal sector’. Education, vol. 55/56. (A biannual collection of recent German contributions to the field of educational research.) Crane, R.I. 1965. Technical training and economic development in India before [the Second] World War. In: Anderson, C.A.; Bowman, M.J., eds. Education and economic development, pp. 142– 66. Chicago, IL: Aldine. Elias, J.; Merriam, S.B. 2005. Philosophical foundations of adult education, 3rd ed. Malabar, FL: Krieger. Fluitman, F., ed. 1989. Training for work in the informal sector. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Grubb, W.N. 1985. The convergence of educational system and the role of vocationalism. Comparative education review, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 526–48. International Labour Organization. 1998. World employment report, 1998–1999: employability in the global economy—how training matters. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Iskandar, L. 2005 The informal sector: non-formal education settings for working children. In: Singh, M., ed. Meeting basic learning needs in the informal sector: integrating education and training for decent work, empowerment and citizenship. Dordrecht, Netherlands: UNESCOUNEVOC/UIE/Springer. Lawrence, J. 1998. Adult education and jobs, or sustainable livelihoods? In: Singh, M., ed. Adult learning and the changing world of work. Hamburg, Germany: UIE. (Report on Theme V of the fifth International Conference on Adult Education, 14–18 July 1997, Berlin.) Lohmar-Kuhnle, C. 1992. Occupation-oriented training and education for target groups from the informal sector. Bonn, Germany: Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation. Nathan, C. 2005. Trade unions and adult learning for women construction workers in the informal sector. In: Singh, M., ed. Meeting basic learning needs in the informal sector: integrating education and training for decent work, empowerment and citizenship. Dordrecht, Netherlands: UNESCO-UNEVOC/UIE/Springer. Northern Policy Research Review and Advisory Network on Education and Training (NORRAG). 1996. Issues and implication from sector papers and discussions on TVET and skills development: researcher and agency perspectives. NORRAG news, no. 20, pp. 35–47. Overwien, B. 2005. Informal learning and the role of social movements. In: Singh, M., ed. Meeting basic learning needs in the informal sector: integrating education and training for decent work, empowerment and citizenship. Dordrecht, Netherlands: UNESCO-UNEVOC/UIE/Springer. Sethuraman, S.V. 1976. Jakarta: urban development and employment. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Silveira, S.; Matosas, A. 2005. Gender and the informal economy in Latin America: new challenges and possible answers for labour training policies. In: Singh, M., ed. Meeting basic learning needs in the informal sector: integrating education and training for decent work, empowerment and citizenship. Dordrecht, Netherlands: UNESCO-UNEVOC/UIE/Springer. Singh, M., ed. 1998b. Adult learning and the changing world of work. Hamburg, Germany: UIE. Singh, M., ed. 2005. Meeting basic learning needs in the informal sector: integrating education and training for decent work, empowerment and citizenship. Dordrecht, Netherlands: UNESCO-UNEVOC/UIE/Springer. United Nations Development Programme. 2001. Human development report 2001. New York, NY: UNDP. Watson, K. 1994. Technical and vocational education in developing countries: western paradigms and comparative methodology. Comparative education, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 85–97.

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World Conference on Education for All (WCEFA). 1990. World Declaration on Education for All. Paris: UNESCO. World Education Forum. 2000. Dakar framework for Action. Paris: UNESCO. World Bank. 1991. Vocational and technical education and training. Washington, DC: The World Bank. (A World Bank policy paper.)








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Section 3 Reforming National Systems of Vocational Education and Training

David Atchoarena UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning, Paris, France Peter Grootings European Training Foundation, Turin, Italy


Chapter III.1

Overview: Changing National VET Systems through Reforms David Atchoarena and Peter Grootings

1 Introduction The future of technical and vocational education is generating heated debate nearly everywhere in the world. Of course, this concern is not new, but globalization, the collapse of planned economies and the failure of development policies in the fight against poverty have put it back at the centre of national and international policy debates. As a result, vocational education reform constitutes a vibrant area of public policy and research. In many countries the issue is no longer about partial and isolated change measures but rather about changing overall systems. This means not just addressing all the different building blocks of national systems (system-wide), but increasingly even how vocational education and training systems are functioning (system-deep). The role and place of vocational education and training as part of overall lifelong learning systems is on the agenda, even though individual countries are at different stages of readiness to face the challenge. This section gives an overview of some of the key issues and developments in vocational education and training around the world at the start of the twenty-first century. It looks in particular at what exactly drives current attempts to change national systems and makes an attempt to identify some commonalities. The section will pay special attention to more recent approaches and initiatives that countries are using to trigger off system-wide and system-deep reforms, such as the development of national qualifications frameworks, regional co-operation and knowledge-sharing, improving accountability and making better use of research. The section includes also a number of country case studies to illustrate the extent to which the various general and specific drivers operate in particular country contexts. Together, the chapters of this section provide evidence for the fact that everywhere there is not just one specific but a complex constellation of drivers at work that include economic, technological, political but also—and perhaps increasingly— educational ones. The emphasis given to each of these differs from country to country depending on existing institutional and political environments and, of course, also on outcomes of past policies. However, even though there is no easy way to identify what works best, there is still a lot to be learned from other countries. The chapters that follow have been selected within such a policy-learning perspective. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 III.1, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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2 Old, New and Continuing Issues and Their Changing Contexts At the turn of the twenty-first century, some of the old contextual issues that launched vocational education and training policy debates have re-emerged, such as: youth unemployment in developed countries and poverty in developing ones; the low status of vocational education as compared to general and higher education; and the need to adapt curricular programmes to new learning requirements. Some new issues have emerged as well, such as: (a) the need for reform of vocational education in transition countries; (b) the impact of globalization; (c) demographic developments leading in most industrialized countries to a rapidly ageing workforce, (d) in many developing countries, an increasing number of young people seeking access to education and work; and (e) the discourse on developing lifelong learning systems in response to these overall challenges. Indeed, some issues seem to be everlasting, such as: (a) the need for occupational flexibility given changing product markets, technologies and work organizations; (b) the role of the State versus that of the private sector; and (c) the need to secure relevance, efficiency and effectiveness of vocational education and training generally. But old and new policy issues are now arising in completely different policy environments and will therefore also be discussed and treated differently.

3 Short-Term Versus Long-Term Objectives Governments’ interventions in the field of vocational education and training have always been motivated by a mix of short- and long-term motives, with the shortterm issues often becoming dominant simply because they are political priorities. This has happened in many European countries where the fight to combat youth unemployment during the 1970s and 1980s frequently led to series of ad-hoc measures to get young people away from the labour market. Improvements of overall quality, relevance and status of vocational education became difficult because of the dominant concern for reducing school drop-out and providing basic qualifications to low school achievers. These measures have taken place in many countries at the cost of developing a high-quality overall vocational education and training system that would provide in a balanced way qualified people at all levels of ability. Sometimes, the—certainly unintended—effect of many short-term measures has been to further decrease the status of vocational education by signalling that training is really for those who do not succeed in education. Nowadays, in many—impoverished—transition countries, there is a similar tension between short-term attempts to preserve the social welfare function of vocational schools and the long-term one of addressing the reform of their qualification function. A dramatic lack of resources forces countries to make choices—and choices are by necessity focused on issues of immediate concern. As a result, in many cases, public vocational schools find themselves increasingly trapped in a vicious cycle of becoming schools for children of the poor without being able to provide them with the knowledge, skills and competences to prevent or escape from

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poverty. Also here, overall improvement of qualification levels and a balanced provision of qualifications that emerging labour markets are demanding is not properly addressed. Also here, vocational education—already of low status—finds it increasingly difficult to be seen as an attractive alternative for general and academic higher education. Most developing countries are still caught in the middle between a plethora of local, NGO-driven and often unsustainable development initiatives, regularly including training and national education policy reforms advised by international donors. Both regularly lack local ownership and are dependent on resources and capacities offered by donors. The importance given to vocational education and training has changed over time in international donor policies with periods of heavy investments in large public training systems (basically buildings and equipment) followed by market-driven short-term training measures aimed at satisfying the needs of the private sector. None of these approaches has as yet been able to properly address the varied learning needs of people working in different positions in either the formal or informal economies of the countries.

4 Reform Histories Some countries have gone through various waves of vocational education reform since the 1970s when the first period of extensive industrialization came to an end and traditional vocational education and training systems that prepared for highly standardized and—often very simple—occupations sought to adapt to changing economic and employment conditions. Some have been more successful than others. A number of countries, in particular those in which vocational education was well established and respected, both among employers and students, have kept their systems fairly stable and have merely sought to gradually optimize what existed. Yet others have missed out on the need to adapt to modernization needs during the 1970s, such as many developing countries and all of the centrally planned countries of Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Whereas the latter are currently undergoing a difficult process of systemic reforms of their systems, many developing countries have remained highly dependent on educational policies and priorities provided by international donor institutions that had become increasingly anti (public) vocational education and training. In the same period, on the other hand, several countries in South-East Asia have managed to establish effective ways of developing the knowledge, skills and competences of their populations.

5 Common Trends and Developments but No Convergence This great diversity of contexts, objectives and histories makes it complex to assess vocational education policies, but it seems that there are nevertheless some commonalities in current reform thinking. There is an increasing attention to embedding

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vocational education and training in local or regional development, for mobilizing and continuously improving competences and, hence, for improving the quality of learning processes and outcomes. There is also an increased appreciation for the fact that a new balance needs to be found between local development and innovation, on the one hand, and overall national quality assurance frameworks, on the other. In addition, there is a growing concern, motivated by globalization and migration trends, that the reforms of national vocational education and training systems need to be placed in an international perspective. The international dimensions of vocational education and training are becoming more and more important—in a way similar to what has already happened with higher education and, indeed, employment systems and labour markets. Finally, and perhaps only in embryonic forms, there is increasing attention and concern for those for whom education and training is in the end all about: learners, and the teachers and trainers that assist them in developing the knowledge, skills and competences that they need. This new concern is very much based on a better understanding of why so many of the previous attempts to reform vocational education and training systems have not brought the anticipated results. They usually were designed for people and not with them; they also tended to focus on structures and institutions rather than on the people involved. These common strands are present in most of the policy debates and developments in vocational education and training around the globe, though not in the same ways and not to the same extent. They also do not point in any way to convergence of systems and policies. While the challenges become increasingly similar, policy responses remain specific.

6 Back to Core Business? The increased attention to learners and learning approaches mentioned earlier is only one element in the current discourse on vocational education and training reform. However, it is important to note that this return to what can easily be called the ‘core business’ of education and training systems follows earlier reform initiatives that focused on other aspects: (a) their governance (through increased involvement of social partners); (b) administration (through decentralization and increased accountability of education and training institutions); (c) funding (involving the private sector and students and their parents in financing arrangements); (d) assessment (giving more attention to learning outcomes and separating assessment from teaching and learning); (e) quality assurance and transparency (such as through developing national qualification standards and frameworks); (f) mobility, openness and pathways (such as through recognition of prior learning and restructuring of educational sub-systems); and (g) curriculum reform (making curricula more flexible and competence based). A return to the core business of education and training also signifies increased attention for those who are actually learning and helping them to learn. This is remarkable, since the earlier reforms have concentrated on the roles and responsibilities of other actors and stakeholders: social partners, administrators, assessors,


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people working in educational support institutions and professionals outside the schools. In fact, in several countries, earlier reforms were directed at making the outcome of vocational education and training less dependent on teachers and trainers, such as by moving from so-called input-based to outcomes-based standards, by stressing involvement of the private sector, giving greater importance to work-based learning and separating learning from assessment. Currently, there seems to be a reversal of this trend—or at least a remarkable shift in emphasis. Teachers and trainers are increasingly becoming recognized in their dual role of educational professionals and of stakeholders in reforms. They are again seen to be important for organizing learning processes, but the nature of learning processes has changed from being teacher-centred to student-centred. They also become appreciated as stakeholders in reform and without whose contribution nothing would really change in the classroom. One of the major challenges that countries are facing, therefore, is to bring these different stakeholders and focuses of attention together in an overall and coherent reform policy that will enable education and training systems to help people develop the knowledge, skills and competences that are needed to survive and prosper in a globalizing world.

7 From Partial to Overall System Reforms? The issue of developing overall and coherent reform policies has yet another dimension that needs to be examined. The increasing need to pay attention to the quality of learning contents and processes does not mean that this can be simply added on to the list of policy measures undertaken so far. On the contrary, focusing on learners, learning processes and those who should enable and facilitate learning may well require a fundamental rethinking of those aspects of education and training systems that have until now in most countries been given priority. For example, decentralization becomes more than merely giving more administrative autonomy to lower levels in the system. It will also imply improving the capacity for schools to dialogue and co-operate with other organizations involved in education and training at the local level and to be able to identify and cater for the learning needs of divergent groups of people. Moreover, it will require developing capacities at school level for initiating and implementing innovations in response to the education and training needs of the local communities that they are part of. This, in turn, will have implications for the functioning of national and often centralized support institutions, as it will have consequences for the ways in which national authorities fund and promote such school-based innovation and development work. But decentralization of this kind can only be successful and productive when it is framed by overall national qualification standards and frameworks that can secure adherence to agreed quality standards across the country, or groups of countries. Otherwise, decentralized initiatives may put the very existence of transparent national systems with open pathways at risk. Obviously, for these very reasons in many countries the move towards new learning contents and approaches is a heavily debated one.

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Generally, awareness of ‘whole-system’ reforms has undoubtedly increased, however, and the search is for those interventions that can ‘drive’ overall reform by triggering off related changes in how the vocational education and training systems operate in a particular context. Changing individual aspects of vocational education and training systems will have little impact if other aspects remain untouched. This understanding has been a strong factor in the current drive for system-wide or whole system reforms. It has also led to a rethinking of the logic or rationale along which systems were structured and functioning. This, as a matter of fact, appears to be the most difficult dimension of education and training reform as it implies fundamental redefinitions of the roles that key actors and stakeholders are playing. Successful reforms therefore require that sufficient space, time and resources are devoted to enabling reform learning to take place. Neither institutions, organizations nor individuals change from one day to the next.

8 Balancing Major Reform Drivers Carnoy determines the global challenges for educational planners in this way: Globalization together with new information technology and the innovative processes they foment are driving a revolution in the organisation of work, the production of goods and services, relations among nations, and even local culture. These changes put a lot of pressure in education to change (1999, p. 14).

He also identifies three types of reform as responses to the pressures of globalization by the education sector: competitive-driven reforms; finance-driven reforms; and equity-driven reforms (1999, p. 37).

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The basic characteristics of the competitive-driven reforms are an emphasis on the macro issues of the education system. Changes are introduced in the area of administration and management (decentralization, privatization, management of resources). Emphasis is put also on the issues of meeting the standards of achievement, and on teacher recruitment and training. The main purpose of this type of reform is to increase the quality of education in order to produce a better educated labour force. Finance-driven educational reforms have as a main target the reduction of public expenditure on education and making the use of public funds more efficient and effective. These reforms are advocated by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in particular with regard to developing and transition countries, and try to shift funding from secondary to basic education, expand the secondary sector through privatization, especially its technical and vocational part, and to reduce the cost of public education by increasing the teacher/pupil ratio. Finally, equity-driven reforms place more emphasis on equality of educational opportunities and on basic education, with the latter taking on a wider meaning than basic literacy only. These reforms aim at integrating marginalized groups in society and at reducing social exclusion and poverty.


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It is probably true to say that since the 1970s equity-driven reforms (including the ones that focused on reducing youth unemployment) have increasingly made way for reforms driven by finance and competition considerations, or combinations of the latter. This is equally true for developed countries as for developing countries, where reforms have been driven largely by the international donor community. It has also been the case for the reform of VET systems in transition countries that have found themselves in the same ‘receiving’ situation, at least until very recently. The challenge that most countries are facing now, however, is to find a proper balance between all three types of reform: (a) they need to develop a well-educated labour force in order to secure sustainable growth and welfare; (b) they also need to make their education and training systems affordable in the mid and long terms; and (c) they need to secure social cohesion through education and training in order to develop a certain degree of political stability.

9 Specific Drivers Remain Country Specific Whereas globalization forces increasingly create an overall environment of policy challenges to which all countries have to respond, priorities and emphasis on particular aspects continue to differ. However, there is also an increased interest in international or regional co-operation and exchange. Indeed, one of the most exciting developments is exactly the growing interest of countries to learn from others. But changes are occurring here as well. Even though short-term action may often still be dominant, there is a growing tendency to consider whole-system reforms instead of addressing isolated aspects by single and unco-ordinated measures. This has necessitated, as mentioned earlier, a broader involvement of stakeholders at all levels of the system, including those working inside schools and training centres. Moreover, the very need for ownership, fit-in-context and sustainability has also led to a review of traditional international assistance and co-operation that was largely based on policy copying and best-practice emulation. Instead, active policy-learning, local capacity-building and approaches that aim at helping-countries-to-help-themselves have emerged as part of the international co-operation rhetoric. Having said this, it is clear that countries differ in the extent to which they have created favourable conditions—such as through earlier reform initiatives—to address the new challenges. For example, there are countries that have traditionally or as a result of recent reforms given schools high levels of autonomy, improved the dialogue with social partners, strengthened innovative and development capacities of schools and teachers, created open pathways for everybody all through their education and training systems and have sufficient budgets to continue further development and innovation. These countries are clearly better equipped to face the challenge of improving the quality of learning and learning processes than those countries where reforms have aimed at different objectives having no immediate relation with organized learning. The latter will have to combine the development of an enabling environment with seeking to improve the quality of learning processes and outcomes.

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This also reminds us that giving emphasis to particular aspects in one country may not have the same ‘driver’ impact as in another country. An example of this is the current discourse on learning outcomes. In countries where there has been a strong tradition of paying attention to the quality of learning processes, such as in countries that favour vocational didactics, giving more emphasis to learning outcomes may in fact contribute to improving their quality even further. In countries that have given more weight to assessment processes and where there is little or no tradition in the professionalization of vocational teachers and trainers, this may result in a further refinement of assessment criteria and procedures and a continued neglect of learning processes. Thus, drivers do not have automatic trigger effects, nor are the effects that they may generate always the same. Also here, the existing context plays its role. Of course, these are not natural laws and an understanding of possible impact and unintended effects may very well help to achieve success even though the existing environment is not optimal. Placing past and on-going reform experiences in their proper context of time and space may therefore lead to better national reform policies in the future. This is what policy-learning is about.

10 Overview of the Contributions This section presents contributions that cover some of the more recent debates and developments on vocational education and training reform from different parts of the world. The chapters that follow provide illustrations of how different drivers for change operate in different contexts and may—or may not—prompt related changes in the overall system of vocational education and training of a country. They include analyses of a variety of country-specific developments, of thematic issues and of reform strategies and approaches. They neither cover the whole world nor all the key thematic issues. We have had to be pragmatic and selective. Together, the chapters do give a reasonably good overview of the key aspects that will need to be taken into account for long-term VET reform policies in any country in the world. The analyses provided should not be seen as presenting best practices that can easily be copied or emulated elsewhere. On the contrary, and we have stressed this already several times before, these are all context-bound reviews and case studies from particular environments and specific periods in time. Nevertheless, they contain valuable experiences that may function as eye-openers and provoke policy-learning. Above all, they show that different aspects of vocational education and training are intimately interconnected and that isolated and partial measures may have undesirable—even if unintended—consequences if the overall challenge of any reform of vocational education systems is not firmly kept in mind. The objective is to have a system in place that enables people to learn the knowledge, skills and competences that are useful and relevant for them to live a decent life through decent work.


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III.2 Latin America’s Efforts in the Vocational Training of Young People from Poor Backgrounds, by Claudia Jacinto Across the world, youth unemployment remains a sensitive issue. In a context of global educational expansion, early school-leavers face an increased risk of exclusion. School-to-work transition constitutes a fertile research field for investigating social and educational change. It also constitutes an active domain of public policies. But education is only one of the variables that determine school-to-work transition. Social characteristics, such as ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status or rurality, have a significant impact upon the work prospects and the life experiences of young people. As illustrated by the experience of Latin America, targeted programmes are sometimes implemented as part of broader social policies for youth. In this region, many youngsters leave school with few or no qualifications. In the context of an overall increase of educational levels, the costs of dropping out are higher than ever because—as in other parts of the world—employment opportunities for the unskilled have diminished. While increasing participation in vocational courses cannot be an end in itself, VET is sometimes used as a strategy that helps to keep children and youth off the streets. The large numbers who are neither in education, work nor training are increasingly seen as contributing to the incidence of juvenile crime, teenage pregnancy and drug abuse. There is currently an extensive debate regarding the focus of these programmes and their contribution to the social integration of young people. Many people are asking themselves whether: (a) it would be better to reintegrate these young people into a formal education system so that they can be guaranteed access to twelve years of education; (b) vocational training alone may create an opportunity for these young people to find a decent job, or produce livelihoods with enough income to pull them out of poverty; (c) the initiatives have been adequately linked to a range of public policies; (d) it has been possible to overcome the tendency to create ‘supply side’ courses that do not take sufficient account of the actual demands of the labour market; and so on. The central question for the author is to what extent and by which means these initiatives can contribute to generate a valuable ‘second opportunity’ for young people from low-income households with low educational backgrounds. The answer is a cautious ‘yes’, but only if these measures lead people into qualifying paths that provide access not only to work, but also to further education and training.

III.3 Accountability and Career Technical Education (CTE) Policy: A Brief Review of Six States of the United States, by Joshua D. Hawley and Alexandra de Montrichard These authors address accountability, an issue that has come to the fore as part of the ‘new public management’ discourse and the reform of the state and the public

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sectors for which it used to be responsible, including in many countries vocational education and training. Accountability is a critical issue for state and federal government in the United States. The approach under the current policy regime is to consolidate the requirements for accountability under the Consolidated Annual Report (CAR) framework. However, there are continuing problems creating an appropriate accountability framework for career and technical education (CTE), as vocational education is referred to in the United States. The development of academically oriented CTE under the most recent legislation has forced states and the federal government to confront the contradictory goals of preparation for the labour market (career development) and further studies (college preparation). As an academic programme, CTE needs to be responsible for ensuring that all young people have basic skills, while also being adequately prepared for success in the labour market. Accountability is the practice of holding schools, districts and teachers responsible for providing quality education and holding students responsible for their performance. As part of the push to hold school systems accountable, standards and (to varying degrees) accountability systems were developed both at the state and federal levels. This is a development that has also taken place in many other countries, for example through the change from so-called input to outcome standards as the basis for funding. The big question everywhere remains how a system can be developed that measures outcomes in such a way that this also leads to improvement of the educational process: what educators would call a formative assessment approach.

III.4 The Regional Perspective of Vocational Education and Training, by Mike Coles and Tom Leney Coles and Leney argue that actions taken to strengthen regional co-operation are among those that shape national VET systems. An important reason for this is the fact that, increasingly, countries in a region (such as Europe) are confronted with similar pressures for change. As the authors also stress, it is probably not the case that common pressures would lead to common responses through reform. The country or regional context will require bespoke solutions. However, the elements of changing VET infrastructure might be expected to show some commonality and the process of change itself could have features that are created through policy-learning from reforms and trials in other countries and regions. First experiences with a co-ordinated approach to policy-learning, the European Union’s Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) and a review of a number of more specific cases, including the European Qualifications Framework, illustrate some of the obstacles that are to be found on the way towards making regional co-operation transform itself into knowledge-sharing and policy-learning.


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III.5 Vocational Education, Training Reform and Regional Integration in the Middle East, by Munther Wassef Masri Chapter 5 takes the issue of regional co-operation to a more operational level based on recent experiences from the Middle East, a region that has traditionally profited from the presence of regional agencies and projects. There are a number of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ that emerge from that experience, especially in terms of ensuring that regional co-operation leads to local ownership and context-fit of reform initiatives. National stakeholders rarely have the means or capacities to initiate or coordinate knowledge-sharing and joint involvement in projects and are therefore depending, as is the case with the European Union countries, on supra- or international agencies. The Arab world has developed its own regional institutions and there are yet other multilateral and bilateral ones as well. Even so, as is clear from history, the mere presence of such agencies does not guarantee effective reforms. But the growing need for VET reform within countries may also lead to a better use of the opportunities that such regional institutions offer for better policy development and implementation.

III.6 The Influence of Qualifications Frameworks on the Infrastructure of VET, by Mike Coles and Patrick Werquin Chapter 6 examines the ways in which the existence of a qualifications framework influences several structural aspects of VET, such as management of the supply and demand for skills, the institutional arrangements, the financing of VET and the way the VET system interfaces with other learning systems and VET in other countries. Given this potential impact, developing national qualifications frameworks can provide strong tools for reforming national VET systems. The authors illustrate how this may work: qualification frameworks make explicit the relationship between qualifications. They aim to increase transparency and to show potential progression routes; they can become the basis of credit-transfer systems. They are overarching tools that can be used to engage all stakeholders in developing and co-ordinating the qualifications system. Often they are used as tools for regulation and quality assurance. At the same time, a qualifications framework can open opportunities to potential learners, because it makes progression routes clear and can offer the opportunity to rationalize qualifications by reducing the overlap between them. In all of these ways, frameworks create an environment where the whole qualifications system can be reviewed. This means that the management of the qualification framework can be used as a tool to enhance many policy responses that countries are adopting in response to the lifelong learning agenda—of which VET is a very important component. It is rather a decisive component when it comes to global economic performance and coping with emerging issues.

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III.7 Reforming Skills Development, Transforming the Nation: South African Vocational Education and Training Reforms, 1994–2005, by Simon McGrath However, national qualifications frameworks (NQF) do not always easily fulfil these promises, as is shown by the case of South Africa. In an era where vocational education and training reform is common, South Africa provides one of the most striking national case studies of the complex interplay between international discourses of both economic change and VET reform and historical and contemporary forces at the national level. Moreover, the twin imperative of economic and social focus for VET is made particularly complex and challenging by the legacy of apartheid. The author concludes from his review that the transformation of the VET system in South Africa has proved far more complex than was realized at the point of departure. Developing new institutions, creating a workable NQF, transforming funding and delivering new programmes have all been attempted at the same time as expanding the system and radically reforming access. Inevitably, too, South Africa has found itself faced with many of the tensions that affect VET systems globally, most particularly the difficulty of balancing social and economic imperatives and of ensuring that national departments of education and labour work together effectively. The country now faces the challenge of reviewing the whole process in such a way that the key successes are allowed to continue. The elements of the system that need radical overhaul can be identified or abandoned. Honest self-reflection needs to be carried out with maintenance of public support for the system. If such a process can be successfully negotiated, McGrath argues, then the South African skill revolution may come to a truly successful conclusion.

III.8 Reform of Vocational Education in the Russian Federation, by Olga Oleynikova and Anna Muravyeva The Russian Federation has not yet reached this point, as the authors of Chapter 8 make clear. Tensions between the qualifying and social protection role of vocational education and training institutions remain one of the big challenges yet to be solved. Moreover, only fairly recently, wider reform requirements have become understood after an initial phase in which the inherited VET system was merely allowed to survive while administrative responsibilities were transferred to regional levels, without the necessary financial, institutional and human resources to enable the system to adapt to radical changes during the transition period. The authors end on an optimistic note. There may not have been much of a national VET reform policy until now, but at the same time a wealth of experience has


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been acquired at local levels, where schools have been forced to act, often profiting from international assistance. Given the wide range of good practices that exist in individual VET schools that could serve as a resource for developing modern and effective models of VET in the country, the authors argue that networking of VET schools should be encouraged to enhance information exchange and sharing of good practices. This seems to be the only feasible way to envisage a continuation of on-going reforms and modernization efforts.

III.9 Vocational Education in the Netherlands: In Search of a New Identity, by Jan Geurts and Frans Meijers Chapter 9 provides a review of VET reforms in the Netherlands, including many of the issues dealt with by other authors in preceding chapters. It is a story of trying to learn from the past while looking across borders. It is also a story where structural change and pedagogical innovation come together in the growing understanding that the role of the school, as an institution, needs to change fundamentally from being an industrial education factory towards becoming a career centre. Such a change implies that learning to change as a result of instruction must become a process of knowledge construction. It also implies a change from making available standard one-size-fits-all programmes towards developing personal competences based on the capacities and interests of learners. Support for these developments that are currently transforming the Dutch VET system are also found in so-called new-learning theories that are based on constructive instead of traditional behaviourist or cognitivist approaches.

III.10 Facilitating Policy-Learning: Active Learning and the Reform of Education Systems in Transition Countries, by Peter Grootings Grootings argues that statements regarding local ownership and fit-for-context have become more and more popular in the donor community, but that in practice traditional policy transfer or policy copy of presumed best practice and conditional assistance have continued to dominate. He explores the opportunities for applying active or constructivist learning principles for educational reforms in transition countries. There are four aspects to be considered: (a) the question of ‘why’ these new principles have any relevance at all; (b) the implications of new learning for ‘what’ education reforms should cover; (c) the process of educational reform itself and in particular ‘how’ reform policies are developed and implemented; and (d) (typical for all active-learning approaches)

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the tensions and contradictions between the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ when trying to implement active learning. Seeing policy-makers as (policy-)learners, international policy advisers should consider themselves as facilitators of policy-learning processes, similar to the new roles that teachers are developing as facilitators of learning processes. The current debates about learning processes, learners and new teacher roles, therefore, are also of immediate concern for policy-makers and their advisers. Policy reform is a learning process for the simple reason that no blueprints exist.

Reference Carnoy, M. 1999. Globalization and educational reform: what planners need to know. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP.

Chapter III.2

Latin America’s Efforts in the Vocational Training of Young People from Poor Backgrounds Claudia Jacinto

1 Introduction Many of the social programmes developed within the framework of the struggle against poverty and/or unemployment in Latin America since the 1990s were focused on improving the entry of young people from low-income and low-education households into the workforce. The method most often used was to offer short vocational training courses, hoping that this would help place these young people in an occupation at a basic level. There is currently an extensive debate regarding the focus of these programmes and their contribution to the social integration of young people. Many people are asking themselves whether: (a) it would be better to include these young people into the formal education system so that they can have at least twelve years of education; (b) vocational training alone can create an opportunity for these young people to find a decent job and lead lives with enough income to pull themselves out of poverty; (c) the initiatives have been adequately linked to a range of public policies; and (d) it has been possible to overcome the tendency to create ‘supply side’ courses, which do not take into account the actual demands of the labour market, etc. This chapter intends to contribute to this debate by summarizing the approaches of the programmes that began in the 1990s, their strengths and weaknesses, and some recently created models attempting to provide new answers to the difficult question of how to introduce young people from impoverished backgrounds into the labour market.1 We look at training models and their links to the job market (particularly their focus on formal employment or the informal sector, including the creation of micro-enterprises); their generally poor links to formal education; the association mechanisms they propose between public and private institutions; the profiles of the targeted population; and achievements in cases where sufficient information is available. The central question we intend to clarify is to what extent and by which means these initiatives can contribute to generating a valuable ‘second opportunity’ for young people from low-income backgrounds, taking into account the process of devaluation in qualifications which is happening simultaneously, changes in the content and types of employment, and the scarcity of the latter.

R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 III.2, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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2 Inserting Young People into the Workforce Differences in educational and employment opportunities, as well as an unbalanced income distribution, are clear structural phenomena in the region. Globalization, the opening of markets and the structural adjustments initiated in the 1990s add to this background of exclusion and have reinforced a productive heterogeneity. Although a certain technological and organizational modernization has taken place inside the leading productive sectors in recent decades, productivity in informal small and micro-enterprises still remains stagnant and, in many cases, outdated forms of production persist. Between 1990 and 2004, economic growth could be considered deficient and erratic, and gave rise to growing unemployment, an increase in low-quality jobs and widespread emigration (CEPAL, 2005). The proportion of the informal sector in the urban job market jumped from 42.8% in 1990 to 46.7% in 2003. At the same time, differences between the average income in the formal sector and the informal sector increased from 59% to 72% (CEPAL, 2005). While the formal salaried employment sector varies according to annual economic growth, there is clearly a duality in the self-employment sector: one part survives under precarious, low-income conditions; while the other, less important, is composed of more efficient productive units— in many cases small businesses profiting from certain jobs outsourced by large companies. This job-market decline and increase in segmentation did not impact equally on every population group. One of the most affected was certainly young first-job seekers. As a matter of fact, demographic tendencies, as well as the expansion of schooling towards universality of primary education and large, but nationally very different, increases in secondary education, led many to believe that the relative position of young people in the workforce would improve during the 1990s. A range of developments, however, contributed to prevent that belief from becoming reality. On the one hand, secondary education enrolment rates meant that participation in the educational process is still falling short of universality. Even in the countries of the southern region of Latin America (el Cono Sur), with high rates of schooling for children, more than half of young people do not graduate from the secondary level. The most critical problems still existing include high rates of repetition and drop-out, and in many cases a poor quality of educational supply. Simultaneously, the basic qualifications required to obtain quality jobs drift upwards towards completion of secondary education, whereas the region shows a devaluation of degrees, certificates or diplomas as the average educational level of young people rises. On the other hand, erratic economic growth coupled with increasing unemployment affected young people particularly, since first-job seekers and employees with a high turnover are mostly young. Compared to the total workforce, the unemployment rates for the young are double. For example, while at the end of the 1990s the general urban unemployment rate was 10.2%, the average unemployment rate for young people aged 15 to 24 was 19.5% (Weller, 2003). These figures add to deteriorating recruitment conditions and low salaries.

III.2 The Vocational Training of Young People from Poor Backgrounds

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Whereas the position of young people in general is difficult, the situation for those from poor backgrounds and/or with low educational attainment is still worse. Unemployment rates increase notably among those who are poor and as educational levels drop. Women, especially those with low formal educational levels, encounter the biggest problems to enter the job market. In fact, among the low qualified, young women show unemployment rates surpassing by more than 50% those of their male counterparts, while in the group with the highest educational level (thirteen years or more) this gap is ‘only’ 20% (Weller, 2006). In an environment demanding completion of secondary education as a necessary but not sufficient requisite to obtain a good job—or even just a job—what can be expected from learning programmes focused on specific vocational training and immediate placement in the job market? Very often the limited effects of ‘one time’ training programmes have been questioned and the need is emphasized for projects targeted to the most disadvantaged—i.e. the young—to surpass the purely assistance approach and to be linked with integral policies of development and social integration (CINTERFOR/ILO, 1998; Jacinto, 1999; Gallart, 2000). The specific training approach, however, has been a model followed by many programmes, and this still continues to be the case.

3 The 1990s: Traditional Approaches and New Training Models In a context of structural transformations, whose effects on the labour market have just been summarized, social expenditures—with financing by the co-operation agencies—tended during the 1990s to be oriented toward compensatory measures, placement and vocational training programmes, many of them intended for young people who had dropped out early from secondary (or even primary) school. These programmes adopted various forms of management. Among the outstanding ones, three are predominant within collective procedures focused on the training of disadvantaged young people: 1. There are still some vocational training measures based on regular, public training establishments, managed by tripartite authorities of professional training or departments/ministries of education; 2. New types of supply through ad hoc programmes were implemented, delegating training to diverse institutional agents, many of whom are private non-profit organizations (known as organizaciones de la sociedad civil—OSCs) or private training institutes. These new types of supply through ad hoc programmes include: 2.a) Programmes adopting competitive ‘open-market’ models through bidding for the selection of training institutions and courses; 2.b) Programmes granting subsidies to organizations working with disadvantaged groups.

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However, both inside the regular supply of vocational education and training, as well as with the new models, certain common tendencies can be observed, such as the establishment of public/private alliances and a profound decentralization favouring regional organizations and local governance. Below, we will analyse in detail these different types of occupational training for unemployed young people, especially those from poor backgrounds with low levels of education.

3.1 The Traditional Supply of Vocational Training In the regions, the supply of vocational training for young people not completing secondary education has since the 1950s been under the responsibility of the tripartite institutes of vocational training or the training institutions dependent on the relevant departments/ministries of education. Programmes bearing the name ‘apprenticeship’ constituted the first public policy for training and employment directed specifically at young people (Casanova, 2004).2 The groups being enrolled in many of these conventional centres were not, however, generally the most disadvantaged, but learners who—at least potentially—could find places in the formal sectors of the economy. It was only at the beginning of the 1970s that programmes started to be implemented specifically for the informal sector; for instance the SENA of Colombia, the POCET in Honduras and the talleres públicos de capacitaciónproducción (public learning and production workshops) in Costa Rica. Financed and maintained by public funds and with instructors employed as civil servants, these institutions implemented a valuable know-how and provided a low-resource population with vocational training, counselling and, sometimes, loans to start up micro-enterprises (Gallart, 2004). Under these circumstances, timetables tended to be flexible and the training programmes adapted to the perceived needs. Very often, these training centres maintained a close relationship with community associations and diverse OSCs offering parallel services locally. Within the participating population, young people received training to start work in specific jobs (generally in traditional occupations) under self-employment conditions or, in some cases, as entrepreneurs. As will be discussed later, the general lack of work experience among young people weakens their possibilities to establish themselves as microentrepreneurs.3

3.2 Ad Hoc Occupational Training Programmes As already mentioned, beyond these offers of traditional institutions, the 1990s witnessed the frequent implementation of social programmes and ad hoc measures against poverty, oriented towards providing vocational training to disadvantaged young people who did not normally have access to institutions of formal training. Many of these programmes were designed by the State, with a great deal of financing from co-operation agencies and multilateral banks, and were implemented by many different institutions and organizations.


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The two predominant models (see above) within these ad hoc programmes will be examined next. 3.2.1 The ‘Open-Market’ Model The most important programme model was developed principally by the ministries of labour and/or employment, and financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and, in some cases, by the World Bank. The ‘open market’ model adopted consisted in the outsourcing of courses to what were basically private institutions (there were also some public ones) by means of bids. The institutions supplied flexible, work-based training oriented to the formal labour market, including placements in companies, and were responsible for course design and for finding placements for the young people. Another method corresponding to the open-market model is the system of ‘vouchers’ allowing workers to select their own training courses according to their needs. Inside this training model, a range of training courses in various occupations were sub-contracted to a wide range of institutions and organizations, both public and private, such as trade unions, technical OSCs (some with an extensive experience in the field, and others recently created) and private training centres. One example of implementation of this open-market model is the national training programmes for disadvantaged youth carried out in several Latin American countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Peru, Uruguay), known as the Chile Joven (‘young Chile’) model. Some traditional vocational training institutions also participated in public bidding for training courses of this type, for example, the SENAI, SENAC and SENAR of Brazil. These programmes exemplify a short and reasonably inexpensive training, combined with stages of training ‘at work’ through placements. In some cases, these programmes have reached better labour market entry results, slightly superior to those of other agencies, because their courses were more oriented toward concrete opportunities in the labour market. It was clear, however, that their positive impact was closely dependent on the general buoyancy of the labour market and the individual size and design of the programme. In Argentina, for instance, a grand-scale programme (its goal was to train 200,000 young people under age 30) was conducted during a period coinciding with a massive increase in unemployment figures. Consequently, its effects on the entry of these young people into the labour market were almost nil (Devia, 2003). In Uruguay, by contrast, where the programme operated on a much smaller scale and with various designs adjusted to different sub-groups of young people, the relative results for the young participants were satisfactory (Lasida, 2004). One weakness in this category of programmes was its poor contribution to enhancing training institutions. Many of the participating training centres in these short-term programmes for the disadvantaged developed more flexible approaches than the traditional institutions, but lasted only a short time and were hardly sustainable.4 The desire to develop an alternative model to the traditional institutions, capable of overcoming bureaucracy and to avoid providing training courses not related to the actual demands of the labour market, seem to have affected the

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sustainability and promotion of institutional learning. One of the dilemmas for vocational training supply is still how to create outsourcing conditions that stimulate experimentation, generate stable technical teams and institutional sustainability, at the same time establishing links with the labour market and leading to acceptable results after completion of the training (Jacinto & Bessega, 2001; Lasida & Berrutti, 2002). The bidding approach for courses specifically focused on the needs of unemployed young people continues to be the model implemented during the last ten years in countries like Peru and Uruguay, and also Colombia where SENA is still active as the national vocational training authority. 3.2.2 Subsidized Programmes for Organizations Working with Disadvantaged Groups Another type of ad hoc programme was developed within the framework of the Ministries of Social Development and/or institutes for young people, and financed in many cases by multilateral agencies. Under this scheme, OSCs, foundations, churches (particularly the Catholic Church), national training institutions, local governments, etc., received subsidies from the State to provide the learning programmes. The training in these cases is geared toward the informal sector, selfemployment and/or the creation of micro-enterprises. Usually, these social programmes encourage alliances between different public organizations, including health services, education and training institutions and private agencies enhancing social well-being, such as banks awarding micro-credits, youth centres, etc. Subsidizing organizations working with poor populations often allows the adoption of more flexible strategies, adjusted to the individual characteristics and expectations of the young people themselves, and for longer periods. In many cases, these programmes tend to develop a more complete approximation of training and combine the learning of technical skills with social competences (also in the broad sense; for example, training for citizenship), skills in seeking work and work guidance. These programmes, however, showed low concern for the technical quality of the courses and lacked clarity regarding the expected results (Jacinto, 2002). There was little emphasis in the placement of learners and little guidance toward concrete occupational opportunities, even in the informal sector. Occasionally, these training courses were oriented to the development of entrepreneurial capabilities in general, without having any link with the learning of particular technical skills, nor specific follow-up to a business sector. They did not take into account whether or not the selected young people had the experience and the personal characteristics to manage their own enterprises (Jacinto, 2002). Nevertheless, another relatively significant part of these social programmes focusing on young people promoted the setting up of micro-enterprises, using a more specific and complex approach. In these cases, mechanisms of selection, training and post-training guidance were included. However, these programmes were more demanding (sometimes including micro-credits) and frequently excluded the poorest, as the enrolment conditions required the participants to already possess a business and/or a secondary qualification (Jaramillo Baanante, 2004). To be successful,


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some evidence was required that the young people had a certain level of business initiative, either experience in salaried work, entrepreneurial skills or an idea for a business plan (Lasida, 2004).

3.3 Achievements and Limitations of the Strategies from the 1990s To sum up the general procedures developed in the 1990s within the framework of programmes targeting the inclusion of young people from poor backgrounds into the labour market, the following features can be noted:

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More flexible training approaches were adopted, as the implementation of courses and projects was carried out by sub-contracting public and private agencies offering various types of training, rather than traditional vocational training institutions. Whereas a certain consensus can be observed about the need to start modifying the State’s preference to organize social policies (i.e. its institutions, human resources, equipment and infrastructure) from the supply side, the adopted mechanisms, both the ‘open market’ model and the subsidized programmes, did not lead to efficient vocational training corresponding to the needs of the young people, the demands of the job market or socio-economic developments. Instead, they resulted in haphazard action with more or less quality and efficacy, according to individual cases. In spite of its diversification and flexibility, the training organizations experienced difficulties with the design and implementation of the learning. First, they had to confront new duties related to curricular design, institutional management, interaction with other institutions and with the labour market, and they did not necessarily know how to respond to these challenges. Secondly, many organizations revealed their weaknesses in administrative and financial management. They also showed knowledge deficiencies about strategies for institutional planning and internal communication (Jacinto, 2001). One weakness was that almost none of the actions taken established links with existing formal education. The certificates that were awarded did not imply any recognition or equivalencies in formal education or regular vocational training, even though the majority of the young people enrolled did not possess a secondary qualification, and although one of the outcomes of enrolment was that almost 30% of these young people returned to formal education (Jacinto, 2004). As mentioned earlier, considering how difficult it was for young people, particularly the most economically and socially disadvantaged, to find quality employment, the programmes tended to foresee entry into the formal (salaried) labour market. However, programmes that promoted the creation of micro-enterprises and/or self-employment also played a relevant role. In his analysis of thirty-seven programmes, for example, Jaramillo (2004) identifies twenty-two that were exclusively oriented toward self-employment and another fifteen that included measures for salaried employment and self-employment at the same time. While the impact of the programmes, measured by access to formal employment, differs

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among countries, in most cases it can be said to be very limited and only produced slight improvements in some sub-groups (Jacinto, 2004). Concerning the results of the programmes that might have promoted micro-industry and selfemployment, these also tended to be very sparse, considering the small percentage of new companies that were able to survive their first year. In addition, the programmes with the highest potential (i.e. including training, follow-up and micro-credits) tended to exclude young people from the most disadvantaged sectors (Jaramillo, 2004).5 Although training has sometimes been linked with other formative and cultural actions, these links do not seem to be vital in the selection or evaluation of courses by the central management of programmes. The broadest approaches, linking the training programmes to other local or sector development projects and to the social integration of young people, remained generally restricted to small-scale experiences with little coverage (Jacinto, 1999).

Generally speaking, these measures reveal an attempt to provide greater opportunities to young people confronting increasingly exclusive social contexts and more complex labour markets. Its most relevant aspects are precisely the fact that they express the urgent need for a programme and the permanent improvement of its strategies, increasingly emphasizing the use of concrete job opportunities. Many of the initiatives, however, proved to over-simplify the problem of young people entering the labour market, particularly those belonging to the most disadvantaged groups. On the one side, they emphasized the question of low skill levels without sufficiently taking into account the role formal education plays in the job-market selection, and the exclusion tendencies of the labour market itself. In addition, the basic view of young people tends to be short-sighted if it fails to cover the social and cultural issues than constitute the fact of ‘being young/adolescent’, nor taking into account the heterogeneity of social and educational situations that characterize disadvantaged young people within geographic, local and family contexts. In fact, it turns out that the situations of the young people targeted are very diverse: from groups very marginal and isolated (indigenous people, homeless children, etc.), to those from poor urban districts or rural young people. Finally, beyond the diversity of the measures, we should not lose sight of the fact that these initiatives covered only a small fraction of the potential population composing all of the young people who dropped out of school without any qualifications. Indeed, in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras, most young people aged 18 to 25 do not complete secondary education. In recent years, only in Argentina and Chile did a majority of the young population complete secondary education. Meanwhile, in Brazil, Paraguay and El Salvador, more than 60% of young people did not complete secondary education; this percentage is more than 75% in Costa Rica and Honduras. In all of these countries there are significant inter-regional differences, with young people living in large metropolitan areas being the ones most likely to complete secondary education (SITEAL, 2005).


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4 Testing New Ways The expansion of formal schooling and the introduction of new technologies, particularly in the information and communication sector, affect not only working practices but also everyday life. It is also clear that an occupational strategy for the disadvantaged based exclusively on vocational training for traditional jobs has its limitations, as has been shown in most of the experiences mentioned. Despite these limitations, many of the measures have followed those same patterns. More recent programmes are now trying new models as a response to some of the limitations or weaknesses of the traditional approaches. One aspect that has received particular emphasis is to achieve a better integration of the formative and inter-sectoral approaches. We can differentiate the following strategies in this field:

4.1 Initiatives Promoting Alternative Educational Paths During recent years some social and employment programmes have encouraged young people and adults to finalize their basic and/or secondary education through learning strategies (in many cases, part-time schooling) that attempt to respond in a more pertinent way to their needs and interests more than traditional educational services. Some initiatives of this type in Argentina, Brazil and Chile have gained momentum in recent years, as well as in other countries. Among the experiences of this type, the example of Chile is probably the one that has been most systematically implemented and evaluated. The flexible and free method of promoting training forms part of Chile Califica (Chile Qualifies), a programme under the auspices of the ministries of education, labour and economy/finance. The World Bank finances 50% of the loans and State contributions cover the other 50%. This pattern is structured in learning blocks and envisages both classroom and self-learning activities. It works with cost-free books supplied by the Ministry of Education. The State also evaluates the students’ progress and awards certificates. Between 2002 and 2004, using this system, 42,000 persons acquired a basic education certificate and 74,000 a secondary education certificate. An interesting aspect of this programme is that it achieves better completion rates than those of traditional educational paths for adults (Letelier, 2005). Some studies have reported positive results in income and occupational level, especially among women and young people.

4.2 Integral Experiences Linking Training with Job Integration One example of a recent programme that decided to focus on training and job-entry for occupations in new technologies is the so-called ENTRA-21 (2005). This programme supports training developed by OSCs and youth employment projects in ICTs with a fund of US$20 million, co-financed by Fundación Internacional para

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la Juventud (FIJ) and the Fondo Multilateral de Inversiones (FOMIN) from the Inter-American Development Bank. The programme subsidizes projects of approximately US$375,000 for up to three years. Until July 2005, ENTRA-21 had carried out twenty-four projects in sixteen countries, reaching 11,227 disadvantaged young people. Some interesting aspects concerning the design and execution of this programme are worth mentioning. First, its focus was on occupations using new technologies with a broad approach to training that included not only learning about technical abilities but also personal and social skills, as well as job placement. It also emphasized public/private co-operation in design and implementation, in order to join resources and facilitate job integration after training. This last aspect represents the most outstanding point of the programme: its commitment to job entry from its very inception. Consequently, mechanisms to assist young people during the job-entry process were put into place. It intends to be not just another VET programme, but a job-integration programme including training. The job-placement results for young people have been satisfactory, achieving rates between 40% and 68% of entry into the job market within six months after training.

4.3 Programmes Using ‘Positive Discrimination’ Mechanisms These practices include:

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Programmes that stimulate the enrolment of young people facing the greatest difficulties, such as first-job seekers in Brazil; Other programmes in other communities have created ‘sheltered’ job opportunities in the public sector. This means reserving jobs or activities for young unemployed people who otherwise would not have the opportunity to enter the labour market if it were not for this strategy, as in the case of the city of Montevideo. This practice demonstrates an interesting strategy of positive discrimination that focuses on creating job opportunities for the most disadvantaged young people. Obviously, this strategy is not without controversy: critics point out deficiencies in the services; trade unions argue that the young are taking jobs away from other workers.

5 Some Reflections on the Future Course of Action Obviously, the problem has multiple facets, tied to national development and growth strategies in a broad sense. Within a region where social inequalities are extreme and poverty has increased, these hard-fought programmes have made progress in consolidating a system of education, training and social guidance for those young people with minimal opportunities. Some strategies attempt to go beyond the more limited visions of vocational training by creating better links to formal education,


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promoting entry into the labour market and a more equitable distribution of employment opportunities. Some points must be outlined regarding opportunities for young people in disadvantaged situations:

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Since the period of formal schooling has expanded, and a long period of education continues to be the best option in terms of finding a job, becoming part of society and conducting a career, we can draw at least three major conclusions about formal education: – Young people dropping out of school face increasingly disadvantaged situations in a labour market where secondary education may not be entirely sufficient, but is absolutely necessary for entry into the labour market. There is a need to reinforce incentives for young people to remain in school and promote the return of drop-outs into the education system. – During their time in school, all young people should acquire the general basics and fundamental skills for work and social integration. In this respect, the pathetic results of formal basic and secondary schooling and the differences among socio-economic groups clearly indicate the need for change. – Bridges between and within different educational paths and learning environments (formal schooling, vocational training, workplace) need to be created and/or reinforced to encourage the social significance of education for young people entering the labour market.

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Concerning programmes and/or measures specifically designed to improve the entry of young people into the job market, it should be noted that there is no evidence of positive results from unselective mass programmes. Consequently, it seems advisable for these programmes to be specific, directed at specificallyselected categories of young people, carefully evaluated and adjusted to specific niches or sectors of the economy. Inevitably, the broad heterogeneity of young people in the region must be taken into account. Their problems are different according to socio-economic levels, gender, educational level, ethnicity, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to identify this diversity in order to formulate proper solutions. More generally, it can be recommended that vocational training programmes in this region should: – be dual, that is to say, they should include components of school training as well as on-the-job learning (internship/placements, etc.); – have an integral design, apt for promoting the development of not only technical, but also personal and social skills; – be able to follow-up the integration of persons into the labour market; and – only for some carefully selected groups of a population, promote selfemployment and the creation of small enterprises, supporting them with financial services, training and counselling.

As evidence shows, account must be taken of the fact that these measures will reflect general trends in employment closely. One remaining issue is to profoundly

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reinforce the links between the various educational services and programmes. In Latin America, formal education and vocational training represent two distinct paths that co-ordinate neither their functions nor their resources. They depend on different sectors of public administration, or operate even on a private basis, and are far removed from constituting a unified system (Jacinto, 2002). One of the greatest current challenges seems to be the design of a strategy leading the population to qualifications. The strategic objective would be the implementation of national systems that could link education, vocational training and diverse mechanisms of learning and entry into the labour market. Better links are not only needed to increase efficacy and efficiency; they also drive the broader field of equity, prophesying in this way a wider system of lifelong education, able to cope with social, cultural, economic and technical changes and offering access to diverse training options. Acknowledgments I am grateful to Victoria González for her assistance in researching and to Veronica Diyarian for her collaboration in writing this text.

Notes 1. Based on the results of regional research covering five in-depth case studies of training programmes for young people in various Latin American countries undertaken in 1999/2000 (Jacinto, 2002). Comments on the most recent developments come from data compiled on several case studies of programmes in recent years, available online at: <www.redetis.iipeides.org.ar> 2. Training programmes leading to a qualification, usually lasting two years, and including work placement in industry. 3. Moreover, training supply for micro-entrepreneurs tends not to recognize their internal heterogeneity: from subsidized micro-enterprises with little viability in the market place to selfemployment with a potential to grow, or even competitive micro-enterprises in certain market niches. According to Gallart (2004), the programmes focused on disadvantaged populations trying to make the weakest micro-enterprises more competitive, even though most of the time this is just not feasible. 4. Many were created just to participate in the programmes (Jacinto, 1999). 5. The promotion of self-employment experiences and/or micro-enterprise opportunities for young people from low socio-educational backgrounds seems to require extensive follow-up, including measures like: support in the selection of viable niches for products or services; training in management, marketing and skills related to the activity; access to loans; and technical assistance for an extensive period, including psycho-social support (Ruétalo, Lasida & Berrutti, 1998).

References Casanova, F. 2004. Desarrollo local, tejidos productivos y formación: abordajes alternativos para la formación y el trabajo de los jóvenes. Montevideo: CINTERFOR. (Herramientas para la transformación, no. 22) Comisión Economica para América Latina. 2005. Estudio económico de América Latina y el Caribe 2004–2005. Santiago: CEPAL. <www.eclac.cl/publicaciones/DesarrolloEconomico/9/ LCG2279PE/LCG2279 e RE.pdf>


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CINTERFOR/OIT. 1998. Juventud, educación y empleo. Montevideo: CINTERFOR. <www.ilo. org/public/spanish/region/ampro/cinterfor/publ/juventud/> ´ Devia, S. 2003. ¿Exito o fracaso de las pol´ıticas públicas de capacitación laboral a jóvenes? Evaluación del programa testigo ‘Proyecto Joven’ de Argentina (1993–2000). Buenos Aires: UBA. ENTRA-21. 2005. Informe de gestión. <www.iyfnet.org> Gallart, M.A. 2000. El desaf´ıo de la formación para el trabajo de los jóvenes en situación de pobreza: el caso argentino. In: Gallart, M.A., ed. Formación, pobreza y exclusión, pp. 241–302. Montevideo: CINTERFOR. Gallart, M.A. 2004. Habilidades y competencias para el sector informal en América Latina: una revisión de la literatura sobre programas y metodolog´ıas de formación. CINTERFOR bolet´ın, no. 155. <www.cinterfor.org.uy/public/spanish/region/ampro/cinterfor/publ/boletin/155/ pdf/gallart.pdf> Jacinto, C. 1999. Programas de educación para jóvenes desfavorecidos: enfoques y tendencias en América Latina. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. Jacinto, C. 2001. Contextos y actores sociales en la evaluación de los programas de capacitación de jóvenes. In: Pieck, E., ed. Los jóvenes y el trabajo: la educación frente a la exclusión social. Mexico: CINTERFOR. <www.cinterfor.org.uy/public/spanish/region/ampro/cinterfor/ temas/youth/doc/not/libro273/epieck7.pdf> Jacinto, C. 2002. Nuevas alianzas y estrategias en la formación para el trabajo de jóvenes desfavorecidos: estudios de caso en América Latina. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. Jacinto, C. 2004. Ante la polarización de oportunidades laborales de los jóvenes de América Latina: un análisis de algunas propuestas recientes en la formación para el trabajo. In: Jacinto, C., ed. ¿Educar para que trabajo? Discutiendo rumbos en América Latina, pp. 187–200. Buenos Aires: La Cruj´ıa. Jacinto, C.; Bessega, C. 2001. Fortalecimiento institucional de entidades de capacitación para jóvenes desfavorecidos. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. Jaramillo Baanante, M. 2004. Los emprendimientos juveniles en America Latina: ¿Una respuesta ante las dificultades de empleo? Buenos Aires: IIPE-IDES. <www.redetis.org.ar/ media/document/id522 fieldfile1.pdf> Lasida, J. 2004. Estrategias para acercar a los jóvenes al trabajo. Buenos Aires: IIPE-IDES. <www.redetis.org.ar/media/document/id521 fieldfile1.pdf> Lasida, J.; Berrutti, E. 2002. Foro Juvenil, ensayos y aprendizajes para las pol´ıticas de educación y trabajo. In: Jacinto, C. et al., eds. Nuevas alianzas y estrategias en la formación para el trabajo de jóvenes desfavorecidos: estudios de caso en América Latina. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. Letelier, M.E. 2005. El programa de nivelación de estudios de Chile: estrategias educativas y formativas para la inclusión social y productive. (Paper presented at the workshop ‘Estrategias educativas y formativas para la inclusión social y productiva de todos’, Instituto Nacional para la Educación de Adultos, Mexico D.F., 14–15 November 2005.) Ruétalo, J.; Lasida, J.; Berrutti, E. 1998. Formación para el trabajo de jóvenes de sectores de pobreza en América Latina. ¿Qué desaf´ıos y qué estrategias? In: Jacinto, C.; Gallart, M.A., eds. Por una segunda oportunidad: la formación para el trabajo de jóvenes vulnerable, pp. 7–32. Montevideo: CINTERFOR/OIT. (Herramientas para la transformación, no. 6). <www.cinterfor.org.uy/public/spanish/region/ampro/cinterfor/publ/jacinto/pdf/jacint2.pdf> SITEAL. 2005. Tendencias interregionales en el porcentaje de jóvenes que no completó la secundaria. <www.siteal.iipe-oei.org> Weller, J. 2003. La problemática inserción laboral de los y las jóvenes. Serie macroeconom´ıa del desarrollo, no. 28. Weller, J. 2006. Inserción laboral de jóvenes: expectativas, demanda laboral y trayectorias. Bolet´ın redEtis, no. 5. <www.redetis.org.ar>


Chapter III.3

Accountability and Career Technical Education (CTE) Policy: A Brief Review of Six States of the United States Joshua D. Hawley and Alexandra de Montrichard

1 Introduction Accountability concerns are at the top of the list of issues that career technical education (CTE) administrators are currently forced to deal with. As it has evolved in the United States, state CTE policy is trying to juggle missions that include preparation for careers with current efforts to improve the academic achievement of youth. This focuses attention at the state level on the articulation of public policies that ‘thread the needle’—allowing students to master both occupational content and academic skills. The United States Federal Department of Education’s (DOE) web-site for CTE reflects the three themes CTE is trying to balance for career and technical education:

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Increasing academic achievement; Fostering post-secondary transitions; and Preparing students for high-skill, high-wage careers.

This emphasis on a variety of outcomes for CTE is reflected in the academic and policy literature. One recent report from the Association for Career and Technical Education stresses the critical role that academic skills play in current CTE practice. The policy paper lays out a framework for CTE in the twenty-first century suggesting that CTE programmes offer both rigorous academic and vocational content. The authors described the issue as follows: ‘we believe that CTE courses and instructional methodologies have a place in the high-school environment, and that there should not be an artificial split between academic coursework and vocational studies’ (Association for Career and Technical Education, 2006, p. 3). Additionally, the long-standing programme from the Southern Regional Education Board emphasizes the importance of academic skills for improvements in the quality of CTE coursework. The recent empirical work done by High Schools that Work illustrates the gains when students in CTE achieve high levels of academic as well as vocational content. Bottoms and Young (2005) provide data that if students take at least four credits of maths or college preparatory English as part of a CTE programme, 80 to 90% did not need remedial coursework in college. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 III.3, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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This focus on accountability has come to a head while the Federal Government’s main policy on education, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), faces continued resistance from states. They continue to object to the appearance of unfunded mandates within the legislation. The difficulty persists when developing performance measures related to curriculum standards. A 1999 report on state-level accountability strategies asserts that: most of the measurement issues related to the conflicting purposes of vocational education (school reform versus workforce development) and governance/system delivery (centralized versus decentralized) are quite complex. All states are working on parts of the system or systems. It is hoped that the parts eventually sum to a whole (Rahn, O’Driscoll & Hudecki, 1999).

Nevertheless, states have historically developed strategies to measure and assess the performance of high-school vocational education in each of these areas. The current debate centres on expanding the accountability systems defined by NCLB, but balancing those accountability demands that are unique to CTE programmes.

2 Accountability and Federal Policy Accountability is the practice of holding schools, districts and teachers responsible for providing quality education and holding students responsible for their own performance. As part of the push to hold school systems accountable, standards and, to varying degrees, accountability systems were developed both at the state and federal levels. As of the 2003/2004 school year, with the exception of Iowa, all states have developed standards for all their core subjects (English/language arts, mathematics, science and social studies/history), as well as school report cards available to the public (The Editors, 2004). The 1990 and 1998 Carl D. Perkins Vocational-Technical Acts (Perkins II & III) required states to set up accountability systems for their local vocational programmes. Perkins III also added incentive performance funds for states. These frameworks have guided contemporary accountability systems in the sample states, but the debate at the federal level threatens to derail this progress. The various proposals from the White House, Senate and House of Representatives offered very different visions of career and technical education accountability systems. The Council of Chief State School Officers reported that President Bush’s 2005 Budget Request expanded achievement and accountability goals from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)—renamed the No Child Left Behind Act—to CTE. This movement, if it occurred, would emphasize achievement of academic outcomes, but still require states to demonstrate workplace preparedness. The Senate and House of Representatives versions of the current Perkins’ Legislation do not extend the accountability goals to CTE in a wholesale manner, but focus on allowing states to define the accountability system that CTE programmes must meet. This legislation at the secondary level focuses on defining the types of indicators that states must meet and requires continuous improvement in educational progress of career-focused students (Association for Career and Technical Education, 2005).

III.3 Accountability and Career Technical Education (CTE) Policy

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The future of CTE accountability is therefore in question, but only in terms of emphasis. The key question is: will CTE accountability remain divided between labour-market outcomes and academic success, or focus narrowly on the academic outcomes?

3 What is an Accountability System? Before reviewing state-level accountability, we focus on describing the definitional issues behind accountability systems. The following paragraphs describe the current literature/focus on accountability at the state level. The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) did a review of state accountability and large-scale assessments in 2001 and outlined the essential elements shared by state assessment systems (National Association of State Boards of Education, 2001). According to NASBE, effective assessments systems:

r r r r r r

have rigorous and detailed standards that are specific enough to determine what needs to be evaluated; are designed to address specific goals and purposes (such as student remediation or school district assessment); balance validity, reliability and efficiency; inform instruction and have consequences; have mechanisms to encourage schools and districts to align their instruction and evaluation with the standards; and have a clearly articulated relationship with national measures of student performance.

Most scholarly literature on accountability evolved in recent years to focus attention on this broad interpretation of accountability to include standards systems, testing and curriculum frameworks, as well as numerical standards for achievement. In the context of CTE, the research on accountability varies considerably.

4 Issues Raised in the Literature on Accountability and CTE Our literature review identified three key areas of concern: the integration of vocational education and general education accountability, the quality of CTE programmes and the integration of federal, state and local accountability.

4.1 Accountability of Vocational Education and General Education CTE is affected by both school reforms, such as No Child Left Behind, and workforce development reforms such as the Workforce Investment Act. In their report on state-level accountability strategies, Rahn, O’Driscoll and Hudecki (1999) argue

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that this creates a tension in purpose, standards, accountability systems and governance structures, which plays itself out differently in various states. Measures that might be called ‘school reform’ items and are used by many states include the percentage of students scoring at below a specific level on an academic test, or the percentage of students enrolled in college preparatory coursework. Secondly, measures that might be called workforce development are represented by other indicators, such as the percentage of students passing certifications/licensure exams or the percentage placed in a job related to the training. School reforms have spurred the development of accountability standards and systems for general education focused on core subjects (English/language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies/history). However, the degree to which vocational education accountability standards are integrated into more general educational standards varies. As of 1999 this had only happened in a few states (Rahn et al., 1999; Stasz & Bodilly, 2004).

4.2 Quality CTE Programmes The 2004 National Assessment of Vocational Education (NAVE) report focuses on the priorities set out by Perkins III and identified strategies that would help improve secondary vocational programme performance. These include strategies for academic achievement, increased occupational and technical skills and workforce outcomes. To enhance academic achievement the report suggested making this a more explicit focus in Perkins, supporting curriculum development to strengthen the academic content of vocational courses, integrating academic and vocational education, focusing funding to programmes with proven academic content, and investment in focused teacher training to improve teacher quality. The report quotes a study not yet released that indicates: ‘states have begun to reference or encourage academic content in vocational course guidelines [. . .] States spend the highest share of state leadership funds—nearly 20 per cent nationally—to promote integration’ (White et al., 2004). However, at the school level integration is still not widespread and the report lists a series of barriers to this integration. To raise occupational and technical skills in high schools the authors suggest that challenging content and performance standards are required for vocational courses, linked with end-of-course technical assessments and that rewards and sanctions be in place for programmes based on performance. Finally, to improve employment and earnings, particularly for non-college-bound students, the recommendations are to encourage implementation of vocational programme course sequences and promote work-experience programmes. Other areas identified as key to programme quality and improvement include the linkages between secondary and post-secondary education, which NAVE finds are strong among CTE faculty, enhancing the use of technology and employer involvement.


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4.3 Integration of Federal, State and Local Accountability In accountability there is a potential conflict between federal, state and local needs. Federal requirements tend to focus more on programmatic accountability and aggregated measures that allow cross-state comparisons. Local accountability systems may be more useful to schools for programme improvement, whereas more standardized data collection facilitates comparisons across schools and districts at the state level. ‘The result is a patchwork of “systems” at the local and state levels, each moving toward accountability with different data and reporting requirements’ (Rahn et al., 1999). One early report argues that: vocational education is particularly susceptible to ineffective, high-level policy-making because local conditions play such a large role in program planning and performance. Programs are planned with an eye toward local economic needs, and program performance is measured in terms of placements, which are found primarily in the local area (Stecher & Hanser, 1992).

This report thus focused on the need to ‘understand local accountability mechanisms and their relationship to more highly aggregated state policymaking’. The authors found that ‘local accountability systems exist, although they are often informal and unsystematic’ (Stecher & Hanser, 1992). They identified four key components that account for much of the variation in the quality of local accountability systems: measures, information, feedback loops and change mechanisms The level at which accountability data is collected at the state also varies depending on whether they have centralized or decentralized governance structures and/or delivery systems (Rahn et al., 1999).

5 Methodology 5.1 Sample The six states studied and visited included Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Ohio. The states selected for this study are different from each other. The population size, labour-market composition and unemployment rates vary. All but two of the states are governed by the State Board of Education; in the other two cases it is the Higher Education Board that has legislative responsibility for CTE. Table 1 shows that the states vary from smaller north-eastern states, such as Massachusetts, to larger mid-western states like Illinois. All of the states have designated CTE systems. Table 2 shows that the states have a variety of mechanisms for implementing vocational education. In the case of Illinois, for example, of the 665 public high schools in the state, there were only twenty-six schools offering CTE, and these were

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J.D. Hawley, A. de Montrichard Table 1 Basic information on state education

Total enrolment in public schools (Student numbers) Diploma recipients (Student numbers) Total state expenditures for education ($ millions)

Year

IL

MA

MI

NJ

NY

OH

2002 2000 1995 1990

2,084,187 2,048,792 1,943,623 1,821,407

982,989 975,150 915,007 834,314

1,785,160 1,720,626 1,641,456 1,584,431

1,367,438 1,313,405 1,197,381 1,089,646

2,888,233 2,882,188 2,813,230 2,598,337

1,838,285 1,835,049 1,836,015 1,771,089

2002 2000 1995 1990

116,657 111,835 105,164 108,119

55,272 52,950 47,679 55,941

95,001 97,679 86,180 100,522

77,664 74,420 67,403 69,824

153,879 141,731 136,234 146,307

110,608 111,668 109,418 114,513

2000 1995 1990

18,441 — 9,867

9,515 6,524 5,024

16,701 — 9,623

16,323 — 9,208

34,837 — —

16,024 — 9,206

Sources: 1. National Center for Education Statistics: 2. National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortia: <www. careertech.org/reference/states/stateInfo.asp>

Table 2 School information on career technical education in six states (number of schools) IL

MA

MI

NJ

NY

OH

All public high schools

665

280

763

311

852

826

Public schools offering CTE – Comprehensive high schools – Vocational high schools – Regional/area vocational/career-technical centres Public schools offering solely vocational instruction according to the National Association of State Directors Public vocational education schools in 2001–2002 according the NCES

26 – – 26

–

–

–

98 60 – 38

–

26

45

29

50

25

76

0

43

12

38

25

68

Sources: 1. National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortia: <www. careertech.org/reference/states/stateInfo.asp> 2. State sources:

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Illinois: <www.isbe.net/career/pdf/avc directory.pdf>, <www.isbe.net/research/pdfs/quick stats03.pdf> Illinois and New York internal state documents. Correspondence with state director’s office in January 2004.

3. Hoffman, 2003.


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organized as regional vocational technical centres. In contrast, New York had 852 public high schools, ninety-eight of which were offering CTE. Within New York’s system, however, sixty high schools were comprehensive in nature and offered vocational schooling as a part of their programme while thirty-eight were regional vocational technical centres. Table 3 shows both the number of secondary and post-secondary students enrolled in CTE in the six states. The proportion of students in CTE at the secondary level varies from a low of 18% in Ohio, to a high of 55% in Illinois. While 79% of post-secondary students in Illinois are classified as CTE students, in Massachusetts only 39% of students are focused on vocational areas. Table 3 Student information on career technical education in six states Students in public high schools Secondary students enrolled in CTE % of secondary students enrolled in CTE Students at public community colleges Post-secondary students enrolled in CTE % of post-secondary students enrolled in CTE

IL

MA

MI

NJ

NY

OH

550,301

233,179

471,950

310,010

708,456

534,536

302,631

46,071

205,020

79,838

256,295

95,253

55.0%

19.8%

43.4%

25.8%

36.2%

17.8%

339,151

80,070

186,847

132,808

245,842

179,077

268,604

31,842

151,459

65,710

143,397

165,839

79.2%

39.8%

81.1%

49.5%

58.3%

92.6%

Source: National Association of States Directory of Career Technical Education Consortia: <www.careertech.org/reference/states/stateInfo.asp>

Several contextual issues surround the issues of accountability and curriculum in these states. Firstly, both Perkins’ legislation and state implementation leave an enormous range of variation in how programmes are established and how a vocational completer/concentrator is established. These are important contextual issues, because they govern the scope of a vocational programme. In most cases the interviews show us that states have very inconsistent views on the definition of a CTE programme or the designation of a vocational completer. Current efforts by the federal Department of Education Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) and others to better define these categories go to the heart of decisions about what unit to assess in vocational education.

5.2 Data Collection Every state except one was visited by a researcher. An interview protocol was developed by staff familiar with career and technical education and state policy. It was reviewed by key members of the research team and served as the basis for the

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discussions with the respondents. At one site the respondents were interviewed by telephone. The focus of this study was a comparison of accountability systems for CTE programmes. The study documents the basic characteristics of accountability systems in each state by determining:

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What are the standards for CTE programmes? How are these standards measured? What types of tests are used to measure CTE student performance? How are the results of these tests used?

Additionally, we focused on documenting state by state:

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the level of CTE and academic curriculum and accountability integration; the effects of school reform legislation, specifically No Child Left Behind, on CTE programmes.

Respondents from six states were interviewed individually or in groups for about 11/2 hours each. A total of sixteen people participated in the interviews. Additionally, the states supplied us with copies of their accountability plans, the current state plan for CTE, and other studies that helped inform our data collection efforts. Each interview was taped and transcribed. The transcription was imported into a computer analysis programme—N’Vivo. These files were the main source of data for the analysis.

5.3 Data Analysis From the transcripts generated for this study the researchers developed a set of initial codes using N’Vivo software. These codes were based on the interview protocol, producing an initial list of twenty-three codes. These twenty-three codes were grouped into five folders, representing data collected on the following key categories of information: CTE administration; CTE programme requirements and definitions; measures and assessment systems; CTE links with occupations and industry; curriculum; and current legislation. A coding report was printed from N’Vivo software for each of these categories. The codes were applied to specific sets of text on the basis of a reading of the transcripts and subsequent analysis.

6 Results 6.1 CTE Organization and Administration Overall, CTE forms an important component of the state secondary education systems across our six states. While the country has a federal Department of Education, constitutionally the education systems are state level responsibilities (Fowler, 2003;


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Table 4 Basic information on career technical education IL Type of governance structure

Funding strategy

States with dual enrolment policy High-school graduation requirements

State Board Authority Post-Secondary Governing Board. Funding based on student participation Cost reimbursement Instructional units Student weights State Foundation grants

MI

NJ

OH

•

•

*

NY

• Graduation contingent on performance on state-wide exit or end-of-course exams Curriculum requirements

MA

*

*

•

•

*

*

*

Note: Ohio states that it will carry out graduation testing requirements and curriculum requirements connected with the Ohio diploma; students must meet both requirements in order to earn an Ohio diploma after 15 September 2006. Sources: Karp et al., 2004.; Klein, 2001, p. 13.; Krueger, 2004; Silverberg et al., 2004; National Assessment of Vocational Education, 2004; The Editors, 2004, p. 109.

Stasz & Bodilly, 2004). This implies that the provision and co-ordination of vocational education is the responsibility of the states. The states we studied vary in a wide range of governance and administrative responsibilities (Table 4). In terms of overall state-level co-ordination of CTE, there are effectively two major models: control through the K-12 education system; or the post-secondary system. In the case of our six states, all but two are administered through the traditional K-12 education system. Only New York and Illinois are controlled through the post-secondary system. This difference is crucial, illustrating the bias towards secondary-level vocational schooling. In recent years, however, other states, such as Alabama and Kentucky, outside of our sample, have retooled their vocational education systems to integrate economic development into the administration of vocational schooling (Grubb et al., 1999). Moreover, state funding of vocational schooling varies considerably. As described in a recent study of vocational funding, there are markedly different funding mechanisms that states have in place to provide for vocational services (Klein, 2001). The amount of money states have available from the federal government for state-level accountability has declined as a percentage of Perkins’ funds, and there is some evidence that this has affected the ability of states to shift accountability systems (Stasz & Bodilly, 2004). In our six states, there is no predominant model of funding, with some operating on a per pupil basis and others on a state grant basis. In all cases, the state administration extends its control to curriculum frameworks and in many of them this includes matched tests to assess student performance.

402


What this implies in the national context is a core curriculum requirement that needs to be met by all secondary school students regardless of curricular focus, as well as specific vocational competencies that are typically industry or field specific. The long-term outcome of the push for accountability, however, has driven more and more states to require a high-stakes test during high school as a mechanism to ensure that all students attain a minimum level of skills. Of our sample states, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Ohio all require CTE students to pass a graduation test, while New York also requires the Regents Tests (Bishop & Mane, 1998). The following section examines the perspectives on accreditation and programme design in the six states participating in qualitative interviews. It then moves on to a consideration of how states define CTE completion.

6.2 Programme Accreditation/Approval As described in the definitional section, CTE requires detailed understanding of school-level performance, as well as a focus on student achievement. Schools are to be judged as systems under the NCLB Act. In each of the six states, CTE systems are governed by a local legislative system that defines the CTE programme and student, and in some cases specifies the accountability provisions that the programmes must meet in order to remain in compliance. Of the six states, the state of New York and the state of Illinois provide for interesting contrast in contemporary programme approval processes. In the case of New York the programme approval process for CTE includes the following: 1. An internal review that takes into account the opinions of the teachers, as well as employers in the locality; 2. An external review that includes both employers and community or post-secondary education partners; 3. Articulation agreements; 4. A defined work-based learning programme; and 5. Identification of industry-based tests. The New York programme process seems distinctive for two reasons. First and foremost, it includes a state mandate for articulation. Second, the state is focusing on encouraging work-based learning. While most CTE programmes will include workbased learning, it is usually left to instructors and schools to decide how best to carry it out. Moreover, the interview with the state director’s staff stressed the positive role that businesses play in determining demand for the programme by actively engaging in the programme design and proposal process. The Illinois programme approval process is different, but offers an alternative vision of how CTE programmes should be developed. As defined by the state leaders in CTE, the programme approval process is as follows:


403

1. Programmes are defined and proposed based on the local labour market (Employment Regional Delivery Systems), which allows programmes to reflect local labour-market demand. 2. Schools outline the potential post-secondary careers for individual students (both career and educational). 3. Programmes describe the industry certifications or tests; and 4. Provide course descriptions. There are some striking differences when the Illinois programmes are compared to New York. The Illinois programme focuses on assessing demand in the labour market, but the specific employer role is quite difficult to discern. In contrast, the New York programme appears to require more detailed external review. Moreover, the Illinois programme still includes an emphasis on CTE that connects to secondaryonly programmes, while the New York criteria appears to require some linkage with post-secondary education.

6.3 Other Programme Criteria State programme criteria for CTE programmes appear to be quite similar. States all have criteria for curriculum and staffing. What varies is the current move in some states towards providing more specificity around the type and level of employer involvement. The New York criteria, in particular, offer some hope that states are recognizing that the role of an advisory committee needs to include requirements for employer assessment of programmes, rather than leaving this decision up to the local administrators or teachers.

6.4 Definition of a CTE Concentrator The definition of a CTE concentrator is not common across the states. There is a wide variation in state regulation about the types of criteria that go into a concentrator definition. Firstly, as the description shows, some states define concentrator by the number of credits or hours they have taken in CTE, while others focus on the level of schooling (11th or 12th grade). A third strategy is to designate all those who reach the last level of vocational schooling as concentrators. The following example comes from Michigan and represents one of the most specific attempts to define concentration in CTE coursework: Concentrator: A secondary student that has successfully completed 60% of a state-approved career and technical education program must have a minimum of 7,200 minutes per year, except for trade and industry programs that must have a minimum of 14,400 minutes per year. The threshold level would vary depending upon the sequence of courses and number of courses and number of minutes for each individual occupational program.

Moreover, there are differences in the ways states characterize students who complete CTE coursework—or completers. The most common characteristics of com-

404


pleters include the following: finishing an approved sequence of courses in a CTE concentration; completion of a set of courses as defined by state regulations to satisfy Perkins’ requirements; or enrolment in a programme for at least two years that meets the common criteria set by the state for career and technical education. The following definition comes from Ohio and clearly represents one of the most elaborate completer frameworks: Completer: Secondary program completer—a student who has enrolled in and completed an approved workforce development program (typically 450 hours) AND has demonstrated sufficient mastery of their vocational and academic subject matter to prepare them for their career and lifelong learning goals as set forth in their individual career plan AND is no longer enrolled in secondary school.

Recent work carried out on the definition of a secondary vocational education concentrator leaves no doubt that the states intend to come up with a firm definition that can be applied nationwide (<www.edcountabilty.org>, Summer 2005 Workshop). Some of the most contentious issues are the following:

r r

State or local role in determining sequence of courses: Should there continue to be a state-mandated sequence of courses that determine attainment of a vocational concentrator, or should this be a locally determined set of courses? Threshold for deciding when someone is a concentrator: As revealed in the interviews, states use different cut-off points (number of credits completed, entrance into last class in sequence) on when to decide if someone has become a concentrator.

7 CTE Standards Following the discussion of accountability and CTE in the background section, we studied individual state implementation of CTE standards in six states. The basic issues that we see in this section are the standards that states use to measure the quality of CTE, the trend in terms of performance on the current federal standards, and the current debates around federal CTE standards.

7.1 State CTE Measures Interviews and a review of the basic legislation confirm that states utilize the same system, called the CARS (Consolidated Annual Report) measures, to evaluate the performance of CTE. These measures are divided into four core indicators: student attainment; credential attainment; placement and retention; and participation in and completion of non-traditional programmes. Table 5 lists these standards and includes both somewhat traditional measures of student success, such as academic achievement, as well as more difficult-to-measure items, such as post-secondary placement and retention.


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Table 5 Core indicators and sub-indicators: career and technical education Core Indicator 1. Student attainment This indicator seeks to assess student attainment of the challenging state-established academic and vocational and technical skill proficiencies at both the secondary and post-secondary levels. 1S1—Secondary Academic Attainment; 1S2—Secondary Vocational and Technical Skill Attainment; 1P1—Post-secondary Academic Attainment; 1P2—Post-secondary Vocational and Technical Skill Attainment. Core Indicator 2. Credential attainment This indicator seeks to assess student attainment of a secondary school diploma or its recognized equivalent, a proficiency credential in conjunction with a secondary school diploma, or a post-secondary degree or credential. 2S1—Secondary Completion; 2S2—Proficiency Credential with Secondary Diploma (Not required for 2000/2001); 2P1—Post-secondary Degree or Credential. Core Indicator 3. Placement and retention This indicator seeks to assess vocational and technical education student placement in, retention in, and completion of post-secondary education or advanced training, placement in military service, or placement or retention in employment. 3S1—Secondary Placement; 3S2—Secondary Retention; 3P1—Post-secondary Placement; 3P2—Post-secondary Retention (Not required for 2000/2001). Core Indicator 4. Participation in and completion of non-traditional programmes This indicator seeks to assess student participation in and completion of vocational and technical education programmes that lead to non-traditional training and employment. 4S1—Participation in Secondary Non-Traditional Programmes; 4S2—Completion of Secondary Non-Traditional Programmes; 4P1—Participation in Post-secondary Non-Traditional Programmes; 4P2—Completion of Post-secondary Non-Traditional Programmes.

States are currently allowed the authorities to decide which indicators will be used to assess the achievement of these measures. The approaches states take to determine which indicators are appropriate to measure success vary substantially. In terms of the academic achievement measures, state-level definitions of CTE academic achievement suffer from the same problems as the achievement measures for secondary education overall. For example, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio and Massachusetts use their state-generated tests as a way of determining if CTE graduates are meeting academic achievement goals. New York uses the Regents Exams as a measure. In contrast, Illinois uses graduation or completion of schooling as the academic measure. The indicators used to assess the vocational achievement measure vary more substantially. While New Jersey and Illinois continue to utilize the same indicators of graduation or course completion, programmes in Ohio and Massachusetts use achievement of specific vocational competencies, such as a state-specific test for vocational subjects, to show achievement of vocational subjects. Michigan and New

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York based the state indicator of achievement of a specific grade-point average in vocational subjects. New York measures the percentage of CTE completers who attain a high-school diploma. Finally, states assess the effectiveness of post-secondary completion through various strategies which currently vary substantially, from use of student surveys conducted by local schools in Massachusetts or Michigan, to use of state-level administrative records to determine employment or educational status of students after graduation in New Jersey or Illinois.

7.2 State CTE Performance Given the variation in the measurement systems adopted by the states, it is no wonder that a review of the most recent data shows such a wide variation in achievement. Table 6 shows the current achievement levels for the six states. It is remarkable that some states maintained a 95% or better measure in any of the indicators. The variation in the achievement of academic measures ranges from a low of 68.12% in Michigan to a high of 95% in Illinois. Interestingly, the results in Table 6 do not correspond to the most stringent measures. For example, while New York’s Regent Exams present a substantial challenge to high-school students, and having 77% of CTE graduates pass those tests seems significant, it is more difficult to judge why only 68.2% of Michigan youth in CTE in the 11th grade reach the state-defined threshold level of career and technical education. This measure is a less rigorous one than the Regents Exams. Secondly, it is interesting to note that states that use unemployment insurance data to measure the placement rate reported fewer students with successful placement rates. Illinois and New Jersey have lower placement rates, while states that use locally-generated surveys, such as Ohio or Massachusetts, have close to 95% of CTE students reported with successful placement. This result supports the empirical literature that suggests using unemployment insurance data as a way to investigate student outcomes.

Table 6 Achievement of core indicators by state (2003–2004) Academic achievement Vocational skills Diploma/equivalent/ degree/credential Total placement

Illinois

Massachusetts

Michigan

New Jersey

New York

Ohio

95%

70.59%

68.12%

93.05%

76.87%

94.61%

> 95 > 95

92.42% 92.42%

87.75% > 95

90.52% > 95

81.09% > 95

59.19% > 95

76.36%

> 95

94.82%

81.95%

> 95

92.22%

Note: >95 = actual performance of this indicator is greater than 95%. Source: <www.edcountability.net>


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7.3 Perspectives on the Accountability Measures Interviews with the state staff responsible for CTE showed that states are aware of drawbacks to their current systems. While the state systems currently have helped in terms of understanding the implementation of Perkins, there is a more tenuous linkage to the use of these systems for performance improvement. When asked directly about how the CARS data are used in the state, respondents described that they are used in assessing local programme performance, but indicated that state capacity to judge if local programmes are effective is hampered by the lack of staff to evaluate programmes or the fact that local education systems are accountable to local authorities rather than to state departments. There are states that are moving towards using data for performance improvement on a more systematic level. One state started doing regional workshops where districts learn about the data that was collected and focus on how to use it.

7.4 Perspectives on Data Quality There is a widespread understanding that the data used to measure the effectiveness of CTE at the local level needs extensive review before they can be used to assess programmes. The most common system is for states to require that Perkins’ data or other state accountability information is entered locally and forwarded to the state department. This situation introduces a lot of potential error into the measurement of student attendance, graduation or testing. In addition, among those states that rely on local authorities to survey graduates, schools potentially can produce inaccurate estimates of student success because of poor knowledge of data collection practices among local school professionals.

8 Other Indicators of Accountability It is critical for accountability to include data that can improve performance rather than simply assessing programme success or failure. In this light, our qualitative study asked state administrators about the measurement of classroom practices, like work-based learning as well as career counselling. In both cases, the states we surveyed varied considerably on the assessment of work-based learning, but none actually collected data on career counselling centrally. They left open the possibility that this information is potentially available at the local level. However, it reveals that a large part of what might be considered CTE is not documented by the states. Work-based learning data is available in a number of states, because it is measured as part of the attainment of advanced vocational competency. In one state, for example, the state laws require that students completing a co-operative programme get an assessment at the school level. These assessments, however, are not integrated into the state level accountability system, but are assumed to be available for local teachers and administrators to improve performance.

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However, another respondent pointed out that some important changes had been made to the co-operative system, including providing professional standards for cooperative education co-ordinators. This still implies a relatively passive accountability system in this one state, where the state may set broad criteria for professional conduct but does not monitor the operation of work-based learning. To a certain extent, other states brought up the issue of work-based learning. However, none of the states built work-based learning into their accountability process as far as can be concluded from the interviews. Work-based learning becomes more important, however, as internships and other forms of school and work integration become popular in general and vocational schooling.

8.1 Curriculum Frameworks Because of the continuing evolution of CTE and, in part, due to the influence of the standards movement, states have often aggressively increased the level of occupational competency required, as well as focusing on formally building academic and vocational integration through curriculum frameworks. This aggressive push has meant increased academic performance among CTE students, and opens the door for better occupational performance through integrated activities. Sometimes the curriculum frameworks, which are proposed often at the state level, run up against local control of curriculum. For example, states mentioned continued resistance among schools, but noted that this had decreased over time.

9 Conclusion Accountability and curriculum reform are increasingly impacting state career and technical education systems. The Perkins III legislation focused state-level energy on the larger questions of how to define indicators that will allow them to account for spending of Perkins’ funds. This shift in accountability follows decades where vocational schooling has both led other education systems in monitoring the outcomes of schooling, but largely fallen behind the K-12 system in crafting state-level tests. In part, this is due to the nature of vocational school curriculum and testing, where both academic and vocational skills are integral parts of the educational enterprise. This is also, unfortunately, due to perennial problems with staffing shortages and possibly an implementation problem at the state level. While many staff have left CTE at the state level and have not been replaced, there remain difficulties implementing the new vision of integrated workforce development systems at the state level (Kister, 2001). A review of the current accountability framework under Perkins and of state indicators revealed some important differences among states in how they approach accountability. It is significant that while a number of states extended the testing from K-12 high schools to vocational programmes, such as New York, a number still use different measures, such as graduation. It is important to note that these


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measures are not weak in terms of data, but if they are not used consistently this means they cannot be compared effectively against more academic measures. Similarly, state assessment of occupational knowledge is variable. While a number of states have invested in centralized testing systems, others rely almost solely on teacher-developed tests or industry assessments. While the latter offer some assurance that completers are consistently being evaluated, the former offer no such comfort. Moreover, the data are not comparable between states, and the Data Quality Institute Report in 2005 did not propose a possible solution to this problem. In terms of curriculum, the current trend is clearly to move to career clusters. While many states have curtailed in-house curriculum development staff, most maintain active staff working with local schools and districts to develop a highquality curriculum for vocational programmes. The framework adopted by all the states studied in this chapter focuses on career clusters. There are differences, however, as some states (such as Ohio or New Jersey) have moved ahead quickly and use the clusters as the basis for all curriculum, programmes and career counselling. States and other national governments can gain something from this brief review. The following suggestions follow from the state comparisons: 1. Academic indicators. While some states are distinguished by having outcomes based on labour-market performance for employment after graduation, states need to be careful to measure the academic performance of graduates rather than relying upon the graduation rates as indicators of performance. The current strategy of relying on graduation rates or completion rates to compute students’ success might be compared against the approach of using a standardized test to measure achievement. Given the labour-market value of basic skills, this would seem to be an important concern. 2. Vocational competencies: The potential solutions for vocational competencies are more problematic, but looking at Ohio’s home-grown testing system might be useful, as it uses career clusters to define potential outcomes. States often use industry-generated tests, but these are frequently not comparable. One other possibility is simply to use a common test that measures completion of certain general competencies, such as teamwork or technology, which are shared across different vocational fields. Acknowledgments This study was commissioned as part of a larger review of vocational education by Rutgers University and the State of New Jersey under contract to the Center on Education and Training for Employment at the Ohio State University. We appreciate the generous funding and also the insightful comments from both groups. This manuscript represents the opinions of the authors. Thanks are also due to Dr Christopher Zirkle and Ms Hyo Sun Kim for helping with data collection, preparing the tables and providing feedback on the study design.

References Association for Career and Technical Education. 2005. Side-by-side comparison of House and Senate bills with 1998 Perkins Law. Washington, DC: ACTE.

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Association for Career and Technical Education. 2006. Reinventing the American high school for the 21st century: a position paper. Washington, DC: ACTE. Bishop, J.H.; Mane, F. 1998. The New York state reform strategy: raising the bar above minimum competency. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies. Bottoms, G.; Young, M. 2005. High schools that work. Atlanta, GA: Southern Regional Education Board. Fowler, F.C. 2003. Policy studies for educational leaders: an introduction, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Prentice Hall. Grubb, W.N. et al. 1999. Toward order from chaos: state efforts to reform workforce development system. Berkeley, CA: University of California, National Center for Research in Vocational Education. Hoffman, L.M. 2003. Overview of public elementary and secondary schools and districts: school year 2001–02. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (No. NCES 2003-411.) Karp, M. et al. 2004. State dual enrollment policies: addressing access and quality. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Kister, J. 2001. State leadership for career technical education. Washington, DC: The National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium. Klein, S. 2001. Financing vocational education: a state policy-makers’ guide. Berkeley, CA: MPR Associates. Krueger, C. 2004. Career and technical education: a briefing memo. Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States. National Assessment of Vocational Education. 2004. Final report to Congress. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of the Under-Secretary. National Association of State Boards of Education. 1998. Public accountability for student success: standards for education accountability systems. Alexandria, VA: NASBE. Rahn, M.L.; O’Driscoll, P.; Hudecki, P. 1999. Taking off! Sharing state-level accountability strategies: using academic and vocational accountability strategies to improve student achievement. Berkeley, CA: National Center for Research in Vocational Education. (No. MDS-1206.) Silverberg, M. et al. 2004. National assessment of vocational education: final report to Congress. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of the Under-Secretary, Policy and Program Studies Service. Stasz, C.; Bodilly, S. 2004. Efforts to improve the quality of vocational education in secondary schools: impact of federal and state policies. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation. Stecher, B.M.; Hanser, L.M. 1992. Local accountability in vocational education: a theoretical model and its limitations in practice. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation. The Editors. 2004. Quality counts 2004: Count me in. Education week, January 8, p. 7. White, R. et al. 2004. The structures and challenges of vocational education funding and accountability systems: a report prepared by the academy for educational development for the national assessment of vocational education. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of the Under-Secretary.

Chapter III.4

The Regional Perspective of Vocational Education and Training Mike Coles and Tom Leney

1 Introduction The trading of goods and services is not necessarily constrained by geographical, social, cultural and political differences. Markets are often diverse in nature and goods and services are usually tailored to meet specific needs of the marketplace and of potential customers. There is also a market for people with skills: people engage in training and move to places where they are more likely to sell their skills through work. Vocational education and training (VET) is mostly localized in terms of where people develop their skills, but is generally more wide ranging in the transfer of those skills. Whatever the specificity of training, a notion has grown everywhere that a person may increase the value of their skills by using opportunities to apply them more broadly. Nowadays, this extends beyond local, regional and national boundaries, so that the supply side of VET is now at least partially responsive to the wider geographical market. On the demand side, there is now better articulation of the skills that are needed in the work place and this is communicated through various markets—some local, some further afield. Thus, it is clear that, through this interaction with skills markets, VET is an integrating factor with the potential to bring about greater levels of articulation across geographical, social, cultural and political boundaries. Looking at VET from a different angle, we can see that it is shaped by actions taken to strengthen regional co-operation. Economic factors, such as the availability of natural resources, regional economic strengths and weaknesses, inward investment, and environmental and safety factors, all shape the form of VET. Institutional arrangements have a powerful influence on the quantity and quality of VET. Global markets for goods and services also influence the general level of VET activity. Some factors are within the control of a region or country—others are not. These diverse influences mean that VET systems cannot develop in isolation from other VET systems and some kind of regional integration is inevitable. A good example of regional co-operation in terms of the supply and demand for VET is in North-Eastern Europe. At first the Nordic Council of Ministers, for whom education, training and labour market issues are an important dimension, was concerned only with Finland and the Scandinavian countries. More recently, the Baltic R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 III.4, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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countries have become closely involved, and the network is expanding, perhaps as far as the St Petersburg region in Russia, as well as in Poland. This example clearly shows how zones of mutual trust can grow quite rapidly in continental regions, helping to extend the mobility of labour. Numerous global regions are looking at the possibilities of co-operation of this kind. A consequence of VET being honed to meet specific needs and used as a tool for regional integration is that it has taken on a wide range of forms. Other chapters in this book will engage with these different forms of VET.

2 Common Challenges What are the pressures on VET systems that tend to lead to greater unity between regions and countries? Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development studies (2006) and research into progress towards the Lisbon Goal (Leney et al., 2005) identify, not surprisingly, economic pressures as the main driver acting on VET systems. Countries want to strengthen the link between the education system and employment and point to the discrepancies between skills needed in the workplace, job training and qualifications. Economic pressures arise in response to global economic trends, as well as local and national economic situations, such as the need to be responsive to innovation, the development of work organization and of human capital. These generic pressures act as a force for regional integration in VET since they focus attention on responding to common skill-supply issues. Vocational qualifications systems are also believed to have potential for improving the link between education and work, for establishing new pathways from education into employment and for reducing barriers to learning, for example by using new forms of pedagogy and assessment. Economic needs are perceived to drive innovation in production. Research shows that innovation often takes place via continuous learning on the part of people in the workplace and that forms of learning at work are changing; for example, there is an increasing effort to organize on-the-job learning and utilize self-directed learning. Consequently, learning structures in the workplace are becoming more complex. In particular, the focus is no longer solely on acquisition of technical knowledge, but has widened to include softer skills, new values, new codes of behaviour and the remodelling of past experience. This has resulted in expansion of training provision across regions and greater use of more diverse recognition systems. Some countries emphasize assessment of vocational ability, recognized through qualifications, as important for employment stability, improved remuneration, and quick and efficient recruitment. Recognition of vocational ability is also expected to reduce risks related to employment, on both the employer’s and the employee’s side, by preventing mismatches engendered through poor information about workers’ skills. Many countries report that rapid economic growth has produced skills shortages and this has exerted pressure to develop the VET system by creating more-efficient and faster responses to changes and emerging needs in the labour market.

III.4 The Regional Perspective of Vocational Education and Training

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Another pressure on VET systems arises from the potential advantages of mobility of labour and the expectation that they should deliver international recognition of skills, including the recognition of formal, informal and non-formal learning that has been carried out in other countries. Among the European Union (EU) countries, there is a commitment to increase mobility of workers and learners across country boundaries. This requires transparency in VET systems and encourages countries to build education and qualification structures that are consistent with other countries in the Union. Recent proposals for a European Qualifications Framework are designed to make it easier for one national qualifications system to articulate with another, without superseding national systems. The European Qualifications Framework will also provide a further means of comparison through the referencing of national qualifications to a single set of levels. In many countries, low population growth coupled with increased demand for high skills has focused attention on growing skill shortages. This means that older people need to be provided with learning opportunities reflecting change in working practices, a policy challenge to which many countries have been slow to respond. Clearly, the outflow of older skilled workers, resulting in a waste of knowledge and expertise, can also lead to pressures on labour markets, and this is exacerbated in most European countries by recent trends for earlier retirement, particularly among males. The demographic shift has had an impact on the need for (re)training older people, on retirement schemes, pension funding and family life. Several countries highlight the challenges VET systems face as a result of immigration flows. These pressures include the need to identify skills gained in other countries compared to the national skills recognition system, as well as the need to accept learning that has not been previously recognized through qualifications. There is pressure for more flexible vocational education and training systems for people in disadvantaged situations as a means of improving social inclusion through education and subsequently work. Social and cultural issues are therefore not divorced from the economic, demographic and immigration issues noted above. At the same time, it is generally recognized that people engage in learning for economic reasons, to improve employment prospects, and for personal development and social reasons—social status, better citizenship and so on. These pressures also include a perception of the need to broaden the current provision of education to include such aspects as values, behaviour and citizenship. There is also a requirement to offer learners more choice and more flexible ways of gaining credit for their learning. The need to give recognition to informal and non-formal learning also falls into this category. Technological innovations and the global spread of information and communications technologies are creating pressure for countries to be using the most upto-date methods of production and service provision. The move towards leaner production systems and working organizations—and the risk of rising unemployment rates—brings with it a need for enhanced training and retraining in the use of new technologies. This means that qualifications systems need to adapt to allow the recognition of new knowledge, skills and wider competences related to the use of new technologies.

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The pressure to develop learning opportunities means that, in some countries, providers have been required to differentiate course offerings in response to more selective demand. This pressure has had a strong impact on the growing amount of VET provision at post-secondary and higher education levels in many countries over recent years. This demand is expected to grow as lifelong learning provision expands and develops the need for even more learning (Leney et al., 2005). Developing VET as part of lifelong learning requires examination of the structure of provision, including: (a) the links between working life, schools and higher education; (b) the content of programmes; (c) the quality and relevance of provision; (d) resource provision and management; and (e) the roles and responsibilities of different partners and stakeholders. Countries in an OECD study (2006) accept that there is an argument for allowing scope for lifelong learning goals to shape the way the education and training system operates. Stronger linkages are needed between learning at different stages of life and between the formal and the informal structures. Countries suggest that more diverse settings for learning will be needed and different partnerships between funders, providers and qualification bodies will be needed leading to more integrated provision. In future, departures from the existing VET infrastructures are likely to be substantial, at least for some countries. The fact that all of these pressures on VET systems are common to many countries might be expected to add impetus to their reform agendas. It would probably not be the case, though, that common pressures for reform would lead to common responses. The country or regional context will require bespoke solutions. However, the elements of changing VET infrastructure might be expected to show some commonality and the process of change itself could have features that result from policy-learning about reforms and trials in other countries and regions.

3 Instruments from the EU Experience The European Commission—working with the member states—has a remit for the development of some policies in the field of education and training. In certain policy areas, member states have transferred responsibility to the EU so that the Union can use ‘hard’ methods of co-ordination, but for other policy areas, such as lifelong learning, including VET, subsidiarity prevails. This means that member states retain responsibility for legislation, policy development and implementation. In VET, therefore, the European Union cannot mandate but has to find ‘softer’ policy tools— involving voluntary co-operation. Obviously, this limits the policy instruments available at the European level that have an impact on an area such as VET, for which governments are determined to retain their autonomy. The range of policy levers that could (but may not) be used for the European level development of VET is shown in Table 1. Table 1 shows that in the case of lifelong learning (including VET) subsidiarity means that mandates and inducements have limited use. The EU can create leverage in some circumstances through capacity-building and systems changing, as the use


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Table 1 Policy levers and the open method of co-ordination (OMC) Policy instrument

Policy assumptions and expected effects

Lever for EU under the rule of subsidiarity?

Mandates Rules intended to produce compliance. Inducements Transfer of money in return for certain actions.

Capacity to demand compliance. Most will comply but maybe not all. Sufficient funding provided to generate results; funding drives change, also with unintended outcomes. Some funding to initiate change: Expect/hope that best practice models produce cascade or ‘pump-priming’ innovation. New entrants to old institutions that are not producing results generate change or reform.

No

Capacity-building Transfer of money for purposes of longer-term investments.

Systems changing Transfer of authority to alter system of delivery.

Hortation Use of proclamations, speeches, public relations campaigns to exhort people to take the needed action. Deliberative change Voluntary and collaborative change processes—bottom-up reform, usually encouraged from higher up.

Assumes players are motivated by images, symbols or values.

Relies on collaboration in experimental activity and the identification and voluntary exchange of good practice, etc.

No

To a limited extent

Indirectly—e.g. in-sector reforms through encouraging social partner activity or Leonardo programmes. Yes. The Lisbon process and OMC.

Yes. The Lisbon process and OMC.

of European structural and regional funds demonstrate. The reform of VET and further education in Ireland is a case of EU capacity-building, in that consolidation funding—which is the additional funding made available to Ireland, Spain, Greece and Portugal when they first joined the EU—made a significant contribution to reforms. However, ‘hortation’ and ‘deliberative change’ are the main policy instruments used to drive education and training policy at the European level. The ‘soft’ method of European co-ordination for VET and several other policy areas is a form of co-operation between governments, social partners and other European stakeholders. It is known as the open method of co-ordination (OMC), which is intended as a means of spreading best practice and encouraging greater convergence towards the main EU goals. The four key stages agreed for the open method of co-ordination, as they apply to education and training, are: 1. identifying priorities and benchmarks; 2. conducting benchmarking exercises to gauge the progress of the EU member states towards the identified benchmarks;

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3. identifying instances of good practice and best practice; 4. through peer review, finding effective and practical ways to share best practice. At the time of writing, the OMC is still a young policy instrument for education and training in the European Union. As a ‘bottom up’ method for sharing and developing best practice, it is being relied on to generate innovation in VET. This depends on the willingness of the stakeholders to make progress, rather than respond to ‘top down’ mandates and inducements. In the first two or three years of operation, OMC in education and training has concentrated on the first stages—identifying priorities and benchmarks; conducting benchmarking exercises within the constraints of available data, and beginning to identify good practice, particularly in aspects such as quality assurance, advice and guidance, the recognition of informal and nonformal learning, and developing a European Qualifications Framework as a point of reference. With lifelong learning, including VET, identified as of high importance to the development of a knowledge society and a knowledge economy, the fourth stage of OMC—called variously peer review, policy-learning and bench learning—now has to play a key role. Such a process across nations and systems is by no means straightforward. Different traditions, drivers and barriers may frustrate the attempt to identify the extent to which good practice can readily transfer from one system to another.

4 Benchmarking to Bench Learning It is the pressures to change VET systems, and the instruments in place to support the process of creating greater articulation between the systems in different countries and regions, that have created an awareness of the need to move away from comparative performance to a greater focus on understanding the dynamics of system change in different country settings. In the past, the setting out of high-class benchmarks based on the best-known country practice was thought to have the potential to stimulate VET performance in countries with lower performing systems. A respect for the knowledge of local conditions (opportunities and constraints) was probably amongst the motives for such an approach. These local conditions were thought to be the dominant determinant of the shape of reforms. There were probably political pressures too arising from the dangers of explicit interference by European development programmes with the governance of processes within European Union member states or regions. The focus has shifted to a more mature policy of sharing, co-operation and mutual support for national and regional reforms across borders, as witnessed by the cooperation programmes led by the Education and Training Foundation in the European Union candidate and accession countries. Policy-learning is a well-researched tool that defines a process where the experience gained in different country contexts for reform is of value to outside observers. It is now accepted that the various processes of policy-learning are more likely to lead to stable and effective outcomes of reform processes than the simplistic notion of policy borrowing. Contextual


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differences in countries and regions are not something that can be controlled as in a scientific experiment. They are powerful, pervasive and valued and are therefore generally non-negotiable. The process of VET reforms can be enhanced by ensuring that key players have exposure to the advantages and disadvantages of different models of VET systems and access to experts who can interpret the evidence for policy-making, whilst respecting national infrastructures and resisting over-complex solutions and simplistic, rapid routes to decisions. Interaction with managers and policy-makers from other jurisdictions can safeguard and optimize the impact of the exposure phase. Similarly, interactions with models of implementation, such as scenarios (Leney et al., 2004) of VET reform and implementation over different time-scales, are also potentially useful tools. The third stage of policy-learning is adaptation of features of other VET models to the national setting. This stage brings the opportunity for consultation and developing of ownership of the emerging model and a first clear sight of major obstacles to implementation. Finally, policy-learning can use the opportunity to conduct evaluation of the preferred model by using international experience of VET design. In summary, policy-learning can play a useful role in VET reform by providing a network of external reference points for informing decision-making. Some writers have suggested that the most fertile ground for policy-learning between countries exists where there are strong similarities between systems. This is not necessarily the case. For example, Finland’s education and training systems have ‘borrowed’ effectively from similar systems (comprehensive schooling, learned substantially for the Swedish model in the 1980s) and from dissimilar systems (competence-based qualifications for adults in the workforce, adapted from a United Kingdom innovation in the 1990s). Rather, it is important to identify the kind of policy-learning that is appropriate to particular problems and challenges. Based on work developed in the Scottish Further Education Unit (McCann & Donald, 2005), which adapted ideas about technology transfer to the world of VET, we can distinguish at least three forms of collaborative innovation for VET. These are:

1. Knowledge transfer initiation. This refers to a situation in which activity creates new approaches, services or products that can create innovation. This could take place by way of collaborative research and development, resulting in new solutions to common problems. Long-term development. 2. Knowledge transfer adoption. This occurs when an agency engages with an existing knowledge base (perhaps a tool, policy or strategic approach being used in another country) in order to achieve some specific change. This approach may be close to the model envisaged in the European Commission’s peer learning pilot. An obvious danger to avoid is the simple trap: ‘policy borrowing’. While there are examples of success through policy borrowing, there are many examples of failure. The purpose remains ‘policy-learning’ in most cases. Medium- and perhaps short-term development. 3. Knowledge transfer capacity-building. This refers not to a specific product but to building the capacity for change. Activities in this area emphasize building

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the drivers for change, overcoming barriers and building capacity, rather than zooming in on particular initiatives. Medium to long term. Beyond these formal mechanisms, the reflective outcome of exploring different approaches to similar issues or problems may itself create an environment for innovation.

5 Facilitating and Managing Regional Learning Having set out the factors that are driving changes to VET (and by implication VET delivery systems), together with a description of the processes in place in Europe for facilitating co-operation, it is useful to examine some case studies of how such processes actually work. Five short case studies follow that are selected to cover the different levels of co-operation that are possible. The Maastricht study provides an opportunity to examine (from a European perspective) national policy goals, progress towards those goals and research evidence that might be useful in shaping future policy responses. The second case study examines the methods used to support national reforms with information and expertise on an on-going basis for countries in the process of VET reform. The third case study examines the ways the infrastructure of the proposed European Qualifications Framework (EQF) can support national reform. Moving to a level closer to the workplace, the fourth case study examines attempts to facilitate policy-learning across enterprises within a sector. Finally, a case study is included highlighting some issues at the level of the individual when mobility of labour across borders is encouraged.

5.1 The Maastricht Study and Communiqué The Maastricht study (Leney et al., 2005) was the first comprehensive overview of developments and trends in vocational education and training in the thirty-one European countries that agreed to the Copenhagen Declaration on enhanced European co-operation in VET in 2002. The study assessed the contribution of VET to achieving the Lisbon Goal from an economic and social perspective. The study concluded that initial VET is well developed in most countries and can be seen as contributing to the EU benchmark of young people completing upper secondary education. However, the study suggested that attention must be given to improving the quality and flexibility of initial vocational education and training if it is to continue to attract adequate numbers of young people in the future. Better links to general and higher education are also needed, as well as flexible pathways encouraging young people to improve their range of competences and progress to higher levels. Continuing vocational training is reported as an area of major concern. Too few Europeans participate and their existing levels of skills and educational attainment are lower than their counterparts in competing countries. Continuing vocational


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training should support the competitiveness of the European economy by upgrading the competences of the whole workforce, and especially the low skilled, who currently receive very little training. Continuing vocational training also needs to address the problem of the ageing European workforce, and the training of older workers so as to encourage them to remain longer in employment. Immigrants will also need training to take their places in communities. Facilitating learning at the workplace itself is essential in all of this. Finally, the report suggests that innovation in teaching and learning needs to become a major action. This important aspect has been omitted from European co-operation in VET thus far, and reinforced attention should be given to the training and competence development of VET teachers and trainers, and to their fragmented profession. In other respects, the blend of current priorities and actions resulting from the Copenhagen Declaration are found by Member States to be appropriate. Commenting on the study, EU Commissioner Jan Figel concluded that: The findings of this study influenced the Maastricht Communiqué and in particular inspired the priorities set at national level. [. . .] The study brings to our notice factors that will influence our VET systems profoundly in the coming years. [. . .] In the spirit of cultivating the Open Method of Co-ordination, this study is rich in examples of good practice, used to illustrate where countries are innovating and doing well (European Commission, 2004)

In 2006, the European Commission organized a follow-up to the Maastricht Study, to coincide with the VET priorities of Finland’s presidency of the European Union.

5.2 Institutions for Catalysing Knowledge-Sharing in VET Practices There are many organizations and networks that facilitate knowledge-sharing between countries. Universities, professional bodies and international businesses are good examples. Research organizations also facilitate exchange, such as the European Centre for Educational Research, the Vocational Education and Training Network and the International Vocational Education and Training Association. However, whilst all of these organizations serve to inform policy directions in one way or another, and offer the possibility of capacity-building, they do not offer direct, on-going practical advice that is relevant to policy-makers. This challenge is taken up in the main by two EU-funded bodies that engage in a co-ordinated way in supporting VET reform. The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP),1 established in 1975, is the reference centre for vocational education and training. It does this by providing information on and analyses of vocational education and training systems, policies, research and practice. CEDEFOP’s tasks are to:

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compile selected documentation and analyses of data; contribute to developing and co-ordinating research; exploit and disseminate information;

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encourage joint approaches to vocational education and training problems; provide a forum for debate and exchanges of ideas.

The Education and Training Foundation (ETF)2 works with developing economies (candidate countries, South-Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and the Mediterranean region) in promoting knowledge-sharing and expertise development in the belief that education and training can make a fundamental contribution to increasing prosperity, creating sustainable growth and encouraging social inclusion. The ETF has a clear agenda for promoting integration through VET and in promoting integration by means of VET reform and policy-learning. For example, its priorities are to:

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assess progress and future priorities for reform in partner countries in vocational education and training and its links to socio-economic development; design, monitor and assess projects at the request of the European Commission; build capacity so that policy-makers and practitioners in partner countries play a full role in modernizing their vocational education and training systems; contribute actively to international debate on reform in transition countries. In particular, it may draw on relevant experience in the EU to pilot innovative approaches to reform in partner countries; facilitate dialogue amongst stakeholders by developing international, national and local networks.

It is difficult to describe the impact of these two bodies because their span of activities is large and the networks associated with them are vast. The time-scales over which knowledge capital develops also vary enormously, making impact difficult to measure. However, the authors believe that these two bodies make a substantial impact on European and national policy development and implementation, research knowledge, skills capacity, workplace development and European co-ordination and integration. Both centres offer serious levels of support to VET professionals, the infrastructures of enterprises, and training and policy planners. Working in the field of VET over the last twenty years has created a knowledge base that can support policy-learning through making available resources (expertise) and helping with the management of projects and reforms. Thus, CEDEFOP has built up expertise in areas such as cross-country sectoral development and e-learning, while the ETF provides expert analytical and developmental support in forging links between VET and labour-market reform.

5.3 The European Qualifications Framework—EQF The interface between one VET system and another is most obvious when the qualifications of trained people are compared. If skilled people are to be able to move to new positions in different systems to fill vacancies, and if recruiters are to look outside their ‘home’ market, it is essential that qualifications systems can articulate one


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with another. The existence of a translation device, such as the proposed European Qualifications Framework (EQF), makes this articulation possible.3 The EQF also sets out a series of progressive steps in qualifications that cross the boundaries between schooling, higher education and work-based education and training. In this way the EQF is a framework for lifelong learning. The EQF is a meta framework—it works on the basis that each country, region or employment sector has its own qualifications framework or frameworks. These local frameworks are the means of recognizing qualifications that support local people and enterprises because they are built to play a part in a training infrastructure. It is possible for all VET systems to link qualifications frameworks to the EQF and, therefore, by using the EQF levels, it becomes possible to compare one framework with another. The market for skills and jobs is potentially larger as a result. Thus, the EQF is at the same time respectful of local qualifications systems and opens up frameworks for use outside countries, regions and sectors. The EQF proposals have been developed through close scrutiny of current practice in countries, regions and sectors. It draws on the strengths of different VET systems and, therefore, is a tool for the exchange of good practice in terms of qualification levels for VET. This is an important dimension for one system to influence another. The EQF proposals ask questions of countries and sectors. The proposals are constructed on the basis of learning outcomes.4 In order to compare a framework to the EQF level, it is helpful if the local framework levels are described as outcomes too. This is often not the case and therefore the EQF applies an integrating pressure for all qualifications frameworks to be clear in terms of learning outcomes from the qualification process, instead of simply defining the learning inputs and the infrastructure that makes these inputs possible. This pressure to use learning outcomes is a powerful tool for enabling examination of the qualification systems from the viewpoint of learners (What is it precisely that I will learn? How does this compare to what I have already learned?) and the enterprise (Is this qualification level from country X what I need? Do these learning outcomes equate with the work practice I intend to establish?). The content, supporting infrastructure and the efficiency become more transparent within the country and to outsiders. This brings with it the possibility of evaluation and reforms that will improve the quality of VET and the system that delivers it. The EQF proposals are based on eight levels (Coles & Oates, 2004). Countries with more or less than eight levels in their frameworks may find pressure to adapt to an eight-level approach so that articulation with the EQF and, consequently, the frameworks in other countries is more straightforward. In this way, the EQF is not likely to be an entirely neutral translation device. The EQF proposals make it clear that, in addition to all else, it is a means of fostering change. This change is in the direction of the Lisbon Goal of a better market for skills that will offer more and better jobs for European citizens. The EQF is potentially a powerful integrating influence, not just within Europe but also in its articulation with markets and qualifications systems around the world.

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5.4 Sectoral Development The sectoral dimension is a key focus for co-operation at the European level. Some sectors have been quick to take initiatives in this respect. European co-operation taking up the theme of ICT penetration and sectoral convergence serves as a good example. ICT penetration and sectoral convergence is an important driver for a European sectoral approach to skills and qualifications. In a sector like manufacturing, which is highly regulated with clear occupational profiles, technological changes—and especially ICTs as a driver of change—are eroding existing qualification profiles. In services, developments such as e-commerce also impact on jobs at all levels. In sectors such as ICTs a perceived slow response level in public education and training systems has spurred sectoral initiatives. In 2002/2003 CEDEFOP commissioned a series of studies on innovation of qualification profiles and curricula in Europe in ICT-user industries. The European Monitoring Centre on Change has also recently commissioned a number of studies in fields such as finance, fishing, media and graphics, textiles and the automobile industry, all of which show the same tendencies. Similarly, the Leonardo da Vinci programme has initiated a number of projects to develop sectoral training modules, assessment standards, and certificates and diplomas.

5.5 Mobility across Borders The 1990s saw immigration trends and patterns emerge with new flows coming from the countries of Eastern Europe and movements resulting from social instability in the Balkans. Migratory flows today are composed of various categories of persons: asylum seekers, displaced persons, persons requiring temporary protection, members of the family of an immigrant already established in the European Union, migrant workers and persons involved in business migration (of whom the numbers are growing) or tertiary/higher education. In 2004, the EU embarked upon a further round of enlargement, accepting ten new member states, predominantly from Central and Eastern Europe. Only the United Kingdom, Ireland and Sweden did not set up temporary arrangements for restricting labour market migration, thus allowing free movement of workers from the new EU Member States. Current research has broadly confirmed this movement as making a positive contribution to those labour markets open to workers from the wider EU, although there is a developing trend of failure to recognize the full value of qualification of migrant workers in many sectors (Anderson et al., 2006). However, sectoral co-operation and EU-funded programmes are likely to place emphasis upon improving recognition. Successful introduction (and further development) of measures such as the European Qualifications Framework, the European Credit System for VET (ECVET), the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) and EU mobility schemes have played an important role in the EU’s Integrated Programme for Lifelong Learning. Schemes


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such as Europass aim to increase transparency between the education systems of the EU countries by providing a single structure for the recognition of qualifications and competences across Europe. It seeks to aid mobility in education and will incorporate five already-existing recognition-based initiatives into one coherent framework. It demonstrates a commitment to lifelong learning and new technologies by placing Europass on the Internet where users can update it as and when they gain new qualifications. The five existing programmes that will be absorbed into Europass are: the European CV; the European Language Portfolio; the MobiliPass; the Certificate Supplement; and the Diploma Supplement. Other similar instruments may be added to Europass in future. Regionalization of VET structures also facilitates cross-border mobility by capitalizing on the trust that develops between all partners in education and training systems that are common and therefore more fully understood.

6 Towards Lifelong Learning Policies In 2005, the education and labour ministries of thirty-two European countries, including the twenty-five EU member states, submitted national reports to the European Commission on the state of development and implementation of their lifelong learning policies. The resulting Communication, ratified by the European Parliament and Council, and the accompanying report provide a careful stocktaking analysis of the state of development across six major aspects of lifelong learning, including the comprehensiveness of lifelong learning policies in the EU member states, funding, VET and higher education. The Communication makes clear recommendations for further progress at European and national levels. For VET, the following conclusions are reached: The implementation of the instruments and tools developed under the Copenhagen process is at too early a stage for countries to be able to present concrete results, but countries have established priorities for implementation at national level. In most countries, improving the attractiveness of VET is a key concern and a range of policies and measures are being actively implemented to improve the infrastructures and funding, to put in place or consolidate pathways and reduce obstacles to transfers from one type of provision to another, to modernise the curricula and create flexibility in its delivery and to adapt teacher training. A second crucial approach, which is receiving substantial attention, concerns strengthening links with the stakeholders, social partners and enterprises. Guidance and counseling systems are undergoing development in some countries, but this issue still needs more concerted attention. It is clear from the reports that a large majority of the countries express concerns with the needs of low-skilled citizens and disadvantaged groups and are implementing a range of policy approaches. However there is a lack of information on the non-formal and informal sectors, which makes it difficult to assess the full range of measures in all the countries. The European Inventory on validation of non-formal learning should help alleviate this problem. The participation of older workers in training is not showing marked improvements. However, an increasing number of countries are putting in place measures for the validation of prior learning and experience and for non-formal and informal learning. In order to achieve the Lisbon goals in this respect, more consideration and a higher priority level

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will be necessary. Increasing the relevance of VET by reforming and improving the links of VET with the labour market, the social partners and other stakeholders is of core concern for a large majority of countries. In most of the countries, there is an ongoing process of reviewing and adapting procedures and structures, which includes setting up tripartite or sectoral mechanisms to underpin the process of developing and updating qualifications. The early identification of skills and needs raises challenges for vocational education and training which are difficult, complex, costly and of longstanding. Overall the reports do not provide sufficient information to make it possible to determine the extent to which countries are developing mechanisms for anticipating skills shortages, gaps and deficiencies. In relation to the major challenge of increasing the access to training and professional development for VET professionals, measures which are being taken for VET teachers should be adapted and extended to trainers who currently seem to be the group most in need of attention (European Commission, 2005, p. 51).

As we have indicated, lifelong learning is accorded a key role in Europe’s agenda for competitiveness, employment growth and social inclusion/cohesion as part of the Lisbon Goals, and VET is a major component of lifelong learning in many European countries. Therefore, it is worth noting the key conclusions that the report and communication reach about the current state of development and implementation of lifelong learning policies at the national level across Europe. Progress has been made towards the agreed goal that lifelong learning strategies should be put in place in all Member States by 2006. Many—but by no means all—countries have now developed lifelong learning policy statements; for example, strategy documents or national action plans. Others have put in place framework legislation. It is still the case, however, that strategies remain imbalanced. There is a tendency either to focus on employability or on re-engaging those who have become alienated from education. It is encouraging that some countries, like Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway, are well on their way to achieving a national approach which is coherent and comprehensive, and are making strong progress on implementation. Even so, many countries still have much to do to achieve the agreed benchmarks for education and training.

7 Conclusion Vocational education and training has been traditionally viewed as most relevant to the micro setting—where workers engage with specific tasks in enterprises and services. The internationalization of markets has gradually transformed VET into a system with a much stronger dependence on interacting with markets outside local communities and beyond national boundaries. This has led to a greater level of regional co-operation in developing people with the skills needed in this wider market. Recruitment has also stretched across boundaries and has been another factor for regional co-operation. Within the European Union, political, financial and social structures have developed which are designed to optimize the value of VET from the regional perspective.


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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

<www.cedefop.eu.int> <www.etf.eu.int> <www.europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/educ/eqf/> Learning outcomes are statements of what a learner is expected to know, understand and/or be able to demonstrate after completion of a process of learning

References Anderson, B. et al. 2006. Fair enough? Central and East European migrants in low-wage employment in the UK. York, UK: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Coles, M.; Oates, T, 2004. European reference levels for education and training: an important parameter for promoting credit transfer and mutual trust. Thessaloniki, Greece: CEDEFOP. European Commission. 2004. The future priorities of enhanced European cooperation in vocational education and training (VET). Brussels: European Commision. (The Maastricht Communiqué.) <ec.europa.eu/education/news/ip/docs/maastricht com en.pdf> European Commission. 2005. Communication from the Commission: modernising education and training: a vital contribution to prosperity and social cohesion in Europe. Brussels: European Commission. (10.11.05.COM(2005) final.) Leney, T. et al. 2004. Scenarios toolkit. Thessaloniki, Greece: CEDEFOP. (Dossier series 8.) Leney, T. et al. 2005. Achieving the Lisbon Goal: the contribution of VET. Brussels: European Commission. McCann, J.; Donald, G. 2005. Initiating, adopting and building knowledge transfer in Scotland’s colleges. Stirling, UK: SFEU. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2006. Qualifications systems: bridges to lifelong learning. Paris: OECD.


Chapter III.5

Vocational Education, Training Reform and Regional Integration in the Middle East Munther Wassef Masri

1 Introduction With the onset of globalization and escalating technological developments, combined with local, regional and international networks and interconnections, mainly in the economic and technical fields, pressure is increasing on VET systems in the Arab Region to better respond to or even to anticipate in some respects, new socioeconomic requirements and labour market needs (Lasonen, 1999). Increasing competitiveness on the local, regional and international levels has already resulted in growing demands for improving qualification standards in the workforce. But labour markets and vocational education and training systems are ill-prepared to respond to these challenges. On the labour market, we witness a relatively high rate of youth unemployment and low participation rates of women, side-by-side with increasing regional labour mobility. Prevailing VET systems still need to be transformed from predominantly supply-driven into balanced supplydemand-driven systems. VET systems are relatively expensive and overall funding and efficiency remain problematic. There are also still weak linkages and channels with higher education within the concept of lifelong learning. Finally, the role of the private sector in the planning and implementation of VET programmes, as well as human resources and development (HRD) programmes in general, is very weak (Wallenborn et al., 2003). A regional approach to VET in the Arab region has been going on for a long time, although at a modest level. Until recently, such regional efforts took place either on a bilateral basis or through regional organizations (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 1998). Organizations playing an active role in the field of HRD in general and VET in particular included the Arab Labour Organization (ALO), the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO), the Arab Union for Technician Education, and the Arab Universities Union. More recently, international organizations became more active in their regional approach to VET issues and needs. Such organizations also included UNESCO-UNEVOC, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the European Training Foundation (ETF), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and other bilateral donor agencies. The overall impact, however, has been limited and very uneven in individual countries. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 III.5, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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More emphasis on regional co-operation and exchange therefore would undoubtedly help individual countries in the region to develop appropriate responses to the challenges they are facing. There are some lessons to be learned, however, from regional projects that have been implemented so far.

2 Regional Priorities It is worthwhile emphasizing here that many of the issues, fields and challenges of VET benefit well from a regional approach with the possibility of high potential returns—both technically and economically. The areas that can benefit most from such approaches, while maintaining the diversity and specificity of offerings, include practically all key areas of vocational education and training.

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Occupational classifications and standards: The regional feasibility of this area is further supported by the need for regional, as well as international, compatibility of such classifications and standards. Testing, certification and qualification frameworks and standards: This is becoming more and more important from a regional perspective due to increasing labour mobility, as well as the pressures of competitiveness and globalization. Curriculum development: Regional efforts in this area would deal mainly with methodologies, the exchange of experience, standards and labour-market relevance criteria. This does not exclude the utilization of common curricula and education/training material, as was the case for some efforts in the past. Teacher education and training: This area is concerned with pre-service systems for the preparation of VET instructors, as well as their in-service training. It can also be concerned with the in-service training of enterprise supervisors, who are expected to undertake some training functions for trainees, apprentices, new recruits, etc. The training of trainers is another relevant area of concern that warrants the availability of regional and excellence centres to offer services to the concerned countries (Grootings & Nielsen, 2005). Career guidance, counselling and employment services: The importance and general nature of such services would warrant a regional approach, especially with the introduction of on-line systems. System development: This area would deal with such topics as governance, funding sources, legislative tools, school-based versus co-operative (dual) systems, etc. The fact that there are great similarities among Arab VET systems renders credibility to any regional approaches to VET system development. Publications: the importance of this area stems from the fact that, apart from textbooks and formal training material, publication efforts in the field of VET in Arabic language are relatively modest. Needless to say, a pool of such publications for the use of learners, instructors and researchers would be beneficial in supporting the VET mission, locally and regionally.

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3 Principles and Criteria To ensure relevance and credibility to a regional approach to the development of VET, activities and programmes should be carefully designed and implemented. A number of principles and criteria should guide regional co-operation. First of all, there has to be real commitment in individual countries at the policy level by the relevant governmental and private agencies. There also has to be involvement of experts and/or agencies from the various member countries in the planning, implementation and utilization stages. This should secure sufficient levels of ownership by the relevant national agencies in the public and private sectors. Regional projects and programmes also need to be relevant to the countries’ needs and the latter should clearly see the benefit and added value of engaging in regional projects. Finally, an important dimension of any regional project has to be the sustainability of outcomes through the continuous availability of human and material resources to ensure impact and follow-up on developments. To be successful, VET projects should be designed using a regional approach. This means that the dimension of ‘regionality’ at the planning, implementation and utilization stages of the relevant activities should be defined and highlighted. This can be ensured by identifying issues that are of common interest to the member countries, and from which regionally relevant activities and specific projects can be derived. Experts and officials from the participating countries should be involved in this process in order to ensure commitment at the implementation stage later on. This should happen both at the operational and policy level with a view to securing sustainability and continuity. After all, the aim of regional projects is to assist in national-level changes. To be adequately utilized, regional VET projects should be owned and sustained by the relevant agency or agencies in each country. After a regional project has come to an end, focal institutions in each country should therefore follow-up on the utilization of the outputs of projects and submit assessment reports accordingly. They should also undertake studies to evaluate the degree of utilization and the impact of project outputs in individual countries. By establishing networking capacities among the national institutions, the sharing of experiences at the regional level could have an additional positive impact on developments in national systems. The nature and objectives of VET—essentially preparing learners for employment in private as well as public enterprises—make it of prime importance that public/private partnership be enhanced and adopted as one of the criteria for choosing projects. Such partnerships can be enhanced at the planning, implementation and utilization stages (Gill, Fluitman & Dar, 2000). At the planning stage, public/private partnership can be enhanced through the active participation of employers’ representatives in all planning activities at the policy and management levels. On the other hand, public/private partnership should have an impact in the objectives set for the chosen activities and projects. This is mainly ensured through the relevance of projects to labour-market needs. Furthermore, employers would be expected to participate in the funding, governance and sustainability of projects after implementation.

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At the implementation stage, public/private partnership can be enhanced through the same channels and activities referred to at the planning stage. In addition, employers’ representatives should participate extensively in expert groups involved in the implementation of activities and projects (e.g. designing curricula, setting standards, etc.). At the utilization stage, enterprises should display ownership as well as involvement in making use of the outputs of projects. Follow-up and evaluation efforts, including impact studies, help to assess the level of private-sector ownership and involvement.

3.1 Evaluation and Assessment Considerations The design of any activity or project should, at the planning stage, identify the evaluation and assessment processes and techniques to be carried out during and after implementation. For this purpose, a number of factors should be taken into consideration. Evaluation and assessment activities should, as far as possible, be undertaken by neutral experts or agencies to ensure credibility and accuracy. They should cover outputs, outcomes and, as much as possible, the impact of projects. External evaluation does not exclude the need for internal or self-evaluation, which should clearly be shown in the design of projects. Some activities and projects, by their nature, benefit more if external evaluation is not left to the final stages of implementation. Evaluation efforts during implementation help to introduce any necessary and useful amendments at the appropriate time.

3.2 The Economics of Activities and Projects The economics of implementation and operation is one of the important dimensions that should be taken into consideration when choosing and designing projects (Masri, 1994). All the relevant financial and funding aspects should thus be carefully assessed with the objective of maximizing outcomes and impact. There are also some other factors that should be taken into consideration. Funding should, of course, be appropriate to the aims of the project, but should also be available in a balanced way to all the countries involved, possibly and preferably matched with counterpart funding, either in cash or in kind. The contracting international experts and consultants should be kept to a minimum. This has the double advantage of economizing on expenditures and enhancing capacity-building efforts in the partner countries.

3.3 Securing Impact for System Development System development can, in general, be realized by catering for one or more of the three groups of components that characterize education systems. These are the inputs, the processes and the outputs.


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In the case of VET systems, as in other education systems, the inputs include such sub-components as curricula, instructors, administrators, learners, physical facilities, governance, legislative tools, evaluation, etc. The processes, on the other hand, comprise such sub-components as teaching/training methodologies, administrative styles, learners’ out-of-class activities, etc. The outputs and outcomes include such sub-components as the level of knowledge, skills and attitudes attained by the learners, as well as the relevance to national developmental needs and to life in general, including the labour market.

4 Regional and International Organizations: Roles and Efforts In what follows, a number of international organizations that are relevant to regional efforts and projects in the field of VET are briefly explored. These organizations all share similar aims that are of benefit to individual countries. They provide external assessment of VET systems and policies from the perspective of other regional and international experts and organizations. By doing so, they also improve mutual knowledge and understanding of VET systems, reforms and issues in other countries. All of them also establish channels and linkages that facilitate the exchange of experiences on the regional and international levels and promote co-operation and linkages at regional and international levels. We shall present the key regional and international organizations that are currently active in the region and follow this up with a brief case study of a bi-lateral co-operation project in vocational education and training.

4.1 Regional Organizations 4.1.1 Arab Labour Organization The Arab Labour Organization (ALO) has its headquarters in Cairo. It is concerned with labour issues, including skill and human resources development, mainly at the informal occupational levels that comprise skilled workers and craftsmen. Activities and projects in the field of skills and HRD development are undertaken through the ALO technical arm, the Arab Centre for Human Resources Development (ACHRD) which is located in Tripoli (Libya). To promote the TVET mission through a regional approach, the ACHRD undertakes such activities as:

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Regional conferences, workshops and seminars. Issuing publications on VET issues in the Arabic language, authored by writers from different Arab countries. About thirty such publications have been issued since 1990. Training workshops for teacher-trainers and officials involved in the implementation and governance of TVET systems.

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Networking among stakeholders in the Arab Region, through on-line and off-line material and contacts.

4.1.2 Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization ALECSO, which is the Arab counterpart of UNESCO, is an Arab League organization that is concerned with education, culture and science. It has its headquarters in Tunis, and although its mandate in VET is not markedly different from that of the ALO, the diversification of its mandate leaves limited room for VET, with emphasis on the formal systems that are usually school-based and institutionalized. 4.1.3 Arab Union for Technician Education AUTE is mainly concerned with technical and vocational education, with most of its activities directed towards intermediate university education that is usually offered by post-secondary institutes and community colleges. It has its headquarters at present in Tripoli (Libya). While the mandates of ALO and ACHRD are concerned with the basic occupational levels in VET, that of AUTE deals more with intermediate occupational levels for the preparation of technicians and subprofessionals. The scope and type of activities are, nevertheless, similar for both organizations. 4.1.4 Union of Arab Universities As its name implies, the Union of Arab Universities (UAU) is mainly concerned with university education. It has its headquarters in Amman (Jordan), and the UAU role in VET is manifested in three areas: (a) scientific research and studies that deal with the various VET issues, including post-graduate studies and theses; (b) preservice and in-service education and training for VET instructors; and (iii) design of university admission standards and criteria for graduates of VET institutions and programmes.

4.2 International Organizations 4.2.1 UNESCO-UNEVOC Network and International Centre for TVET The UNEVOC Network covers the world and comprises specialized institutions in technical and vocational education and training (TVET). These institutions are called UNEVOC centres. The general objective of the network is to support developments in national TVET systems through:

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Supporting a dialogue among researchers, policy-makers and practitioners who work in the field of technical and vocational education and training.

UNEVOC was established in 1992 by UNESCO to act as a platform for regional and international co-operation in the field of TVET. At present there are more than 220 UNEVOC centres in more than 155 UNESCO Member States. In 2002, the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training was inaugurated to strengthen the UNEVOC network. It is based in Bonn, Germany. Although the UNEVOC network is international in scope, the great majority of its activities are of a regional nature, implemented under the umbrella of UNESCO’s regional and field offices. In the Arab Region, such offices exist in Beirut (Lebanon), Cairo (Egypt), Amman (Jordan), the Gulf, etc. UNEVOC centres can be found in some Arab countries. More recently, a UNESCO-UNEVOC e-Forum was established, providing a freeof-charge e-mail list service to those joining the forum: (a) to help them to connect with experts in TVET from around the world; (b) to identify partners for regional and international co-operation in research and development that targets TVET issues and topics; (c) to pose questions on TVET and obtain authoritative answers from experts in the field; (d) to obtain essential information on TVET development in such fields as curriculum, instructor training, etc.; and (e) to share thoughts and gain access to useful information about TVET.

4.2.2 The European Training Foundation The ETF is an agency of the European Union that started its operations in Turin (Italy) in 1994 with a mission to assist partner countries in developing quality education and training systems and to enable them to reform their VET systems. The ETF partner countries include many in the Arab Region, mainly along the south and east coasts of the Mediterranean, through the MEDA programme. ETF shares expertise and advice on policies in education and training across regions and cultures. Each year, its work programme comprises a group of projects that are implemented in the partner countries to facilitate the reform of VET and employment systems. A regional approach is frequently utilized in such programmes and projects. Such an approach, when deemed feasible, helps to spread experience in the development of VET systems, in addition to maximizing outcomes and returns on the relevant projects. The areas of concern of ETF up until the present cover many themes that are relevant to VET, such as VET policies, teacher and trainer training, training for poverty alleviation, adult and lifelong learning, employment and the labour market, national qualifications frameworks, etc. In addition to its annual Yearbook, ETF publications cover a wide variety of topics that reflect national and regional developments and experiences in the field of VET. On the regional level, expert meetings, peer reviews, seminars, etc., help to exchange experiences and establish contacts and channels of

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communication that assist practitioners, decision-makers and policy-makers in their plans to develop the various aspects of VET systems (Grootings & Nielsen, 2004). In the Arab Region, ETF projects helped some countries to benefit from the experiences of other countries in such areas as human resources information systems, VET indicators, etc.

5 Case Study: Arab-German Co-operation in VET This project which was launched and funded by GTZ and was planned from the outset to support the development of VET systems in five Arab countries—Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria—through regional co-operative efforts and involvement. Thus, it was originally planned with a regional perspective at the policy, management and operational levels. This project is in many respects an interesting one from a regional perspective. First, the regional approach to VET development was comprehensively and institutionally adopted and incorporated at the planning stage with the explicit objective of developing national VET systems with major involvement from regional sources. This approach was formalized through agreements between GTZ and each of the concerned countries. Finally, the structure and governance of the project ensured relevance and provided the utilization of the resulting benefits to be maximized by national VET systems. Below we list some of the key characteristics of the project that have contributed to its positive impact on the development of TVET systems from a national and regional perspective.

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The relatively long duration of the project, spanning the period 2003–2011, helps to secure the sustainability, impact and credibility of monitoring and evaluation efforts. The project has been designed to facilitate the identification and choice of subprojects that are considered by policy-makers and practitioners as priority areas and are of common interest to member countries. Although the scope of the project covered five Arab countries, the outcomes of sub-projects are potentially relevant to all other Arab countries, especially taking into consideration the great similarities in their VET systems and the common language background. It is worthwhile noting here that some VET areas are language sensitive and socially influenced, such as classification systems, glossaries, etc. Networking among VET institutions and experts is a major feature of the project, thus facilitating the exchange of experiences to the benefit of national VET systems. The structure and governance of the project, as described below, shows how such networking is secured. At the operational level, a relevant focal point is chosen in each country to be responsible for the implementation or supervision of the relevant activities and sub-projects at the national level. Focal points varied in their nature from


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one country to another. Autonomous VET agencies or VET departments in the Ministries of Education or Labour are examples of such focal points. A regional office in one of the concerned countries (Jordan) with a project office manager, hosted by a national institution, provided the secretariat for the project, undertaking the co-ordinating and networking functions. The continuous contacts and communications among focal points in the implementation of sub-projects provided useful channels and frameworks whereby experts and decision-makers in the concerned countries benefited to develop their own VET systems. At the middle-management level, project governance is taken care of by a Regional Management Committee (RMC) composed of two senior officials, one from the public sector and one from the private sector from each country. The RMC holds its meetings in turn in one of the five countries twice annually to choose sub-projects from among a pool of project proposals submitted by the focal points in the concerned countries. The RMC submits its recommendations on the choice of projects to a Regional Higher Council, referred to below, in addition to undertaking the function of following up procedures for the implementation of decisions taken by the Council. At the policy (macro) level, project governance is taken care of by a Regional Higher Council (RHC) composed of three senior officials—two from the public sector and one from the private sector—from each country. The RHC holds its meetings in turn in one of the five countries as it is required to take decisions on the final choice of sub-projects, to assess their implementation and utilization, and to discuss policies and strategies for the regional project. As in the case of the Regional Management Committee, the Regional Higher Council, through its meetings and functions, provides a forum for policy-makers and senior officials to exchange views and experiences on national VET issues and developments on the one hand, and on identifying areas for further regional co-operation and common approaches in the field of VET on the other. The way in which sub-projects are implemented depends upon their nature and other practical considerations, such as the availability of expertise and technical resources. Two such models have already been utilized in this project and are described below.

Model 1 The project is implemented exclusively by an institution or group of experts in one country. In this case, regionality is ensured through one or more of the following procedures: (a) establishing a regional steering committee that meets periodically to follow-up and guide the stages of implementation; (b) choosing a counterpart institution or group of experts in each of the other countries not involved in implementation, to be consulted frequently at the various stages of implementation; and

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(c) holding periodical regional workshops to discuss and approve the work at the different stages of implementation.

Model 2 The activity or project is divided into parts, and each part is implemented by an institution or group of experts in one country, thus paving the way for more than one country to participate in the implementation. Although the regional dimension is thus assured, homogeneous outputs of the various parts are difficult to guarantee. To minimize such shortcomings, co-ordination efforts are needed through the following measures: (a) periodical meetings/workshops of the expert groups; and/or (b) establishing a regional steering committee that meets periodically to follow-up and guide the stages of implementation.

6 Conclusion One major conclusion of the review presented here is that efforts directed at regional co-operation and integration can promote and stimulate changes and developments in national TVET systems through channels and venues of co-ordination, peer-reviewing, policy-learning and exchange of experiences. Needless to say, cooperation in VET issues can facilitate similar co-operation in other areas. Furthermore, national developments in VET are expected to face the need for regional co-operation due to such factors as worker and student mobility, recognition of qualifications, lack of capacities, etc. In other words, national reforms in VET can pragmatically lead to regional co-operation and integration.

References–English Gill, I.; Fluitman, F.; Dar, A., eds. 2000. Vocational education and training and training reform: matching skills to markets and budgets. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Grootings, P.; Nielsen, S., eds. 2004. ETF Yearbook 2004: learning matters. Turin, Italy: ETF. Grootings P.; Nielsen, S., eds. 2005. ETF Yearbook 2005: teachers and trainers: professionals and stakeholders in the reform of vocational education and training. Luxembourg: European Communities. Lasonen, J., ed. 1999. Workforce preparation in a global context. Jyväskylä, Finland: Institute for Educational Research-University of Jyväskylä. Masri, M.W. 1994. Vocational education: the way ahead. London: Macmillan. UNESCO-UNEVOC. 1998. Vocational education and training in Europe on the threshold of the 21st century. Paris: UNESCO. Wallenborn, M. et al. 2003. Human resources development in school-based and company-based technical and vocational education and training (TVET)-Egypt and selected MEDA/MENA countries. Mannheim, Germany: Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung GmbH.


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Chapter III.6

The Influence of Qualifications Frameworks on the Infrastructure of VET Mike Coles and Patrick Werquin

1 Introduction It is likely that most vocational learning resulting from formal schooling is not officially recognized in qualifications. Informal and non-formal learning are probably the dominant forms of vocational education and training (VET). However, the recognition of learning through qualifications is probably dominant in shaping the formal VET system because qualifications are one of the most tangible outcomes of VET for people and enterprises. The financial and social returns to qualification levels are also widely appreciated. It is not surprising, therefore, that the ways in which qualifications are organized exert a powerful influence on the vocational learning system. In this chapter we examine the ways in which the existence of a qualifications framework influences several structural aspects of VET. These structural aspects include the management of the supply and demand for skills, the institutional arrangements, the financing of VET and the way the VET system interfaces with other learning systems and VET in other countries. Before this analysis begins, the diverse nature of qualifications frameworks is examined.

2 The Nature of Qualifications Frameworks The idea of a qualifications framework that shows how qualifications relate to one another is not new. For many centuries the trade organizations in many countries have exercised control over the right to practice a trade and control how progression in skills is defined and managed. Before this, universities had set down common patterns of recognizing progress within higher academic learning. What is new is the interest of governments in developing overarching frameworks that incorporate qualifications representing the learning outcomes from school, work and higher education. Importantly, the new frameworks are often linked to lifelong learning policy and are intended to capture learning from experience that the learner wishes to have recognized. A qualifications framework is a classification of qualifications according to a set of criteria reflecting the levels of learning achieved. This set of criteria may R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 III.6, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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be an implicit characteristic of the qualifications themselves or made explicit in the form of a set of level descriptors. In the simplest form of classification the qualifications themselves are arranged in a hierarchy of demand or standard, the lowest level of qualifications rises through a series of steps to the highest level. The qualifications in these hierarchies are sometimes further classified into qualification types (e.g. higher-education qualifications, school qualifications, workbased qualifications). The second kind of classification uses explicit levels that are each defined by criteria—these are often termed level descriptors or level indicators. The scope of frameworks may be comprehensive for all learning achievement and pathways or it may be confined to a particular sector, for example initial education, adult learning or an occupational area such as agriculture. Some frameworks may have more design elements and a tighter structure than others; some may have a legal basis, whereas others represent a consensus of views among social partners. However, all qualifications frameworks establish a basis for improving the linkages between qualifications and the quality, accessibility and public or labour-market recognition of qualifications within a country and internationally. Some countries established comparative levels for qualifications in the 1960s (e.g. France) and others more recently (e.g. New Zealand). In Scotland the qualification framework has evolved over the last twenty years or so. It was not until 1985 that the first significant attempt to develop an international framework appeared. CEDEFOP developed a five-level framework (CEDEFOP, 2001) for vocational qualifications to facilitate the comparability of qualifications in the context of an anticipated growth in the mobility of labour. These levels had little impact and European Union (EU) countries made little effort to align their vocational qualifications systems with these levels. More recently, the European Commission has proposed a European Qualifications Framework (EQF)1 that is intended to operate as a meta-framework.2 The EQF proposal suggests that the most effective way for nations to articulate with the European framework is through a national qualifications framework (NQF). Evidence suggests that this request is receiving a positive response from the majority of European countries (Bjørn˚avold & Coles, 2006). See Coles (2006) for a full review of national qualifications frameworks. NQFs have various forms and functions, but all have four generic aims:

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to establish national standards for learning outcomes (competences); to promote through regulation the quality of education and training provision; to act as a way of relating qualifications to each other; and to promote access to learning, transfer of learning and progression in learning.

It is often the case that NQFs have policy purposes that go beyond these four aims. The development of an NQF can be used to integrate parts of the qualifications system (for example, professional education delivered via further and higher education) or to modernize parts of the education and training system (for example, to change the regulation of the quality of qualification processes or to change the way public funds are used to support education and training). These wider effects

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of qualifications frameworks on the infrastructure of VET are the principal focus of this chapter and in the following sections some of these effects are discussed in more detail.

3 Managing the Supply of Skills Vocational education and training arrangements in a country are always complex because of: (a) the many forms of learning that are considered as VET; (b) the wide range of institutions that deliver VET; and (c) the interaction and overlap of sectors, occupations and enterprises. The complexity of the system can make it difficult to adjust programmes so that training leads to the competences that are required in the workplace, particularly when work practices and technology are leading to changes in competence requirements. It is generally the case that VET competences are defined, delivered and evaluated by means of collaboration between stakeholder groups (usually governments, providers, enterprises and employee organizations). It can be argued that the better the collaboration between stakeholders, the better the modernization process is likely to be. One way in which the collaboration process can be supported is to make sure that labour-market information and information about the qualification process (such as pedagogic methods) are freely available for analysis. Qualification frameworks can make this information easier to use, for example by:

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classifying the levels of qualifications in a commonly understood way; requiring the expression of qualification in terms of learning outcomes; showing how qualification structures relate to the needs of sectors by defining categories of the content of qualifications; quality assuring the qualification process through the use of regulation and accreditation criteria; and making transparent the way qualifications at one level can lead to the next level.

There are other ways in which a national set of benchmarks in terms of levels can be used to make statistical analysis of skills requirements easier to express and use across a wide range of sectors. Qualifications frameworks act as a classification device. This function is important, but it is increasingly common for a framework of levels to be considered as the basis for a classification of units of qualifications (partial qualification), as well as for whole qualifications. By breaking down whole qualifications into units it is possible to modernize a qualification relatively easily by developing a new unit to replace an out-of-date unit. Whilst this can be achieved without a framework, it is usually the case that a unitized system of qualification can become unwieldy and opaque without a classification system. Thus, through the location of units of different content at different levels, it is easy for collaborators defining skills needs to identify the required competences and to provide institutions to deliver them to learners.

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These unitized approaches also offer the advantage of easier transfer of credit from one sector to another, particularly in the case of transversal skills, such as communications, team management and health and safety. Thus, modernization of these transversal units of qualifications can improve the quality of training across many sectors. Qualifications frameworks generally classify qualifications that arise from dedicated training programmes. However, because levels and content are often defined more clearly for qualifications in a framework, usually through learning outcomes, it is easier for an individual to appreciate that they have competences that have developed non-formally (e.g. through work) or informally (e.g. through managing a family) that can meet the requirements of a formal qualification. Recognition of non-formal and informal learning can be facilitated and can go some way to meet skills needs in a region or an enterprise. All of these examples are specific ways a framework can lead to better articulation of knowledge, skill and wider competence requirements. In addition to improving this articulation, it is possible for frameworks to modernize the supply side of VET, for example by improving the efficiency of delivery.

4 Articulating the Demand for Skills If VET is ‘education and training that aims at equipping people with the knowledge, skills and competences that can be used in the labour market’3 then qualifications frameworks will impact on the infrastructure of VET whenever they impact on the skills and competences produced by VET that are or can be used in the labour market. There are many reasons to believe that this is going to be the case on the demand side of VET competences because qualifications frameworks:

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can bring transparency; can be durable and provide stability; can provide consistency; can bring confidence; can allow for a coherent statistical monitoring by qualification level; and are essentially based on learning outcomes.

All these arguments are linked to each other to a large extent. For example, confidence in qualifications may grow because there is transparency of the qualifications system and they therefore reflect a widely recognized system (backed up by main qualifications authorities, such as the ministry of education). Thus, users of qualifications, such as employers, know exactly which competence(s) they are about to hire. Confidence may also arise because there is stability over time making investment in the system—learning how to use it and for improving it—worthwhile in the medium and long term. As a consequence, employers may be more motivated to hire graduates from the VET system and to promote VET itself since they can be sure exactly what recruits know and can do. Greater transparency of VET systems


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will lead to a more effective use of VET by employers that will waste less time in recruiting due to a more effective search for appropriate skills. In some countries, such as Spain, Greece, the Czech Republic or Japan, qualifications frameworks are associated primarily with VET (OECD, 2007). As a classification device, a qualifications framework organizes all the qualifications that are delivered in a particular country. Thanks to the concepts of levels and descriptors, qualifications frameworks provide a planning tool for employers who are constantly demanding [new] skills. This additional transparency, brought about by qualifications frameworks, helps employers to identify the skills that they need for the good functioning of the enterprise leading to a better economic performance. What a framework does that did not exist so clearly before is to put a clear label on a qualification and to position this qualification in the big picture by relating qualifications to one another in terms of level. As a consequence, recruiters or people having a demand for skills are better informed about what they are looking for and what is available. They can better compare existing qualifications and therefore better organize their demand for skills. Beyond that, qualifications frameworks help to articulate the demand for skills with that of supply. This will happen because individuals (typically workers or applicants for a job) will eventually receive strong signals about the skills that are most in demand. This will happen whatever the recruiting scenario the employer decides to opt for: (a) they may look for the competences internally and organize the move/promotion of insiders if adequate competences are available internally; or (b) whether the competences are available internally or not, they may decide to recruit externally. In both cases, whether using internal mobility or external recruitment, employers may realise that the skills they demand are not available or not available at the expected level. As a consequence, they may organize their own training strategy to promote insiders or send a strong signal to the training authority for them to provide the appropriate training. Individuals themselves will receive all of these signals through more-or-less formal circulation of information within the enterprise or, for outsiders, through using the public employment service for example, or any other usual channel—including, probably, word of mouth. As a result, supply and demand of skills are likely to reach a better match if a framework exists providing transparent information regarding qualifications and qualification levels. In turn, this mechanism is likely to impact back on the infrastructure of VET, which will have to adjust to meet the needs of a better informed demand. A typical consequence one might anticipate is that VET will have to evolve at a faster pace than before since the labour market and the demand for skills are also evolving ever faster as a result of technological changes. Another possible consequence is that this impacts on curricula in the formal VET sector; so that they are formulated to describe what student should know or should be able to do at the end of their training to better match with the concept or learning outcomes widely associated with the concept of qualifications frameworks. In addition, to allow for the demand for skills to be appropriately planned, whether using external recruitment or internal mobility and/or promotion, qualifications frameworks will improve the confidence of the actors demanding skills toward the VET system.

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By the same token, since qualifications frameworks can be heavily based on learning outcomes rather than input (duration of the course, for example) and since, again, many VET competences are not produced in the formal system, qualifications frameworks will help recruiters to appreciate the skills available and to plan their future utilization of VET competences. Making obvious the demand for skills through the use of levels and qualification types is a clear added value of qualifications framework. Beyond, and thanks to, transparency, confidence will be built so that the main actors in the demand for skills will have greater trust in VET competences that appear clearly in the qualifications framework. The French qualifications levels represent an attempt to use qualifications levels for economic planning and for better organizing the supply and demand of skills. This system was created as part of French economic planning and went beyond forecasting skills needs by enabling the education and training system to meet business needs by supplying sufficient numbers of people skilled to appropriate levels in appropriate occupations. It was a tool for developing active educational policies directed at increasing and standardizing vocational training in order to guide and promote French economic development (Bouder, 2003). The classifications system led to the setting up a qualifications agency (Commission technique d’homologation) that is responsible for positioning all diplomas and maintaining an up-to date classification according to labour-market innovations. One aspect of the classification system is that it is deeply embedded in social hierarchies and goes beyond a simple classification of diplomas and training programmes. However, in the case of France, it did not really work because the form of manpower planning that it was based on did not take into account the practice of enterprises that may have promoted or retrained workers internally. In that sense, the French qualifications levels, despite being deeply embedded in social hierarchies and going beyond a simple classification of diplomas and training programmes, do not constitute a framework. This is probably because it was too heavily based on qualifications delivered by the formal system where a qualifications framework is closely linked to the concept of learning outcomes. The new classification system, introduced in 1994, attempts to classify any training programme regardless of its level, mode of learning, field of application or social use, including personal development activities and leisure programmes. Like other frameworks, this initiative aims to de-compartmentalize the education and training system and form links between formal education, vocational education, university education and professional education.

5 Frameworks and Institutions Education and training systems often evolve into complex networks with differences between institutions that include:

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licences to operate across a specified number of levels of qualification; the nature of enterprises in a catchment area; the geography and transportation in an area; the type of governance employed; and size and the capacity to offer programmes.

There are many more dimensions of difference, and from a consumer point of view both for individuals and enterprises. These differences can lead to confusion and wasted investment of time and money. For example, a qualification programme offered in one institution can differ markedly from that provided in another and yet they can lead the learner to the same state of readiness for employment. How can a choice me made? How can the most efficient use of prior learning be accommodated? Qualification frameworks have the capacity to reduce complexity. This happens not simply by means of the classification of qualifications but also by requiring that every qualification in a framework is described in terms of what a learner is expected to know and do at the end of a programme of learning. Thus, we see a common requirement of transparency for every qualification that is not dependent on any institutional factors. A consequence of this is that qualification programmes across different types of institution (e.g. initial VET and general education; professional education and higher education) become comparable and points of overlap are evident. This can have the effect of encouraging helpful differentiation between programmes and in facilitating co-operative arrangements to deliver certain programme content. For some time, policy-makers have been concerned with the potential overlap between higher education programmes and high-level VET. The concern stems from the belief that higher education programmes have the potential to deliver programmes that meet the needs of enterprises better than VET. Thus, institutions (schools, colleges and universities) can both define a qualification framework and be defined by one. By means of making the purposes, structure and content of qualifications explicit through associating them with learning outcomes, it is possible to see opportunities for one kind of institution being able to make contributions to the traditional territory of others. This is not to suggest that the traditional patterns of qualifications programmes are faulty in some way—it simply opens up the possibilities for making more dynamic links between parts of the system which could render decision-making by learners a little easier, thus increasing the efficiency of the system. With increasing use of information and communications technologies in educational development (e.g. distance learning, knowledge management) the potential for these kinds of inter-institutional links are likely to increase. The institutions that have mainly management roles in the qualifications system can also be affected by qualifications framework development. These institutions include government departments (education, labour and sectoral ministries, such as a ministry of agriculture), qualifications awarding bodies, quality assurance agencies and funding bodies. It is often the case that social partners have important roles. The manner in which the processes are agreed for setting up and managing a NQF

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can increase or decrease the influence of different types of stakeholder groups on the education and training system. Two rather obvious examples are worth consideration since they are commonly found in increasing numbers in countries where frameworks are being developed. The first example is the tightening of control by government of the qualifications system so that it can be more easily used in government-led reforms. Countries where centralized control is increasing might want to use the framework to introduce new qualifications routes that provide access to qualification for those social groups who are often excluded (or exclude themselves). The second example is where there is an intentional shift of the balance from the supply side of training to the demand side for competences. The role of employers, employees and their representative bodies could be given a stronger role in system management, while that of the providing institutions becomes weaker. Providing institutions can also be directly influenced by the introduction of a qualifications framework. It can have some associated operational characteristics. A good example is quality-assurance arrangements. Whilst not evident in any framework diagram, the framework may only allow qualifications to be registered on it if the qualifications—and the providers that deliver it—meet certain criteria. So the framework becomes a powerful regulatory tool and a benchmark for national standards. These criteria can require institutions providing programmes and qualifications to change their practices to conform to standard protocols. It is now clear how frameworks can influence institutions and therefore can be used to drive VET reforms. Frameworks can also be powerful co-ordinating tools capable of changing the VET landscape so that specific reforms can flourish.

6 Financing VET Provision The existence of qualifications frameworks is likely to have a strong impact on the way VET provision is financed. Framework developments can be expensive. Clearly the scope of the NQFs and their intended purposes directly affect the costs of implementation and on-going maintenance. This distinction between implementation costs and maintenance costs is important. Whilst it is common for NQFs to be established in order to bring co-ordination to existing structures and qualifications, the development of the basis for agreement on an NQF requires:

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policy analysis; consideration of experience elsewhere; development of options; modelling of the favoured option(s); engagement of leaders of stakeholder groups; specialist task groups; consultation; and communication with main institutions and the general public.


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The implementation phase could also involve piloting technical procedures and fullscale trials. As discussed above, a national body is often established to manage the implementation phase and the on-going maintenance. Making estimates of costs therefore requires anticipating large-scale systemic change that includes these elements and others. The central administration costs related to the NQF can be relatively small. Even in countries where large agencies are responsible for the NQF, the costs (mainly staff costs) associated only with the NQF can be low. However, where such things as quality assurance procedures, curriculum and assessment monitoring, reviews of employment standards and establishing benchmarks corresponding to other national or international qualification frameworks are involved the costs can rise steeply. NQFs take the place of informal structures and co-ordinate existing VET provision. It is likely, though difficult to quantify, that there will be some cost savings through this process. It is also likely that in a co-ordinated qualifications system there will be co-financing of some procedures such as the development of employment standards. Some NQFs are explicitly quality assurance mechanisms and the title national qualification is reserved for those qualifications accredited to the NQF. Quality controls on these qualifications can be extensive and therefore expensive. They are intended to develop maximum confidence in users of the qualifications. Where education and training is funded by governments, there is a good case for seeking a return on the investment in quality assurance of national qualifications and consequently public funding favours these qualifications above others. Another characteristic that has a direct impact on cost and therefore financing is the fact again that qualifications frameworks are essentially based on learning outcomes and also because most of vocational education and training competences are learned outside the formal system. As a consequence, the burden of the cost may move from learning to assessing the real competences of the individuals. The financing will need to be carefully reviewed. Given the international context, with the existence of meta-frameworks—such as the European Qualifications Framework—and international benchmarks, qualifications frameworks may also have an impact on the way governments and policy-makers communicate about the destination of public money, and therefore on all spending. All countries have national benchmarks and quality standards and policymakers need to show that their financing practice for qualifications and learning programmes is prudent. Therefore, they may use the international benchmarks as a way of showing that they met the international standards in their own countries or even that they have done better, justifying at once the use of public money. From the point of view of quality assurance, the international context also sets some forms of benchmark because all processes leading to a qualification usually receive scrutiny in a country and all the major international developments, especially at the European level, have quality assurance processes associated with them (higher education framework in the Bologna process; the Copenhagen process common principles for quality assurance).

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More generally, all the elements that the existence of qualifications frameworks has brought into the picture are important in terms of financing because they always intrinsically lead to cost-effectiveness analysis. In many countries, the world of qualifications is subject to debates about the over-supply, for instance, of very similar qualifications—which is inefficient. A qualifications framework is a very useful tool to eliminate duplication if it shows that several qualifications are at the same level. The possibility of removing redundancy has just been given to countries such as Poland, for instance, where the number of qualifications has been reduced from 1,000 to 400. A qualifications framework is therefore an important tool for effective financing practice and updating of the qualifications pool. Using qualifications frameworks can also be useful to bring private investments to the world of qualifications because they represent a mechanism for involving employers. The reason for that is because qualifications frameworks are based on learning outcomes in essence and learning outcomes bring visibility. Therefore, employers will be less keen on formulating their most frequently heard complaint about the lack of transparency and the confusion in the qualifications system. As a consequence, there must be a role for sponsors, but this role has to be clear or they will not embark on financing qualifications; especially if they feel this is the duty of the government in the first place. To that extent, it is useful to take an international perspective and look for good practice to spot the possible role of private investors in qualifications. Russia is an example of a country where pilot projects and experimentation with the basis of a qualifications framework is privately sponsored. This has arisen because employers in the hotels and catering sector in Russia believe the qualifications system is not delivering the skills entrepreneurs need. It does not necessarily mean that they want to be involved in the delivery processes themselves (teaching, etc.), but they want to be involved in setting standards beforehand. There is a cost to that and this why employers find it acceptable to put money into the system. Finally, it should not be forgotten that the major reforms likely to occur in the infrastructure of VET due to the implementation of qualifications frameworks will take time. Therefore, financing ought to be carefully planned in the medium or long term.

7 More Flexible Credit-Transfer System Overcoming compartmentalization of the education and training system has been a goal in many countries. In the late 1980s in New Zealand various independent reports signalled the need for a radical overhaul of the qualifications system that it was felt was hampering participation, achievement and New Zealand’s competitiveness. After a series of reforms to various parts of the education and training system, an NQF and a formal system of establishing recognition of qualifications based on unit standards (learning outcomes) were established. A national validating authority (the New Zealand Qualifications Authority) was also set up requiring the assessment of


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learning programmes to be drawn up against unit standards and to be subject to a series of quality-assurance procedures, including the accreditation of providers. The NQF was both a product of the need for widespread reform and a tool for maintaining a reformed system. The NQF regulatory requirements are a means for bringing increased commonality to different parts of the education and training system, whilst preserving the integrity of those separate systems and the roles of key agencies within them. So employment sector bodies, schools, community groups, private providers and higher education all have separate procedures for developing unit standards and maintaining the quality assurance requirements of the NQF. Universities are not part of this process and there are qualifications that are not sufficiently based on unit standards to be part of the NQF. A comprehensive register of qualifications has been set up to include all qualifications—the NQF qualifications are a subset in this listing. The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) also developed in a way that reduced barriers between parts of the education and training system. However, it also has taken on the task of sustaining systematic transfer of credit at the level of units of qualifications. The SCQF developed as a result of a series of innovations in the education and training systems covering school, vocational and higher education. Each innovation reinforced the SCQF as a means of securing greater coherence in the qualifications system. At the same time as these substantial changes were being implemented, knowledge of system-wide features was shared. Credit transfer was seen as a means of increasing the flexibility of qualifications and the SCQF was identified by its partners as having the potential to accommodate the common principles necessary for its implementation. One of the functions of the SCQF is the credit rating of units of qualifications. The rules for good practice can be agreed centrally, but a prerequisite for credit transfer is that the units of assessment in learning programmes have to be rated in terms of the volume of learning. Making judgements about learning volumes involves close scrutiny of the curriculum and some attention being paid to pedagogy and resource provision. Thus, the providers closest to the programmes are enabled to carry out this process and the influence of the SCQF is extended deep into the education and training process.

8 A Tool for Reform Policy-making for lifelong learning in the arena of qualifications systems is difficult, underdeveloped and possibly undervalued. Establishing a qualifications framework, in the same way as providing credit transfer, optimizing stakeholder involvement in the qualifications system, recognizing non-formal and informal learning and creating new routes to qualifications for example, seems to be a powerful mechanism to trigger more and better lifelong learning from within the qualifications system (OECD, 2007). This chapter suggests that it is useful to consider the role qualifications frameworks may have on the infrastructure of VET in particular.

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An example of a framework being used for purposes that lie outside the education and training system is given by the EQF, having as its principal aim a strong link to the Lisbon Goal of more and better jobs for all European citizens and the creation of Europe as a top-performing knowledge economy. The Maastricht Communiqué (European Commission, 2004) states that the EQF: will improve permeability within education and training, provide a reference for the validation of informally acquired competences and support the smooth and effective functioning of the European, national and sectoral labour markets [. . .] and should facilitate the voluntary development of competence-based solutions at the European level enabling sectors to address the new education and training challenges caused by the internationalisation of trade and technology.

The EQF design, which is essentially based on learning outcomes and a set of levels aimed at corresponding with the labour-market job structures, should facilitate this aim. The EQF also has an objective to support and promote change in national qualifications systems. This is a clear signal that the reforming power of national qualifications frameworks can be enabled by the existence of a high-status overarching framework that is respected by trading partners, even if the European Qualifications Framework is by no mean a template and remains a meta-framework. More generally, countries have made attempts to reform education and training systems in order to bring about more and better lifelong learning. Some of these policy responses bear directly on qualifications systems (cf. OECD, 2004). This is the case for the following points:

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to increase the flexibility and responsiveness of the qualifications system; to motivate young people to learn for qualifications; to link education and work through qualifications; to facilitate open access to qualifications; to make qualifications progressive; to make the qualifications system transparent; to review funding and increase efficiency of the qualifications system; and to better manage the qualifications system.

For VET in particular, it is possible to use qualifications frameworks as a policy tool and to review present and future policy on qualifications and qualifications systems, to test the robustness of the latter and see if the benefits they promised have been delivered. For instance, there seems to be reasons to believe that qualifications frameworks can change the landscape because they impact on:

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the provision of VET; curricula in the formal VET system; barriers to the development of VET; the link between VET and the labour market; and benefits for VET graduates and participation in, and access to, VET.

They impact on the provision of VET because a close look at all qualifications at their respective level within the qualifications framework provides a clear picture


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of the qualifications available in a country and therefore will help spot the gap in provision at a given level or for a given qualification. They impact on curricula through the simple fact that qualifications frameworks are often linked to the concept of learning outcomes and, therefore, the formal VET system will not be able to avoid the discussion about defining the curricula in terms of what learners can do and not about how long they have been studying a subject. This may well be one of the biggest challenges for reforming VET programmes in the years to come. VET has traditionally suffered from low esteem and, in some countries, is even regarded as the only solution for those students that cannot follow the academic tracks. The development of VET has therefore been hampered by issues not directly linked to the programmes it provided but to the way they are seen in the wider public and, sometimes, among employers. The creation of a qualifications framework may help lift some of the barriers by providing transparency, encouraging employers to hire individuals leaving the VET system and removing dead ends—therefore always offering the possibility for reaching a higher level qualification from within the VET system. Another typical example about how qualifications frameworks may help improve participation, self-esteem and remove some inequities is by breaking the ‘glass ceiling’ that seems to exist between the regular VET system and the higher VET system; meaning that individual learners often cannot continue to higher education when they graduate from the initial VET system. A good example is given by Romania where the scheme put in place with levels did not seem to work as transition between levels 3 and 4 was regarded as too great a jump for graduates of the VET system at level 3. Soon after the system was implemented, it was necessary to create a level 3+, in between levels 3 and 4, to accommodate VET graduates. For all the reasons given above, the existence of a qualifications framework may help more adequately—and therefore more effectively—in linking the VET system and the labour market. In addition, some feedback can be organized so that pieces of information about what employers need are brought into the organization of the VET system. For the same reasons, it will also bring more and better benefits to the VET graduates and may end up in more people choosing this path.

9 Concluding Remarks Research needs to be carried out into the impact of qualifications frameworks on the infrastructure of VET. More work remains to be done also to link the levels in the framework to the labour market issues or occupations (OECD, 2004). Qualifications frameworks make explicit the relationship between qualifications. They aim at increasing transparency and showing potential progression routes; they can become the basis of credit transfer systems. They are overarching tools that can be used to engage all stakeholders in developing and co-ordinating the qualifications system. Often they are used as tools for regulation, financing and quality assurance.

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At the same time, a qualifications framework can open up opportunities to potential learners, because it makes progression routes clear and can offer the opportunity to rationalize qualifications by reducing the overlap between them. In all of these ways, frameworks create an environment where the whole qualifications system can be reviewed. This means that the management of the qualifications framework can be used as a tool to enhance many policy responses that countries are adopting to react to the lifelong learning agenda, of which VET is a very important component— rather decisive when it comes to global economic performance and coping with emerging issues.

Notes 1. <ec.europa.eu/education/policies/educ/eqf/index en.html> 2. A meta-qualifications framework is a classification system for levels of qualification where the criteria for levels are written in a highly generalized form. This enables the meta-framework to relate to all more specific (national or sectoral) qualifications frameworks. The EQF is thus a meta-framework that will act as a translation device between different national qualifications systems. As a meta-framework the EQF does not take over any of the established roles of national systems. 3. <www.cedefop.europa.eu/>

References Bjørn˚avold, J.; Coles, M. 2006. The development of qualifications frameworks in European countries. (Paper presented to the European Commission Conference on the European Qualifications Framework, Budapest, 27–28 February 2006.) Bouder, A. 2003. Qualifications in France: towards a national framework? Journal of education and work, vol. 16, no. 3, September. Coles, M. 2006. A review of international and national developments in the use of qualifications frameworks. Turin, Italy: European Training Foundation. CEDEFOP. 2001. European structures of qualification levels, vols 1, 2 and 3. Thessaloniki, Greece: CEDEFOP. European Commission. 2004. The future priorities of enhanced European cooperation in vocational education and training (VET). Brussels: European Commission. (The Maastricht Communiqué.) Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2004. The development and use of ‘qualifications frameworks’ as a means of reforming and managing qualifications systems. In: Mernagh, E.; Murphy, A.; Simota, T., eds. Final report of the Thematic Group 1 of the OECD activity on The Role of National Qualifications Systems in Promoting Lifelong Learning. Paris: OECD. <www.oecd.org/edu/lifelonglearning/nqs> Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2007. Qualifications systems: bridges to lifelong learning. Paris: OECD.

Chapter III.7

Reforming Skills Development, Transforming the Nation: South African Vocational Education and Training Reforms, 1994–2005 Simon McGrath

1 Introduction In an era where vocational education and training (VET) reform is common, South Africa provides one of the most striking national case studies of the complex interplay between international discourses of both economic change and VET reform, and historical and contemporary forces at the national level. Moreover, the twin imperative of economic and social focus for VET is made particularly complex and challenging by the legacy of apartheid. In particular, the new, democratic South Africa has been faced with abnormally high levels of inequality and unemployment, and the pressing need to break down racial inequities in education, skills and work. In this chapter I will consider first some of the detail of the apartheid legacy in skills development before turning to a consideration of policy developments since 1994. I will finish with an analysis of key tensions that continue to play at the heart of South African VET policy.

2 South African VET before 19941 Internationally, skills development systems tend to reflect and reinforce broader domestic power dynamics. This is particularly apparent in terms of class and gender, which are powerful organizing principles for access to particular programmes and for the resourcing and status of such programmes. Since the beginnings of formal vocational education and training in South Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century, these forces have been powerfully overlaid with the effects of race, and, to a lesser extent, supporting dynamics of migration and ethnicity. In its early involvement with the Industrial Revolution, during the late nineteenth century, South Africa obtained skilled labour largely from the United Kingdom, as immigrant miners and other artisans came into the country. As a formal vocational education and training system began to emerge, it was largely English- rather R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 III.7, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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than Afrikaner-dominated, reflecting the continued industrial predominance of the English-speaking community. Whilst this reliance on imported skilled labour declined (though never disappeared) during the twentieth century, the South African system of skills formation became increasingly distorted by the political economy of race. For most of that century, there was a legally enshrined bifurcation of work and skill (and, of course, income, residency, enfranchisement, etc.) between white and black.2 White workers were skilled by the colour of their skin, whilst blacks remained largely incapable of skilled status until 1981, regardless of their levels of knowledge and experience. This bifurcation had massive implications for the system of skills development. White workers were socialized into a powerful vision of their right to be either a labour aristocracy or professionals. Over time, growing prosperity led to a strong upward shift of white employment into service and professional activities, but there was no mechanism to allow public VET institutions or trades to respond by inducting a new wave of black artisans prior to the 1980s. African workers were treated as eternally unskilled. Moreover, their official status as migrants, either from neighbouring countries or from the system of homelands within South Africa, encouraged the sense of them as interchangeable, homogenized labour. Thus, there was no real impetus towards VET for Africans as participants in a modern industrial economy. Instead, VET for Africans was seen as a blend of ‘appropriate’ education for those deemed incapable of benefiting from an academic schooling and equally low-level practical skills development for local needs in the homelands. By the 1970s, this model was beginning to fall apart. Even under a system of import substitution, many employers were becoming increasingly concerned that technological change at the international level required South Africa to upskill. The early 1970s also saw the beginning of a new and persistent wave of African tradeunion activism and a growing worker drive for skills upgrading as part of a move for higher wages and better conditions. To this mix was added a serious drain on white skill through the increasingly hot war South Africa was fighting with many of its neighbours, and the apparently urgent need for a new political approach after the bloody response to student protests in Soweto in 1976. All of this led the apartheid regime to attempt to reform VET as a key strand of its search for a workable strategy that could maintain and entrench white power. In 1979, the Wiehahn Commission began developing a new approach to training that would lead to Africans being indentured as apprentices (Wiehahn, 1981). The following year, the de Lange Commission sought to propose a new education system that would go some distance towards de-racialization of education, but which saw the most appropriate route for African learners as lying in vocational education (Human Sciences Research Council, 1981). It quickly became apparent that a new bifurcation between the approaches to skills in the workplace and in schools and colleges was being enacted. Although with much contestation and taking more than a decade to come to real fruition, there was a fumbling towards a new consensus between elements of capital and

III.7 South African Vocational Education and Training Reforms, 1994–2005

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labour about the needs for a de-racialized model of skill that would improve productivity, efficiency and competitiveness, on the one hand, and pay and conditions, on the other. This model would necessarily be largely built on the capabilities of black South Africans. Thus, both employers and unions began to focus strongly on the upskilling of the already employed, addressing the functional competencies necessary for performing existing jobs and beginning to develop a way of looking at career paths for these workers as they became more skilled. Reforms in education were harder to push forward, particularly where they appeared to threaten the segregation of facilities and undermine white privilege. Thus, what happened in practice was the growth of separate VET facilities for different racial groups, although whites-only facilities still remained in the majority and were far better resourced. Moreover, the quality and relevance of public VET was undermined by the growing delinking of colleges from employers. As in the United Kingdom, technical colleges had emerged as a means of providing part-time theoretical training for those who were already employed as apprentices. However, by the start of the 1990s, the apprenticeship system was in decline, whilst the new black colleges were often situated far from industrial centres and lacking in links to employers. Thus, by the early 1990s, there was a relatively powerful coalition for change in workplace skills development, but colleges lacked champions. Never linked to non-racialized trade unionism, they were increasingly seen as an irrelevance by employers. Moreover, the low status of colleges within the education system and their limited political significance meant that the State had little real passion for driving radical change in the sector. On assuming power in 1994, the incoming government was faced with a divided and divergent system that was in radical need of overhaul in order to respond to a triple challenge: (a) racial integration was a socio-political imperative; (b) the legacy of apartheid also meant that there was a pressing need to respond to poverty and inequality; and (c) the global environment into which the new South Africa was entering meant that VET also needed to provide part of an economic response to rapid liberalization and insertion into the global economy.

3 Policy Responses, 1994–2005 African National Congress (ANC) policy on education and training at the time of the 1994 elections called for an integrative response to the legacy of the past. The de-racialization of institutions and systems was an indisputable part of the ANC vision. However, the integrative notion was taken further to include a commitment to an Integrated Department of Education and Labour and a National Qualifications Framework (NQF). Both were seen as essential to ensuring that the progress that had been made by the trade-union movement in the field of training would be carried over into the education system and to expanding the training vision itself to make it more oriented towards developing citizens and not just workers.

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However, due to higher strategic considerations related to the composition of a new Government of National Unity, it was decided to keep the two departments separate. This was unanticipated by ANC education and training officials. However, the notion of the NQF still remained and would have to assume greater responsibility as the glue that would stick together the policies of the two departments (Badroodien & McGrath, 2005).

3.1 The National Qualifications Framework The importance of this role for the NQF was given further symbolic weight when the South African Qualifications Authority Act (Republic of South Africa, 1995) became the first new piece of legislation to emerge in the post-apartheid period. This set up a South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) to oversee the translation of all qualifications into awards according to a new NQF. SAQA was to report to both ministers, although it was seen as primarily under the authority of the Minister of Education, one of the first fault lines to emerge in the new system. SAQA was to have a relatively small staff that would work with and oversee a large number of (largely) new standard-setting and quality-assurance bodies. It was to be governed by a council representing a wide range of relevant stakeholders. Through this mechanism, and stakeholder membership of the range of new committees, it was intended that the system would become far more responsive to demand (McGrath, 1996; Kraak & Young, 2001; Allais, 2003). Table 1 shows what the NQF looked like. Table 1 The National Qualifications Framework NQF level

Sector

Qualification type

8 7 6 5

Higher education and training (HET)

Post-doctoral research degrees Doctorates Masters degrees Professional qualifications Honours degrees National first degrees Higher diplomas National diplomas National certificates

Further Education and Training Certificate (FETC) 4 3 2

Further education and training (FET)

National certificates (the level 4 certificates would be the terminal qualifications of both schools and colleges)

General Education and Training Certificate (GETC) 1

General education and training (GET) Grade 9/Adult Basic Education and Training Level 4 National certificates


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3.2 The Department of Education’s Policies3 3.2.1 The Further Education and Training Act, 1998 Beginning in 1996, the Department of Education embarked on a process leading to a new act governing public and private colleges, now designated as further education and training (FET) colleges, in line with the NQF structure. The Further Education and Training Act (Republic of South Africa, 1998a) sought to find a balance between an emphasis on the economic importance of FET and the social, cultural and humanistic elements. It sought to address boundary issues between FET colleges and universities by proposing a joint committee to examine these issues involving the Council for Higher Education and the National Board for Further Education and Training. Colleges had long been involved in programmes that were now defined as higher education by the NQF, which, typically, provided education below the university level. Nonetheless, the White Paper was very clear about its opposition to ‘mission drift’ and the need for FET institutions to focus primarily on their ‘core business’ of FET provision. The relationship with schools remained difficult for the White Paper to address. However, in its conceptualization of the implementation trajectory for the new policy, it went into far more detail about an integrated vision of the FET level than had previously been attempted. It suggested a phased approach spreading out from colleges eventually to encompass the whole FET sector. It was stated that, by the end of the third year after the adoption of the act, a framework for incorporating senior secondary schools into the FET system would have been developed. By the end of the fourth year, a decision on the future of senior secondary schooling would have been taken and, from the fifth year, incorporation, if agreed upon, would begin. Regarding linkages with the Department of Labour’s programmes, it was clearly stated that steps should be taken ‘to fast-track the introduction of learnerships in FET colleges’ (Republic of South Africa, 1998a, p. 26). The act also introduced procedures for the establishment of the new colleges, focusing particularly on the legislative process leading to mergers of existing institutions. It set out new governance and financial arrangements; and stressed the role of quality assurance. It also considered the place of private providers.

3.2.2 The National Strategy for Further Education and Training, 1999 Once the FET Act was passed, the FET Branch of the Department of Education turned its attention to a strategy for its implementation. This was completed in 1999 (Department of Education, 1999). Central to this process was a set of proposals about funding. It argued that a new funding system should be introduced over time. This should include a core of programme-based funding with additional specialpurpose funding. The programme-based element should itself be largely based on the notion of full-time equivalents (FTEs), but it was recommended that there should also be an outcomes-related component to encourage efficiency. It was envisaged that special-purpose funding should be directed at the development of management,

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staff and learner-support systems, and for the development of new learning support materials. It was recommended that fees would be progressive, but it was made clear that there would be no public funds for student financial aid, unlike higher education. It was strongly expected that FET institutions would have access to significant amounts of funding out of the new levy system established by the Department of Labour (see below).

3.2.3 The New Institutional Landscape, 2001 It was clear to the Department of Education throughout this process that the current number of colleges, and the disparities between them, were untenable. In 2001 the department published its strategy for responding to this challenge after a series of provincial analyses, overseen by a national task team. A new institutional landscape for public further education and training colleges (Department of Education, 2001) envisaged a series of fifty large institutions grounded on nine attributes:

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large, multi-site institutions; increased autonomy; a mixture of specialization and multi-purpose institutions; a new quality-assurance framework; an increased focus on open and distance learning; a greater focus on access for learners with special needs; better articulation and collaboration with higher education; a commitment to improved student support services; and a stress on partnerships with government and the private sector (Department of Education, 2001, pp. 16–20)

The report reinforced the requirement for the staffing of colleges to be more representative. It reiterated the need for curricular reform and for a wider range of programme offerings, supported by a new funding mechanism. It envisaged a transition over time in the degree of autonomy as colleges developed sufficient capacity to manage themselves, and stressed the need for a capacity development effort to support such a growth in powers.

3.2.4 Overviewing FET Policy Development and Implementation Important elements of the FET policy recommendations of the last decade have been realized in a set of practices, including the transformation of the institutional landscape through the merger process. However, it is striking that a number of policy recommendations remain at best partially acted upon. These include the areas of finance, curriculum, articulation (with schools, higher education and skills development) and addressing both social and economic needs.


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3.3 The Department of Labour’s Skills Development Strategy4 Meanwhile, in 1997 the Department of Labour published the Green Paper on a skills development strategy (Department of Labour, 1997). This has formed the basis for subsequent skills policies. The Green Paper called for: (a) a levy-grant system aimed at increasing the investment and involvement of employers in the training of their workforce; (b) new sector education and training authorities; and (c) the introduction of learnerships (the model to succeed and extend the apprenticeship system). These recommendations led to the Skills Development Act (Republic of South Africa, 1998b) and the Skills Development Levies Act (Republic of South Africa, 1999a). 3.3.1 Skills Development Act, 1998 The act created a new institutional framework for skills development in which there is a high level of co-ordination at the national level (via the National Skills Authority—NSA) and at a sectoral level (via the twenty-five Sector Education and Training Authorities—SETAs).5 The new SETAs’ role includes the evaluation of workplace skills plans (WSPs) and the development of sector skills plans; developing and registering learnerships; quality assuring training provision; and managing and administering the grants received through the training levy (legislated by the Skills Development Levies Act). At the national level, the NSA is responsible for developing a macro-skills development policy for the Minister of Labour on a fouryearly cycle. At the programme core of the new system is the new notion of learnership. Learnerships are legislated by the Skills Development Act to include complex contractual agreements for a fixed period between the learner, the provider and the employer. The contractual agreement provides a framework for formalizing the relationship between these three parties in carrying out the qualification. Beyond the formality of the agreement, this relationship requires high levels of co-operation to ensure the smooth planning and operation of the learnership. Learnerships are located at the core of the Department of Labour’s macro-strategy for skills development. They are intended to move beyond the narrow confines of conventional apprenticeships and seek to build learners from disparate levels of prior learning to a situation of competence necessary for meaningful social and economic participation. This requires high levels of investment of resources to provide sufficient support to learners, both within the theory provider and within the workplace (Akoojee, Gewer & McGrath, 2005a). Learnerships are not just for those who are already employed. There is also a strong commitment to learnerships for the pre- or unemployed. In this model, the employer commits to a period of employment during the time-span of the learnership, but not to subsequent employment. In addition to establishing the legal framework for learnerships, the Skills Development Act also made provision for the development of skills programmes, which

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would comprise an occupationally-directed learning programme leading to a credit towards a qualification rather than a full qualification. The purpose of the skills programmes is to allow learners access to short programmes that could be combined towards a complete qualification, thus allowing more flexibility and mobility.

3.3.2 The Skills Development Levies Act, 1999 The funding regime for this radical new approach was legislated in the Skills Development Levies Act (Republic of South Africa, 1999a). Beyond a certain size, all enterprises were required to pay 1% of payroll (0.5% in the first year) as a skills development levy. Some 80% of these funds would flow through the South African Revenue Service to the relevant SETA. A range of criteria were developed governing how enterprises could claim back the majority of these funds through evidence of training activities linked to their WSPs. The remaining 20% of the total levy income was set aside for strategic and developmental interventions, including a specific focus on skills development for small, medium and micro-enterprises. These moneys are managed by the National Skills Fund, located within the Department of Labour. 3.3.3 The National Skills Development Strategy, 2001 and 2005 In the National Skills Development Strategy of 2001, the Department of Labour set twelve targets for the skills-development system, with three cross-cutting equity targets, to be met by March 2005 (Department of Labour, 2001). Most of the indicators have been reached, and it is clear that the department has achieved much in its attempted skills revolution (McGrath & Paterson, 2006). However, there are still concerns about the performance of the system in terms of equity and broader impact. A new National Skills Development Strategy was launched in March 2005, which largely seeks to continue along the path of the first strategy (Department of Labour, 2005).

3.4 The Human Resources Development Strategy, 2001 As a further way of building intra-departmental coherence between education and labour, in 2001 the two departments jointly produced a Human Resources Development Strategy—HRDS (Department of Education/Department of Labour, 2001) (Fig. 1). The first element of the Human Resources Development Strategy, ‘building the base’, is concerned with early-childhood development, which is the responsibility of various departments, most obviously those concerned with health and education. The second element, the ‘supply side’, is seen largely as the role of the Department


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4. GROWING THE FUTURE National capacity for Innovation, Research and Development

2. SUPPLY SIDE Improving the supply of high-quality skills

5. HRD STRATEGY Enhancing the linkages between the other four strategic objectives

3. DEMAND SIDE Increasing employer participation in lifelong learning

1. BUILDING THE BASE Improving the foundations for human development

Fig. 1 Visualizing the Human Resources Development Strategy Source: Department of Education/Department of Labour, 2001.

of Education, albeit with the involvement of other departments, most notably those concerned with labour and (at the higher education level) science and technology. The third element, ‘demand side’, is primarily the responsibility of the Department of Labour, although here the work of trade and industry in encouraging a high-skills approach is particularly relevant. The fourth element, ‘growing the future’, is an overlapping responsibility of the Departments of Education, Science and Technology and Trade and Industry in particular. The strategy itself and the continued enhancement of linkages between the other elements of the approach is driven by the Departments of Education and Labour, who jointly own the HRDS and who jointly convene the national Human Resources Development Co-ordinating Committee.

4 Analysing the Policy Transformation Process and the Remaining Tensions In the second half of this chapter I will consider the dynamics inherent in the policy process outlined above and the tensions that remain unresolved. I will do so under three headings. First, I will consider the ways in which the principles of coherence and integration have been interpreted in the development of a new South African approach to education and training. Second, I will explore how tensions in this regard relate to other unresolved issues regarding the nature of responsiveness. Third, I will deepen this discussion by shifting into an examination of the way that the institutional logics of departments and conflicting visions of responsiveness relate to differing and inconsistent models of the relative roles of the State, market and people in the decision-making process.

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4.1 Coherence Earlier in this chapter I recounted how the original ANC plan to have an integrated Department of Education and Labour had been abandoned. Of course, SAQA and the NQF were supposed to be the mechanisms for ensuring a common vision between education and training. However, it quickly became apparent that the two departments’ institutional logics, and the ways that these intersected with overall government policy, meant that there was a complex set of forces preventing integration. At times, the two departments appeared to have genuine common visions and interests and be pulling together. However, there were clear examples from early in the process that their different interests could also serve to pull the system apart (McGrath, 1996; Akoojee, Gewer & McGrath, 2005a; Badroodien & McGrath, 2005). As in many other national contexts, Department of Education officials tended to stress the educational and social aspects of VET’s role and to downplay the economic ones. Equally typically, Department of Labour officials, on the other hand, tended to focus on what could be agreed upon by employers and trade unions and showed a willingness to dilute educational considerations when these appeared to get in the way of agreement on training reforms. In spite of a range of working groups and public protestations about collaboration between the two departments, it remained clear that there was little real agreement between them beneath the most general level when it came to the rules of the new game. Thus, learnerships began to develop largely with private providers whilst college qualifications were still predominantly education/supply-led. Education has not yet managed to really access any of the funding ‘owned’ by labour; whilst labour lacks the set of provider institutions ‘owned’ by education. The limits of coherence were also made apparent by the process of reviewing the NQF and SAQA, which began in 2001. Responding to an independent review of the system (Department of Education/Department of Labour, 2002), the two departments spent eighteen months in arriving at a workable compromise (Department of Education/Department of Labour, 2003), which essentially allowed the two departments to strengthen control of ‘their’ segments of the system, whilst maintaining a weakened SAQA as a largely symbolic point of articulation between the different parts (Akoojee, Gewer & McGrath, 2005a). After a consultation period ending in October 2003, which resulted in widespread external criticism of the compromise, the two departments continued to seek a revised model that could satisfy everyone. However, this has still not been achieved at the time of writing—more than two years later. In the meantime, SAQA is left weakened by inadequate funding and uncertainty about its future, and is not in a position to drive integration without serious departmental and ministerial support.

4.2 Responsiveness All education is supposed to be responsive to broader individual, community and societal needs. Moreover, it is argued that this is particularly true for VET. Recent international work on VET systems has shown, however, that there are multiple


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versions of responsiveness to which these systems are supposed to react (Ashton & Green, 1996; Crouch, Finegold & Sako, 1999; Brown, Green & Lauder, 2001; King & McGrath, 2002; Wolf, 2002; Cosser et al., 2003; Akoojee, Gewer & McGrath, 2005b). The experience of South African VET since 1994 highlights a set of tensions regarding responsiveness. In the public FET college system, it is apparent that there are internal tensions within the Department of Education’s position regarding their responsiveness. The FET Act sought to make it clear that social responsiveness and a focus on equity and redress were more important than a focus on preparation for the economy. However, the HRDS, jointly developed with the Department of Labour, places emphasis on the need for colleges to respond to shortages in certain areas of skills. The latter argument is clearly the dominant one in the government’s most recent Programme of Action (Republic of South Africa, 2004). Moreover, the Department of Education’s own practices appear to go beyond the language of its policies in stressing the primacy of economic factors. Although the New institutional landscape (2001) reflected the department’s vision for the sector, its implementation came to be dominated by the funding and technical support given by the corporate sector through the National Business Initiative. Thus, the key support given to colleges in the vital period of mergers was from a highly market-oriented think tank, which stressed the need for colleges to become more efficient and focused on business partnerships. Moreover, this process was given significant support by a series of initiatives from the British Council, which resulted in a strong influence at the institutional level from a managerial reading of the reforms that the British college system had undergone since 1992. To use Argyris and Schön’s (1978) useful concepts, it appeared in the early part of the current decade that the Department of Education’s theory-in-use of responsiveness was at some variance from its espoused theory. I have argued elsewhere (McGrath, 2000, 2005a, 2005b) that the Department of Education has a very weak view of what economic responsiveness really means. Whilst the HRDS stressed the importance of targeting older learners who were already employed and of focusing on scarce skills, FET policy appears to be more concerned in practice with the ‘problem’ of what to do with those 14–19-year-olds who are not deemed suitable for higher education. This has led the department to plan to expand the size of the system massively and, at the same time, to reduce the target-learner age-group. Moreover, the department has proved very reluctant to address the challenge of the informal economy. In spite of approximately one-third of the economicallyactive population being engaged in informal work (International Labour Office, 2002), it is difficult to find anything but the most passing mention of the need to support skills development for the informal economy in departmental policies. At the level of practice, there are examples of colleges that are trying to develop localized and nuanced readings of the challenge of responsiveness. However, there is also evidence that many colleges are developing strategies that threaten to undermine access and educational worth in the search for economic advantage. The Department of Labour too has faced problems in trying to develop its own account of responsiveness. Although emerging largely out of compromise between

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organized business and the trade unions, the department’s policy attempts to balance a focus on economic growth and competitiveness with a concern for social inclusion and redress. Some sense of the tensions that the department has been trying to manage can be seen in the subtitle of the first National Skills Development Strategy: ‘Productive citizenship for all’ (Department of Labour, 2001) and in the vision statement for the second strategy: ‘Skills for sustainable growth, development and equity’ (Department of Labour, 2005). In spite of its stated concern to balance these different considerations, the department has been criticized for its failure to do enough to support the skills development needs of the smallest and most informal enterprises (King, 1998; King & McGrath, 2002; McGrath, 2005a, 2005b) and for its performance on supporting equity (Badroodien, 2003; McGrath & Paterson, 2006). Although responsiveness has been seen as a vital part of the new system, it appears that the notion remains too vague and inconsistent to be of much practical use. In the FET sector, the vacuum created by State vagueness in this area has led to the major practical influence of the views of business and the alleged example of the British college sector. In skills development, some progress has been made in broadening access, but the system remains hugely shaped by the particular dynamics of various industrial sectors (McGrath & Paterson, 2006).

4.3 State, Markets and People Internationally, VET systems have been encouraged to move away from State control and towards responsiveness both to market forces and to the wishes of local people. In developing countries, both of these dynamics have been heavily driven by international development co-operation agencies. In response to and largely driven by the policies of international co-operation agencies, VET systems have adopted new modes of governance, including national training agencies and institutional governing bodies (Johanson & Adams, 2004; Akoojee, Gewer & McGrath, 2005b; McGrath, forthcoming). Examples of this can be seen in South Africa in new public FET college councils and in the establishment of SAQA and the National Skills Authority. However, it is important to ask whether a set of global policy certainties necessarily work in the ways intended in a context as unique as that of South Africa. The case of FET college reform in South Africa provides little support for the argument that decentralization of policy, governance and management necessarily brings about meaningful and sustainable benefits. Rather, the South African case may be one in which the ability of a legitimate State to effect necessary social change has been undermined by a diffusion of power and capacity across nine provinces and, increasingly, fifty institutions. The national department has taken the view that institutional autonomy can only be developed over time and cannot simply be granted on grounds of ideology. This is an important point to bear in mind in other national contexts. However, the South


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African case also emphasizes the need to be consistent both in public statements and in developmental activities in supporting the eventual development of institutional capacities if this is indeed a policy goal. The South African college sector also provides an important lesson in terms of the need to approach public-sector reform as a particular area of expertise distinct from private sector management. In spite of the Public Finance Management Act (Republic of South Africa, 1999b) and the attempts to adapt the King principles for corporate governance for the public sector (McGrath, forthcoming), there has been too little practical support to the college sector regarding what good governance means for a public institution. Instead, there has been too much advice given by large international management consultancy firms, lacking a real grounding in public sector issues. Work on school democracy in South Africa (e.g. Sayed, 1999; Karlsson, 2002; Bush & Heystek, 2003) has shown that local-level democracy does not simply come into existence because it is legislated for. Although there was a degree of genuine democratization of decisions about schooling, there have been three difficulties that are likely to affect colleges too. First, more equitable access to membership of governance structures does not mean that old and new power imbalances in society are overthrown. Second, it also does not mean that the new governors are receiving support to develop the necessary tools for good governance. Third, as Karlsson (2002) notes, school governance reform has ‘over-reached’ in terms of what was expected of governing bodies. There are also grounds for caution in judging the impact of stakeholderism at the national level. The National Board for Further Education and Training has been almost entirely ineffectual. The SAQA Council has not proved a sufficiently robust and influential body to ensure that the National Skills Authority itself has had the resources to do its job and sufficient autonomy from ministerial interference. Finally, the National Skills Authority has struggled to develop capacity, to get beyond the sectional interests of its stakeholders and to construct a working relationship with the department’s officials. The role of the market in the reformed system is also less than clear. Whilst there has been a language of responsiveness and the favouring of a demand-led approach, it is clear that the South African State takes a rather sceptical view of the primacy of the market, both in the skills field and more generally. As regards skills, the State takes a strong view of the need to overcome the market’s failure to produce the right quantity and quality of skills for the right people. Essentially, it has been attempting an institutional approach to transforming the market for skills in terms of both equity and effectiveness. This view is mirrored at the overall policy level by the increasing tendency of the State to espouse developmentalist positions that seek to intervene strategically in bringing about better outcomes than would happen if left to the market alone (Southall, 2005). There are grounds for questioning the consistency and detail of the State’s vision, but there is fairly widespread acceptance in South Africa that the market cannot be left to decide on skills or on policy areas more generally. However, the greatest

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concern about a more development approach concerns the State’s capacity to deliver on its aspirations (Southall, 2005; Paterson, 2005).

5 Conclusion It is easy to argue from today’s vantage point that the first decade of VET in democratic South Africa saw far too much change, delivered at a pace that outstripped the capacity of new officials and institutions to adapt to a hugely ambitious vision. However, such an argument fails to acknowledge the massive and multiple pressures that there were at the outset for a transformation that was both radical and rapid. What is clear is that the transformation has proved far more complex than was realized at the point of departure. Developing new institutions, creating a workable NQF, transforming funding and delivering new programmes have all been attempted at the same time as expanding the system and radically reforming access. Inevitably, too, South Africa has found itself faced with many of the tensions that affect VET systems globally, most particularly the difficulty of balancing social and economic imperatives and of ensuring that the Departments of Education and Labour work together effectively. There have been many successes along the way, but the greatest challenge in the second decade may be in managing a review process that: (a) allows the key successes to continue; (b) identifies the elements of the system that need radical overhaul or abandonment; and (c) which combines honest self-reflection with maintenance of public support for the system. If such a process can be successfully negotiated, then the South African skill revolution may reach a truly successful conclusion.

Notes 1. A more detailed discussion of this history can be found in McGrath et al., 2004. 2. I follow the official South African practice of using racial classifications as a means of understanding how the effects of race continue to shape people’s lives without subscribing to any view of the essential nature of racial classifications. In keeping with South African practice, I use ‘black’ as a collective term to refer to African, Indian and coloured people. 3. This sub-section on FET policy draws extensively on my previous writings, especially McGrath, 2000, 2004 and Forthcoming. 4. This section draws on King & McGrath, 2002; McGrath, 2005a and Forthcoming, as well as Kraak, 2004a and 2004b. 5. The list of SETAs is under revision at the time of writing, with some mergers identified and other changes under consideration.

References Akoojee, S.; Gewer, A.; McGrath, S. 2005a. South Africa: the unfinished revolution in intermediate skills development. In: Akoojee, S.; Gewer, A.; McGrath, S., eds. Vocational education and training in Southern Africa. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press.


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Akoojee, S.; Gewer, A.; McGrath, S., eds. 2005b. Vocational education and training in Southern Africa. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press. Allais, M. 2003. The National Qualifications Framework in South Africa: a democratic project trapped in a neo-liberal paradigm? Journal of education and work, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 309–23. Argyris, C.; Schön, D. 1978. Organisational learning. London: Addison-Wesley. Ashton, D.; Green, F. 1996. Education, training and the global economy. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Badroodien, A. 2003. Enterprise training. In: Human Sciences Research Council, ed. Human resources development review, 2003. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press. Badroodien, A.; McGrath, S. 2005. International influences on the evolution of South Africa’s National Skills Development Strategy, 1989–2004. Eschborn, Germany: GTZ. Brown, P.; Green, A.; Lauder, H. 2001. High skills. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Bush, T.; Heystek, J. 2003. School governance in the new South Africa. Compare, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 127–38. Cosser, M. et al., eds. 2003. Technical college responsiveness. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press. Crouch, C.; Finegold, D.; Sako, M. 1999. Are skills the answer? Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Department of Education. 1999. National Strategy for Further Education and Training. Pretoria: Government Printer. Department of Education. 2001. A new institutional landscape for public further education and training colleges. Pretoria: Government Printer. Department of Education/Department of Labour. 2001. Human Resources Development Strategy for South Africa. Pretoria: Government Printer. Department of Education/Department of Labour. 2002. The report of the Study Team on the Implementation of the National Qualifications Framework. Pretoria: Government Printer. Department of Education/Department of Labour. 2003. An interdependent qualification framework system. Pretoria: Government Printer. Department of Labour. 1997. Green Paper on a skills development strategy for economic and employment growth in South Africa. Pretoria: Government Printer. Department of Labour. 2001. National Skills Development Strategy, 2001-2005. Pretoria: Department of Labour. Department of Labour. 2005. National Skills Development Strategy, 2005–2010. Pretoria: Department of Labour. Human Sciences Research Council. 1981. Report of the main committee of the HSRC investigation into education. Pretoria: HSRC. (The de Lange Report.) International Labour Office. 2002. Women and men in the informal economy. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Johanson, R.; Adams, A.V. 2004. Skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. Karlsson, J. 2002. The role of democratic governing bodies in South African schools. Comparative education, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 327–36. King, K. 1998. Policy coherence in education, training and enterprise development in South Africa. In: Morrow, W.; King, K., eds. Vision and reality. Cape Town, South Africa: University of Cape Town Press. King, K.; McGrath, S. 2002. Globalisation, enterprise and knowledge. Oxford, UK: Symposium. Kraak, A. 2004a. The National Skills Development Strategy: a new institutional regime for skills formation in post-apartheid South Africa. In: McGrath, S. et al., eds. Shifting understandings of skill: moving beyond low skills in post-apartheid South Africa. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press. Kraak, A. 2004b. Rethinking the high skills thesis in South Africa. In: McGrath, S. et al., eds. Shifting understandings of skill: moving beyond low skills in post-apartheid South Africa. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press. Kraak, A.; Young, M., eds. 2001. Education in transition. Pretoria: HSRC.

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McGrath, S. 1996. Learning to work: changing discourses on South African education and training, 1976–96. Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh. [Unpublished Ph.D. thesis.] McGrath, S. 2000. Coming in from the cold: further education and training in South Africa. Compare, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 65–84. McGrath, S. 2004. Reviewing the development of the South African further education and training college sector ten years after the end of apartheid. Journal of vocational education and training, vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 133–53. McGrath, S. 2005a. ‘Skills for productive citizenship for all’: the place of skills development for micro and small enterprises in South Africa. Journal of education and work, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 111–24. McGrath, S., ed. 2005b. Skills development in South African very small and micro enterprises. Pretoria: Department of Labour; Cape Town: HSRC Press. McGrath, S. Forthcoming. Transforming the governance of South African public further education and training colleges. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. McGrath, S.; Paterson, A. 2006. Enterprise training. In: Human Sciences Research Council, ed. Human resources development review, 2006. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press. McGrath, S. et al., eds. 2004. Shifting understandings of skill: moving beyond low skills in postapartheid South Africa. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press. Paterson, A. 2005. Public sector training: a ‘blind’ spot in the 1998 South African national levy-grant policy. Journal of vocational education and training, vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 519–36. Republic of South Africa. 1995. South African Qualifications Authority Act. Pretoria: Government Printer. Republic of South Africa. 1998a. Further Education and Training Act. Pretoria: Government Printer. Republic of South Africa. 1998b. Skills Development Act. Pretoria: Government Printer. Republic of South Africa. 1999a. Skills Development Levies Act. Pretoria: Government Printer. Republic of South Africa. 1999b. Public Finance Management Act. Pretoria: Government Printer. Republic of South Africa. 2004. Programme of Action. Pretoria: Government Printer. Sayed, Y. 1999. Discourses of the policy of educational decentralization in South Africa since 1994: an examination of the South African Schools Act. Compare, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 141–52. Southall, R. 2005. Introduction: can South Africa be a developmental state? In: Buhlungu, S. et al., eds. State of the nation, 2005-2006. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press. Wiehahn, N. 1981. The complete Wiehahn Report. Johannesburg, South Africa: Lex Patria. Wolf, A. 2002. Does education matter? London: Penguin.

Chapter III.8

Reform of Vocational Education in the Russian Federation Olga Oleynikova and Anna Muravyeva

1 Background The reform processes for Russian vocational education and training (VET) started in the early 1990s when the former USSR split into independent states, and the Russian Federation became a nation consisting of eighty-nine regions, each with a considerable degree of autonomy. In the field of education this autonomy was reflected by the rapid adoption of regional legislation on education, even if based on the Federal Law on Education. The Federal Law on Education reflects the provisions of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, laying down in Article 42 universal access to free-of-charge pre-school, general and vocational education. The same Article (paragraph 5) also stipulates that national education standards are set by the Federal State. In Section II, Article 9, vocational education and training is subdivided into two levels—initial and secondary VET.1 Access to both levels of VET is open for general secondary (nine-year compulsory education) and complete or full secondary school-leavers (eleven years). For school-leavers who do not possess a full general secondary education certificate, vocational curricula at both levels are supplemented by a curriculum of complete general secondary education. Thus, in principle both levels of VET provide open access to higher education (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education, 1996) VET, and especially initial VET, has always played a two-fold role, namely that of preparation for work and of providing some kind of a social security net for children from disadvantaged families (as of now, about 70% of initial VET students come from low-income and single-parent families) (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education and Science, 2005). The social support role of VET that goes back to the Soviet days has, obviously, been transformed by the new market economy conditions, although VET has tended to retain this important social function. However, it has clearly been weakened by insufficient financial support for education from the State. In Russia the share of GDP spent on education amounts to only 3.6% (as against France 5.8% and Germany 4.5%) (National Observatory for VET, 2003). Tensions between the qualifying role and the social protection role of vocational education and training institutions remain one of the big challenges yet to be overcome. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 III.8, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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2 Processes of VET Reform and Modernization 2.1 The Initial Years of Transition VET reform in Russia has passed through two stages: an initial one that can be broadly termed liberalization lasted until 2002, when it was followed up by attempts to introduce modernization. Modernization has been accompanied by a structural change in the organization of the VET system (National Observatory for VET, 2004). During the administrative reform of the federal and regional governing bodies in 2004, the Ministry of Education, responsible for vocational education, was transformed into the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. This ministry is in charge of both VET segments, as well as of the system of so-called supplementary education, which is in fact a prototype of what is usually referred to as continuing vocational education and training (CVET). Thus, vocational education and training delivered by VET schools, VET centres attached to enterprises and State providers of supplementary education is currently under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education and Science and its two affiliated agencies, namely of the Federal Education Agency and the Federal Inspection Service. Vocational training of the unemployed, however, is the responsibility of the Federal Employment Service. This agency either contracts training courses with VET schools or provides labour-market training at its own training centres. The latter issue their own certificates which are recognized by employers. In initial VET, worker training takes place either directly at enterprises or within the State-run initial VET schools or lyceums. Unfortunately, since 1993 there have been no official figures made available on the in-service training of workers. Secondary VET programmes are available at technicums and colleges (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education, 1999). Within each level of VET differences between types of schools depend on the type of programmes—either basic or advanced—and differ in the content and composition of curricula and qualifications. To fully perceive the scale, scope and problems of the reform and modernization effort in Russia, it is worthwhile bearing in mind that we are talking about a VET system embracing around 3,790 initial VET schools and lyceums (with about 1,649,300 students), 2,600 State-run and municipal secondary VET institutions (with about 2.5 million students), and over 200 private colleges (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education and Science, 2005). These VET institutions are scattered all over the country’s eighty-eight regions2 that differ not only geographically, but also in terms of the level of economic development. Regions are subdivided into ‘donor’ regions, considered to be doing relatively well economically, and ‘recipients’ who benefit from additional equalizing subsidies from the federal government. The overhaul of relations between education and production in the country in the early 1990s resulted in VET schools severing their former links with enterprises. Traditionally, these links included mandatory provision of work-experience placements for VET students, jobs for VET graduates and other forms of support. Given that the only form of ownership of enterprises in Soviet times was State ownership,

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and given the planned character of the national economy at that time, matching demand with supply used to be part of the overall VET administrative system. The introduction of labour markets has also changed this aspect of the system. In the early days of the transition period (accompanied by an economic crisis), the VET reform effort was—besides trying to preserve institutions—directed largely at overcoming the ‘rigidity’ of the system and at liberalizing content and regulations. Hence, the catchwords of those days were diversification of curricular content and increased autonomy of VET schools at all levels. The biggest achievement of this stage was the first generation of VET standards that, for the first time in Russian history, introduced a differentiation between a federal and a regional component. This was meant to provide the regional levels with a certain degree of autonomy that would allow them to address local specificities, including the structure of their labour markets. These VET standards still had to be approved by sector ministries and the Ministry of Labour before their final adoption by the government, but in itself this was a major step forward. During this period private colleges of secondary VET also emerged, and contractbased training was permitted. This opened up an opportunity for VET schools to raise money to supplement the meagre budgets provided by the State and to broaden their services to embrace different target groups of learners—in particular unemployed and employed adults. It is noteworthy that contract-based training has served as ‘litmus paper’ revealing the entrepreneurial spirit of some schools—and its absence in others. Proactive ‘entrepreneurial’ schools managed to re-establish links with enterprises and receive money that they have used for research and development, as well as to support teachers’ salaries. Unfortunately, at the federal level no notice has been taken of this development and of the crucial factors behind it. A proper analysis of the motives, actions and contexts of proactive schools could have resulted in models that would have been beneficial for the whole VET system.

2.2 Revision of Strategies and Priorities With the gradual development of the national economy and under the influence of globalization, the emerging goals of the knowledge-based economy and discussions about European integration, the constraints of the initial reform efforts became obvious and have led to the strategy and priorities being revised. This was reflected in a number of policy documents, including the ‘National Doctrine of Education’ (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education, 2000), the ‘Concept of Modernization of Education in the Russian Federation’ (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education, 2002), and the most recent document ‘Priorities for the Development of Education in the Russian Federation’ (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education, 2004). From then on, VET modernization has addressed the following new issues: (a) development of a new generation of VET standards; (b) establishment of an independent quality assessment and certification system; (c) development of a

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methodology and infrastructure for the identification of the current and future demand for labour; and (d) development of social partnerships in the sphere of VET. These objectives were further specified in 2004 in the ‘Priorities for the Development of Education in the Russian Federation’. This document sets down the strategic goals of the country’s educational development, which include: (a) improvement of the well-being of its citizens; (b) the promotion of social stability, security of the State and its citizens; (c) the development of civil society institutions; (d) the maintenance of the social and cultural integrity and civil identity of Russian society; (e) the provision of a qualified work force for the labour market; and (f) the development of a national innovation system enhancing the competitiveness of the Russian economy (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education, 2002, 2004). For VET the main goals are: (a) the development of an up-to-date system of continuing vocational and higher education; (b) enhancing the quality of VET and higher education; and (c) making the education system more attractive for investors. In order to develop an up-to-date system of continuing vocational education and training, it was deemed necessary to: increase the number of VET providers; to establish a system of external assessment and accreditation of programmes and competences; and to facilitate the academic mobility of students. To enhance the quality of VET it was necessary to restructure the system of initial and secondary VET, to create conditions for the innovation-based development of VET, and to better integrate education and training, research and practice. Finally, in order to make the education system more attractive for private investments it was suggested: to increase the financial autonomy of schools by promoting wider diversity in their organizational and legal status; to reduce investment risks for educational investors by promoting stakeholder involvement in the governance of educational establishments; and to introduce new principles for the financing of VET schools. As of the time of writing, tangible outputs can be observed along two axes of modernization. Firstly, the second generation of VET standards developed in 2002 has seen a broader participation on the part of social partners. And secondly, social dialogue has begun to develop, reflecting both the internal processes at work in the regions, as well as the impact of international projects implemented in Russia, such as those supported by the European Commission and the European Training Foundation. However, due to the absence of occupational standards in most of the economic sectors, VET standards have not taken full account of employers’ perspectives and remain largely based on educational inputs instead of the outcomes. Nevertheless, in the preparation for the third generation of VET standards now under way, employers’ needs are receiving more attention. There is also a growing interest on the part of employers in developing sector-wide occupational standards. Such intentions have been clearly voiced by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, the biggest association of employers in the Russian Federation. To add weight to its intentions, this union has established a National Agency for Promotion of Qualifications bringing together all relevant stakeholders to create common ground for enhancing the quality of the workforce by expressing their viewpoints in order to reach a consensus. In 2006 the Government of the Russian Federation approved


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an action-plan addressed to the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Health and Social Development setting out concrete measures to develop a national qualifications framework, competence-based VET curricula, occupational standards and VET standards based on the latter. This action-plan is a breakthrough in terms of the conceptual perspective underlying the modernization effort. Since 2002, the rhetoric of VET policymakers has also visibly shifted towards quality—in terms of relevance to the labour market—regarded both as an objective and outcome of social partnership. Thus, since that time, the VET discourse has been enriched by such notions as social partnership in VET, multi-level multi-purpose VET schools, optimization of the network of VET schools, decentralization of VET governance, per capita financing of schools, lifelong learning and continuing education and training. Furthermore, the discussion about the Bologna and Copenhagen processes has put additional pressure on the system and, in a way, has acted as a catalyst for further modernization efforts (Oleynikova, 2005). While the preceding overview offers a somewhat static picture of VET modernization effort in Russia, below we take a look at active on-going processes involving various interest groups and stakeholders. Finally, we summarize the main achievements and list some of the remaining challenges.

2.3 Contract-Based Training The first event was the development of contract-based training. For example, in initial VET schools about half a million adults are trained under contracts with enterprises, employment agencies or under individual contracts. It is interesting to note that the largest number of contracts is signed with individual citizens (around 60% as against 40% in both of the other groups taken together) (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education and Science, 2005), which indicates a high level of interest in education and training among individuals and recognition that education is the key to a successful career and self-fulfilment. On the other hand, paid tuition is distorting the VET system, often tempting schools to launch programmes that may be attractive to individuals, but have little relevance to the labour market. The most typical examples are programmes in law, economics and accounting that can be found even at initial VET schools.

2.4 Competence-Based Curricula The second process that is currently coming to the fore is the introduction of the competence-based approach to VET curricula. This implies a further transition to new quality-assurance mechanisms and streamlined institutional mechanisms of social partnership in VET. The development of competence-based VET has been largely triggered by international projects, including the ‘VET reform in the North-West of Russia’ Project

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and the recent European Union-funded Delphi II project that ended in 2005 with the publication of a set of manuals on the development and delivery of competencebased modular curricula. These have been approved by the federal Ministry of Education and Science and are currently being piloted in a number of VET schools. In one region that is very development oriented (Sverdlovsk Oblast), the regional VET standard component has been developed based on learning outcomes (competences). It is therefore unfortunate that an independent system of quality assessment has not yet been put in place and assessment remains within the jurisdiction of VET schools. Clearly, until the outcome-based approach has fully taken root, an independent assessment and certification institution has little chance of succeeding.

2.5 Quality Assurance Nevertheless, certain processes towards improving quality assurance can be observed. Some VET schools have taken the initiative into their own hands. They have opted for ISO certificates in quality management and others have piloted the selfassessment model developed by the Copenhagen Technical Working Group. The second group of schools are working together with a view to submitting proposals to the federal Ministry of Education and Science on the relevance of this model for the Russian VET system. Some VET schools—though few in number—have adopted a modified total quality management model that serves as the basis for the National and Regional Competitions for the Quality Award, initiated by both the federal and regional governments.

2.6 Continuing Vocational Education and Training Another important process at work in the VET system is the spread of continuing vocational education and training (CVET), despite the fact that the CVET sector is not yet officially institutionalized. However, at the conceptual level, steps have been taken towards integrating all forms of post-initial VET and adult education, ensuring coherence of qualifications, and enhancing the diversity of pathways to extend access to education and training for all age-groups. Under the Delphi II project, a planning model for CVET at the regional level has been developed that has been recommended for use by all regional VET administrations (Muravyeva, 2005). VET schools are increasingly involved in CVET delivery and will be even more so in the near future, with young cohorts dramatically decreasing due to demographic ageing of the population. There is also a growing need for up-skilling and retraining of the workforce as a result of rapid technological change. It should be stressed that the demographic aging3 of the population creates new challenges for the VET system in terms of knowledge updating, as it is the young generation, namely recent graduates from the education system, who are familiar with and use up-to-date knowledge and


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technologies. With the ageing of the population, the inflow of young people into the work force is slowing down and the age structure of the population group that is most active economically and socially (aged 20 to 60) is undergoing dramatic changes.

2.7 Optimization of the School Network Another on-going process concerns the optimization of the network of VET schools. This reflects other processes, such as the decentralization of VET governance and the need to increase the cost-effectiveness of VET systems (Butko, 2004). Priorities established by the federal Ministry of Education and Science for the reform of the network of VET schools envisage a systemic integration of schools of different levels in establishing larger complexes, including those based on universities, as well as multi-level multi-purpose VET schools/centres. In addition, organizational and curricular continuity between levels of VET and professional education should be established, and qualification profiles and volumes of training should better match the requirements of the labour markets. The Concept of Optimization of VET Schools, adopted by the federal Ministry of Education and Science foresees (St. Petersburg Department of Education, 2005):

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Choosing a selected number of VET schools to form multi-level and multipurpose centres of excellence that will remain under federal jurisdiction and deliver training in occupations of importance for the national economy (high-tech sectors, defence industry). These schools will pilot innovations, both technological and methodological. Geographically, such federal centres of excellence will be located in smaller cities having few VET schools. By the end of 2008 about 300 schools of this type will have been established implementing initial (IVET), secondary (SVET) and continuing (CVET) curricula in occupational profiles relevant for each region; Modifying IVET and SVET schools into multi-profile and multi-level VET centres under the regional jurisdiction will concern about 40% of the total amount of these schools. Already most SVET colleges have introduced training for two or three new occupations on top of the traditional ones to address the changing needs of the labour market and are implementing IVET and CVET programmes; Establishing the so-called resource centres on the basis of the best regional VET schools. Many regions have opted for this model in order to restructure their school networks. The concept of a resource centre, which is quite complex and requires further development, has been thoroughly analysed and piloted in a number of regions in the World Bank financed Education Reform Project. There is a danger that a resource centre becomes just a better-equipped VET school or a methodological and research ‘repository’, but is not a training centre with advanced technology and equipment that can be used collectively by all regional and inter-regional customers for the practical training of students.

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The first outcomes of restructuring the VET schools network are witness to the reorganization of 130 VET schools of different levels into twenty-four university complexes and nineteen multi-profile colleges. This move has reduced the number of legal entities—recipients of public funding—and contributed to the elimination of redundancy in training profiles within a region, streamlining the governance and procedures and resulting in an improvement in cost-effectiveness. It is expected that the restructuring of school networks will require new organizational and legal formats for VET schools. The rationale behind these proposals is that a new legal status will promote employer involvement in VET school governance, and will thus improve financial support for VET schools.

2.8 Decentralization The federal policy on the decentralization of VET governance aims at better addressing the regional and local needs of the economy and the population. It also aims at involving regional administrations in VET development as well as activating the participation of employers and professional associations in VET governance. Decentralization means the transfer of VET schools into regional jurisdictions with a redistribution of decision-making powers between the federal and regional authorities. As of January 2005, the responsibilities of VET management and financing for most IVET schools were devolved from the federal to the regional level. The SVET schools are also being gradually transferred to regional jurisdictions. To date, about 92% of IVET schools and about 460 SVET schools have been transferred to the regional jurisdiction. In spite of the fact that decentralization, as such, is a very positive development, the financial situation of VET schools may deteriorate, primarily due to the constraints resulting from very different regional priorities. Plans to streamline regional disparities through targeted federal subsidies for VET schools are under discussion. The transfer of IVET and SVET schools to the regional jurisdiction would require the development of a legal framework empowering the federal ministry to maintain control over the quality of VET, while the infrastructure is devolved to the regional jurisdiction. Thus, a model of VET governance is to be created that would delineate powers and competences, functions and responsibilities of schools and local governments between the regional and the federal authorities. In preparation for such optimization, the regions of the Russian Federation are modernizing their VET infrastructure by setting up regional centres for labourmarket monitoring, for quality assurance and integrated systems for up-skilling (CVET). Some have also started to improve vocational guidance and counselling systems. In certain regions (e.g. in Samara Oblast), stipends and additional benefits have been introduced for students to stimulate training in occupations that are needed by the economy but are not popular. Some regions have started establishing regional centres for the certification of qualifications using international experience. Without the co-ordination and guidance of federal authorities, such issues as the transfer of certificates across regions and the lack of nationally agreed standards may undermine the viability of centres and thus affect their survival.


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Regional VET systems are also involved in maximizing the regional element in VET standards so as to improve the labour-market relevance of education and training. To this end, various forms of councils have been set up with the participation of social partners. In some regions VET schools’ licenses are reconfirmed only if their training profiles address the regional labour market needs. Employers, regional employment service agencies and students must also speak out positively about the school.

2.9 New Financing Mechanisms Alongside the decentralization and optimization processes, new financing mechanisms have been devised, including per capita financing of IVET and SVET schools differentiated according to the profile of training (in terms of its relevance for the economy) and the costs of the programme. The development of per capita financing (often referred to as norm-based financing) has been under way for quite a few years but no final model has yet been approved. The decentralization process has also engendered a model of co-financing of VET schools under medium-term target programmes from both federal and regional budgets. The development of decentralization and optimization mechanisms has revealed a number of bottlenecks in the VET system, including the lack of capacity to analyse demand and the need for a legal framework for CVET, including new organizational forms and their financing. Experience so far has also shown that there are problems motivating VET school principals to become actively engaged in the modernization process. Most principals are baffled or even scared by the on-going changes and fail to react. Only a very few of them are able to be pro-active and anticipate changes. Management and leadership skills of VET administrators and managers at all levels have to be further developed to cope with all the challenges of decentralization.

3 Main Reform Achievements and Remaining Challenges Summing up this short history of VET reform and modernization in Russia, it can be concluded that some progress has been made:

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The State has recognized the importance of vocational education and training as a prerequisite for the country’s economic growth and competitiveness, and is committed to its development and support. Measures have been devised and implemented to improve the network of VET institutions and set up multi-level and multi-purpose integrated VET schools and VET centres of excellence. VET schools are increasingly involved in training the adult population, including the unemployed. There is an increased awareness both among VET policy-makers and practitioners of the need to develop outcomes-based VET standards and programmes.

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VET schools are adopting a methodology of skill-needs analysis that is conducive to enhancing social partnership in VET, alongside other mechanisms of social partnership instituted on the regional and municipal level.

At the same time, the development of the VET system in general has been slowed down by a number of unresolved issues that have not received sufficient attention, even though they have been known about for many years by VET partners and stakeholders. What has been achieved has mainly been stimulated by international projects and has therefore been largely restricted to the community that has been involved in such projects. Social dialogue on VET remains underdeveloped. As such, social partnership is recognized and practised by pro-active schools, largely by those that have been exposed to international projects. On the system level, there are various councils set up to co-ordinate the efforts of the VET system and social partners, however it is too early to speak about their impact, given that they have primarily focused on intake figures and profiles of training. The major recent development is the setting up of sector skills councils initiated by the international Delphi II project that focuses on competence standards for VET graduates, effective work placements for students, as well as on updating the contents of programmes and the assessment of competences. On the whole, however, it should be stressed that, in spite of the modernization efforts, there is a pronounced lack of a culture of social partnership on both sides. There remains great reluctance on the side of employers to interact with vocational education (partially because of a lack of appropriate incentives for enterprises). There is also little recognition on the side of regional administrations of a possible role for vocational education as an agent in economic development. Skill mismatches continue to exist. According to employers—supported by unemployment figures—the competences of VET graduates are irrelevant for the labour market. About 20.7% of the unemployed population have a secondary VET diploma and about 16.4% have initial VET diplomas. Among the economically active population, 7.7% of SVET diploma holders and 6.2% IVET diploma holders remain unemployed (Federal Statistics Service, 2005). Unemployed VET graduates have to make contact with the employment services to receive re-training which, apart from negative social and psychological implications, entails extra costs for the State. Vocational education programmes also remain largely input-based. There is still an absence of updated occupational standards and the existing classification of labour-market occupations has not yet been revised. In practice, this means that outdated and obsolete occupational profiles are still used as a basis for many programmes provided by VET schools. At the same time, there is no generally accepted methodology and communication system for anticipating skills demand. VET institutions have no guidelines on which they could base new initiatives and often follow the most recent fashion. One of the outcomes of this process is the so-called ‘qualification loop’. New occupations on the labour market requiring different or higher qualifications in a new market segment (i.e. finance) remain vacant due to the lack of school graduates having the required knowledge and skills. The


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rigid dependence in awarding diplomas and qualifications on duration and type of programmes in formal education is paralleled by the absence of mechanisms and instruments to recognize prior learning from non-formal and informal settings. Drop-out from VET schools remains high as well. It is highest in agricultural and fishery occupations, reaching about 35%; in natural sciences occupations it amounts to 25% and in teaching occupations about 15%. There is a mix of factors that may explain high drop-out rates, including perceived lack of relevance of programmes for obtaining employment, traditional emphasis on general subjects at the cost of practical vocational education, overloaded curricula and old-fashioned teaching approaches. The quality of teaching is also deteriorating rapidly, amongst others things due to an increasing shortage of qualified teachers and practical training instructors. The shortage of instructors amounts to more than 40%, with about 14% of practical training instructors having qualifications that are lower than the qualifications awarded to VET school graduates. This development can be accounted for by the low social prestige of teaching and instruction jobs in vocational education and to the miserably low salaries. The prospective introduction of outcomes-based VET may in fact further aggravate the shortage of VET teachers and instructors, as those who are still working in schools may not be motivated enough to adjust to on-going changes. The situation is made even worse by the rapid ageing of the teaching force. Translating these weaknesses into practical steps that would be in line with the goals and objectives set down in the Priorities for the Development of Education in the Russian Federation, it would seem first of all necessary to clarify the division of power and responsibility between the federal and regional levels in the system of vocational education and training. Some of the measures currently being discussed will be presented below. In general terms, the improvement of VET governance should aim at transforming regional VET systems into a resource for social and economic development. Thus, the regional level should become responsible for:

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providing access to VET for all population groups, with special regard to the disadvantaged and individuals with special needs; the development and updating of VET standards; the organization of in-service training of teachers and practical training instructors; and the development of a legal framework for social partnership in VET.

The central government should be responsible for:

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creating the conditions for the free development of the market of VET providers; an overall quality assurance system; setting the financial mechanisms for the VET systems, including a legal framework for student loans and the participation of employers in co-financing of student loans; and initiating measures to encourage employers to participate in VET (e.g. tax benefits for enterprises investing in VET).

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Increasingly, there is an awareness of the need for structural changes in the overall VET system and in particular for better integrating the different levels, types and forms of vocational education and training, such as initial and secondary VET, and supplementary and adult training, including training of the unemployed. This would also make it necessary to develop an independent system of quality assessment, ensuring an integrated national education space and enhanced objectivity in the assessment of learning outcomes. Such a system could be based on autonomous notfor-profit organizations authorized to carry out examinations and the certification of learning. At the same time, they could also be responsible for the accreditation of programmes and the issuing of certificates. Finally, there is also an understanding of the need to change financing mechanisms and their principles. Schools should become more financially autonomous. This would imply a radical change of existing itemized funding principles. It would also require increased accountability for the results that schools achieve. Therefore, financing of VET schools should be based on outcomes that have been clearly identified, formulated and agreed. To enhance overall efficiency of financial schemes it is proposed to introduce new mechanisms that include target figures, educational credits and medium-term programmes. Under the latter programmes, priority financing will be provided for developing up-to-date teaching and learning infrastructures, such as computer networks, education databases, e-libraries, teaching and learning materials, systems of quality assessment and a system of certification and accreditation of curricula, as well as software packages in educational management and governance. In October 2006 the federal government expanded the National Priority Project on Education to support innovations in VET. In years to come tens of millions of dollars will be granted to VET schools to upgrade their equipment, facilities and to modernize training programmes. It is important to analyse and learn from the experience accumulated in international projects with a view to ensuring that these new investments will complement what the regions are already doing. The beneficiary institutions will receive incentives to work and share the results with other institutions. Past experience suggests that equipping and supporting individual schools does not represent a sustainable long-term solution to the problems of the VET system. Before moving ahead with this initiative, the government would need to develop a long-term vision for the development of the VET sector that takes into account the rapid changes taking place in the workplace as a result of the introduction of ever-more sophisticated technologies and the demand by entrepreneurs for graduates with flexible skills and the capacity to learn fast. As can be seen from our review, there is a long list of needs and suggestions. The key challenge is to implement some of them. Given the wealth of good practices existing in individual VET schools that could serve as a resource for developing modern and effective models of VET in the country, networking of VET schools should be encouraged to enhance information exchange and the sharing of good practices. This seems to be the only feasible way to envisage a continuation of ongoing reforms and modernization efforts.


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Notes 1. These titles may be confusing. The term ‘initial vocational education’ in the Russian tradition refers to education for basic, i.e. lower, levels of occupations. However, as workers used to be able to upgrade their qualifications through courses, ‘initial vocational education’ also provided a basis for continuing vocational education and training. The term ‘secondary vocational education’ should not be associated with the secondary level of the education system but refers to post-secondary education and is aimed at training medium-level specialists for all sectors of the economy. 2. In 2005, two regions of the Russian Federation were merged into one, thus bringing the overall number of regions down from eighty-nine to eighty-eight. 3. In some regions of the Russian Federation the average age of the working population is around 50. The current demographic development in Russia is a combination of low birth rates and low average life expectancies, resulting in the ageing of the population. According to the State Statistics Committee, the size of the population decreased from 148.3 million in 1992 to 144 in 2004. This trend is expected to continue in the coming years.

References Butko, E. 2004. Education and economic strategies of IVET schools in contemporary conditions. Moscow: Ministry of Education. Federal Statistics Service. 2005. Education in the Russian Federation: annual statistics. Moscow. Muravyeva, A. 2005. Competence-based VET. Journal ‘Specialist’, no. 5. National Observatory for VET. 2003. VET stocktaking report. Moscow. National Observatory for VET. 2004. VET update. Moscow. Oleynikova, O. 2005. Outcomes of the Delphi II project. Journal ‘Specialist’, no. 11. Russian Federation. Ministry of Education. 1996. Law of the Russian Federation on Education. Edition of January 13, no. 12. Russian Federation. Ministry of Education. 1999. Programme of Development of Secondary VET. Moscow. Russian Federation. Ministry of Education. 2000. National Doctrine of Education in the Russian Federation. (Papers from the conference of education workers.) Moscow. Russian Federation. Ministry of Education. 2002. Concept of Modernisation of Education in the Russian Federation. Moscow. Russian Federation. Ministry of Education. 2004. Priorities for the Development of Education in the Russian Federation. Moscow. Russian Federation. Ministry of Education and Science. 2005. Education in the Russian Federation: annual collection of statistics. Moscow: Federal Statistics Service, Federal Education Agency. St. Petersburg Department of Education. 2005. Papers from the Conference ‘Decentralization of VET Governance’.


Chapter III.9

Vocational Education in the Netherlands: In Search of a New Identity Jan Geurts and Frans Meijers

1 Introduction Students’ motivational problems in combination with new occupational demands (which resulted from the transition from a primarily industrial to a more service- and knowledge-oriented economy) triggered an identity crisis in vocational education in the 1990s. The search for this new identity will be analysed in this chapter. First of all, we will evaluate the urgency of the problem. In the first section we will show that increasing amounts of criticism were directed at the functioning of the vocational education system during the 1990s. The national qualifications structure was the primary object of criticism, the response to which was the development of competence-based vocational education. In section 3, we will describe the main characteristics of this kind of education, and we will connect this to the concept of the vocational education school as a career development centre. Even though this concept was mainly developed outside the vocational education system (i.e. by academics, social partners and the government), a centrally directed national innovation policy has not really been the preferred option, for political as well as substantive reasons. Instead, it was agreed that competence-based vocational education should be realized through a variety of regional innovations, managed by the schools themselves. In other words, a ‘bottom-up’ approach to innovation has been chosen. In section 4, we will critically review this approach taking on the role of a ‘critical friend’. Recent research into the development of competence-based learning will receive special attention in section 5. In the sixth section, we will conclude our chapter with a look into the future. In our opinion, vocational education has to focus its search for a new identity through an increase of its own ‘professionalism’, as a basis for self-direction. The central government can support the growth of personal professionalism and the professionalization of vocational schools by stimulating opportunities for locally initiated experimentation. One way to do this could be by creating a national innovation fund with agreed key goals for innovation. However, proper support for the self-direction of schools requires adequate steering by the government.

R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 III.9, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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2 The Qualification’s Structure Under Fire The qualification’s structure that was developed during the late 1980s for nonuniversity vocational education had four levels. Every level is associated with a vocational education programme with two major variants: one school-based, whereby the amount of practical training is between 20% and 60%, and one work-based, where this percentage is greater than 60%. The lowest qualification level is one for simple operational tasks, with the associated assistant-level training. The highest level is for autonomous task implementation, with either broad areas of application or specialization, with an associated intermediate- or specialist-level training. The keys to the qualification structure are the so-called learning outcomes, or ‘end-results’, that are determined by ‘knowledge centres vocational education business’, that exist for each sector or branch. In a first step, the social partners (employers and union representatives) establish occupational profiles for key occupations in their industry or branch. They describe—per occupation—the core tasks and the necessary knowledge and skills, taking future developments into account. The social partners then formulate the qualifications and the corresponding ‘end results’, derived from one or more occupational profiles. They also determine which training variant can be offered, whether the training must be fee-based or free of charge, and to what extent qualifications need to be legitimized by an external, independent institution. At this point, the Advisory Commission on the Education-Labour Market (ACOA), established by the Minister of Education, will be asked to advise whether the qualifications and end results adhere to the legal requirements. After acceptance by ACOA, the Minister of Education ratifies the end-results and the approved education and training variant will be entered in the vocational education central register (the CREBO). From that moment on, educational institutions are allowed to develop—on the basis of the ratified end terms—curricula for the programmes that they are willing and able to offer. Educational publishers translate—sometimes in co-operation with educational institutions—the end results into practical training material. Finally, arrangements are made with enterprises concerning the scope and implementation of the practical training parts. The entire procedure (from endresults to training materials) is regulated by the Educational and Vocational Training Act (WEB). During the 1990s, there were increasing concerns about the effectiveness and efficiency of the WEB. In Table 1, derived from Geurts (2001), we present the conclusions of a number of studies concerning the functioning of the WEB. In terms of effectiveness, there now exists a plethora of strongly differentiated and narrow-function profiles. Efficiency also has room for improvement. A bureaucracy has been developed to maintain the qualification structure and—as a result—there is again limited responsiveness to the labour market. Moreover, the qualification structure insufficiently stimulates increases in knowledge production, because the WEB allows all parties (schools, knowledge centres and support institutions) to simply implement the WEB without reflecting on ways for improvement. Especially, little thought has been given on relating the agreed qualifications to pedagogic goals. The WEB does not stimulate schools and other parties to actively consider

III.9 Vocational Education in the Netherlands

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Table 1 Remarks concerning the effectiveness and efficiency of the qualifications structure Effective: doing the right things

Efficient: doing things well

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r

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too one-sided attention to the demand side; structure not up-to-date: obsolete occupational profiles; qualifications not broad and durable enough: too narrow function profiles; much overlapping in qualifications; too many, too differentiated qualifications (approx. 700): not transparent; blind spots: new occupations are not given enough attention; confusion in the demarcation between initial and post-initial education; deterioration of educational goals.

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bureaucratic procedures with (too) long durations; insufficient connection with initial- and tertiary levels of vocational education and training, leading to unnecessary delays; too little involvement and communication between interested parties; qualification structure is developed in relative isolation; too rigid role distribution between interested parties; lack of clarity in description of end-terms; actors use their own opportunities for improving interfaces insufficiently.

and apply the qualification structure, possibly offering modifications and improvements from their own perspective. Because they see little opportunity to utilize their own experience, educational institutions have generally not developed a positive relation with the qualification structure. They have, in fact, never viewed it as an instrument to improve the quality of their own work. As a result, the qualification structure is generally used in a defensive manner, namely as an instrument to legitimatize themselves towards government, the inspectorate, businesses and their own teachers. The quality of vocational education became a subject of increasing contention between employer organizations and the government, certainly after the European Council agreed in Lisbon in 2000 that the European economy needed to transform itself within ten years into the world’s most competitive and dynamic knowledge economy. The transition to a service/knowledge economy requires qualifications other than those currently provided and a more responsive system of vocational education. The rise of a service/knowledge economy is accompanied by three megatrends (Korbijn, 2003, p. 45 ff): 1. The market is becoming increasingly demand-driven: customers want (at the lowest possible price) custom-made products, i.e. products tailored to their own specific wishes and needs. Customers are increasingly demanding that producers take all aspects of the products’ life cycle into account. This implies that the importance of ‘absolute quality’ (i.e. quality according to industrial criteria) is decreasing, and the importance of the relative quality is increasing. Durability is becoming less important than functionality and usability. 2. The speed of globalization is increasing: customers, partners and competitors are spread over the entire globe. This trend also accentuates the importance of

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relative quality, while time-to-market is becoming decisive. For companies to remain competitive, the time between product development and the moment of actually placing it in the market place has to become shorter and shorter. 3. The world is also becoming increasingly dynamic: technology becomes obsolete more quickly and marketplace demands are changing just as rapidly. This increasing dynamism forces producers to place new products in the marketplace at an increasing tempo. The effect of these mega-trends is that the market is changing continuously in an unpredictable manner, the ability to innovate is becoming an increasingly important competitive factor and knowledge is becoming of key importance. To survive in this hectic environment, businesses have to innovate constantly and at the same time apply ‘concurrent engineering’. The organization of their production processes has to be structured in such a way that employees can work on various different product innovations and, at the same time, work in multidisciplinary teams, applying integrated design for specific innovations. This means that the organization of an enterprise has to become less hierarchical and to utilize all of the knowledge and skills available from its employees.

3 The School as a Career Development Centre Businesses are under pressure to become flexible ‘learning’ organizations, which means that they not only have to invest in knowledge management, but also that their employees must become entrepreneurial themselves: they have to be able to be ‘self-directing’, that is able to manage their own work, take initiatives and make appropriate decisions when needed. The solution for generating self-direction is primarily sought through continuing education and training for experienced employees, and by broadening the qualification structure for new employees. The key idea in current educational innovation is ‘competence-based education and training’. This, however, turns out to be an extremely vague concept and includes not only occupational skills but also attitudinal and behavioural characteristics (Thijssen & Lankhuijzen, 2000). In practice, this results in more attention being given to the development of occupational skills—mainly in the form of experiential learning by means of problem-driven training—often to the detriment of abstract and theoretical knowledge. In a certain sense, therefore, the generalization of vocational education during the 1950s is being reversed, without reverting to the narrow industrial-oriented training of that era. In modern competence-based education, as opposed to vocational education and training of the 1950s, attention is paid to selfdirection on the basis of reflection, thus to the formation of a reflective practitioner (Schön, 1983). In the meantime, it has become clear that it is extraordinarily difficult within existing training and educational structures to motivate young people and employees to become self-directing. Existing structures force schools, as well as their support institutions, to define self-direction in terms of knowledge that can, in turn,


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be validated by means of the qualification structure and can be transmitted to students. For this reason, self-direction is usually defined in terms of meta-cognitive and information-processing skills, and in terms of emotion and affective regulation (Meijers & Wardekker, 2001). It is undeniably true that these competences are important for surviving in a turbulent environment. However, when these are used with an emphasis on technical-instrumental skills, the very essence of self-direction is missed, namely, the competence to identify oneself with (i.e. to voluntarily and durably commit to) society or at least parts if it, such as the work situation (Meijers & Geurts, 2002). Becoming self-directed in the area of work and employment means attaching meaning to one’s own work, thereby developing a work-identity (Meijers & Wardekker, 2002). From this perspective, in the scientific and policy discussion over (the future of) vocational education, as well as in concrete innovation projects, competencebased learning has recently been explicitly understood to be authentic as well as self-directed (Collins, Brown & Newman, 1989; Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989). By authentic we mean that an explicit and well-thought-out connection between theory and practice has to be made during training, in order for students to develop the competences to become a professional. In the traditional, subject-based education and training model, traineeships were intended for this purpose. Research has shown, however, that there is little connection between theory and practice in traineeships, and there is certainly no systematic development of a work-identity (Meijers, 2004). Therefore, modern competence-based education attempts to create a learning environment in as realistic a manner as possible. Students learn, during their training, to act as professionals and thereby experience the relationship between occupational practice and vocational theory. Learning must be self-directed as well as authentic if it hopes to produce competent practitioners in a service/knowledge-based economy, according to the constructivist school in educational psychology (e.g. Duffy & Cunningham, 1996; Simons, Van der Linden & Duffy, 2000). Constructivism assumes that individuals actively construct knowledge by interpreting new information on the basis of pre-existing knowledge and experience. Knowledge transfer—at least in the manner that people have always assumed—is therefore impossible. Students can only construct knowledge when the information presented to them can be transformed into something personal (Wardekker, Biesta & Miedema, 1998). This explains why ‘knowledge transfer’—as intended by the school system—often achieves only limited success. Constructivist learning approaches argue that students must be activated as much as possible to enable them to construct their own knowledge. Students do not always have to construct knowledge on their own; co-operation with other students can also play an important role because it forces students to be active. For example, students may have to explain something to others, or to compare their ideas with those of others (see e.g. Simons et al., 2000). Teaching then becomes the creation of an environment whereby learners are stimulated, helped and supported in their personal construction (possibly together with the help of others) of valuable knowledgecontent and skills. This is expressed in the well-known saying: the teacher shouldn’t transfer knowledge, but rather coach the learning process. Traditional educational

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innovations, such as those based on the theories of Montessori and Dalton, are also based on this idea. It is interesting, however, to note the zeal with which these ideas have been grasped by Dutch vocational education in recent years. Geurts (2001) has integrated the educational developments around authentic and self-directed learning in a model that attempts to illustrate the process of redesigning traditional, content-oriented education in the direction of a system more concerned with personal, competence-development, and based upon constructivist learning-theory (see Fig. 1). Re-designing of VET proceeds, according to Geurts, along two dimensions: the what and the how. The what-dimension primarily concerns the contents of VET programmes. Are we concerned with a standard programme or are we more interested in flexible, tailored-made programmes? Questions about narrow and/or broad training arise at the level of school organization. Schools may choose to develop programmes not as a funnel, but rather as a (hand-held) fan. With respect to the ‘fan’ metaphor, the student doesn’t have to explicitly choose a specific occupational specialization at the beginning. Rather, it is important that the student has the opportunity to become familiar with many aspects of the occupational reality, and during the course of their training—and depending upon their own interests and ambitions—they can ‘fan out’ over the various (work-relevant) specializations. Of course, this fan metaphor does not preclude participants from immediately choosing a narrow education if they wish to do so. In any case, multi-sectoral skill development—as opposed to monosectoral—is given priority. For the individual, it is important that, in organizing the curriculum, emphasis is placed upon offering students a training trajectory with Construction

School as career centre

New didactical practices

H o w ?

Development of personal competences

What?

Standard programme

Industrial educational factory

Personalized education

Instruction

Fig. 1 From training factory to career centre: two main dimensions for re-design Source: Guerts, 2001.


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optimal career guidance. The school becomes then more of an organization that offers individual learning trajectories, instead of standardized courses. Didactics are the primary concern of the how-dimension. The main thrust here is that vocational education has to make the transition from learning-from-instruction to learning-by-construction. The learning cycle has to be inverted: theory must not precede practice any longer, but practice must guide theory (which then has to be presented just-in-time and just-enough). This idea is being implemented on a larger scale at this moment via various forms of problem-driven education, whereby occupational work-related problems are presented by companies which then need to be solved by students. In this way, there is a guarantee that the occupational problems to be solved are relevant and realistic. Problem-driven learning (and certainly in its most developed form, also known as practice-driven learning) gives vocational education the possibility to develop its own pedagogical methods, with learning-bydoing and constructive learning as important didactical principles. It is clear that the division between learning and working, and between school and business, has to become less pronounced. In this new didactical vision of learning, there is more interaction between the three parties: student, school and business. Each party has a responsibility for their own, active contribution to occupational training seen as part of professionalization. It is assumed that this process will become more efficient, effective and pleasant when the three essential actors optimally co-operate. This requires, at the very least, committed (regional) co-operation with the purpose of optimizing individual careers. In the lower left of Fig. 1, traditional vocational education is characterized as an industrial training factory. We see a standardized programme with clear diploma requirements, with instruction as the primary learning method. Opposite to the school as factory, upper right, we see the school as a centre for optimal career development. The starting point for achieving a recognized qualification is the interests and capacities of the students. Students develop their own unique set of abilities via a flexible programme, with individual, customized training as the terminus. Construction as opposed to instruction is the primary form of learning. Upper left and lower right, we see intermediate forms of education. New didactical practices such as problem-driven education are to the upper left. At this moment, new practices are almost always placed within traditional, standardized programmes. Lower right refers to the modular organization of existing educational programmes. This a` la carte education is similar to custom-made education, but is not innovative in the didactical sense.

4 Bottom-up Innovation The transition from an industrial diploma factory to a career centre is something schools will have to navigate on their own. Since the end of the 1980s, the educational policy of the government—in reaction to the visible boundaries of the welfare state—has been deregulation and decentralization. As opposed to the industrial era, during which the national government (i.e. the Ministry of Education) almost

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completely determined daily affairs in the classroom, nowadays schools are granted more autonomy. The main reason for this radical shift is—at least with respect to educational policy—the recognition of the fact that the educational innovations for a service/knowledge economy cannot be developed on a drawing board and subsequently implemented—top-down. The ‘school as career centre’ can only be the result of inside-out innovation, if only for the reason that teachers and school managers need to develop their own new professional identity (Geijsel & Meijers, 2005). The central government limits itself to providing framework legislation directed toward quality requirements and enforcement. This process of deregulation and decentralization will, of course, take place over a number of years; there will naturally be a period of inconsistencies and confusion. In addition, decennia of ‘industrial educational policy’ have resulted in the disappearance of almost all innovative ability in the schools today. During the last few decades, innovation has rarely meant the development of new didactical practices on the part of teachers, but rather almost always the incorporation of new scientific knowledge into the teaching materials. School managers used to have primarily an administrative task, and not an innovative one. In short, schools have difficulties in making the transition from being an executor of government policy to that of a developer of their own policy. The result is that they tend to fall between the two roles. Schools experience the disadvantage of a larger distance to the government without being fully able to harvest the fruits of their own, new-found autonomy (Engberts & Geurts, 1994). Geurts (2001) believes that inspirational school leadership can strike the correct balance between external demand and internal ambitions and competences. It is, however, a problem that this leadership is often lacking; one has to make do with a bureaucratic leadership culture. Apparently, school managers are still mainly pre-occupied with implementing existing legislation and regulations. According to Van Emst (2002), there is a real possibility that schools will even express a growing need for new rules and regulations. Turbulence increases the craving of the school management for even more control. This results in a great deal of ‘paper’ and red tape: detailed descriptions of tasks, privileges, responsibilities, rights, rules, regulations and organizational schemes, so that everyone knows what his/her place is. In practice, however, hardly anyone pays much attention to such arrangements. In response, school management then enforces the rules even more rigorously. It is not uncommon that the desired control actually leads to stagnation. No one is any longer interested in investing energy in school innovation and renewal. In governmental policy aimed at increasing school autonomy, ‘lump sum’ financing plays a large role. A decreasing portion of resources are explicitly reserved for specific purposes. This means that schools have to develop their own policy-making ability so as to make good use of their increasing autonomy. In order to strengthen this ability, the government has decided to implement its innovation policies in the form of projects. For educational innovation that the government considers to be important, an amount of money is made available administered by a (often specially created) non-governmental organization (NGO). This NGO then invites interested parties to submit proposals for innovative projects, which are then evaluated by


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independent experts. The idea is that the most promising proposals (and thereby also the most innovative contexts) may be identified and rewarded. After funds are granted for an innovation project, a cycle of research and evaluation begins, conducted under the supervision of the NGO involved. In this cycle, ‘good practices’ assume an important role, in addition to traditional evaluation research. The idea behind this is that an evaluation procedure can only be viewed as truly meaningful when the assumptions—as well as the approach—are intended to promote the continuous improvement of the knowledge development process within the school itself. The innovation projects are therefore considered based on the principles of the ‘learning organization’: the projects are viewed as ‘learning projects’ that are inherently, continuously concerned with improving their own quality (Geurts & Pouwels, 2001). Learning organizations require that parties involved utilize the experience derived from quality-assurance systems, such as the International Standard Operating Procedures (ISOP) and the European Foundation of Quality Management (EFQM). Such quality-assurance systems attach great importance to a systematic approach to monitoring project progress and quality control. They also utilize principles of self-evaluation, such as internal auditing and selfdirection and correction. From the viewpoint of the philosophy of self-evaluation, a (continuous) process of quality improvement must be seen as a joint responsibility of all parties involved (the NGO, the school, and the external researcher/evaluator contracted by the NGO). Thus, the evaluation of an innovation project has to be a co-production of all parties involved, and be characterized by an open and communicative (and thereby a ‘learning’) policy style. This co-production can be realized by requiring schools to reflect on the project’s progress on the basis of a template developed by the involved NGO. In this manner, Axis, for example, an NGO that was founded in 1998 to stimulate students to enrol in technical and science studies, required schools to write so-called ‘good practices’ that were to be subsequently published on a website. Writing a ‘good practice’ forces the project to go into ‘slow motion’ and to clarify (mainly for themselves): (a) which ‘practical theory’ they adhere to; (b) what people have done (as inspired by this practical theory) in terms of product or process development; (c) whether they have achieved the results predicted by the practical theory; and (d) what can be learned from the project results up to that moment (Geurts & Oosthoek, 2004). The ‘good practice’ descriptions give the external researchers an opportunity to monitor the quality and progress of the projects in such a manner that the evaluation process also contributes to the development of knowledge. In other words, the evaluation is not based on abstract criteria from scientific discourse but rather on the ‘good practices’ written by the school itself. The reports from the Axis project evaluators (Geurts, 2004; Meijers, 2003a; Onstenk, 2004; Sanden, 2004) demonstrate that a ‘learning’ evaluation style could not easily be realized. A number of different reasons were found. First of all, there exists an educational culture in which evaluation has never been connected with learning. The consequence is that many project leaders began their projects with enthusiastic support of an active, learning evaluation but were rather hesitant about someone ‘looking over their shoulder’. In other words, people were hardly prepared

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to admit that mistakes may have been made. A second reason involves a culture of innovation in which people are accustomed to initiating short-term projects that usually are not integrated in a long-term innovation, but are carried out because external funding happened to be available. All too often, the fortuitous availability of funding determines innovations. Thirdly, most projects function in an environment with a poor history of reflection—something which is associated with the previous two points. People are not used to examining their own actions and have therefore not developed a tradition of doing so. Due to all this, it was very difficult to obtain hard evaluative data for any of the projects. The data were simply not available; all energy was expended in the development of new products and processes. However, during the course of monitoring and evaluation of these projects, due to active co-operation between researchers and project leaders, trust between the two groups developed. It became increasingly clear during this process that writing up good practices had a demonstrable positive added-value for the progress of these projects. Due to these developments, the willingness to invest in good practices increased and in a number of cases there has actually been an effort made to obtain hard data concerning the innovation.

5 Between Dream and Reality Bruijn, Leeman & Overmaat, (2006) recently published the results of eleven case studies of strong learning environments in vocational education. A strong learning environment is defined as having: (a) constructivist programme characteristics (career identity is the basic principle of the programme; it is oriented towards authentic learning; and there is an integrated thematic and subject-based approach); (b) students participate in cognitive processing activities (mainly construction and reflection), (c) teacher guidance activities (adaptive instruction, coaching and the promotion of self-regulating skills); and (d) evaluation (functional testing of knowledge, insight and skills, as well as assessment of broad competences in situated action). In Table 2 we present the results of this analysis. Table 2 includes averages of the eleven investigated training programmes for the ten characteristics of a powerful learning environment in decreasing order of implementation. In addition to the means, the number of programmes having a score greater than or equal to 2.5 (a neutral score) are also indicated. As can be seen, the characteristics ‘adaptive instruction’ and ‘professional identity’ were relatively strongly developed in a large number of programmes. This is probably due to the fact that those characteristics are easily combined with traditional educational concepts, yet are not at odds with competence-oriented education. More innovative characteristics, such as ‘authentic/functional learning’ and ‘assessment of broad competences’, are less prominently present. The level of a programme’s authenticity remains limited and seems to be dependent upon fortuitous events, such as the commitment of the instructor. Relatively few programmes demonstrate systematic reflection by the students upon their own results and learning processes and a coaching style by the instructors.


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Table 2 Implementation of strong learning environments Ten characteristics of strong learning environments in order of decreasing implementation N=11

mean 2.5 or more

Adaptive instruction Professional identity as basic principle Integrated thematic/subject-based education Constructive learning Functional tests Promotion of self-regulating skills Authentic/functional learning Assessment of broad competences Coaching by exploratory learning Reflective learning

2.48 2.32 2.30 2.18 2.07 2.05 1.98 1.93 1.84 1.81

Total score: strong learning environment

2.10 N=3

N=8 N=6 N=3 N=5 N=4 N=4 N=4 N=4 N=2 N=1

1 = weak; 2 = more weak than strong; 3 = more strong than weak; 4 = strong

Other research confirms the picture that, until now, schools have been mainly investing in structural change as opposed to cultural change (see e.g. Meijers, 2003b; Severiens & Joukes, 2001; Boer, Mittendorff & Sjenitzer, 2004). Specifically, there has been little change in the manner in which people communicate within a school (i.e. between students and teachers, between teachers themselves, and between teachers and management), as well as between the school and its environment. Within the school, there remains a situation in which students may contribute little or nothing to the content, the progress or the evaluation of their learning process. ‘Construction’, in other words, remains a foreign concept. The relation between schools and their environment (and especially local businesses) usually reflects a divided rather than a shared responsibility (Meijers, 2004). Even though the principles of competence-oriented education (i.e. involving an authentic learning environment and self-directed learning) have achieved broad support during recent years, the implementation of those principles seems to be more difficult. This resulted in extensive criticism of ‘new learning’ in the Dutch media in 2005. The criticism has focused on two arguments: the ideological character of the proposed educational renewal; and the idea that ‘new learning’ would threaten the quality of education, because self-directed learning would demand too little of students. Both criticisms are not without their faults (Volman, 2006). The main point is that the opponents of ‘new learning’ ignore the problems presently confronting vocational education, namely, too little motivation, high drop-out rates and the limited transfer of theory to actual practice. The criticism is perhaps better understood as an attempt of the middle class to retain the selective function of education in which their offspring optimally profit in terms of status, income and power (Bernstein, 1975). Geurts (2005) argues, therefore, in favour of filling up the present pedagogical vacuum surrounding the future of vocational education. If one wants the relevant parties to become interested in innovation, there will have to be more discussion and debate about pedagogical principles, about vocational education’s

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rich societal responsibility, and about how the parties involved can together ensure real improvements. This debate about the essence of this societal responsibility and how it may be best achieved is presently hardly taking place at all.

6 The Future The vitality and achievements of schools will, in the future, increasingly depend on the extent to which school management is able to develop and utilize the skills and ambitions of their staff in order to satisfy the wishes and needs of their students and local businesses (the demand side). Until now, all parties have assumed— probably as an automatic reaction to vocational education being supply-oriented— that achieving a more demand-driven education required that schools would retain a passive role. In recent years, therefore, there have been many discussions—in and outside educational circles—concerning how students and social partners could take an active role. More recently, there has been a swell of opinions arguing that schools should take a more pro-active stance (WRR, 2004; Van den Brinke et al., 2005). The proponents of this pro-active stance argue that allowing the content of education to be solely determined by the needs and wishes of students and regional employers would only lead to a qualitatively emaciated supply. First of all, most students and many employers are not able to articulate their intermediate-term wishes and needs. Secondly, some of the interests of employers and students may not coincide. And, thirdly, neither students nor employers are homogeneous with respect to their needs and wishes. The wishes and needs of students and social partners can therefore only partially determine what a good educational ‘supply’ would be. For a good balance between supply and demand, the professionalism of the school itself has assumed a central role. The school should not only react to external wishes and needs but also take a more pro-active attitude in the development of qualitatively good vocational education. This conclusion, according to Zee (1997), places the reflective competence of the school management and staff at centre stage. Whether schools for vocational education ever succeed in becoming career centres will primarily depend on the degree to which school managers and staff get the opportunity to develop a new professional identity, based on reflective competence. In the Netherlands, there exists no stimulating innovation structure or culture with respect to the renewal of vocational education. The main reason for this is that the withdrawal of the central government does not in itself create room for educational innovation. The opposite seems to be more likely the case. Whereas before, power used to be clearly concentrated at the Ministry of Education, those wanting to rejuvenate education are now confronted with various, rapidly changing power cliques, inside as well as outside their school (Geurts, 2004). Inside the schools, those desiring innovation are in the minority and they are confronted with a school management that displays little educational leadership. The projectbased innovation policy of the government in such a situation often results in ‘educational isolation’. Meijers and Reuling (1999) and Meijers (2001) demonstrated that innovation-oriented teachers were merely tolerated to implement innovative


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mentoring projects because they were subsidized by the Ministry of Education. The school management was, in those cases, not inspired by a clear vision of the future. That, however, was also not necessary because such a vision was not required in order to be eligible for project funding. Moreover, project subsidies were in addition to regular funding, so that the school was not required to make substantive choices. The consequence was that the innovations implemented by the projects slowly dried up after termination of the funding, because—in addition to the absence of a clear vision—there was hardly any attention devoted to letting those achievements ‘sink in’ to the rest of the regular educational organization. Geurts & Corstjens (2007) demonstrate that, in technical and vocational education, some lessons have been drawn from these experiences. In the context of the renewal of higher technical vocational education, an innovation programme has been developed in which a direct connection is made between innovatory activities and school policy. Innovation is seen as an institutional choice and the programme supports this when it contributes to goals determined at the national level. In this particular case, that would be an increase in the number of engineers in the country. Those interested in educational innovation are also confronted with a battleground outside the school walls on which the various interest groups articulate their wishes, without having to relate them to the wishes and desires of others. Because the central government has (partially) withdrawn from this arena, these interest groups have increased their relative influence, such that they cannot easily be ignored. In addition, school managers have never really learned to manifest themselves as a pressure group and to negotiate on that basis. One of the consequences is that school management (and the individual teacher) is confronted with contradictory imperatives. In such a situation, it is understandable that schools generally assume a passive role. In order to resolve this stalemate, two conditions need to be met: (a) more active support from the central government for the needed structural renewal of vocational education; and (b) the replacement of the incidental project-based policy by the establishment of structural innovation funds. Government support should not take the form of (compulsory) rules and regulations, but rather the (temporary) suspension of rules and regulations so that more opportunity is created for schools to attempt real experimentation. Schools must have the opportunity to generate creative solutions for the most important problems that vocational education is presently facing. The government must, in turn, exercise some patience and not immediately strive for standardization. The structural innovation funds, initially championed by Geurts & Van Oosterom (2000), must not only be financially supported by the government but also by employer organizations and unions. The purpose of this public/private co-operation is to force all interested parties to reach a common agenda with respect to the educational innovations deemed necessary and to subsequently invest in the choices made. The funds must be constructed in such a way that a virtuous cycle of knowledge development can be reinforced. Investments are not only needed for the development and implementation of educational innovations but also for their evaluation, so that all parties can contribute to improved designs in the following phases of innovation.

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References Bernstein, B. 1975. Class, codes and control, vol. 3: Towards a theory of educational transmissions. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Boer, P. den; Mittendorff, K.; Sjenitzer, T. 2004. Beter kiezen in het (v)mbo. Een onderzoek naar keuzeprocessen van leerlingen in herontwerpprojecten Techniek in VMBO en MBO. Wageningen, Netherlands: Stoas. Brinke, G. van den, et al. eds. 2005. Beroepszeer: Waarom Nederland niet goed werkt. Amsterdam: Boom. Brown, J.S.; Collins, A.; Duguid, P. 1989. Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational researcher, vol. 18, pp. 32–43. Bruijn, E. de; Leeman, Y.; Overmaat, M. 2006. Authentiek en zelfgestuurd leren in het mbo. Pedagogiek, vol. 26, no. 1. Collins, A.; Brown, J.S.; Newman, S.E. 1989. Cognitive apprenticeship: teaching the craft of reading, writing and mathematics. In: Resnick, L.B., ed. Knowing, learning and instruction, pp. 347–61. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Duffy, T.M.; Cunningham, D.J. 1996. Constructivism: implications for the design and delivery of instruction. In: Jonassen D., ed. Handbook of research for educational communications and technology, pp. 170–98. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Macmillan. Emst, A. van. 2002. Koop een auto op de sloop: paradigmashift in het onderwijs. Utrecht, Netherlands: APS. Engberts, J.; Geurts, J. 1994. Deregulering en kwaliteit in het BVE-veld. Mesomagazine, no. 72, pp. 70–78. Geijsel, F.; Meijers, F. 2005. Identity learning: the core process of educational change. Educational studies, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 419–30. Geurts, J. 2001. Herontwerp: een onmisbaar onderdeel van kwalificatiestructuur. In: Blokhuis, F.; Visser, K., eds. Jaarboek kwalificatiestructuur 2001. Den Bosch, Netherlands: Cinop. Geurts, J. 2004. Herontwerp beroepsonderwijs: een strijdtoneel. In: Breebaart, W.; Geurts, J.; Meijers, F., eds. Beroepsonderwijs: van opleidingenfabriek naar loopbaancentrum, pp. 77–121. ‘s-Gravenhage, Netherlands: Haagse Hogeschool. Geurts, J. 2005. Zonder engagement geen innovatie. Profiel, no. 14, pp. 18–20. Geurts, J.; Corstjens, H. 2007. Resultaatgericht innoveren: een beloftevol en krachtig vernieuwingsconcept. Tijdschrift voor hoger onderwijs en management, no. 4, September. Geurts, J.; Oosthoek, R. 2004. Bèta/Techniek verbeteren en vernieuwen: 250 good practices. Delft, Netherlands: Axis. Geurts, J.; Pouwels, J. 2001. Naar een gereedschapskist bèta/techniek. In: Geurts J., ed. De menselijke kant van bèta/techniek, pp. 39–58. Delft, Netherlands: Axis. Geurts, J.; Van Oosterom, W. 2000. Technisch beroepsonderwijs en unieke competenties: pleidooi voor een leer- en leerlinggerichte transformatie. Mesomagazine, no. 112. Korbijn, A. 2003. Vernieuwing in productontwikkeling. ’s-Gravenhage, Netherlands: Stichting Toekomstbeeld der Techniek. Meijers, F. 2001. Mentoring: van jenne naar jutte: mogelijkheden en onmogelijkheden van mentoring binnen onderwijsleerprocessen. ’s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands: Cinop. Meijers, F. 2003a. Bèta/Techniek in ontwikkeling: de Axisverbeterprojecten bekeken. Delft, Netherlands: Axis. Meijers, F. 2003b. Leren in de praktijk: een onderzoek naar de mogelijkheden tot beroepsvorming. Zoetermeer, Netherlands: Colo. Meijers, F. 2004. Het verantwoordelijkheidsdilemma in het beroepsonderwijs. In: Breebaart, W.; Geurts, J.; Meijers, F., eds. Beroepsonderwijs: van opleidingenfabriek naar loopbaancentrum, pp. 5–77. ’s-Gravenhage, Netherlands: Haagse Hogeschool. Meijers, F.; Geurts, J. 2002. Auf dem Weg zu einem neuen pädagogischen Schwung in der niederländischen Berufsausbildung. Recht der Jugend und des Bildungswesens, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 492–513.


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Meijers, F.; Reuling, M. 1999. Schoolloopbaanbegeleiding in een turbulente samenleving. In: Lacante, M.; De Boeck, P.; Vander Steene, G., eds. Meer kansen creëren voor het hoger onderwijs, pp. 11–34. Diegem, Belgium: Kluwer Editorial. Meijers, F.; Wardekker, W. 2001. Ontwikkelen van een arbeidsidentiteit. In: Kessels J.; Poell, R., eds. Human resource development: organiseren van het leren, pp. 301–19. Alphen a/d Rijn, Netherlands: Samsom. Meijers, F.; Wardekker, W. 2002. Career learning in a changing world: the role of emotions. International journal for the advancement of counselling, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 149–67. Onstenk, J. 2004. Herontwerp techniek in het middelbaar beroepsonderwijs. Delft, Netherlands: Axis. Sanden, J. van der, et al. 2004. Naar aantrekkelijk technisch vmbo: resultaten van drie jaar herontwerp. Delft, Netherlands: Axis. Schön, D.A. 1983. The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. Aldershot, UK: Arena. Severiens, S.; Joukes, G. 2001. Studenten in het HTO. Verschillen in leerstrategieën, motivatie en positie. Delft, Netherlands: Axis. Simons, R.J.; Linden, J. van der; Duffy, T., eds. 2000. New learning. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Thijssen, J.; Lankhuijzen, E. 2000. Competentiemanagement en employabilitystrategie: een kader voor beleidskeuzes. In: Glastra, F.; Meijers, F., eds. Een leven lang leren; competentieontwikkeling in de informatiesamenleving, pp. 125–52. ’s-Gravenhage, Netherlands: Elsevier. Volman, M. 2006. Het ‘nieuwe leren’: oplossing of nieuw probleem? Pedagogiek, vol. 26, no. 1. Wardekker, W.; Biesta, G.; Miedema, S. 1998. Heeft de school een pedagogische opdracht? In: Bekker-Ketelaars, N. de; Miedema, S.; Wardekker, W., eds. Vormende lerarenopleidingen, pp. 57–67. Utrecht, Netherlands: Uitgeverij SWP. WRR. 2004. Bewijzen van goede dienstverlening. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Zee, H. van der. 1997. Denken over dienstverlening. Deventer, Netherlands: Kluwer. [Ph.D. thesis.]


Chapter III.10

Facilitating Policy-Learning: Active Learning and the Reform of Education Systems in Transition Countries Peter Grootings

1 Introduction Multilateral and bilateral donor agencies increasingly issue declarations that refer to the need to contextualize knowledge and secure ownership of development policies by involving local policy-makers and other stakeholders in policy development and implementation. Yet, policy transfer through imposing or copying (selective knowledge about) policies and models taken from other contexts still dominates the day-to-day operational practices of the donor community (King, 2005; King & McGrath, 2004; Grootings, 2004; Ellerman, 2005). Development agencies and their staff often act as classical school-teachers who have the right knowledge and know best what has to be done. True knowledge just needs to be transferred to (or made accessible for) partners who do not know the truth (yet) and partners should implement measures that are presented to them as best practice. Local policy-makers and local stakeholders are regarded as passive receivers of knowledge and instruction, who do not possess any relevant prior knowledge and experience. Development or reform is seen as a process of social engineering that will be successful, if properly managed technically. In reality, most reform projects are short-lived because they do not fit in context and there is no local ownership. Reforms are often not sustainable. On the contrary, they tend to come and go with the donors and their agencies. One reason for the gap between declaration and actual behaviour is a particular— some would say erroneous—understanding, often only implicit, of why and how people learn and develop new knowledge and expertise. There are many other reasons, of course, and some of them may be even more important—at least in the short term—such as the fact that policy assistance is usually part of a large financial aid package and accepting and implementing policy advice are part of the conditions for receiving these funds. But even when conditions disappear, the policy transfer approach is likely to remain dominant. The standard assumption underlying most traditional learning approaches is that someone (of course, the donor representative) possesses the right knowledge and learners who do not have this knowledge (of course, the local policy-makers and other stakeholders) should simply listen carefully and then do what they are told. Carrots and sticks are available in many variations to provide the incentives to make R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 III.10, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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learners listen and do what their teachers tell them to do. However, carrots and sticks often fail to motivate. The donor’s truth has not necessarily been heard (or not properly understood, as the donor would argue), nor has it led to the desired and foreseen action (due to lack of ‘political will’ or—more positively—insufficient capacities as donors would conclude). New learning theories, instead, argue that learners are more successful in acquiring, digesting, applying and retrieving new knowledge when they have been actively engaged in these processes. Facilitating active policy-learning rather than policy transfer may therefore have better chances to contribute to sustainable reformed systems.1 Section 2 below will summarize briefly what active or new learning is about. It will also indicate wider implications of active learning for formal education systems, informal learning and the roles and responsibilities of the main stakeholders, in particular teachers and learners. Section 3 will present the systemic nature of educational reforms in transition countries and the role that international donors play in assisting such reforms. Section 4 will introduce the concept of policy-learning as a translation of the principles of active learning to the field of reform policy assistance. Section 5 will present some practical implications and contradictions of the policy-learning concept. It will argue for a different role for donor agencies and consultants based on similarities between the roles of teachers and policy advisers in facilitating learning. Section 6 will suggest that knowledge-sharing should be an integral aspect of policy-learning.

2 Active Learning Engaging students in successful learning has always been a key problem for educationalists since the development of formal education systems providing standardized obligatory school-based educational programmes. Some teachers manage to survive the system and some students as well, but many do not. There has been talk about bad systems, bad schools, bad teachers, bad learning environments and bad students. Sometimes attention was simply focused on the good students, while the bad ones were left to their own devices or were given shelter in special lower-rated forms of education and training. In many countries vocational education and training has been the second—or last—choice for students who failed ‘la route royale’. Hence, there have always been debates about causes, consequences and possible solutions. In looking for solutions, countries have increasingly tried to borrow from more successful countries. The policy debates have been coloured by the dominant understanding of why, what, where and how people learn and how people can be motivated to learn at all. The traditional behaviourist and cognitive approaches on which much of standardized (formal and non-formal) education has been based have assumed that learning is basically a steady accumulation of discrete entities of knowledge and skills that can be presented to learners as if filling empty vessels.2 Hager (2004, p. 411) has pointed at five further assumptions that follow from this understanding of learning:

III.10 Facilitating Policy-Learning in Transition Countries

r r r r r

501

There is one best way of learning; Learning is essentially an individual activity; Learning which is non-transparent is inferior; Learning centres on the stable and the enduring; Learning is replicable.

In contrast, by seeing learning as a continuous—and highly selective—process of exchange between individuals and their environment, constructivist approaches argue that people give their own meaning to information. They do so based on what they already know and framed by how they have become accustomed to see the world around them. They select and retain what is relevant for them. In so doing they construct their own understanding of reality as a basis to intervene and act. Different people therefore may give different interpretations to the same thing, may retain different aspects and may act differently on the basis of the same information. Constructivists also argue that: (a) there are many ways through which people can learn, apart from someone else passing on pieces of expert knowledge (Verloop & Lowyck, 2003); (b) learning is foremost a social activity (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998); (c) there is a lot of tacit learning taking place which is not easy to categorize and demonstrate, but which is there when needed (Schön, 1983); (d) learning is dynamic and very much context-bound; and (e) good learning therefore depends on meaningful learning environments (Kolb, 1984; Simons, van der Linden & Duffy, 2000). In combination, these insights are now known as new learning or active learning. While there are currently many attempts to introduce—often on an ad-hoc basis—active learning techniques in traditional educational settings, a more holistic active learning approach has developed into something like a new paradigm. Based on the principles of active learning, several countries, including the Netherlands, are now reforming parts of their public education systems. Obviously, much of what is now receiving attention as new learning has been around for decennia in the writings of school innovators, such as Dewey, Montessori, Froebel, Steiner, Freinet and others, and has been practised in schools that follow their pedagogical approaches. Until recently, attempts that combined different learning outcomes and alternative ways of learning have remained marginal to mainstream education and training. Most public education became characterized by the single model of expert teachers and trainers passing on bit-by-bit their knowledge and skills to pupils and students who knew nothing or at least not enough. The emergence of an increased interest for the new learning paradigm during the 1990s is the combined result of fundamental changes occurring in the labour market, which have done away with employment security and created a need for lifelong learning (OECD, 1996). Moreover, declining public budgets have also contributed to attempts to make education more efficient and effective. Neo-liberal policy agendas on the left and the right have placed the responsible and autonomous citizen back on stage again. Changes in organization of work within companies also build on responsible workers able to foresee and prevent rather than to react ex-post or too late. The overall economic and political climate of the 1990s has been very receptive for active learning insights. Active learning is more than a scientific approach to learning.

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New insights and research results from a whole range of disciplines that are dealing with the question of how people learn and retain new information have provided scientific support for a different understanding of learning.3 These developments coincide on the importance given to specific criteria for learning outcomes, attention for alternative ways of achieving these learning outcomes and developing instructional models that teachers and trainers may apply when organizing learning processes. The new learning approaches give a more active role to learners in managing and shaping their own learning processes based on the understanding that good learning cannot be achieved when learners remain passive receivers of information and instructions. The active learning paradigm stresses the need for new criteria for and new kinds of learning outcomes. For reasons of employability in a world characterized by fast-changing job requirements and growing insecurity, learning outcomes should not just be more relevant at a given moment, but they should be durable, flexible, meaningful, generalizable and application-oriented (Simons et al., 2000, pp. 1-2). These criteria could also easily refer to traditional kinds of learning outcomes, in particular if one is concerned about propositional knowledge and technical skills and their transferability in time and context. New kinds of learning outcomes have become important as well. These include the ability to learn, think, collaborate and control. People should be able to adapt quickly to changing situations, be able to cope well with continuing uncertainty, and know where and how to find the information that they need to deal with the challenges of their work and life situation.4 Such regulative or meta-learning outcomes have also become important given the sheer amount of new information that is becoming available at ever-faster speeds with new generations of information and communication technologies. This makes it more relevant to consider what people can do with information instead of just having the information available as such (Simons et al., 2000). The need to cope with new (social or key) competences has been a major driving force behind curriculum and educational reform in many countries since the early 1990s. But while initially these reforms have concentrated on the new ‘what’ as additions to existing curricula and standard approaches, it is now increasingly understood that traditional ways of organizing learning are unable to deal with these new learning insights and requirements.5 Therefore, the key issues in current educational discussions are not so much about the ‘what’ but about the ‘how’ questions: how can new learning outcomes be achieved and how to secure that learning outcomes comply with the new criteria? From the point of view of the educational sciences, attention paid to new learning outcomes follows from a better understanding about how experience and information are represented in memory and about the kind of learning activities that learners apply. Three different ways of representation are normally distinguished:

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Episodic representations are based on personal, situated and affective experiences. Conceptual or semantic representations refer to concepts and principles and their definitions.


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Action representations refer to what can be done with episodic and semantic information.

People differ in terms of their preferred modes of representations. Because conceptual and semantic forms of representation have traditionally been regarded of a higher (intellectual) order, theoretical knowledge has been seen as more important than practical knowledge—learning with the head being superior to learning with the hands. The traditional curriculum therefore consisted of (unrelated) theoretical subjects plus—in vocational streams—practice periods to apply such theoretical knowledge. For modern educationalists, however, good learning outcomes mean rich and complex memory representations whereby there are strong interrelated connections between the different ways of representation. They also argue that these connections can start from any of the three different modes of representation. Some people master theory by starting with practical problems, while others may be more successful when learning the other way around (Simons et al., 2000, p. 3; Driscoll, 2000, ch. 8; Pieters & Verschaffel, 2003). As mentioned earlier, a reformulation of expected learning outcomes is only part of the story. For educational professionals, the key question is how they can promote new learning outcomes through organizing appropriate learning processes and developing instructional strategies. The new learning theories argue that learners are more successful in acquiring, digesting, applying and retrieving new knowledge, skills and attitudes when they have been actively engaged in these processes. Active involvement, co-operation with other learners and real-life contexts also help to increase the motivation to learn, which in turn makes it easier for people to take responsibility for their learning into their own hands. In combining all this, active learning therefore provides strong learning environments and produces good learning outcomes. The search is now to develop operational approaches to make active learning principles work in practice.6 Active learning also implies considerable changes in the roles that teachers and students play in education. With growing attention to active learning, there is a shift of responsibility from the teacher to the learner. The teacher becomes more of an organizer and facilitator of learning processes than the transmitter of expert knowledge or skills, whereas the learner is asked to actively participate in identifying learning needs and in managing the process of acquiring new knowledge. Teachers and trainers still need good knowledge and skills in technical domains, but the ways in which to make these accessible for learners change. Teachers have to be able to identify what learners already know and how they learn best and then to guide them to find the information that can increase their knowledge further. In terms of structure of the education system, active learning insights give strong arguments for creating open and flexible pathways in education, providing a rich variety of learning environments, and recognizing prior and informal learning outcomes (Kok, 2003; Simons et al., 2000; Driscoll, 2000; Verloop & Lowyck, 2003; Grootings & Nielsen, 2005; OECD, 2005). This new understanding of learning has considerable implications for the organization of formal education (structures and contents), for informal and non-formal

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learning (recognition and validation) and the role of policy-makers, teachers, students and other stakeholders in education. The active learning paradigm is of relevance for any learning situation where people seek to acquire new knowledge and understanding in order to be able to act competently in a changing context. In the following section I will explore what active learning means for policy-makers in transition countries when faced with reforming their education and training systems.

3 Educational Reforms in Transition Countries Transition countries are very diverse but all have in common that they are undergoing a fundamental change in their main societal institutions, including the education system. They are seeking to change from centralized authoritarian societies with some form of State-planned economy towards more democratic societies with a market-based economy. For that reason they can be called ‘transition’ countries. However, contrary to the way the term transition has often been used, nobody really knows where the transition will lead to. One might, for instance, be seeking the general characteristics of democratic market-based economies, but there are no blueprints that countries can simply apply. All modern market economies differ in important aspects from each other and none of them resembles the textbook case. What will come out of the reform process in each transition country will depend to a large extent on how local policy-makers and other stakeholders manage to use the resources that their countries have built up in the past, including the inherited physical and human infrastructures of their education systems (Grootings, 2004). Transition countries differ from developing countries in the sense that they used to have well-established and—in the recent past—effective and successful education systems. These have become impoverished as a result of continued underfunding and have increasingly lost relevance for a new labour market context: the issue here is reforming and transforming obsolete systems rather than building new ones from scratch. The reforms in transition countries are systemic, as they imply changes that are both system-wide and system-deep. Reforms are system-wide, in the sense that they require changes in all aspects of the institutional arrangements of the countries. For education and training this means that all the building blocks of the education system need to be reviewed and revised: from delivery, provision, assessment, funding, quality assurance, administration and governance up to research and development. But changes are also system-deep since they require the development of new relations between education and training on the one hand, and other evolving institutions in society on the other. In transition countries these are, in particular, the relations between schools, the labour market and private enterprises. This asks for fundamentally new definitions of the roles of the main stakeholders in education and training, as well as for changes in established working procedures for education and training organizations. These are complicated processes as all these other institutions are also undergoing systemic changes. Vocational schools, for example, have


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now to educate and train for open and uncertain labour markets and no longer for agreed numbers and assured jobs in hosting companies that were basically interested in hoarding labour. However, in most countries labour markets are still under development and private sectors are only gradually emerging. Teachers who have always been told how many students they would have and what they should teach them are suddenly in a situation where there is nobody anymore to tell them anything. Developing new roles and relationships is for individuals essentially a process of learning new knowledge, skills and attitudes in order to become competent in a changing context. Reforming a national education system is a collective learning process for all stakeholders (Grootings, 1993). A major challenge for transition countries facing systemic reforms of their vocational education and training systems is to build up and strengthen their own capacities to formulate reform policies, and not just the capacity to implement imposed or borrowed policies. Reforms of vocational education and training in transition countries (and indeed any kind of major reform in any country) will only be successful and sustainable if policy development, formulation and implementation are firmly based on broad ownership and fit within existing institutions. The concept of policy-learning reflects this understanding. Policy-learning emphasizes not just involvement but the active engagement of national stakeholders in developing their own policy solutions. It is based on the understanding that there are no universally valid models that can simply be transferred or copied from one context into another. At most there is a wealth of international but context-specific experience in dealing with similar policy issues that can be shared. The discussions about new learning are relevant for education and training reforms in transition countries. They provide key criteria for successful reform and reform assistance. Educational reform can only be sustainable if reform policies are owned by local stakeholders and are embedded in the context of the country. Educational reform is really about stakeholders being motivated to learn new ways of how to organize education and training systems—system wide and system deep. Learning is about developing new roles for all stakeholders at all levels in all the building blocks of the system. The challenge for donors and aid agencies, therefore, is not to sell prefabricated ‘what’ solutions but to find the appropriate answer to the question ‘how to help people help themselves?’ (Ellerman, 2004, 2005).7

4 Policy Reform is Policy-Learning8 Applying active learning insights to a review of vocational education and training (VET) reform experiences in transition countries further supports the need to think in terms of policy-learning. Such a review indicates first of all that VET reforms in transition countries have often depended heavily on the presence and contribution of international donors.

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There is a mix of positive and less-positive experiences. Especially in the initial phases of transition (but sometimes also long after), donors have played a key role in developing awareness of the need for VET reforms, influencing the reform policy agenda and providing resources for strategy development and implementation. Often, however, donors or their experts in the field have showed little familiarity with specific national transition contexts and no understanding for the knowledge, experience, views and expectations of people involved in education and training. Very often also, they have entered partner countries with standardized one-size-fitsall packages of assistance. Capacity-building was usually focused on developing appropriate capacities to implement what donors thought would be necessary. In turn, many national policy-makers, certainly in the initial stages of transition (but sometimes also long afterwards), were more interested in receiving funding than in policy-making. They were convinced that the key problem was the impoverished state of their educational infrastructures. Moreover, they have often been unable to assess the fitness of donors’ proposals for best practice for the institutional context of their own VET systems. This combination of donor and recipient expectations and behaviour has created problems of sustainability for many donor-supported reform initiatives. With the departure of the donor the reform usually came to a halt. With the limited resources that donors can make available, practically nowhere have system-wide changes been started. Much of the earlier assistance to VET reform in the partner countries was guided by principles of policy-copying. The guiding principle on the donor side seems to have often been: we know your future—and your past is irrelevant. Because international assistance has underestimated the relevance of institutional context, policy-copying has not contributed to system-deep VET reforms either. Stakeholders and policy-makers in transition countries have not been able to learn much about their new roles in a changing VET system—although they may sometimes have become experts on the systems of other countries. We may not know the details of future VET systems in partner countries, but from international experience some of the basic characteristics that modern VET systems should develop have become increasingly clear. They should be: (a) decentralized; (b) responsive to labour markets and learner needs; (c) transparent; (d) well-resourced (e) providing flexible and open pathways for young and adults; and (f) have a capacity to innovate and adapt to changing conditions. All modern VET systems around the world are trying to become like that! But there is no best practice of how to organize such systems, neither in developed market economies nor in transition countries. There are many good—and perhaps also a couple of bad—context-bound practical examples. Moreover, such examples not only refer to what countries wanted to achieve in their reforms but also to how they have tried to change their systems. How do you make good use of such knowledge and experience about policy objectives and strategies if policy-copying does not work? The following example may further illustrate the challenges. The policy-learning approach requires an intensified focus on how to organize policy-learning platforms and environments in the countries so that a critical mass of key actors and stakeholders gradually develop VET reform policy understanding and competence. So


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far, since policy transfer and policy-copying approaches have been dominant in the reform debates in most countries, the concept of stakeholders has been very much influenced by the model—and indeed the ideology—that was taken to be transferred or copied. In vocational education and training reform, a key issue is the involvement of employers, private industry, or—in EU language—social partners. The view is that in a market-based economy governments cannot continue to be the sole responsible authorities for vocational education and training. The essence of systemic reform—adaptation of vocational education and training to free educational choice, private enterprise and labour markets—requires involvement of the enterprises where the graduates will have to find employment. The reality of the reform process in many transition countries, however, has created a whole series of interesting contradictions. Whereas private sector or social partner involvement was presented as a conditio sine qua non for any market-based vocational education and training system, in practice governments have faced a huge problem of disinterest on the side of the private sector (employers and unions alike) to be involved at all. There are many reasons that can explain this situation, but one is the lack of representative organizations at the national level. Another is the absence of any professional capacity among social partners to deal with vocational education and training matters in a reform context. The result was, and often still is, that enlightened governments have to include the interests of the private sector into their own policy thinking. Thus, reform policy remains dependent on a few political reform champions. Another problem is the absence of a professional civil servant community inside or an educational support infrastructure outside the ministry apparatus. Public educational authorities in transition countries therefore remain the driving force behind vocational education and training reform—certainly at the national level. The involvement of stakeholders representing industry is not something that can be built on from the start, but has to be developed as part of the reform process itself. Interestingly enough, if trade unions have been involved at all in national education reform policy debates, these have often been the teachers unions and understandably—given the state of public budgets and mounting pressures to decrease public spending on education in many transition countries—they have been more interested in defending the social and material status of their membership than in discussing the contents of educational reform. As a result, teachers, also through their unions’ behaviour, have become generally regarded as major obstacles to reform. This, in turn, may sometimes even have led to the development of policies that sought to break the power of the teacher and trainer community instead of engaging them more positively.9 More recently, however, there is an increasing awareness that teachers and trainers must be included among the critical mass of stakeholders in the reform. This is, most of all, the result of a better understanding of why so many educational reforms all over the world have gone wrong in the past. Exclusion of teachers as stakeholders from the reform process has frequently led to national reform policies failing to trigger any changes at all inside educational institutions and classrooms. Teachers and trainers have now become recognized as crucial agents in making

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reforms work in their professional capacity of organizers of learning. It has also been understood that involving teachers is not just a matter of informing them so that they know what is expected of them. Nor is it only a matter of training so that they are taught how the new policies must be implemented. As professionals, teachers principally know best what will work in the specific context of their own school and classroom environment, including responding to the particular learning needs of the student population that they have to cater for. Their expertise therefore is an important source for translating general policy initiatives into very divergent real-life contexts. A better understanding of why many educational reforms have not worked has therefore not only implications for the implementation of reform policies, but impacts on the very process of policy development and formulation. This, in turn, reflects the fact that the current reforms in vocational education and training are very complex development processes that hardly compare to the traditional reform conceptions with their clear stages of preparation, formulation, implementation and evaluation. This is especially true of reforms in transition countries that seek to combine systemic reforms with structural changes and modernization of contents and approaches. Such reforms are not one-off social engineering events designed by external experts but on-going change processes set within a broadly agreed reform agenda. The reform agenda can be quite radical but requires further operational detailing, based on local innovation processes. Reform strategies have to build on the commitment of teachers and trainers working inside their school organizations. It is because of this that teachers who are actively engaged in local innovation and experimentation are an important source of expertise for national policy-makers. Such an understanding of reform puts policy-learning, capacitybuilding and policy advice at both national and school-levels in a new perspective and, at the same time, with considerable more urgency than before.10 Traditional top-down or bottom-up strategies have become too simplistic and are insufficient to make reforms work. Policy-learning as a process requires a continuous interaction and dialogue between national and local partners—vertically, as well as among the various local initiatives horizontally.

5 Facilitating Policy-Learning in Practice A policy-learning approach may be the appropriate response to some of the key challenges related to the VET reform processes in transition countries. Policy-makers and other key stakeholders should be enabled to learn to develop their own policies. But, in practice, there are considerable obstacles to facilitating policy-learning. These stem from the many tensions between ‘what’ and ‘how’ in the relationship between experts and novices. Several of these obstacles are known from the search for operational approaches to make active learning work in classical education settings. The key issue remains how a learning situation can be established where the expert acts as a learning process facilitator and the novice can be stimulated to engage actively in learning. However, others obstacles pertain to the field of reform policy development.


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Understanding the context limits or institutional fit is not easy and it is a challenge that both local policy-makers and international advisers share. While donors usually do not have a good understanding of the local context (and often do not even speak the language), it can also not simply be assumed that local policy-makers understand the characteristics of their own VET system. It is difficult to question what has always been normal and the rule. Moreover, international consultants do not always understand that the advice they provide is perhaps firmly rooted in the institutional context that they come from themselves; they are often not well informed about policies and systems in other countries. How can local policy-makers assess the fitness of what is sold to them as the latest international trend? How can international advisers properly assess prior knowledge and contextualization of new knowledge? Policy-makers are also under stress to come up with quick solutions. Their political mandate does not leave them much time. Advisers are bound by the financial and time resources that the donors have reserved for their projects. Also, the ownership issue raises some problems, especially when this is restricted to a few co-operative national policy-makers and—simply because of the design of the donor project—leaves out the vast majority of teachers and trainers in schools (Grootings & Nielsen, 2005). How can international advisers facilitate learning under such conditions? The basic assumption underlying the concept of policy-learning is not so much that policies can be learned but that actual policies are learned policies. Learning is not simply the transfer of expert knowledge or behaviour from one person to another, but rather the acquisition of understanding and competence through participation in learning processes. However, policy-makers are not only policy-learners. They also have to act, and acting on the political scene, especially in environments that are undergoing radical change such as in transition countries, does not always leave a lot of space and time for careful and gradual learning. They have to engage in daily political decision-making and, depending on their position in the system, may often have to give priority to active participation in political power struggles. On the other hand, policy-makers engaged in systemic reforms are in need of new knowledge which very often contradicts established knowledge and routines. For policy-makers, therefore, because they are under pressure to act, learning is more than merely a cognitive process: learning is practice. Their learning is situated learning as it is an integral and inseparable aspect of their social practice. Lave & Wenger (1991) argue that all learning is situated learning and, more particularly, ‘legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice’. Novice learners learn best when they are engaged in a community of more expert learners; during the learning process they become more competent themselves and move from the margin to the centre. Policy-makers in transition countries can be regarded as highly motivated novice learners and policy-learning can be facilitated by letting them participate in relevant communities of practice (Wenger, 1998). Such communities of practice could be created by bringing together policy-makers from different countries that have gone through or are undergoing reforms of their education systems. International and local policy analysts, researchers, advisers and other practitioners could be part of such communities as well.

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However, policy-makers in transition countries may be seen as ‘novices’ in terms of knowledge and expertise concerning the development of modern education systems in market economies, but they are also ‘experts’ as far as their own country context is concerned. Similarly, international policy advisers may perhaps be the ‘experts’ with respect to educational policy-making in developed economies, but they are often ‘novices’ in terms of knowledge about the particular context of the partner country. Neither local stakeholders nor international advisers really know what ‘fits’ with regard to modern education policy in a partner country’s context. The community of practice concept therefore needs to be further developed to take these differences properly into account in learning experience with high levels of uncertainty. Since old and new knowledge relate to different contexts, there are different peripheries and centres and even those who are closer to the centre remain learners themselves.

6 Policy-Learning through Knowledge Sharing Reforming education and training systems in transition countries implies combining old and new knowledge in changing contexts for both local stakeholders and international advisers. Policy-learning is not just about learning the policies that other countries have developed, but rather about learning which policies can be developed locally by reflecting on the relevance of other countries’ policies. Policy-learning in this sense can only happen when there is information and knowledge available and shared. The principal role of donors would be to facilitate a reform policy-learning process by providing access to such information and experience and by enabling a critical reflection on their relevance. However, donors and their staff cannot do their learning facilitation role well if they do not recognize that they themselves are also learners in the same policy-learning process. VET reform policy development, seen as VET policy-learning, would have to use knowledge-sharing to enable decision-makers from partner countries to learn from—and not simply about—VET reform experiences from elsewhere for the formulation and the implementation of their own reform objectives. Knowledgesharing would also enable donors and international advisers to better understand the institutional context and history of the partner country. For them, in becoming familiar with local knowledge, it will also be easier to appreciate and value the expertise that partners bring into the reform process. International donors and their policy advisers would have to play a role similar to the one a modern teacher is supposed to play: not that of the expert who knows it all and simply passes it on; rather the one who recognizes problems, does not know the solutions yet, but organizes and guides knowledge-sharing and in so doing develops new knowledge for all involved in the learning process. Policy-learning therefore can only happen in partnership. In policy-learning partnerships, the timing and sequencing of knowledge sharing is of major importance if donor assistance is to have a real impact on local


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ownership and contextual fit, and if it is to create the necessary motivation, commitment and capacities to sustain reforms. This would ask specific competences from policy advisers as they have to be able to judge where they themselves and their partners are in moving from the periphery to the centre of the community of practice. It would also require a rethinking of the classical development instruments, such as workshops, study visits, technical assistance, pilot projects and so on, with a view to developing strong learning environments for policy-learning to happen. Policy-learning is sharing experience from the past to develop knowledge for the future. It is also about sharing knowledge from abroad and knowledge that is locally produced. Therefore, it is about developing new knowledge as well. It contributes not only to creating more coherent system-wide reforms that fit, but also facilitates system-deep reforms of VET systems as it enables all stakeholders to learn new roles and develop new working routines. It will be a challenging task to develop concrete approaches that can make policy-learning, which is based on principles of active learning theory, work in practice.

Notes 1. Others would argue that good governance, the participation of civil society, the fight against corruption and sound legal frameworks are more important. This chapter will simply pay attention to the learning aspect that has been neglected so far. 2. See, for a critical presentation of these various learning theories, Driscoll, 2000. 3. These include, besides psychology and educational science (Driscoll, 2000), also brain research (OECD, 2002). 4. These are also called social or key competences. 5. In many English-speaking countries educational reform has in fact taken the form of establishing an assessment system that could measure learning outcomes, assuming that these could be the result of very different learning processes and arguing subsequently that the nature of these learning processes therefore would not be relevant at all. The ‘black box’ approach to learning has been a typical characteristic of economist approaches to education and training. 6. See the various contributions in Simons et al. (2000) for an account of experiences from different domains. 7. Ellerman, 2005, has summarized this challenge into three ‘dos’ (starting from present institutions; seeing the world through the eyes of the client; respect autonomy of the doers) and two ‘don’ts’ (don’t override self-help capacity with social engineering and don’t undercut self-help capacity with benevolent aid). 8. What follows is a summary of more detailed reviews in Grootings, 2004. 9. Such as through moving from so-called input control (based, amongst other things, on teacher qualifications) towards output control mechanisms based on occupational and educational standards with neglect of the educational and learning processes that would lead to achieving the standards. In such cases, the assessment of standard attainment has frequently replaced education and training as such. 10. Experience from some countries, such as the Netherlands, also points at the need to have additional co-ordinating and support institutions at the sector, regional or school-type level. Such is the role that associations of secondary and higher vocational schools, and sector-based expertise centres are playing. Specialized local, regional and national research and development institutions in turn support these. In other words, reform, innovation or development infrastructures require more than national stakeholders and teachers in schools.

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References Driscoll, M.P. 2000. Psychology of learning for instruction, 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Ellerman, D. 2004. Autonomy in education and development. Journal of international cooperation in education, vol. 7, no. 1, April. Ellerman, D. 2005. Helping people help themselves; from the World Bank to an alternative philosophy of development assistance. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Grootings, P. 1993. VET in transition: an overview of changes in three East European countries. European journal of education, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 229–40. Grootings, P., ed. 2004. Learning matters: ETF yearbook 2004. Turin, Italy: ETF. Grootings, P.; Nielsen, S., eds. 2005. The role of teachers in VET reforms: professionals and stakeholders—ETF Yearbook 2005. Turin, Italy: ETF. Hager, P. 2004. The competence affair, or why vocational education and training urgently needs a new understanding of learning. Journal of vocational education and training, vol. 56, no. 3, pp. 409–33. King, K. 2005. Development knowledge and the global policy agenda. Whose knowledge? Whose policy? Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh, Centre of African Studies. King, K.; McGrath, S. 2004. Knowledge for development? Comparing British, Japanese, Swedish and World Bank aid. London: Zed Books. Kolb, D.A. 1984. Experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Kok, J.J.M. 2003. Talenten transformeren: over het nieuwe leren en nieuwe leerarrangementen. Tilburg, Netherlands: Fontys Hogescholen. Lave, J.; Wenger, E. 1991. Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 1996. Lifelong learning for all. Paris: OECD. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2002. Understanding the brain: towards a new learning science. Paris: OECD. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2005. Teachers matter: attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers. Paris: OECD. Pieters, J.M.; Verschaffel, L. 2003. Beinvloeden van leerprocessen. In: Verloop, N.; Lowyck, J., eds. Onderwijskunde: een kennisbasis voor professionals, pp. 251–84. Groningen/Houten, Netherlands: Wolters-Noordhof. Schön, D. 1983. The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. New York, NY: Basic Books. Simons, R.J.;, van der Linden, J.; Duffy, T., eds. 2000. New learning. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Verloop, N.; Lowyck, J., eds. 2003. Onderwijskunde: een kennisbasis voor professionals. Groningen/Houten, Netherlands: Wolters-Noordhof. Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Section 4 National Initiatives for Reengineering Education for the New Economy

Joshua D. Hawley College of Education and Human Ecology, Ohio State University, Columbus, United States of America


Chapter IV.1

Overview: Regional Reviews of TVET Joshua D. Hawley

1 Introduction Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is often a national or even a local issue, much more so than other sub-sectors of the education system. Unlike primary and secondary education, there are few large United Nations’ interventions that concentrate on technical and vocational education. Moreover, because TVET serves employers and the labour market, schools and teachers are often more concerned with student completion and placement in work than movement into higher education. The current United Nations’ efforts (the Millennium Development Goals— MDG) to support primary and secondary education are numerous, and are designed to dramatically improve enrolment, the completion rate and the quality of basic education. While the United Nations development goals have implications for schooling after lower secondary education, the degree to which they require government action for upper secondary in general and TVET in particular remains in debate. In the MDG report for 2006, for example, the authors reported that all countries, with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa, were making substantial progress towards attaining basic education for all. However, the point remains that for countries to compete in the world economy their young people must be trained beyond basic education, and that technical and vocational schooling needs to play an important role in this process (Lewin, 2004; United Nations, 2006). The modest efforts that the United Nations have undertaken to support TVET, such as the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre, are less operational in focus, in comparison to the Millennium Development Goals. UNESCO’s recent work in chronicling the enrolment statistics for TVET are commendable, but there are no major international efforts to support improvements to TVET that I know of and that work on a global basis. There remain, however, significant regional efforts. The Asian Development Bank has maintained a substantial lending practice in Central and South-East Asia, in particular concerning TVET (Asian Development Bank, 2002). Europe’s CEDEFOP and ETF have consistently worked across countries to support their vocational education sectors. The Latin American emphasis on technical and vocational education R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 IV.1, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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continues to be an important part of the conversation about the school-to-work transition (Castro, Schaack & Tippelt, 2000; CINTERFOR/ILO, 2001). A number of agencies, most importantly the World Bank, have supported substantial analysis of the experience in Sub-Saharan Africa in recent years, leading to a renewed interest in investments in TVET in this region (Johanson & Adams, 2004; Ziderman, 2003). This section reviews the current work on TVET regionally, offering a discussion of a number of critical empirical issues that the sub-sector faces. We begin with a discussion of the role of the international organizations that often deal with TVET, continue with a discussion of regional political engagement with TVET, and end with a critical review of the findings from the chapters in this section.

2 The Status of TVET and the Role of International Organizations Over the years, the literature on international development and comparative education has shone a spotlight on the critical role that development institutions play. In a 1994 paper, McGinn (1994) pointed out the increasing importance of multinational organizations and companies in national development. Castro (2002) describes the particular role of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and the World Bank in terms of educational policies, focusing specifically on presenting the tradeoff between support for educational reform and the use of measures to target changes in education locally. Studies by Karen Mundy have refined both our understanding of the role of these institutions and the specific place they have in the policy-making process (Mundy, 1998; Mundy, 2002; Mundy & Murphy, 2001). The roles of other international institutions, such as UNESCO and the ILO, or even the European Union’s Leonardo da Vinci Programme, have received less attention in the academic literature. While we know that regional development banks, such as the African Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank, have critical roles in lending to vocational education and training, there are relatively few academic studies tracking their involvement and reflecting on their impact on national systems in developing countries. An exception is the study by Chabbott (2002), which describes the specific role of organizations such as UNESCO in establishing the World Conference on Education for All. Additionally, in a paper for the Asian Development Bank, Adams (2002) describes the evolving role of that agency in the international development field, focusing on the development of new policy directions in education. While those who study the evolution and functioning of the international agencies do not often deal specifically with vocational education and training, the international organizations themselves have frequently focused on this topic, and vocational education and training has long been a critical area for debate about the relative importance of education for employment in national development (Middleton, Ziderman & Adams, 1993). As mentioned earlier, four agencies (the IADB, the World Bank, the ILO and UNESCO) have recently developed documents outlining policy options for the

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future of vocational education and training. These papers vary in their stage of production and the formality of the policy directions they explore. The ILO/UNESCO document, ‘Revised Recommendation Concerning Technical and Vocational Education’, offers the most formal statement, providing recommendations about the structure and function of technical and vocational education (ILO/UNESCO, 2001). It was formally adopted by the governing councils of UNESCO and ILO in 2001. The IADB strategy paper, ‘Vocational and technical training: a strategy for the IDB’ was approved by the IADB Board of Governors in 2000. Finally, the World Bank has issued a number of studies on the future of vocational education and training in Africa. The summary document, ‘Vocational skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa’ was produced in 2002 and summarizes the results of a number of reports from consultants on various aspects of vocational education and training in Africa. This paper, unlike some others, is not a formal policy document issued by the World Bank (Johanson & Adams, 2004). The reports vary in their level of detail. All agencies review current research on vocational and technical education internationally and make recommendations for the larger community of policy-makers. All of the reports reflect current trends in public policy for international vocational education and training, although the IADB and the World Bank’s reports are primarily concerned with Latin America and Africa respectively. They each deal with the larger issues of secondary vocational education, privatization and the role of training within enterprises.

2.1 Secondary Vocational Education Research on the role of development banks has frequently become heated, particularly around policy questions that have special relevance to the vocational education and training sector. For example, in the aftermath of the 1995 and 1999 Education Sector papers from the World Bank, the International journal of educational development published special issues discussing the implications of the policy provisions emphasized. In the area of vocational and technical education, for instance, the 1995 Education Strategy reiterated the general distrust of secondary level vocational education as a strategy to support sustained development (World Bank, 1995). In the original 1991 study, the World Bank advocated moving away from secondary vocational schooling (World Bank, 1991). However, scholars like Jon Lauglo and Kenneth King have questioned this wholesale abandonment of secondary-level preparation. Based on studies of individual countries, they state that secondary vocational schooling has its place, provided it is adapted to the needs of the labour market (King & Martin, 2002; Lauglo, 1996). Indeed, secondary vocational education is still the predominant form of vocational skills training in most developing countries. Lauglo & Maclean’s (2005) recent book on the topic contains some important information on the continuing debate around which form of vocational schooling to invest in, focusing particularly on matching the level of economic development with the form of vocational schooling.

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International agencies are moving slowly away from a commitment to secondary vocational education and towards the broader goal of workforce or human capital development. Except for the UNESCO/ILO policy statement, the specific documents that the organizations produce stay away from vocational education as preparation within the classic French/American model of school-based vocational education (Castro, Schaack & Tippelt, 2000). The UNESCO/ILO statement reminds us that vocational education and training is intended for young people over 15 years of age and concerns ‘all forms and aspects of education that are technical and vocational in nature’. This broad statement includes occupational preparation in its vision, but is also linked explicitly to larger social and economic goals, such as poverty alleviation and sustainable development. Likewise, vocational education and training is supposed to facilitate lifelong learning. The ILO/UNESCO statement is probably most similar to the view of ‘career and technical education’ in the United States, stating that technical skills and vocational competencies should be taught within the context of general education. The policy statements by the World Bank and the IADB differ from those proposed by ILO/UNESCO. For instance, the IADB states that ‘well-focused training is investment in human capital’ and offers a ‘balance between general and vocational skills.’ Unlike those proposed by ILO/UNESCO, the IADB does not define at what age training should begin to be offered by governments, nor does it take a stand relative to the occupational orientation of the vocational and technical education. In fact, there seems to be a general pattern in the review of country-level experiences in IADB documents away from a form of secondary-level vocational education that is explicitly occupational in nature. The IADB, however, remains committed to supporting vocational education and training, as recent lending in Belize and other countries has shown. The World Bank statement is more formal, offering up definitions for technical education, vocational training and skills development. As the report states: technical education is training for technicians; vocational training is provision of crafts; and skills development is practical competencies, know-how and attitudes (Johanson & Adams, 2004). The emphasis on skills development echoes the larger push in the educational community to provide individuals with basic skills, particularly training in the ‘new basic skills’ (Murnane & Levy, 1996). The particular goals that the World Bank report outlines include a focus on using vocational education in the public sector, but only when the private sector is unable to provide these services or there are insufficient incentives to support training for disadvantaged groups. This fits into the broader emphasis in World Bank policy to promote private-sector involvement.

2.2 Privatization and the Relationship with Industry One of the core issues for development agencies is the emphasis on privatization of public services. As Klees (2002) has discussed, the Washington Consensus in the 1980s led to a general focus in World Bank lending on supporting the movement of public goods to the private sector. There is, as Klees discusses in detail, a belief that the private sector can and should take over any State services that they are able to run


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efficiently; the role of the government should be seen as the provider of services only as a last resort, and only in situations where such services cannot operate efficiently. Moreover, there is a general view that government needs to encourage cost-sharing through user fees. For example, even if services are provided through governmental institutions, they need to share the costs of service provision with the parents and students. The issue of privatization as applied to vocational education and training is particularly complex. Economic justification for supporting education draws a sharp line between general skills training and specific skills training (Becker, 1993; Johanson, 2002). Right from the start, scholars of human capital theory supported compulsory schooling with the view that students should master skills that are generalizable and that lead to higher education or potential employment in many fields. In contrast, training is often in specific technical areas, and therefore is not considered appropriate for government investment. This dichotomy is debated frequently by scholars in vocational education, as well as more broadly in the economics of education. In practice, it is exceedingly difficult to decide where to draw the line. Many governments do support training at the corporate level in significant ways and, indeed, scholars have shown that this commitment to training has led to sustained economic growth in developing Asian countries (Ashton et al., 1999). In a recent study, we see that, on average, the returns to education in Asia are higher than those in Latin America, although it is difficult to conclude that this is because of differences in the allocation of resources at the secondary education level (Sakellariou, 2005). One of the critical design issues for leaders in vocational education and training is how to relate to the other educational sectors. The classic dilemma for a large ministry of education in a developing country, for example, is whether vocational education and training needs to be governed through the secondary education system or can be established as a separate department. As Herschbach & Gasskov (2000) point out, these kinds of questions are located at the ‘macro-level’ of educational planning and raise issues that are social and political, as well as technical in nature. This is not simply an administrative issue, and the larger question of partnerships with other educational organizations, businesses and social partners receives a lot of attention from development agencies. For example, the most important distinguishing characteristic of high-profile systems in Europe is the relationships established by business and other social partners in education and training (Culpepper, 2003; Lasonen & Rauhala, 2000). The quality, as well as the social acceptance, of vocational education and training in Germany is largely due to the substantial relationships with business associations and industry. International agencies have long supported the German, or dual system, model of vocational education and training in principle, but support at the project level has varied. Many of the projects from the Asian Development Bank in recent years have emphasized supporting secondary-level vocational education and training systems, while the support in African nations has shifted more towards enterprise-based training (Asian Development Bank, 2002; Johanson, 2002). In general, international agencies are continuing to support the position that vocational education and training comes after basic or primary schooling. Only one report—ILO/UNESCO— supported keeping vocational education and training at the secondary level outright.

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It is offered as an option for secondary education students at the upper secondary level. The World Bank report by Johanson seems to favour keeping an option of secondary level vocational education and training, but restates the opinion that ‘regular vocational schools have to be redirected to areas that are in greater need of skilled labor’ (Johanson, 2002). One area of general agreement concerns the relationship with industry. All of the reports emphasize the importance of including vocational education and training as an option within employment. The agencies differ on the direction of the policy advice, however. For instance, UNESCO/ILO supports co-operative training through employers, while the World Bank and the IADB emphasize employers subsidizing training through training levies. One area of increasing importance is the use of vocational education and training aimed at adults working within the informal sector. This approach to training is particularly critical as labour markets evolve within developing countries. Many nations have established training programmes in entrepreneurship (Johanson, 2002; King & McGrath, 1999). A third policy issue raised by the development agencies with special relevance to vocational schooling is the continuing effort to encourage enterprise-level training through government policy. Recent studies from Gill, Fluitman & Dar (2000) and Johanson & Adams (2004) provide some basis for stating that governments have increasingly used incentives, such as tax levies, to promote training. As Ziderman (2001) describes, as firms (especially small and medium-sized firms) under-train, governments need to play an increasingly active role in promoting training. However, Ziderman goes on to show that national training funds need to be carefully monitored for sustainability of financing and proper controls should be in place to ensure that funds are spent on appropriate training activities. Ziderman also reports that training levies have become increasingly important in financing training within firms. While there are problems with the use of levies, they give the government a strong role in directing training among firms. These programmes are used in the United States as well, often combined with reductions in unemployment insurance taxes (United States of America. Government Accounting Office, 2004). Unlike the traditional German system of apprenticeships, current models rely on market mechanisms to increase the skills levels of out-of-work youth, informal sector workers or in-service workers needing re-tooling. Firms are given State funds through tax systems that collect a portion of payroll taxes. Firms can then carry out training interventions (Herschbach & Gasskov, 2000). This model could be problematic from a theoretical perspective. As Ziderman (2001) points out, for large firms the strategy often pays off, but does not necessarily benefit small or mediumsized companies. Moreover, if firms are simply using the funds to provide specific skills training, the State is then subsidizing activities that firms could undertake on their own. To address this concern, many countries (and states in the United States) carefully monitor spending under these levy systems (Moore et al., 2003). However, the tax levies are subject to intense political conflict over the allocation of resources (United States of America. Government Accounting Office, 2004).


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Many of the loans granted by agencies are focused on upgrading workers’ skills or improving training quality, rather than providing entry level vocational education and training. For example, Johanson (2002) points out that 93% of on-going World Bank projects included informal sector training—a major increase over projects carried out in the 1990s. Moreover, in 43% of the current World Bank projects, they have emphasized training funds. In general, international agencies are continuing to support the position that vocational education and training comes after basic or primary schooling. The IADB, similarly, stresses that model training must include enterprise-based schooling. These increasing connections with firms are seen as a way to remove rigidities in vocational education systems. Interestingly, the three organizations emphasize national vocational qualifications as a strategy to improve the curriculum and training within firms.

2.3 Curricular Focus of Vocational Education and Training The reports also describe the role of national government in certifying the curriculum according to international agencies. The agencies generally refocused vocational education and training from occupational training to a hybrid of academic and vocational instruction. As the ILO/UNESCO report described, the curriculum for vocational education should lead to interdisciplinary skills that can be used in several occupations. This focus on generalizable skills is largely in response to the evidence that employment and occupational training are often not strongly related (Hawley, 2003; Neuman & Ziderman, 1999). Moreover, the World Bank and IADB reports emphasize the importance of integrating basic skills training and vocational preparation. The emphasis on basic skills seems to be grounded in the perception that vocational education and training is best suited to individuals who have completed primary and secondary education. Certainly in the United States, vocational education reform has resulted in fewer occupational courses in high school and more focus on academic training (Silverberg et al., 2004). Furthermore, curricula must be integrated with business needs and offer competency-based instruction. There is similarly a restatement of the growing importance of competency-based training. While individuals are supposed to master technical skills, these skills are intended to be embedded within national vocational qualifications or other standards which are certified through industry. As the World Bank report describes, national vocational qualifications help to remove the rigidity of the skills training systems because they allow training to be connected more formally with employers’ skills demands (Johanson & Adams, 2004). National qualifications frameworks allow countries to integrate training within firms, leaving government to focus on certifying the competencies that individuals master. These systems are modularized, enabling more flexibility in the delivery of training, and can be designed to meet short-term as well as long-term skills needs (Johanson & Adams, 2004).

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3 Regional Strategic Efforts in TVET Despite the largely scattered scholarship on the role of vocational education internationally, there has been a continuing interest in using TVET to solve strategic economic and equity issues. While countries have undeniably moved students from vocational to general secondary schooling, TVET as a whole remains a critical part of the infrastructure that educational planners use to meet labour shortages. TVET is simultaneously seen as a tool to enable poorer and marginalized youth and young adults receive skills training that will allow them to pursue productive employment. Because of these dimensions, TVET has remained on the agenda of regional and national government agencies. The regional agencies have played a surprisingly important role in places like Europe, where funding from successive programmes has contributed to national investment in TVET within both member and non-member States of the European Union.

4 Overview of the Contributions The chapters in this section are quite varied in their emphases and the depth in which they deal with TVET issues globally. They represent an important catalogue of largely government-led interventions in this often neglected area. The chapters are summarized by three frames: the truly regional studies that compare TVET across a geographical area; the country level studies that attempt to connect with the regional approach to TVET; and finally a few global studies that were completed as part of this review of regional aspects of TVET. The more in-depth chapters in the first section deal with a review of the reaction by Baltic States to the dissolution of the Soviet system and an important piece on the changes in TVET policy from the European Union. The second group of studies in this review includes a range of chapters that really are single country-level studies, but have strong regional implications. These are interesting to a more limited audience of TVET scholars and practitioners with specific geographical interests. Lastly, there are several studies that take a decidedly global look at TVET policy. They include studies of the relationship between TVET and the agricultural sector, and a cross-national paper exploring the possibility of extending the International Baccalaureate Organization curriculum to TVET at the upper secondary level. Finally, there is a study of how the larger TVET systems have shifted in recent years. We start with the regional studies. The chapters in this sub-section deal with a range of TVET issues, from traditional studies of the evolution and current capacity of vocational education in Africa and Asia, to a look at how the regional policies from the EU government have changed from the da Vinci Programme to the current Lifelong Learning Programme.


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IV.2 To Vocationalize or Not to Vocationalize? Perspectives on Current Trends and Issues on TVET in Africa, by Moses O. Oketch The study by Oketch, which is based on document analysis and interviews/data collection in seven African nations, paints a broad-based view of TVET. The pattern that emerges is one of fractured TVET systems on this continent.

IV.3 TVET in the Asian Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, by P.P.G. Lionel Siriwardene and Muhammad Ashraf Qureshi Similarly, Siriwardene and Qureshi provide a limited view of the state of TVET in Asian countries, reviewing basic problems with the economic transition to services and the burden that overcoming these challenges places upon the State.

IV.4 Transforming TVET Systems with the CPSC in the Asia and Pacific Region, by Man-Gon Park Park offers an analysis of regional TVET in the Asia and Pacific region. It provides some details about the changing context for TVET in Asia and the Pacific and the challenges facing governments.

IV.5 European Action Programmes for Lifelong Learning, by Johanna Lasonen Lasonen provides a welcome review of the state of TVET policy under European Union (EU) governance. Going back to the Leonardo da Vinci Programme, the author describes the goals of the programme, and the broad engagement with EU member states. The paper offers a glimpse also at the new TVET policy, the Lifelong Learning Programme, illustrating the integration of financial assistance for higher and vocational education into traditional TVET fields.

IV.6 VET in the Baltic States: Analysis of Commonalities and Differences of Reforms in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, ¨ by Frank Bunning and Berit Graubner Bünning and Graubner provide a review of VET in the Baltic States after the collapse of the USSR. The most important discussion is of how the different nations

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responded in unique ways to the dissolution of the Soviet system, and put in place a similar array of youth, business and adult training services. It is particularly important to note that Lithuania was ahead of the trend on re-organizing its VET systems.

IV.7 Education and Training Needs of Rural Communities: A Situational Analysis of Selected Villages in Fourteen Provinces of Fiji, by Paula Cavu, Isimeli W. Tagicakiverata, Seveci Naisilisili and Viliame Rabici The first study in the country-level cases by Cavu et al. describes a survey they completed of the training needs for adults in rural areas of the Fiji Islands. Using a standardized protocol, they offer a descriptive analysis of the kinds of training that men and women are interested in following.

IV.8 Social Partnership in Vocational Education and Training in Lithuania: Challenges and Perspectives, by Lina Kaminskien˙e Moving from the Pacific Islands to Europe, Kaminskien˙e offers a study of the evolution of social partnerships in Lithuania, and more generally what steps the government has taken to strengthen TVET since 1990. The paper offers a clear statement of the differences between Soviet labour-driven relations with TVET institutions and the current push to create a structure of social partnerships to develop vocational and technical schools.

IV.9 Integrating Education and Work: The Status of Vocational Education in Brazil by Luc´ılia Regina Machado and Carlos Roberto Jamil Cury Interestingly, Machado and Cury provide a brief review of the legal and institutional framework for TVET in the largest nation in the Latin American region—Brazil. This study provides some orientation to the legal foundation for technical and vocational education and reviews the size and composition of the institutional structures that make up the TVET system. This is useful for readers who need a quick review of the structure of this important TVET system, but does not answer the larger question about how the legislative changes in the 1990s led to steep declines in TVET enrolments, nor what the evaluation evidence shows about the impact of these changes on Brazil.


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IV.10 China’s Higher Technical and Vocational Education: Development and Reform, by Jing Mi and Aihua Wu Jing Mi and Aihua Wu offer a summary of China’s TVET system, and an up-to-date review of the changes facing this large country with its rapidly growing economy. The review lacks an evaluative focus, and instead focuses fairly broadly on describing the institutional structure, legal framework and enrolments.

IV.11 The Adoption and Adaptation of the Work-Team Concept in Urban Thai Workplaces, by Chitrlada Burapharat Burapharat offers a theory-based view from the perspective of adult education on the use of work teams within Thai organizations. This is a strong study in that it places the use of work teams in the context of Thai culture. It is one of the few studies based on data collection from firms in this section.

IV.12 Globalization of the Labour Culture in the Republic of Korea: What ‘Tripartite Relations’ Mean for Workers, by Phoebe Moore Moore offers a theoretically rich discussion of the impact of globalization and the problems brought by the East Asian economic crisis on labour relations in the Republic of Korea, and to an extent on TVET in this country. Through textual and socio-cultural studies, she provides some analysis. The result is a rich study for TVET scholars, as it brings out a theoretical literature that is only infrequently related to vocational subjects.

IV.13 Involvement of Labour-Market Partners in TVET in the Russian Federation, by Olga Oleynikova Oleynikova offers a glimpse at the state of post-Soviet relations between employers and TVET. She uses illustrative cases from a range of locations around the Russian Federation to describe and analyse the current state of work on Russian employer involvement in TVET.

IV.14 Strengthening TVET to Achieve Lifelong Learning for All: Historical Snapshots and Recent Initiatives in Myanmar, by Naing Yee Mar Mar’s essay is an excellent example of a good country case study placed in a regional context. The chapter provides a history of Myanmar’s education sector, an update

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of the current TVET priorities and reforms, and places these in the larger regional context. The major issue with this study is the relatively superficial treatment of the issues that Myanmar is dealing with in trying to provide TVET in a country where the economy has stagnated since the late 1980s.

IV.15 Technical and Vocational Education and Training and Rural Development, by Lavinia Gasperini Gasperini makes a strong restatement of the traditional connections between TVET and the agricultural sector. The primary contribution of the paper is to raise the important point that TVET is often biased towards the service and manufacturing sectors. The primary problem with this perspective is that both adult education and vocational education have often developed targeted programmes. However, assuming that the rhetoric of TVET is geared away from rural development does not mean that all countries focus on this dimension.

IV.16 An International TVET Programme Development by the International Baccalaureate Organization, by Monique Conn Conn offers an extremely interesting study which expands the important IBO programmes into TVET. Using case studies of programmes in Finland and Canada, the author shows how students in upper secondary schooling can incorporate TVET and a regular college preparatory curriculum. This is one of the first efforts I have seen that favours fundamentally improving the academic outcomes of vocational students, rather than focusing more on the occupational outcomes.

IV.17 A Profile of TVET in the Asia and Pacific Region: A Survey of Progress, Innovations and Promising Practices, by Chris Chinien, Elspeth McOmish, Mohan Perera and Alex Chinien Finally, Chinien, McOmish, Perera and Chinien offer a review of a global survey of TVET systems. Using data from responses in a national basis, they are able to illustrate how the structure and focus of TVET has shifted under a globalized world.

5 Conclusion The topic of regionalism in TVET is an important one. In recent years, TVET overall has been facing a major shift as governments reinvest in many regions, and are faced with the broad need to restructure their education systems to meet the needs of new


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economic and social realities. The chapters in this section offer a somewhat scattered view of regionalism in TVET, but in several cases begin what might be seen as a trend towards cross-national research. In that light, I would offer several important research ideas for the future that come in part out of a reading of these chapters.

5.1 Regional Political Entities and TVET Regional political entities, such as ASEAN or the European Union, play markedly different roles in education policy overall, and in TVET specifically. The EU is a very active player and the scholarship in this section shows the marked evolution of EU-sponsored TVET activities. However, we know relatively little about other regional entities such as ASEAN. This is unfortunate as the regional political organizations play an increasingly important role in structuring intergovernmental policies and programmes.

5.2 TVET and Secondary Education In general, there is a bias toward using TVET in secondary schooling. This results from generations of technically skilled workers being trained in this manner. The traditional view that TVET should be focused at the level of secondary schooling needs to be rethought. There are some policies, such as those of the Millennium Development Goals, that require governments to expand secondary education and potentially offer new vocational options. However, as economies have changed, the importance of TVET at the post-secondary and enterprise levels has come to the fore. The role of secondary-level TVET should be the subject of more research.

5.3 Diversification and TVET One of the most productive areas of TVET scholarship are studies that explicitly raise the academic mission of TVET, offering to use vocational schooling as a way to build the capacity to teach both academic and vocational skills. I found some of the scholarship in this section avoided this important issue. Therefore, one of the pressing scholarly avenues should focus on the divide between vocational and academic instruction. How can they be integrated? What changes in the curriculum can be made to increase the quality of academic schooling in vocational education?

References Adams, D. 2002. Education and national development: priorities, policies, and planning. Manila: ADB. (Education in developing Asia, vol. 1.)

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Ashton, D. et al. 1999. Education and training for development in East Asia: the political economy of skill formation in newly industrialized economies. London: Routledge. Asian Development Bank. 2002. Policy on education. Manila: ADB. Becker, G.S. 1993. Human capital. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Castro, C.d.M. 2002. The World Bank policies: damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Comparative education, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 387–99. Castro, C.d.M.; Schaack, K.; Tippelt, R., eds. 2000. Vocational training at the turn of the century. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang. Chabbott, C. 2002. Constructing educational development: international development organizations and the World Conference on Education for All. New York, NY: Routledge Falmer. CINTERFOR/ILO. 2001. Modernization in vocational education and training in the Latin American and the Caribbean Region. Montevideo: CINTERFOR/ILO. Culpepper, P.D. 2003. Creating co-operation: how states develop human capital in Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Gill, I.S.; Fluitman, F.; Dar, A. 2000. Vocational education and training reform: matching skills to markets and budgets. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Hawley, J.D. 2003. Vocational-technical schooling and occupational matching in Thailand: differences between men and women. In: Osman-Gani, A.; Akaraborworn, C.T., eds. Second International Conference on Human Resource Development in Asia: national policy perspectives. Bangkok: National Institute of Development Administration. Herschbach, D.R.; Gasskov, V. 2000. Financing workforce preparation programs. In: Herschbach, D.R.; Campbell, C.P., eds. Workforce preparation: an international perspective, pp. 74–88. Ann Arbor, MI: Prakken Publications. International Labour Organization; UNESCO. 2001. Revised Recommendation concerning technical and vocational education. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO; Paris: UNESCO. Johanson, R. 2002. Sub-Saharan Africa: regional response to Bank TVET policy in the 1990s. Washington, DC: World Bank. Johanson, R.K.; Adams, A.V. 2004. Skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. King, K.; Martin, C. 2002. The vocational school fallacy revisited: education, aspiration and work in Ghana 1959-2000. International journal of educational development, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 5–26. King, K.; McGrath, S., eds. 1999. Enterprise in Africa: between poverty and growth. London: Intermediate Technology Publications. Klees, S.J. 2002. World Bank education policy: new rhetoric, old ideology. International journal of educational development, vol. 22, pp. 451–74. Lasonen, J.; Rauhala, P. 2000. Vocational education and training in the Nordic Countries. In: Herschbach, D.R.; Campbell, C.P., eds. Workforce preparation: an international perspective, pp. 96–102. Ann Arbor, MI: Prakken Publications. Lauglo, J. 1996. Banking on education and the uses of research: a critique of World Bank priorities and strategies for education. International journal of educational development, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 221–33. Lauglo, J.; Maclean, R., eds. 2005. Vocationalization of secondary education revisited. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Lewin, K.M. 2004. Beyond primary education for all: planning and financing secondary education in Africa. (Paper presented at the Donor Conference on Secondary Education in Africa, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Centre for International Co-operation.) McGinn, N.F. 1994. The impact of supranational organizations on public education. International journal of educational development, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 289–98. Middleton, J.; Ziderman, A.; Adams, A.V. 1993. Skills for productivity: vocational education and training in developing countries. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Moore, R.W. et al. 2003. Training that works: lessons from California’s Employment Training Panel Program. Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.


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Mundy, K. 1998. Educational multilateralism and world (dis)order. Comparative education review, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 448–78. Mundy, K. 2002. Retrospect and prospect: education in a reforming World Bank. International journal of educational development, vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 483–508. Mundy, K.; Murphy, L. 2001. Transnational advocacy, global civil society? Emerging evidence from the field of education. Comparative education review, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 85–126. Murnane, R.; Levy, F. 1996. Teaching the new basic skills. New York, NY: The Free Press. Neuman, S.; Ziderman, A. 1999. Vocational education in Israel: wage effects of the VOCEDoccupation match. Journal of human resources, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 907–32. Sakellariou, C. 2005. Heterogeneity in the returns to education: multi-country evidence from Latin America and East Asia. Washington, DC: World Bank. Silverberg, M. et al. 2004. National Assessment of Vocational Education: final report to Congress. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. United Nations. 2006. The Millennium Development Goals report, 2006. New York, NY: United Nations. United States of America. Government Accounting Office. 2004. Almost half of states fund employment placement and training through employer taxes and most coordinate with federally funded programs. Washington, DC: GAO. World Bank. 1991. Vocational and technical education and training. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank. 1995. Priorities and strategies for education: a World Bank review. Washington, DC: World Bank. Ziderman, A. 2001. Financing vocational training to meet policy objectives: Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. (Africa Region Human Development Series.) Ziderman, A. 2003. Financing vocational training in Latin America. Washington, DC: World Bank.


Chapter IV.2

To Vocationalize or Not to Vocationalize? Perspectives on Current Trends and Issues on TVET in Africa1 Moses O. Oketch

1 Introduction Forty years ago, Philip Foster exploded the vocational school myth in Africa. He argued that ‘it might be more fruitful to encourage small-scale vocational training schemes closely associated with the actual ongoing developments and quite divorced from the formal educational system’ (Foster, 1965, p. 154). He even recommended that ‘the burdens of vocational training should be shifted to those groups who are actually demanding skilled labour of various types’ (p. 158). Many writers have continued to address the issue of vocationalization in various contexts (see e.g. Heyneman, 1979, 1986, 1987, 1997; Neuman & Ziderman, 2003; Gill & Leigh, 2004; Hawley, 2003; Middleton, Ziderman & Adams, 1993; Blaug, 1973; Pscharopoulos, 1997; Green, 1998; Ngome, 1992; King & Martin, 2002; Wilson, 2001, 2005; Wolf, 2002) and many of the arguments in support of technical and vocational education and training continue to be based on the assumption that vocational training is more useful for job entry than general education. This assumption may correspond to the vocational education curriculum of twenty years ago, but it is wrong today. Nowadays, vocational education is seen as training for future training; not as a way to facilitate job entry, but as a way to facilitate vocational-specific skills over a lifetime. Essentially, the content and organization have changed. But has it in Africa? In this chapter, I reflect on this issue.

2 A Brief History of TVET Policy in Africa Psacharopoulos (1997) argued that TVET has been called upon to solve a multitude of problems, some of which he advises would have ‘better been dealt with by other types of policies, completely unrelated to education and training’ (p. 386). He identifies the following as the most common of these objectives that have driven TVET policies (and, it can be added here, not least in African countries): 1. Vocational education and training can overcome youth unemployment. 2. Instilling technological knowledge, based on what happened during the British industrial revolution, followed by Germany and Japan. It is a common belief that R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 IV.2, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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economic progress depends heavily on technological know-how. It therefore logically follows that the first step is to expand vocational and technical education. Vocational education and training offer some hope to the academically less-able students who are not able to progress through the general education system. As everyone cannot be trained for top-level jobs, vocational education and training can provide the much-needed middle-level technicians and artisans. In its role in equipping young people with skills needed in the labour market, vocational education and training can reduce unemployment leading to higher incomes and reduced poverty. Vocational education can provide the skills needed in an increasingly globalized world where manufacturers outsource production to countries with lower labour costs.

Middleton et al. (1993, p. 54) summed up these factors in a way much more relevant to contemporary African experience when they argued that general opinion still favours the idea that ‘vocational education and training improves attitudes toward skilled, manual work, and thus diverts at least some young people from seeking the white-collar jobs that are in increasingly short supply’. The problem, however, is that most of these objectives connected to TVET policy indicate that it is primarily aimed at occupational education and is terminal in nature. Initially, it was associated with colonial educational policy in colonized parts of the world, not least, in Africa (Wilson, 2005). It became undesirable in post-independence Africa once Africans were in charge of educational policy. What had been viewed as suitable for Africans by colonial education authorities on the basis of Africa’s economic production structure was not viewed the same way by Africans themselves. They (the Africans) considered it as a ‘second-class’ education (Wilson, 2005). Not surprisingly, the first conference of African States on education held in Addis Ababa in 1961 clearly set the tone in placing priority not on TVET but on expanding (academic) secondary and tertiary education (UNESCO, 1961), with a view to quickly developing the African manpower needed to replace colonial personnel and other expatriates in the civil service. However, less than a decade after gaining independence many governments reverted to supporting vocational education and training on the basis of the shrinking number of civil-service jobs and to encourage young people to remain in the rural areas where they could contribute to the economy by participating in agriculture. A sudden surge in the numbers of young people completing primary education and the unmet demand for secondary education left TVET as a viable response by governments to solving what was considered a mismatch between education and the labour market. Massive support from international assistance agencies, particularly the World Bank, was also directed towards establishing and expanding public vocational education and training systems, and to legitimize preemployment training as an important component of public education and manpower needs (Middleton et al., 1993, p. 4; Psacharopoulos, 2006, p. 330). Yet, despite its subsequent appeal to policy-makers, who in 1961 had had little en-

IV.2 Perspectives on Current Trends and Issues on TVET in Africa

533

thusiasm for it, and the momentum gained by arguments in support of TVET both nationally and internationally, Philip Foster raised a ‘warning flag’ as early as the 1960s over government involvement in massive expansion of TVET. The evidence from field research did not match the assumptions about the benefits anticipated of TVET. Young people did not want TVET and when they joined TVET, they expected it to be an avenue to higher levels of education. Moreover, using vocational and agricultural labour to punish students who did not perform well in (academic) class activities or for misbehaviour within African schools only worsened their perceptions about TVET (Wilson, 2005). Furthermore, those who had undergone TVET were not only less well paid, but often stayed unemployed much longer than their counterparts who had gone through general education. Foster’s work added international controversy to what was already a dilemma and a subject of political debate within the circles of African Ministers of Education. Mark Blaug followed later in 1973 with the argument that vocationalization cannot be a remedy for educated unemployment. It cannot prepare students for specific occupations and reduce the mismatch between education and the labour market. He went on to observe that, in general, individuals could tell that academic streams promised higher wages and a better livelihood than vocational education (Tilak, 2002). For those opposed to TVET, it was an opportunity to brand it as ‘useless’ education, associated with those with less aspiration for higher education and better paying jobs, clearly reflecting the misgivings expressed by Psacharopoulos (1997). In the villages of Africa, parents did not feel much pride—if any—when their children only managed to enter a TVET stream. Yet, such strong arguments against full acceptance of vocational education and training have to date not deterred African governments from pursuing vocational education and training programmes in public education systems. Some countries may have momentarily slowed down their emphasis on elaborate training systems following these debates but, going by the evidence of subsequent years, vocational education and training seem to have maintained their inherently powerful, but also paradoxical, appeal in Africa’s education systems.

3 Current Trends and Issues in TVET in Africa Research evidence and analysis coming from Africa show that TVET in Africa has failed if measured by the key objectives mentioned by Pscharopoulos (1997) and which have underpinned TVET policies in the continent. If anything, the demand for academic and higher levels of education has risen in spite of growing unemployment and under-employment among the educated in several African countries (see e.g. Atchoarena & Delluc, 2001; King & Martin, 2002; Oketch, 2000, 2004). Yet, governments still maintain faith in TVET, even when there is compelling evidence that it can be a wasteful public investment. Psacharopoulos (1997) has argued that

534

M.O. Oketch

TVET has failed because it is a simple solution to a complex set of problems, with too much weight placed on intuitive logic rather than empirical evidence. Here, I follow up this argument, but ask what has changed? The following questions guide the inquiry.

r r r r

How is TVET defined and what is the TVET framework today? At what level does TVET start in formal education? What is the purpose of TVET and has that purpose changed over the past twenty years? Who are the providers of TVET?

3.1 Procedure An opportunity to respond to some of these questions presented itself in the summer of 2004. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (hereafter UIS) commissioned a small study undertaken by myself and two colleagues at the Institute of Education, University of London, whose main aim was to assess the extent and limitations of the data and knowledge about global provision of TVET and, based on the findings, to identify steps that could be taken to improve international data (Green et al., 2004). Initial and background investigations were undertaken based primarily on the analysis of UIS data in the Global education digest, 2004 (GED) and other data sets supplied to the team in raw form by UIS, but a number of issues needed follow up with representatives in selected countries in order to obtain clarification. The UIS data, however, enabled the research team to purposefully identify countries for follow-up interviews (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2005).

3.2 Sample Thirty countries were selected for follow-up via telephone interviews. These countries represented a range of types: (a) of regions (eight countries in South and East Asia; three countries in Central Asia; nine countries in Africa; five countries in Latin America; three Arab States; and two Pacific States); (b) of levels of economic/industrial development; (c) of population size; and (d) of the degree of comprehensiveness identified by the team in the GED country data returns. Once the selection was agreed by UIS, relevant individuals within each of the selected countries were contacted through e-mail. The exchanges introduced the team, explained the nature of the investigation and requested telephone interviews. An interview guide questionnaire with forty-two items, some requiring short yes/no answers and others prompting discussion/explanation, was attached. Seventeen countries responded positively. The following seven African countries were among them: Botswana, Egypt, Ghana, Senegal, Seychelles, Tunisia and


535

Zimbabwe. The telephone interview sessions lasted roughly an hour and, while based on items on the questionnaire, generally addressed issues related to the four questions stated above. Where further clarity was needed, e-mail exchange was used.

3.3 How is TVET Defined and what is the TVET Framework Today? In the seven African countries, technical and vocational education and training included and referred to a range of learning experiences that were viewed as relevant to the world of work and which occurred in a variety of learning contexts, including educational institutions and the workplace. It includes learning designed to develop the skills for practising particular occupations, as well as learning designed to prepare for entry into the world of work in general (Green et al., 2004). There was no mention, however, of training designed for re-entry into the world of work. Much of the learning is occupational and terminal. TVET is not purposefully provided to act as a foundation for entry into further education either. TVET is mostly initial vocational training (IVT) undertaken by young people in diversified secondary schools and viewed as preparation for employment. Where there is any continuous vocational training (CVT) undertaken by adults, it only relates to specialized government ministries or departments needing such skills. Not surprisingly, there is a lack of schemes aimed at re-skilling and up-skilling as a prerequisite to engage in global manufacturing and/or respond to economic globalization.

3.4 Levels of Entry into TVET In general, the education systems in Africa are divided into four levels as follows (Atchoarena & Delluc, 2001): 1. 2. 3. 4.

Primary education, lasting six to eight years; Lower-secondary education, lasting three to four years; Upper-secondary education, lasting two to three years; Higher education lasting about four years.

The emphasis placed on TVET at each of these levels varies from country to country depending on the importance that each country assigns to it. In some cases, TVET forms a separate system that parallels the general education system with its own institutions, teachers, programmes and curriculum (Atchoarena & Delluc, 2001). In such cases, the issue is mostly on the proportion of academic content in the courses offered and the level of specificity in the vocational courses on offer, what Wilson (2005) refers to as ‘convergence between academic and vocational education’. In many cases, however, TVET is offered alongside general education in integrated schools forming a dual-tracked school system. Table 1 provides a summary

536

M.O. Oketch Table 1 The features of TVET in selected African countries

Country Botswana

TVET features

r r

Egypt

r r

Senegal

r

Seychelles

r

Tunisia

r

Zimbabwe

r

Eritrea, Ethiopia, Malawi, Namibia, Niger, South Africa Botswana, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Morocco, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda Egypt, Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Mali Algeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia Botswana, Egypt, Ghana, South Africa, Zimbabwe

r r

TVET starts from senior secondary school but TVET proper is offered at post-secondary institutions for those who graduate from senior secondary; There is less clarity on the level of specificity or distinction between TVET and general education at the secondary level. TVET is offered from junior secondary level but TVET proper begins at senior secondary; TVET forms a separate system that parallels general education with its own teachers, programmes and curriculum. TVET begins at senior secondary level upwards, but there are problems deciding levels of specificity in the TVET and general curriculum. TVET courses are offered at post-secondary level only. Both junior and senior secondary provide general courses. TVET is offered at junior secondary, but there is also TVET at senior secondary and at tertiary levels. TVET is offered at post-secondary level for those who do not qualify for higher education admission. However, 12% of the content at the secondary level has vocational content TVET provision in secondary level is over 2% of the total enrolment.

TVET provision at secondary school level is between 5 and 9% of the total enrolment. In these countries, TVET now includes reasonable levels of general content (i.e. a balanced level of specificity).

r

TVET’s share of secondary total enrolment is over 10%.

r

TVET retains a fairly large amount of general content.

r

TVET retains a fairly large amount of specificity.

Source: Author’s interviews with representatives of selected countries, supplemented with information obtained from Atchoarena & Delluc, 2001.


537

of some of the key features of TVET in the countries studied, as well as in some other African countries.

3.5 Levels of Participation in TVET TVET generally occupies a small and marginal position in the school systems of most African countries. While in some cases specialized ministries have been created with the aim of strengthening and/or streamlining the development of TVET throughout the entire education system, for the most part, it does not receive the same emphasis that general education does. At the secondary level, where much of TVET specificity is meant to develop, only a tiny percentage of those enrolled can be classified as pursuing TVET streams. However, problems of data collection at national level and lack of consistency across countries make comparative analysis difficult (also see Atchoarena & Delluc, 2001). There are generally problems resulting both from data collection and classification that make it difficult to analyse the precise nature of TVET provision in different countries. However, broad differences between French-speaking and English-speaking systems are more easily observable than the finer distinctions in countries within each of these groupings. A further problem results from the fact that much of the private provision and, indeed, some of the public TVET provision are not captured by the national datagathering exercises. Overall, there seems to be a decline in the share of TVET as a percentage of enrolments in secondary education (Table 2). One explanation offered by Atchoarena & Delluc (2001, p. 39) for this is uncertainties about the effectiveness of TVET in matching the requirements of the labour market. An alternative explanation is an expanded secondary education that is offering general education. Still, it is unclear in those cases where secondary education has not expanded whether more young people are opting to join post-primary but non-secondary institutions, such as community polytechnics or family apprenticeships. Despite the problems with data collection, Atchoarena and Delluc have grouped countries into three categories. First are those countries where the provision of TVET in secondary enrolments is less than 2%. Among these countries are Eritrea, Ethiopia, Malawi, Namibia, Niger and South Africa. Second are those countries where the proportion of TVET enrolment in general secondary education over the past few years has been between 5 and 9%. Examples in this category include Botswana, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Morocco, Mozambique, Togo, Tunisia and Uganda. Third are countries where the share of TVET enrolment in secondary education is over 10%. Examples include Cameroon, Mali, Gabon, Congo and Egypt. In the English-speaking countries, TVET retains a high level of specificity, whereas in the French-speaking countries elements of modernization of their TVET programmes have led to a reasonable balance between general and vocational content. This makes it easier for those who opt for one reason or another to join TVET to progress to higher levels of education or come back to general programmes without much difficulty.

538

M.O. Oketch Table 2 Percentage of TVE enrolments in secondary technical and vocational education

Year

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2001

2002

2003

Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Cameroon Chad Congo Côte d’Ivoire Eritrea Ethiopia Gabon Guinea Lesotho Malawi Mali Mauritania Mozambique Namibia Niger Senegal South Africa Togo Uganda

2.7 20.5 15.2 23.7 10.1 9.9 7.5 – 4.5 16.3 3.3 9.3 1.8 10.2 n/a 3.6 1.0 2.9 9.3 n/a 9.6 14.6

2.7 12.3 16.9 25.4 4.5 7.0 13.3 – n/a 11.1 1.8 3.4 2.8 9.4 n/a n/a 1.2 1.73 10.5 n/a 8.0 12.1

6.7 8.9 14.2 27.0 n/a 9.1 9.7 – n/a 21.7

6.1 8.0 8.0 24.5 6.3 10.6 8.1 – 0.8 23.1 5.8 3.4 1.5 n/a 5.3 7.9 0.6 1.2 6.8 n/a 5.7 6.0

7.5 5.8 7.0 18.0 4.9 6.7 7.6 0.6 0.4 n/a 9.8 3.3 1.3 12.6 2.2 6.4 0.1 1.1 3.6 1.5 6.7 4.6

n/a 6.3 n/a n/a 2.3 11.7 n/a n/a 0.3 9.4 3.5 1.1 0.8 11.9 2.8 8.1 n/a 0.9 2.6 n/a 4.6 5.0

9.0 4.0 8.0 21.0 2.2 n/a n/a 1.0 1.0 7.0 n/a 2.0 n/a 11.0 3.0 9.0 n/a 6.0 n/a 4 7 13

9.0 3.0 9.0 19.0 2.0 10 – 1.0 1.0 7.0 n/a 2.0 n/a n/a 2.0 5.0 2.0 n/a n/a 5.0 n/a 7

8.0 3.0 9.0 18.0 2.0 10 – 1.0 2.0 7.0 n/a 2.0 n/a n/a 2.0 5.0 n/a 2.0 n/a 5.0 n/a 5.0

9.0 3.0 8.0 n/a 2.0 n/a n/a 1.0 4.0 n/a n/a 1.0 n/a 11.0 4.0 5.0 n/a 1.0 n/a 5.0 n/a 5.0

5.0 2.7 n/a 4.7 n/a 0.9 1.4 10.6 n/a 5.2 7.1

Source: Atchoarena & Delluc, 2001, p. 40.

Generally speaking, there is a low and declining proportion of TVET in secondary education, which can be partly attributed to the public’s attitude towards this type of education. For the most part, that attitude has been shaped or influenced by lack of progression to higher levels of education and the low skills that TVET offers those who pursue it. There is also a gender aspect to this as well. Where the picture seems improved in terms of female participation, TVET becomes an even less prestigious branch of education.

3.6 What is the Purpose of TVET and has that Purpose Changed over the Past Twenty Years? In these seven countries the purpose of TVET remains tied to solving the mismatch between educational expansion and the labour market. Not surprisingly, most of the provision is terminal and leads directly to entry into the labour market, where often many young people join the pool of the unemployed. Unfortunately, it is those from the lower socio-economic strata that still dominate in TVET because they cannot


539

afford the general and higher levels of education. This has contributed to the perceptions that people hold about TVET. In Egypt, however, it is reported that the attitudes of young people towards TVET are now becoming increasingly positive, although TVET is still dominated by socio-economic factors and those from working-class families are more likely to enrol compared to those from the middle class. In Ghana, people in general place low value on TVET. Their attitude to this type of education is that it is inferior to academic education, still reflecting what Philip Foster discovered there four decades ago. As a result of this attitude, it has been the less bright pupils who have often opted for TVET courses. Like all the other countries in the study, Ghana proclaims the idea that TVET leads to direct entry into the labour market and is therefore useful in responding to unemployment and poverty problems. Similar responses were obtained for Senegal, Seychelles, Tunisia and Zimbabwe. In general, the traditional objectives mentioned earlier have continued to guide national policy on TVET, while individuals prefer academic streams with the promise of higher wages. Going by the responses obtained through these interviews, it can be concluded that the purpose of TVET has not changed much over the decades.

3.7 Patterns of Delivery Aside from the differences discussed above, there is an obvious difference in the way TVET is organized in French-speaking and English-speaking countries. This, as noted earlier, is attributable to the colonial influences that have largely been retained to date with minimal modifications. In Algeria, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia, which are all Francophone, TVET retains a fairly large amount of general content as has been the case with TVET in France. However, lack of specificity towards vocational content has the disadvantage of delinking the TVET courses from the mostly informal labour-market skills. Atchoarena & Delluc (2001) found this to be the case in their study of TVET in Côte d’Ivoire, Madagascar, Mali and Senegal, where the informal sector, especially micro-enterprises, is totally ignored by the programmes and patterns of TVET delivery. Originally modelled on the French school system, TVET in these countries has often not fully taken into account the possibilities of traditional apprenticeship for meeting the needs of the artisanal sector, which provides jobs but often stands in need of improvement. In contrast, Anglophone countries display a much stronger experience, both in dual forms of public-sector training and in the provision of training for the artisanal sector (Atchoarena & Delluc, 2001). In the case of these English-speaking countries, the vocational content is generally high and the academic content is extremely limited. While this has the advantage of reflecting specificity in terms of the skills needed in the informal sector, where more jobs continue to be created, it has the disadvantage of limiting progression to higher levels of education or movement between vocational and general institutions. This high level of specificity leads to narrowness, an issue that often makes TVET less appealing, relegating it to a type of education only capable of leading to what many refer to as ‘dead-end’ jobs. But, there are some emerging trends in countries such

540

M.O. Oketch

as Botswana, Ghana and South Africa, where TVET has been ‘modernized’ from the traditional apprenticeship schemes to programmes that permit movement into the national training system. The aim of this approach is to include a balanced proportion of general and vocational content that would enable participants to move both laterally within the TVET programmes and vertically to general or advanced education institutions. This progression within and between TVET and general education, when fully implemented, can create a breathing space whereby the education system responds to the types of skills demanded for the labour force at different periods.

3.8 Who are the Providers? For many years, State provision dominated the field of education in many African countries. However, over the past twenty years, private provision has been steadily growing. This has happened as State provision has either found it increasingly difficult to expand and cope with increased demand for education or simply because the State’s capacity to monopolize provision of education has generally deteriorated and become unattainable. This can also be said of the TVET sector. Atchoarena and Esquieu (2002, pp. 21–22) conducted research on this phenomenon and documented patterns of provision and policy issues with reference to private technical and vocational education in sub-Saharan Africa. They conclude that: 1. Private provision of TVET is growing rapidly and even dominates in some countries, such as Mali. 2. There is heterogeneity in private provision with key aspects, such as legal status, ownership, objectives and financing, most difficult to establish clearly. 3. The majority of private TVET institutions enrol students from low socio-economic backgrounds. 4. A sizeable number of private institutions cannot be properly traced in government registrations records, implying that they operate illegally. 5. Many of the private providers offer courses with a high concentration in commercial trades, although there are also a few cases such as in Mali where 21% of the offerings are in technical areas (such as light industrial skills). 6. Given their private nature, tuition fees are the main source of operational resources for these institutions. 7. The private sector has the benefit of tailoring the courses to the labour-market demands and seems to be flexible in adapting to demand. 8. There is little evidence to indicate a close working relationship between enterprises and the private institutions. In most cases, it is up to the students to choose what they would like to specialize in by themselves. The degree to which they respond to the actual needs of the enterprises is thus less known. The good news, however, is that private providers tend to provide programmes which, on average, appear to be better prepared compared to State institutions, although there is also great variation in terms of quality within the private provision.


541

In all the seven countries in this study, data on private provision were reported as being difficult to obtain. Interviews with the respondents revealed similar concerns or features, as summed up above in the Atchoarena and Delluc (2001) study. Some key issues and contrasts are worth mentioning. In Botswana the provision is still predominantly offered by the State in six vocational institutions and forty-one brigades (vocational institutions training at craft level). There were some private providers, especially in Gaborone, but the Ministry of Education does not have full details of how many there are and the nature of their operations. Similar responses were obtained from the six other countries, although the State monopoly was noted as sometimes being in doubt. In Senegal, the respondent reported that data on private institutions were difficult to obtain but acknowledged that they exist and in visible numbers. Similarly, in Zimbabwe, there are several data collection problems to be faced when dealing with private institutions, but the respondent acknowledged that most of these institutions provided TVET to those who had completed secondary-level education. It was thought that there are over 350 such private institutions in the country, most of which are offering commercial-based programmes. In Ghana, there are 160 technical and vocational institutions run by government agencies and 250 registered private institutions. It is thought, however, that there could be approximately another 700 unregistered private providers. Private technical and vocational institutions run a variety of courses in Ghana which last an average of three years. Their students take either the City and Guilds of London Institute or the Ghana Education Service Craft examination or the National Vocational Training Institute (NVIT) Craftsman or Tradesman Grade examination.

4 Recent Concerns over TVET in Africa Aside from the early criticisms by Philip Foster (1965) and Mark Blaug (1973), numerous concerns have been voiced over the past decade. Atchoarena and Delluc (2001, p. 38) summarize them in Africa in terms of:

r r r r r

poor quality; very high cost; training not suited to actual socio-economic conditions; disregard of the informal sector’s needs; disregard of the labour market and of the high unemployment rate among graduates.

In view of the changes in the labour market, the objectives of technical and vocational education have become more diverse: they are no longer simply economic but also social, including the fight against poverty and the integration of young people into the working world, all in line with the articulations in the Millennium Development Goals (Atchoarena & Delluc, 2001), and the present day demands of globalization. Given the prevailing economic trend, two other major objectives have

542

M.O. Oketch

Percentage of employment

100 90 80 70 60 50

Series1

40 30 20 10

a

So

ut

h

Af

ric

ga

l

e

ne

Se

oz

am

bi

qu

co

ia

oc

M

or M

i

an

a

al M

au

rit

M

na

n

d

ny Ke

G ha

C ha

oo er

Fa a

C am

Bu

rk

in

Be

ni

n

so

0

Fig. 1 Informal sector employment as a share of non-agricultural employment, selected African countries (1990s) Source: Johanson & Adams, 2004, p. 52.

been identified and which must now be pursued: (a) to train the workforce for selfemployment; and (b) to raise the productivity of the informal sector (Caillods, 1994, in Atchoarena & Delluc, 2001). Figure 1 reveals the growing importance of the informal sector in terms of providing employment outside the agricultural sector, but lack of resources is seen as a hindrance to pursuing these new critical objectives. This is all the more so given that TVET is an expensive form of education and expanding it without necessary and adequate facilities and equipment does not lead to increasing productivity in the long run. Yet, at the same time, criticisms of TVET have led to cuts in the volume of training provided in public institutions and a call for the mostly family-run informal enterprises to take on more responsibility for providing TVET. A look at the funding of TVET can shed light on the contradiction between the emphasis for skills and the limited funding that governments are willing to commit to it. Moreover, the international pressure on countries to meet their Education for All goals by 2015 has meant that more resources have been shifted, both within national budgets and by international aid assistance, to realizing universal primary education—and yet the rhetoric over skills and the value of TVET continues.

4.1 Financing of TVET As is the case with provision, delivery patterns and levels of participation, the financing of TVET as a percentage of public education expenditures varies considerably from country to country. It ranges from as low as 0.9% a decade ago in Ethiopia


543

to 12.7% in Gabon at the same period (ILO, 1998/1999, cited in Atchoarena & Delluc, 2001). In all the seven countries in the UIS study, it was noted that obtaining the financial breakdown for TVET is difficult because allocation is made for the entire education sector rather than by programme. It is therefore hard to provide accurate expenditure on TVET. Difficulties in specifying spending on TVET are compounded by the fact that provision in the private sector is hardly covered by the data. Interviews with respondents in all seven countries revealed that many of the private providers do not want to co-operate in providing their financial information and, in cases where they do, the figures are often inaccurate. Nevertheless, Table 3 can shed some light on the levels of financial allocation to TVET in selected countries in the 1990s. Table 3 Percentage of technical and vocational education expenditures in total education expenditures Country

%

Year

Country

%

Year

Benin Botswana Chad Congo Côte d’Ivoire Eritrea Ethiopia Gabon Ghana

3.3 5.5 2.0 4.9 4.8 1.6 0.9 12.7 4.9

1995 1991 1994 1980 1994 1994 1993 1992 1990

Guinea Lesotho Malawi Mali Mauritania Mozambique Namibia Senegal Togo

7.5 3.3 1.1 9.1 2.3 6.2 2.0 2.7 3.7

1993 1994 1992 1995 1995 1990 1995 1990 1994

Source: ILO, 1998/1999 cited in Atchoarena and Delluc, 2002, p. 45.

4.2 Conclusion Based on the information gleaned from other studies and interviews with representatives in the seven countries, it can be concluded that: 1. Business has been as usual over the past two decades—TVET is still driven by the traditional objectives identified earlier in all of these countries. 2. TVET mostly begins at lower secondary and/or junior secondary level in a majority of African countries. 3. Excellent institutions offering TVET at post-secondary level, such as national polytechnics, are under pressure to convert into degree-granting institutions allowing wider diversity of courses and a large mix of general education programmes in addition to their technical and vocational courses. 4. TVET is not attractive to families and is seen as a last resort by those who cannot access general education. 5. There are countries, such as Egypt, with a dual-track system, the problem with which is the danger of tracking students into ability groupings. 6. There is a tremendous growth in private providers, especially for business-related skills.

544

M.O. Oketch

5 The Way Forward and Some Perspectives There is no doubt that TVET is important in Africa’s development and, from the analysis of trends and issues in the region, the key point is to transform it so that what is offered can reflect the prevailing reality in the labour market and the global economy. This transformation must partly begin with TVET policy casting off its traditional mould, and taking as its objective the need to provide convergence with academic education (Wilson, 2005), in addition to establishing links to the informal sector. More importantly, private providers who are more flexible should be encouraged but carefully monitored to ensure that the courses they offer are of acceptable standards and quality. Where government provision has proven wasteful, inflexible and inefficient, alternative provision through employers should be sought and encouraged. In addition, more and accurate data should be collected to monitor patterns of provision in both government institutions and private provision in order to provide a basis for a new TVET framework in many African countries. Under present-day skills, TVET should reflect the development of ‘high-skills’ as well as ‘re-skilling’ rather than being a mere means of addressing ‘runaway’ unemployment in formal sectors. Specifically, the following are recommended: 1. Increased specificity within TVET programmes where general educational content has dominated with the result that these programmes are less useful to the informal sector. 2. Lateral and vertical movement should be allowed. 3. TVET should be de-linked from having to provide a solution to manpower and unemployment problems. 4. There should be increased proportions of TVET content in general programmes and increased general content in TVET programmes. 5. Encourage high skills rather than low skills in TVET programmes. 6. Promote re-skilling and up-skilling to cope with technological changes. 7. In some instances, it may be right for the public sector to withdraw from vocational schooling altogether, especially where waste has been so serious, the needs for general education so compelling and labour-market growth so sluggish.

Note 1. This chapter is a modification of the original version appearing as an article in the International journal of educational development, 2007, vol. 27, pp. 220–34.

References Atchoarena, D.; Delluc, A. 2001. Revisiting technical and vocational education in Sub-Saharan Africa: an update on trends, innovations and challenges. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. Atchoarena, D.; Esquieu, P. 2002. Private technical and vocational education in Sub-Saharan Africa: provision patterns and policy issues. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. Blaug, M. 1973. Education and the employment problem in developing countries. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO.


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Foster, P.J. 1965. The vocational school fallacy in development planning. In: Anderson, C.A.; Bowman, M.J., eds. Education and economic development. Chicago, IL: Aldine. Gill, A.M.; Leigh, D.E. 2004. Evaluating academic programs in California’s community colleges. San Francisco, CA: Public Policy Institute of California. Green, A. 1998. Core skills, key skills and general culture: in search of the common foundation in vocational education. Evaluation and research in education, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 23–43. Green, A.; Oketch, M.; Preston, J. 2004. Global report on technical and vocational education and training: report to UNESCO Institute for Statistics. London: University of London Institute of Education. Hawley, J.D. 2003. Comparing the pay-off to vocational and academic credentials in Thailand over time. International journal of educational development, vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 607–25. Heyneman, S.P. 1979. The career education debate: where the difference lies. Teachers College record, vol. 80, no. 4, pp. 659–88. Heyneman, S.P. 1986. The nature of a ‘practical curriculum’. Education with production, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 91–103. Heyneman, S.P. 1987. Curriculum economics in secondary education: an emerging crisis in developing countries. Prospects, vol. 17, no. 1. pp. 63–74. Heyneman, S.P. 1997. Russian vocational and technical education in the transition: tradition, adaptation, unresolved problems. Institute for the Study of Russian Education newsletter, vol. 6. no. 1, pp. 22–34. Johanson, R.K.; Adams, A.V. 2004. Skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. King, K.; Martin, C. 2002. The vocational school fallacy revisited: education aspiration and work in Ghana, 1959–2000. International journal of educational development, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 5–26. Middleton, J.; Ziderman, A.; Adams, V.A. 1993. Skills for productivity: vocational education and training in developing countries. Washington, DC: World Bank; New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Neuman, S.; Ziderman, A. 2003. Can vocational education improve the wages of minorities and disadvantaged groups? Economics of education review, vol. 22, pp. 421–32. Ngome, C. 1992. Vocationalisation of education in Kenya: factors that have influenced policies and practices in the colonial and post-colonial period. Nairobi: Kenyatta University, Department of Educational Foundations. [Mimeo.] Oketch, M.O. 2000. Costing and financing higher education for development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Kenya’s case. International education journal, vol. 3, pp. 1–10. Oketch, M.O. 2004. The emergence of private university education in Kenya: trends, prospects and challenges. International journal of educational development, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 119–36. Psacharopoulos, G. 1997. Vocational education and training today: challenges and responses. Journal of vocational education and training, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 385–94. Psacharopoulos, G. 2006. World Bank policy on education: a personal account. International journal of educational development, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 329–38. Tilak, J. 2002. Vocational education and training in Asia. In: Keeves, P.J.; Watanabe, R., eds. The handbook on educational research in the Asia-Pacific Region. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. UNESCO. 1961. Conference of African States on the development of education in Africa: final report. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO Institute for Statistics. 2005. Global education digest, 2005. Montreal: UNESCO-UIS. Wilson, D.N. 2001. Reform of TVET for the changing world of work. Prospects, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 21–37. Wilson, D.N. 2005. Promise and performance in vocationalised secondary education: has the baby been thrown out with the bath water? In: Lauglo, J.; Maclean, R., eds. Vocationalisation of secondary education revisited. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Wolf, A. 2002. Does education matter? Myths about education and economic growth. London: Penguin.


Chapter IV.3

TVET in the Asian Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects P.P.G. Lionel Siriwardene and Muhammad Ashraf Qureshi

1 Introduction The twenty-first century is one of emerging challenges and an era of knowledge, information and communication. Globalization and unprecedented advancements in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have already signalled the need for a new human-centred development paradigm. Education, particularly technical and vocational education and training (TVET), has a crucial role to play in this new era for all regions of the world, including Asia and the Pacific. In view of the immense potential of TVET to generate growth, it is emerging as a vital empowering tool for improving living conditions by enhancing the capacities of individuals to be employed, obtain decent work and increase their earnings. Orienting TVET to the needs of the world of work is, therefore, indispensable not only for economic and social development, but also for sustainable development. This calls for a paradigm shift in TVET, such as the one taking place in the Asian Region—as everywhere else in the world. Its philosophy, vision and mission, goals and objectives, policies and practices, content and methodologies are all changing to keep pace with advances in science and technology, industry and business. In spite of the fact that the World Bank, once TVET’s staunchest supporter, introduced a radical shift in its policy in 1991, all countries still announce their interest in TVET, especially in the Asian Region where it has come to be regarded as the master key that can transform the economy, alleviate poverty, save the environment and improve the quality of life (Quisumbing, 2005).

2 A New Role for TVET Thanks to the unprecedented advances in science, technology and communications, the world today is a global village with far greater interdependence between countries. However, the global level of development continues to be distressing in the Asian and Pacific Region, where about two-thirds of the world’s population lives. Most of these people are still living in developing countries, if not some of the least developed. While worldwide, one out of five men and one out of three women R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 IV.3, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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are still illiterate, in Asia, particularly South Asia, one out of three men and one out of two women are illiterate (Mehta, 2003). Education for All is still far from a reality in this region. This situation calls for new patterns of education with a catalytic role for TVET in keeping with the changing role of work and its impact on national and international economies and competitiveness. For sixty years, the world has failed to achieve Education for All. It is now time to reconsider the basic options—including the option of TVET—to give to the world, and particularly developing countries, the chance of achieving Education for All (Hughes, 2005). For this to be possible, TVET will have to enable learners completing basic education to enter the labour market with some basic know-how and skills. With work becoming more knowledge- and technologically-based, TVET can play a key role as an entry point to the knowledge society. However, a radical policy reform would need to shift TVET away from heavy investments by the central government in equipment, workshops and instructor training to a pragmatic and meaningful partnership with its major stakeholders in industry, trade and agriculture. Some governments are already embarking on new approaches to providing TVET programmes through improvements in content, teaching methods, models of delivery and teaching/learning processes (Mar, 2005). Two successful examples are provided by the Republic of Korea and China. While the Republic of Korea successfully tailored its TVET system to forecast needs, China almost completely overhauled its antiquated system by encouraging the private sector to provide financing, materials, apprenticeship and guidance to align training with the needs of the market (UNESCOUNEVOC, 2005).

3 The Present Scenario and Regional Context In the recent past, there have been some impressive but uneven developments in education. TVET, which consists of a diverse range of courses, is usually offered at the upper secondary level and beyond, with the lower secondary stage being only for general vocational skills for all students (Maclean, 2005a). Globally, almost 50 million students were enrolled in TVET in 2002, 90% at the upper secondary level. At the moment, one in five upper secondary students is enrolled in TVET on a world scale. However, the enrolment rate varies widely: in East Asia, including China, TVET programmes account for 33% of enrolment, while in West Asia its share is less than even 4% (Ellis, 2005).

3.1 Vocational Gross Enrolment Rates In a global study of TVET by the University of London Institute of Education of the various combinations of students in a number of countries, especially the vocational gross enrolment rates (VGERs), major variations in the public provision of vocational education were noted (Green, Oketch & Preston, 2004). The study showed

IV.3 TVET in the Asian Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects

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that the public provision of vocational programmes in East Asia seems to be low, with the highest rate being the Republic of Korea at 16%. In Oceania, Australia stands far above any other country with a VGER of 68%. Other Asian VGERs are generally low, varying from 0.4% for India, 0.5% for Bangladesh and Pakistan, 4.2% Malaysia and about 9% for Thailand. The study indicates that countries are increasingly including both general and vocational content in all secondary programmes as they fine-tune their curricula to meet particular requirements. Although this strategy has resulted in a rise in the status of vocational training in some countries by being included within a broader range of secondary and tertiary programmes, developing countries still regard it as a second-rate option (Ellis, 2005).

3.2 Globalization, Industry Restructuring and TVET As a result of globalization, the restructuring of industry is now also taking place across the world. As a result, TVET is also undergoing a major reorientation, particularly regarding curriculum revision which is becoming increasingly industryand market-driven, with an emphasis on new technology, the removal of obsolete subjects and the modernization of equipment and teaching/learning materials. However, TVET frequently exists in complete isolation from industry, which is a major problem requiring immediate attention. For TVET to assist and facilitate industry, strong school/industry linkages are essential. As the financial resources of countries in the Asia and the Pacific Region are limited, it is to be hoped that donor agencies would continue to assist them in their reform of TVET, as in the past. This would enable them to modernize their existing facilities to serve the growing requirements of regionalization and internationalization. The restructuring of TVET in the region is accordingly emerging as an urgent priority in view of the challenges posed by globalization and the ICT explosion. However, for this restructuring to be meaningful, it must take into account curricula, resources, teachers, assessment and examinations, school/industry links and certification, non-formal options and the involvement of the private sector (Maclean, 2005b).

4 Philosophy and Objectives At present, preparation of skilled personnel and increases in national productivity and competitiveness seem to be the urgent objectives of TVET in most countries of the region. Nevertheless, many countries are also pursuing objectives unique to their own contexts. While India stresses the need for reducing the aimless pursuit of higher education, there are others that highlight the formative and developmental role of TVET, particularly when it is imparted during the basic cycle of education. Awareness of career paths, career planning and vocational guidance also finds a place in the philosophy of many countries.

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In many countries’ philosophies of TVET there are concerns not precisely reflected under the statement of its objectives. TVET as an integral component of school education is reflected in the educational objectives of several countries. Some countries also have various kinds of vocational or vocationally-oriented schools (Mishra, 1995). A present policy shift in the region relates to TVET being demandor industry-cum-market driven, as opposed to supply-driven as in the past. However, the size, population and economies of countries are creating different situations with regard to TVET. Some countries are reconstructing TVET to meet the needs of their changing societies and the free-market economy.

5 Organizational Problems and the Constraints of TVET Countries in Asia and the Pacific are going through an intensive evolutionary process with regard to TVET. National models continue to emerge to cope with present and future needs, and structures are becoming increasingly relevant to national economic and social requirements. The number of TVET institutions is also increasing. As a result many structures are now providing different entry and exit points and horizontal and vertical mobility. There are countless ways in which TVET is organized in different countries of the region and even within the same country. Although each country, to some extent, has its own pattern, every country seeks the most cost-effective model that offers efficient instruction (Mishra, 1995).

5.1 Problems and Constraints The most industrialized countries in Asia are China, India and Japan. In recent decades, countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and the Republic of Korea have enjoyed rapid progress, earning the title of ‘newly industrialized countries’ (NICs). Thailand’s rapid economic growth needed skilled manpower requiring compulsory education to be extended to year 9. Malaysia’s economic profile changed from a mainly agricultural and mining nation to a more balanced economy with a growing manufacturing industry. The Republic of Korea’s rapid industrialization required skilled manpower in large numbers. These countries have accordingly reformed and developed their TVET systems. Other less-industrialized countries in the region are also improving their systems to meet industrial development needs and growing global competitiveness. A major problem with TVET is that it is generally three to four times more expensive than general education. As developing countries’ resources are limited, they are forced to seek assistance from international agencies, such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and elsewhere, which have often radically changed their policies and strategies (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2005).


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Unemployment is a serious problem in Asian countries and they are reforming their education systems to alleviate this. The Asian region has a big potential for job creation through TVET. Despite the diversity in populations, cultures and levels of development, countries are faced with weak linkages between education and national economic activity. This issue is being addressed by creating, as far as possible, linkages with employers and the job market. However, there is a general shortage of reliable mechanisms to assess job-market demands so as to avoid a mismatch between training and employment.

5.2 The Participation of Women The participation of women in TVET has been low but is increasing rapidly. As a result, large numbers of women are entering the job market in countries such as Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines and Thailand. In a number of countries, separate TVET institutions have been created for women, in addition to regular institutions. TVET courses in keeping with women’s preferences are also offered to encourage their participation.

5.3 TVET and Rural Uplift The Asian region is largely rural and agrarian. An increase in TVET in rural areas is planned so that these economies can benefit. However, there is concern that TVET in rural areas is insufficient and irrelevant, even though it has immense usefulness for farm technology, agro-based industry and bio-technologies. There is an urgent need to focus TVET on improving agricultural productivity in the region.

5.4 Image and Status of TVET A major problem for TVET has been its low status among students and parents. In many countries, it is still considered as ‘second-class education’ (Maclean, 2005b). This problem is gradually decreasing with the recognition of its usefulness and the key role it plays in national development and employment generation.

5.5 Access, Equity and Participation Access and equity are both essential for ensuring meaningful participation in TVET, but increasing enrolment is no guarantee of achieving them. Although there has been a three-fold increase in secondary enrolments in the region over the past forty years, there is still unequal access to this level affecting females, the

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handicapped, members of various social or racial groups and people from remote areas (Maclean, 2005b). There are indications that the proportion of females in secondary education, as well as in TVET, is increasing. However, this is happening more in the relatively industrialized countries of the region, such as Malaysia and the Republic of Korea where it reached about 50% as compared to only 27% in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Mongolia (Maclean, 2005b). Equity and access can be helped also by reducing drop-outs, which are quite appreciable in many systems. Equity can also be helped by removing the disparities between urban and rural institutions, which are still prevalent in several Asian countries. These disparities are due to poor planning and the shortage of funds. There is an urgent need to improve TVET for rural areas throughout Asia. Some countries are using new methods of student enrolment to ensure equity and better participation in TVET programmes. It has been observed that some students who qualify and enter TVET institutions have no interest in vocational courses and this constitutes a wastage of resources. Some countries have adopted aptitude and ability tests so as only to admit students who will benefit from these programmes. These measures are likely to help in reducing high drop-out rates.

6 Policy and Planning The importance placed on TVET is relatively recent. Frequent changes in policy and planning have been made in recent years to meet emergent industrial and economic development needs. There is a growing realization of issues related to the relationship between TVET and the economy, between ecology and social development and the role that TVET can play in improving national productivity and competitiveness. Many countries have also recognized the need for discussion with the labour market, chambers of commerce and other appropriate bodies when planning TVET. This is because labour market demands constantly vary. Planning is also largely dependent on population and demographic trends, literacy rates and the level of primary education, factors that place more pressure on secondary education and hence on TVET. Co-operation between TVET and industry (i.e. employers) is still weak in many countries. Close links should be maintained with industry to improve student job placement, periodic industrial experience for teachers, the provision of equipment and teachers and, more importantly, representatives of industry sitting on school boards.

6.1 Role of the Private Sector An important policy issue is the role of the private sector in TVET. With more private sector participation and with more public/private partnerships, not only would the quality of training improve but countries would greatly benefit from additional funds so as to reduce expenditure. In India, the Republic of Korea, Philippines and


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Thailand many large industries run their own training departments. In many other Asian countries, TVET is high on the development agenda, as well as collaboration between institutions and industry. A notable example in this regard is that of Japan which encourages practical training in agriculture, business, fisheries, home economics, nursing and society welfare in co-operation with industry (Okada, 1995). Even some less-industrialized countries, such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and the Philippines, have recently made major shifts in TVET development strategy in co-operation with industry and trade sectors.

6.2 Institution/Industry Linkages The issue of linkage between industry and institutions has been a subject of immense interest throughout the world (Mishra, 1995). In many Asian countries, institution/industry linkages are still weak and are taking time to develop due to insufficient knowledge about each others’ capability and potential. Industry’s lack of interest or its critical attitude towards TVET institutions is also due to the fact that many institutions have been functioning in complete isolation from industry’s demands. Institutions can benefit greatly if industry were better informed about their programmes. Industry too needs to collaborate as it would be a major beneficiary if TVET institutions functioned more efficiently. TVET/industry co-operation could also facilitate ‘sandwich’-course training and ‘day-release’ or ‘block-release’ programmes to meet urgent occupational demands.

7 A National Co-ordinating Mechanism Several countries in Asia have set up national co-ordinating bodies to oversee the TVET system. As well as educators, these bodies include representatives of State authorities, industry, agriculture and the private sector and meet regularly to identify problems and resolve them. These mechanisms also help in minimizing mismatch between demand and supply of graduates, as well as providing programmes for disadvantaged population groups, such as women. Identification of organizational changes to improve the responsiveness of the systems to market demand is also supervised by these co-ordinating mechanisms. Co-ordination of TVET activities is helping to prevent duplication of efforts and wastage of resources. On the contrary, the pooling of resources is facilitating the task of making the system more cost-effective. Good working examples of these co-ordinating mechanisms exist in Australia with the Vocational Education, Employment and Training Board (VEET) (Wolfensberger, 1995), in the Philippines with the Technical and Skill Development Authority (TESDA) (Lacson & Justimbaste, 1995) and in Pakistan with its National Vocational and Technical Education Commission (NAVTEC) at the federal level and technical education and vocational training authorities (TEVTA) in the provinces.

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7.1 Decentralization A major policy change in some countries is the decentralization of TVET. Large countries with many provinces find these essential, but other countries may find the concept of decentralized planning and implementation a useful strategy. Countries such as Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan are beginning to benefit from decentralization. The organization and management of the TVET system in a large and diverse country such as India is a formidable task. The need for an effective relationship between education, working life and the community has long been recognized in India and this philosophy has helped the country in its policy of decentralizing to regions, with a National Council for Technical and Vocational Education at the federal level. In Pakistan, the TEVTAs in the provinces and NAVTEC at the central level also provide a workable example of national co-ordination and decentralized management.

7.2 Research on TVET Policy A significant drawback is that very little research is done on TVET at the national level. Research findings could be of great help to policy-makers and planners, and a big incentive to teachers. A research pool should be developed among national TVET institutions and research competencies urgently developed. Exchange and sharing of information and experiences through regional and international cooperation and networks, such as UNESCO-UNEVOC, could go a long way in assisting countries in this regard.

7.3 Multi-Skilling and Broad-Based Training In TVET planning, too often institutions do not meet national requirements both in respect of course content and the numbers of students trained. A decrease in manpower demands in some occupational areas due to saturation of job markets, or less manpower being needed due to new technologies and automation, is making the task of planning TVET systems more difficult. Recasting training programmes should enable those trained to fit into more than one job situation, which is becoming more desirable from industry’s point of view.

7.4 Selection of Sites for TVET Institutions Not enough attention is always given to the siting of institutions. In principle, sites should be in proximity of industries so as to facilitate student training and institution/industry linkages. Too often, sites are selected for political expediency.


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Feasibility studies can greatly help in this regard. Not enough attention has been given to the design of buildings to make them cost-effective. Quite often ‘standardtype plans’ made for general purposes are used which may not be suitable everywhere. Industry’s advice could go a long way to overcome this problem.

7.5 Articulation Articulation is a major reform in some Asian countries. ‘Bridging courses’ have helped in providing opportunities to TVET system graduates to enter tertiary education. The creation of post-secondary TVET institutions has also contributed towards the democratization of education and has helped in raising the status of this form of education. Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines are practising articulation in TVET as a major reform to provide alternative pathways in technical fields with higher technical institutes and junior colleges providing credit points and systems enabling entry into higher education institutions. Bangladesh, Pakistan and India have opened other pathways to higher technical education through the polytechnic system, where places are reserved on engineering degree courses for polytechnic graduates who are admitted on a competitive basis. Degree-level vocational courses are also available in India to better prepare graduates for the world of work. About 100 Indian universities and colleges are involved in degree programmes of this type. Another method in India is the use of open learning and flexible delivery to provide a pathway to those for whom further education might not otherwise be an option. An innovation in this regard is provided by Bangladesh which attempted to articulate TVET with general education (Rafique, 1995). Pakistan has also launched a Matric (ten years of schooling) technical programme which is similar in nature.

7.6 Structures TVET structures are being continuously revised and developed to meet the needs of the changing job market. During the 1960s and 1970s a simple three-tiered structure was common. The first tier, the ‘certificate’ level, was for trade or craft vocational training for skilled workers. The course duration was generally two years and entry was upon completion of Grade 8 in secondary education. The second tier was the three-year diploma course for technician training with entry after Grade 10 of secondary education. The third level was higher education for engineers. The three tiers still function in many TVET systems, while major reorganizations are taking place. Cross-national comparisons of TVET structures are not easy due to differences in programmes and course specifications, the involvement of different ministries, diversification within and across the former tiered structure and variations in nomenclature.

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7.7 Stage and Level The upper secondary stage is the most common level for TVET in many countries of Asia, such as China, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, the Republic of Korea and Thailand. It is organized in two- or three-year blocks over the final years of schooling and essentially aims to impart pre-employment skills. The programmes may be strongly to lightly vocational, depending on the countries needs and requirements.

7.8 Administration and Management The efficient management of TVET continues to be a weakness in many countries. This is often due to a lack of people with managerial training and expertise. It is also due to the appointment of people without clear recruitment procedures. The promotion of individuals on the basis of seniority from the education sector as a whole often leads to inefficient and incompetent managers. Poor planning and insufficient time being given to carry out managerial functions are common factors leading to poor management. Management training programmes hardly exist in TVET systems. Management information systems (MIS) are rare and so are the facilities available for inspection, monitoring and evaluation. A few countries, for example Australia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Philippines and the Republic of Korea, have set up MIS facilities. The availability of computer facilities has significantly helped to improve management functions. An efficient management system would help to justify expenditure and prevent wastage by reducing drop-out and repeater rates among students. It can also assist in rationalizing student enrolments, while maintaining teaching and training efficiency, i.e. quality and standards. It can also assist in maintaining information on students, teachers and resources, examinations and awards—as well as finances. Changing course contents driven by new technologies and new job-market requirements are making new demands on TVET managers, who now require competence in the management of change—a vital need today. Heads of TVET institutions generally lack leadership qualities and tend to follow routine practices. Leadership implies competence, vision, good communication and teamwork, besides being articulate and able to obtain the best from a team. TVET systems, especially in developing countries, are more prone to administrative delays. These delays adversely affect performance and the quality of training. In a few countries, ministries of education have set up separate units to handle TVET, such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Ministries of education are also responsible for the accreditation of non-formal private-sector TVET institutions and for monitoring their progress. Bangladesh, Pakistan and India have autonomous boards established by the Ministries/Departments of Education to accredit the vocational training institutions. These boards are also responsible for providing learning resources, conducting examinations and certification.


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8 Curriculum and Training Most of the problems facing Asian countries are curriculum related. The rising demand for TVET is expanding in both formal and non-formal systems. New programmes and delivery approaches are being developed. The cognitive content of training is increasing because a knowledgeable, broad-based and multi-skilled workforce is required. Countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and the Republic of Korea, where rapid industrial progress has taken place, are now requiring multiskilled employees with competency to undertake many functions. An innovation in the region is, therefore, the integration of training courses with combinations of specialized training for multi-skilling. TVET curricula, of necessity, need to be prepared, revised and developed continuously so that they continue to be relevant. Many countries lack competence in curriculum development and some of them have set up curriculum development units. The mismatch between what students learn and the needs of the job market is a major concern in most TVET systems. A major shortcoming is a mechanism for obtaining information about current job-market demands and future needs. Some countries carry out tracer studies to obtain the views of past graduates and employers on improving the curriculum and the employment of graduates. Practical courses in industry for students are a concern in many countries that are not sufficiently industrialized.

8.1 Monitoring and Evaluation The upgrading of the teaching/learning process is also a matter of growing concern as is the maintenance of quality and standards. Many developments are taking place in this regard. Monitoring and evaluation of TVET programmes are being developed using computer facilities. There have been serious shortcomings in monitoring and evaluating TVET and, indeed, there is insufficient assessment of teaching methods and student performance in education systems in general. Establishing TVET monitoring and evaluation units within departments of education is an urgently needed reform in many countries.

8.2 Competency-Based Training A major innovation in some countries is competency-based training where achievement of competency is the basis of measuring progress in training. Standards of performance for this purpose are specified by industry. Australia, Bangladesh and New Zealand have developed occupational competency standards in co-operation with industry. TESDA in the Philippines and TEVTA in Pakistan are in the process of developing competency-based training standards.

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8.3 The Dual Model The German Dual Model has influenced many countries, such as China, Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, Thailand and Viet Nam. This programme is provided according to the needs of industry, which establishes contracts with industry providing skills training and practical experience while the institution provides the theoretical component of the training (Timmermann, 1995).

8.4 Modular Training Modular training is proving useful for both initial training and continuing education. It is also useful for upgrading skills of the employed and for those changing jobs. It is also helpful in meeting lifelong learning of skills.

8.5 Flexible Delivery Countries are taking initiatives to introduce flexible delivery and learning approaches. Australia, China, India, New Zealand, Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam are among countries that have developed open learning, distance education, self-paced and continuing education methods to reach school drop-outs, working people and populations in remote areas. Flexible delivery is also helping in making lifelong learning attainable in the future. The future of TVET greatly depends on flexible learning for more non-formal, more part-time, more private-sector, more industry-oriented and more market-driven programmes.

8.6 Entrepreneurial Skills TVET curricula in many Asian countries include entrepreneurial skills for business and industry imparting concepts such as self-employment and small-scale management. The poor interest in such activity by TVET graduates has been a major concern. Australia and New Zealand have been pioneers in this regard. Entrepreneurial skill development is now being actively pursued in many other countries, such as Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Philippines and Thailand. Other countries are also helping young entrepreneurs with small business loans, material incentives, financial support and tax exemptions.

8.7 Teacher Training The recruitment and retention of competent teachers, especially those with industrial experience, has been a major problem for TVET systems in many countries.


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Frequently, salaries are insufficient compared to those in industry. Teachers who join TVET systems often leave to take up jobs in industry. Sometimes the causes of leaving are lack of satisfactory career prospects and unsatisfactory working conditions. Some systems, however, do offer career building to teachers through teacher education and industrial experience programmes, as well as incentives through merit-based promotion schemes—and sometimes even by providing housing and assistance with children’s education. The shortage of teachers has necessitated the use of part-time teachers or trainers seconded from industry. The shortage of teachers in many countries is making it difficult for serving teachers to be released for further training. Teacher up-grading is an urgent priority for every country so that TVET can be continually improved.

8.8 Vocationalization of Curricula A major concern of countries is the extent to which general lower secondary education could be vocationalized. The consensus has been that it should create an awareness of the world of work and provide an appreciation of hands-on skills. Outcomes would be a healthy attitude towards practical work and mental preparation for taking up a career involving the use of practical skills. One dilemma is that vocational training at this level is not adequate for work purposes, so questions are asked as to whether the effort and expenditure are justified. However, some South Asian countries, including Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, are increasing the vocational content of education at the secondary level.

8.9 Assessment of Training Quality Maintaining the high quality of training is generally hampered by funding difficulties for the acquisition of physical resources and the recruitment of competent teachers. Many systems do not have the procedures and facilities in place for the systematic assessment of training quality and standards. For these systems to be effective and efficient, quality and standards are absolutely necessary. Australia and New Zealand provide good examples of industry/institution linkages that can assist and facilitate TVET systems in this regard.

8.10 Vocational Guidance and Counselling The social and financial background of most TVET students in the Asian Region makes vocational guidance and counselling absolutely necessary. Many TVET systems have set up the required facilities, including ‘vocational guidance centres’, in their institutions. Working teachers are generally associated with this work and they do advise students on a day-to-day basis. Some TVET institutions provide training

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for those appointed to conduct vocational guidance and have facilities for maintaining student records, as well as regularly updated employment and job-market information. Vocational guidance and counselling helps students with the selection of TVET courses that suit their interests and potential, and provides advice on career prospects and employment possibilities. Counselling work is also useful to help students who are having personal difficulties. It is important to mention that vocational guidance and counselling not only help students but also teachers—both directly and indirectly—in teaching their students.

9 Costs and Funding A major issue facing TVET is its comparatively high cost. Governmental budgets are generally inadequate and many Asian countries are forced to seek the assistance of international agencies, such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and bilateral donors. It should be noted that many of these agencies have gone through a radical shift in their policies after, in some cases, being the staunchest supporter of TVET for decades (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2005). The high unit cost of TVET is placing a limitation on the numbers that can be trained and the extent to which training can be provided. It is also affecting the quality of training. The physical and teaching resources, such as the recruitment of teachers, the modernization of equipment and the purchase of consumable and other training materials, are the hardest hit. The quality and employability of the TVET graduates is also suffering and inadequate training courses and trainee numbers in many cases do not justify the expenditure on institutions. For developing countries this really is a dilemma and they need urgently to reconsider the strategies of donor agencies so that they can reform their institutions—often established with the assistance of these donor agencies. A matter to be considered by donor agencies could be provision of seeding grants for technical support for particular purposes (Maclean, 2005a). The comparisons of cost per graduate rather than cost per enrolled student make the costs look even higher due to the high drop-out and repeater rates in many TVET institutions.

9.1 Cost-Effectiveness Cost-effectiveness is extremely important since it is a useful indicator of productivity within the institution. If an institution uses the resources efficiently then it can be cost-effective. Cost-effectiveness has not been given much consideration in TVET systems in many Asian countries. They are mostly engaged in quantitative expansion without any regard to the quality of the graduates. There is an imperative need to assess and demonstrate quality and cost-effectiveness so that these institutions can contribute to improving national production and competitiveness.


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9.2 Public/Private Partnership Public/private sector partnerships are increasing in many countries and have been instrumental in providing both training and funding. However, developing countries are still finding it difficult to exploit this potential due to the fact that their TVET institutions have been working in complete isolation from industry. Private-sector involvement can help governments to augment funding for TVET while making the optimum use of resources for national development.

9.3 Project Work Some TVET institutions use their workshops to produce saleable items, mainly for other schools, and thereby generate funding. Combining training with production is an innovation in many Asian countries that has been responsible for improving the quality of training and providing additional funding. There is a need to exploit this potential source of revenue for improving the quality of TVET. China provides a very good example in this regard, where technical schools are encouraged to run factories or enterprises to generate funding.

9.4 Industrial Funding A major funding agency available to TVET is industry itself. Industry can help institutions with the provision of equipment, setting up workshops, paying for teaching posts and helping with training. Levies and assistance from industry are only possible when TVET institutions function efficiently and produce the graduates that industry requires. Several countries in Asia have enforced levies on industries, usually those with a certain number of employees, on the basis that industry is the main beneficiary of TVET. The Republic of Korea’s in-plant training through the enterprise’s own facilities is a case in point. Many other countries could benefit from such examples.

9.5 Diversifying Funding Diversifying TVET funding sources is a major development in some countries in the region. Revolving funds with public and private-sector contributions have been established in some countries encouraging enterprises to provide training. Private institutions have also been established through this funding. Thailand placed a skillsdevelopment levy on industry, a major beneficiary of TVET, so as to establish a skills-development fund to support innovative schemes. Governments need to reassess their budgeting for TVET in the light of the growing need for the national economies to improve their productivity and competi-

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tiveness. There is also a need on the part of many governments in the region to encourage the private sector to invest in TVET and then to support these initiatives so that these efforts could eventually lead to more training places.

10 Regional Co-operation Regional co-operation has been encouraged over a long period, but shows little progress. It can help countries especially when problems are similar and resources are limited. It is mutually beneficial in areas such as the exchange of information and experiences, identifying common problems and seeking solutions, the use of teachers and equipment, curriculum development and improving the quality of training. Regional co-operation can assist the development of TVET structures, teacher upgrading, the maintenance of skill standards, the movement of students on a credit transfer basis, and even assist in providing employment possibilities. A regional information exchange system can be of much benefit. Regional co-operation can be made effective through the use of regional co-operation mechanisms, such as the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC), amongst others. While regional and international co-operation are useful, countries in Asia can benefit greatly through mutual collaborative efforts among their national TVET institutions. The UNESCO-UNEVOC Network has been assisting countries in the region in the exchange of information and experiences, the development of infrastructures and the establishment of regional and national databases. There is an urgent need, both on the part of the countries and of UNESCO-UNEVOC, to accelerate this co-operation through the establishment of regional centres and national nodal points so that this potential can be fully utilized.

11 Conclusion In spite of the fact that TVET is regarded as a priority for development in the region, there is still much to be done to achieve the vibrant, rich, high-quality education desired by all countries to restructure industry and enhance national production and competitiveness in this age of globalization and information. On the other hand, in the minds of most parents and students, TVET still remains a second-class education, suffering from a a lack of status. The present need is to reform TVET so as to equip its learners with skills of the future as opposed to the obsolete skills and know-how of the past. In this way, they can contribute to providing a competitive edge to national economies. This huge task is both urgent and imperative and calls for bold innovations in philosophy, objectives and practice. Nowhere is the need for economic, social and sustainable development greater than in the vast, diverse and still developing region of Asia and the Pacific. The biggest challenge in the region, which is mostly rural and agrarian, is to facilitate rural transformation and to alleviate poverty. For this purpose there is an urgent need to mobilize innovative


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and alternative approaches. Improvements are required in content, teaching practices, modes of delivery and teaching/learning processes with a bold shift from a supply-driven approach to the market-driven philosophy, objectives, practices and approaches of the future. There is also an urgent necessity to improve the delivery and outreach of TVET systems in the region using ICTs to optimize and maximize the results. Asia and Pacific as a region has a big resource in the form of an abundance of manpower. However, this resource is also the region’s greatest liability. For TVET, this challenge is the biggest opportunity in view of its huge potential to increase the region’s productivity and competitiveness through reform and modernization in this age of information and globalization. In view of its huge magnitude, this task is beyond the capacities of most of the developing countries in the region. This matter therefore requires the urgent assistance of donors to provide support to these countries in their new and bold reform initiatives. New donor orientation, support and strategies can enable countries to produce the needed technical manpower for economic and social uplift. These approaches can also assist in achieving a competitive edge in their bids to derive optimum benefits from global and regional trade and mobility in this age of unprecedented technological advancement. The urgent challenge for TVET is to bridge the gap between the demands for jobs and the actual needs of society for economic, social and sustainable development. There is also an urgent need on the part of countries and donors for substantial investments in the skills of the future, particularly future generations, which for many governments in the region could be bold initiatives.

References Ellis, S. 2005. Current international data for TVET and their limitations. Prospects, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 367–80. Green, A.; Oketch, M.; Preston, J. 2004. Global report on technical and vocational education and training: report to UNESCO Institute for Statistics. London: University of London Institute of Education. Hughes, P. 2005. Why access to TVET for All is essential if EFA is to be achieved? Prospects, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 253–67. Lacson, J.D.; Justimbaste, B.S. 1995. Philippine country paper. (Paper presented at the International Workshop on Organisational and Management Alternatives for Vocational Education within the Educational System, 1995, Bhopal, India.) Maclean, R. 2005a. Orientating TVET for sustainable development. Prospects, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 269–72. Maclean, R. 2005b. Setting the context: an overview of secondary education reform with particular reference to the Asia-Pacific Region. In: Lauglo, J.; Maclean, R., eds. Vocationalisation of secondary education revisited. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Mar, Naing Yee. 2005. Approaches and concerns in TVET in Myanmar. Prospects, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 331–42. Mehta, A.C. 2003. Progress of literacy in India: what the Census 2001 reveals. New Delhi: NIEPA. Mishra, A.K. 1995. Organizational alternatives in vocational education. In: Central Institute of Vocational Education of India, ed. Vocational education: organizational and management alternatives. Bhopal, India: Pundit Sunderlal Sharma Central Institute of Vocational Education.

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Okada, S. 1995. Country paper on Japan. (Paper presented at the International Workshop on Organisational and Management Alternatives for Vocational Education within the Educational System, 1995, Bhopal, India.) Quisumbing, L.R. 2005. Education for the world of work and citizenship: towards sustainable future societies. Prospects, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 289–301. Rafique, A. 1995. Country paper on Bangladesh. (Paper presented at the International Workshop on Organisational and Management Alternatives for Vocational Education within the Educational System, 1995, Bhopal, India.) Timmermann, D. 1995. Dual training in Germany: is it a model for other countries? In: Central Institute of Vocational Education of India, ed. Vocational education, organisational and management alternatives, pp. 68–87. Bhopal, India: Pundit Sunderlal Sharma Central Institute of Vocational Education. UNESCO-UNEVOC. 2005. Vocational education: the come-back? Education today, no. 13, April– June. Wolfensberger, J. 1995. Organizational structure of vocational education and training in Australia. (Paper presented at the International Workshop on Organisational and Management Alternatives for Vocational Education within the Educational System, 1995, Bhopal, India.)

Chapter IV.4

Transforming TVET Systems with the CPSC in the Asia and Pacific Region Man-Gon Park

1 Introduction The Asia and Pacific Region extends from Mongolia in the north to New Zealand in the south and from the Cook Islands in the east to Iran in the west. It embraces the world’s largest ocean, the Pacific (165 million square km.), as well as its third largest ocean, the Indian (73 million square km.) and a range of important seas. It contains three of the largest and most populous countries in the world (China, India and Indonesia), several mountainous and land-locked States (such as Bhutan and Nepal), and twenty-two small archipelagic States, territories and protectorates. With only 23% of the world’s total land area, the region is home to about 58% of its population. Twenty-four of the Colombo Plan Staff College (CPSC) member countries in the region are situated in the following geographical areas: North-East Asia (Japan, Mongolia and the Republic of Korea); South-East Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam); South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka); and the Pacific (Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Palau and Papua New Guinea). These countries are diverse in terms of socio-economic status and this has significant implications for the development of technical and vocational education systems. Sustainable human resource development (HRD) through technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is an ambition for every country in the world. But rapid population growth and intensification in the exploitation of natural resources is making the Earth more fragile environmentally—and we are now aware that its capacity is not unlimited. This sustainable HRD concept was realized during the 1992 Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in which heads of State and government adopted Agenda 21 and stressed the link between the sustainable use of natural resources and human development. The concept of sustainable development emphasized that economic development should enable present generations to meet the present needs without depriving the following and future generations of the same opportunities. In order to put Agenda 21 into practice, a special programme known as Capacity 21 was launched by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to aid countries in the development and implementation of capacity-building programmes. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 IV.4, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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The realization and importance of sustainable human resource development has been actively pursued since then. Investment in human resource development is the key to the development process of any country. It requires linkages and an integrated multidisciplinary framework to bridge the traditional gap between sectors, as well as new innovative approaches to ensure sustainability and the optimum use of scarce resources. The latest information and communication technologies (ICTs) are also playing a greater role in the enhancement of individuals’ capabilities to perform better in their work place and, at the same time, to ensure the sustainability of scarce resources. The CPSC, a specialized agency for human resource development in TVET for its member countries in the Asia-Pacific Region, has been undertaking programmes and courses of further professional development in technical and vocational education over the past thirty-two years. It has thus accumulated a wealth of resources on all major aspects of technical and vocational education and sustainable HRD that need to be disseminated across the globe. CPSC, directly and indirectly, has been contributing towards HRD in this region with an emphasis on sustainability. This chapter highlights some of the contemporary issues in TVET for HRD in the region, some programmes initiated by international and regional agencies to solve the pressing problems in sustainable HRD, the dilemmas and implications in sustainable HRD, the catalytic role of CPSC in the Asia-Pacific Region and the challenges for sustainable human resource development.

2 Regional Issues for Human Resource Development Human resource development through TVET is actually a cycle of investment in human resources to enhance productive capabilities, the utilization of those resources to produce higher output, and the consumption by those human resources of the benefits arising from the increased output, thereby leading to an enhanced quality of life (UNESCO, 1999). The Asia and Pacific Region contains countries of great diversity in terms of the size of their economies, demographic trends (population growth), ageing of the population, international migration, urbanization, the concentration of the population in rural areas, poverty, workforce mobility with the opening up of labour markets, the technology divide, etc. These diversities pose great challenges for international and regional organizations to successfully implement sustainable human resource development programmes. Several CPSC member countries have witnessed marked improvements in the areas of health, nutrition and education over the past five years. However, some of them continue to grapple with low per capita income, rapid urbanization, inadequate access to ICTs, brain drain, an ageing population, rapid population growth, etc. Some of the most urgent issues are presented here with statistics taken from the World Bank and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) data sources (World Bank, 2003).

IV.4 Transforming TVET Systems with the CPSC in the Asia and Pacific Region

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2.1 Demographic Trends The countries of the Asia and Pacific Region are heavily populated and are home to almost 3 billion people. The region includes some of the world’s most populous countries, like China with 1.28 billion people, followed by India with 1 billion, Indonesia with over 210 million, Bangladesh and Pakistan with around 140 million people each. Young people (under 25 years of age) constitute a sizeable and growing proportion of the population and their reproductive health concerns are a major issue, especially in view of the spreading HIV/AIDS pandemic. On the other hand, large ageing populations are emerging as an area of concern in countries all over the world. This is mainly connected with declining fertility and increased longevity. The proportion of older people is thus getting larger relative to the working population. It is interesting to note that the number of people aged 60 and above in lessdeveloped regions is more (393 million) than those in more-developed regions (235 million). The growth of the ageing population (by the year 2050), as estimated in World Bank documents, is five times more for the less-developed regions than for the developed regions (World Bank, 2003). Table 1 gives the total population, the older population, population density and population growth rate for CPSC member countries.

Table 1 Population, population density and population growth rate: selected Asian countries No. Country

Total population in millions

Population aged 60 years or older (in 000)

Population Population density (people growth rate per sq. km.) (% per annum)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

22 135 2 0.83 1,068 214 66 128 48

1,100 7,210 144 NA 81,089 17,169 3,922 31,027 5,532

33 912 48 45 325 113 40 342 481

1.8 1.3 3.2 0.7 1.5 1.4 1.4 0.5 0.6

25 0.29 53 24 148 6

1,561 16 3,389 1,438 8,611 NA

76 956 81 164 185 12

2.1 1.6 2.0 2.1 1.9 1.8

81 4 19 0.02

4,513 463 1,857 NA

270 6,134 307 46

2.0 0.5 1.3 1.5

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Afghanistan Bangladesh Bhutan Fiji India Indonesia Iran Japan Republic of Korea Malaysia Maldives Myanmar Nepal Pakistan Papua New Guinea Philippines Singapore Sri Lanka Palau

Source: World Bank, 2003.

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The percentage growth rate of the population in most of the CPSC member countries has not changed considerably over recent years. However, when comparing the countries of the ESCAP region, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore and Thailand are the CPSC member countries with the lowest population growth rate, while Bhutan and Fiji are the countries with the highest rate (Fig. 1). Put simply, the more developed countries have lower population growth rates while the lessdeveloped countries have higher population growth rates (Fig. 2). Afghanistan Bangladesh Bhutan Fiji India Indonesia Iran Japan Rep. of Korea Malaysia Maldives Myanmar Nepal Pakistan Papua New Guinea Philippines Singapore Sri Lanka Palau 0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

% per annum

Fig. 1 Population growth rates

1.6 1.4

1.46

1.2 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2

0.25

0.0

More-developed countries

Less-developed countries

Fig. 2 Comparative population growth in more- and less-developed countries

Due to the limited geographical area, the population density is highest in Singapore and Maldives (Fig. 3). In the case of Bangladesh, the population is mostly concentrated in big cities. The number of ageing people is growing as a result of lower fertility rates and better health conditions (Table 2). This increase in the aged population is an area


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Population density (people/km2) Afghanistan Bangladesh Bhutan

Fiji India Indonesia

I.R. Iran Japan Rep.of Korea Malaysia Maldives Myanmar Nepal Pakistan Papua New Guinea Philippines Singapore Sri Lanka Palau 0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

Fig. 3 Population density in the Asia and Pacific Region Table 2 Percentage of the older population by region in 2000, 2015 and 2030 Region

Year

65 years or older

80 years or older

Asia

2000 2015 2030

5.9 7.8 12.0

0.9 1.4 2.3

Europe

2000 2015 2030

14.7 17.6 23.5

3.0 4.7 6.4

Latin America/Caribbean

2000 2015 2030

5.6 7.6 11.5

1.0 1.5 2.5

Middle East/North Africa

2000 2015 2030

4.4 5.5 8.4

0.6 0.9 1.4

North America

2000 2015 2030

12.4 14.7 20.0

3.3 3.9 5.4

Oceania

2000 2015 2030

10.1 12.4 16.3

2.3 3.1 4.4

Sub-Saharan Africa

2000 2015 2030

2.9 3.1 3.6

0.3 0.4 0.5

Source: <www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/>; <www. unescap.org>

for concern for less-developed countries (United Nations Population Fund, 2002; Hermalin et al., 2002). The publication Global aging: the challenge of success (Kinsella & Phillips, 2005) points out that people aged 65 or above already make up nearly one-fifth

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M.-G. Park 1600

1500

1400 Millions

1200 1000 0.25% per year

800 600

420

400 200 0

131 1950

2000

2050

Fig. 4 Growth of the ageing population (60 years and above)

of the population in many European countries—and this proportion is rising. And less-developed countries are also seeing their populations growing older, ushering in new social problems for societies that already have few public support systems. By 2050, nearly 1.5 billion people aged 65 or older will reside in less-developed countries increasing at the rate of 0.25% per year (Fig. 4).

2.2 The Brain Drain through International Migration Since the 1970s, Asia has been largely a region of out-migration, much of which is intra-regional. Today, out of the 179 million people who are outside their countries of birth, an estimated 50 million are in Asia. Of the many forms of international migration in the region, the movement of labour across borders has been most significant. Contrary to the intent of governments to regard migration as a temporary phenomenon, it has been sustained over the past thirty years. Asia, like other regions before it (North America, North-West Europe, the oil-rich Gulf countries), has not escaped the need to import labour to sustain the development processes. One report painted the following picture of Asian region migrants (Asis, 2005). In the 1980s, the high performing economies of Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and later on in the decade, Malaysia and Thailand, had to import migrant workers. The construction sector, plantations, fishing and rice mill industries and factories in these countries experienced labour shortage, as locals moved on to better job prospects. The demand for female migrant workers increased, but the demand was limited to domestic work (Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia) and entertainers (Japan). On the other hand, the Middle East continued to draw migrants, although not in the same scale as in the previous decade. A remarkable development was the opening of the labour market to women migrants to fill jobs in the service (mostly domestic workers), sales and professional (e.g. medical personnel) sectors. The Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka became the major source countries of domestic workers. Female migration from the latter two countries, in particular, is heavily directed to the Middle East countries. While domestic workers also dominate female migration from the Philippines to the Middle East, a sizable number are professionals (mostly nurses and other medical personnel). The concentration of women migrants in domestic work and entertainment (also in caring professions such as nurses) highlights the gendering of the labour market. In Asia, male labour migration has specialized in addressing the labour needs in the formal/productive sectors, while female labour migration is responding to the domestic work force.


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In view of some of the above trends and associated immediate problems and issues in labour force migration, we can summarize that:

r r r

Mobilization of the workforce across national borders would continue with migration from less-developed countries to more-developed countries. The disparity of skills and competencies with regard to the optimum qualifications required remains a matter of concern both for employers and migrants. The demand to standardize and harmonize TVET systems through accreditation and certification would grow.

2.3 Massive and Rapid Urbanization Urbanization has taken on a new dimension and become a matter of concern in the Asia-Pacific Region. In an article published by the United Nations, it says that in 1999 47% of the world’s population (2.9 billion people) lived in urban areas. By 2030, it projects that this proportion will reach 60%, totalling 4.9 billion people. Roughly 95% of this massive urban growth will occur in less-developed countries. More than 60% of the increase in the world’s urban population over the next three decades will occur in Asia, particularly in China and India, but also in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines and Viet Nam. According to World Bank indicators, Asia will have a lower overall urbanization rate in 2030 (53%) than any other region. Africa will be slightly higher at 55%, while Latin America is projected to reach 83%. However, Asia’s total urban population will exceed 2.6 billion in 2030, compared with 604 million in Latin America and 766 million in Africa. Such huge flows of human resources to urban areas will put pressure on governments to take measures and allocate funds for better health, education and accommodation (World Bank, 2003; Mendes, 2005).

2.4 Poverty Alleviation Poverty is a serious issue all over the globe. The severity of the issue can be judged from the fact that the first goal under the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is related to the commitment to eradicate poverty and hunger: <www.un.org/milleniumgoals/>. The 2005 report on the MDGs has given an improved picture of poverty reduction in the Asian region. Even with an overall population growth of more than 800 million since 1990 in developing regions, the number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen by 130 million worldwide. The situation in some African countries where poverty persists is still not good; extreme poverty has risen in that region from 227 million in 1990 to 313 million in 2001, i.e. one in five people in the developing world still lives below the extreme poverty line of $1 per day income. The statistics are given in Fig. 5.

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1990

Sub-Saharan Africa

All other developing regions

936 (76.72%)

227

748 (68.19%)

1996

271

703 (64.50%)

2001

313

78

74

57

1,220 M

1,097 M

1,050 M

Fig. 5 The number of people living on less than $1 per day, 1990, 1996 and 2001 (millions)

2.5 The Technology Divide The digital divide is often described as the disparity that has emerged between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ in a society grounded on ICTs. Generally, the ‘haves’ are the well-educated with the financial means to invest time and effort to acquire skills that will enable them to flourish in an information society. The ‘have-nots’, mainly from the lower-income groups, are the ones who lack affordable access to ICTs, thus being disadvantaged in terms of employability and learning opportunities. This digital disparity can be seen in Table 3, which gives the number of Internet users in CPSC member countries: Table 3 Number of Internet users in CPSC member countries No.

Country

Literacy rate (%)

Number of Internet users per 100 people

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Afghanistan Bangladesh Bhutan Fiji India Indonesia Iran Japan Republic of Korea Malaysia Maldives Myanmar Nepal Pakistan Papua New Guinea Philippines Singapore Sri Lanka Palau

NA 50 56 94 68.36 92 83 99 98 92 97 89 59 60 65 93 97 95 92

NA 2.04 1.75 6.7 1.75 3.76 7.24 48.27 60.97 34.41 5.34 0.05 0.34 1.03 1.37 4.40 50.87 1.17 NA


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It can be seen that, although most countries have access to Internet technology, there is a considerable disparity between Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia and Singapore and the rest. This emerging divide is no longer between the traditional haves and have-nots, but between those nations that are wired and those that are not. Of course, the developed countries already have the edge. For example, in the Republic of Korea high-speed Internet access is available to the majority of the people, as compared to Afghanistan and Bhutan which have minimal Internet facilities in work places and homes.

3 Dilemmas and Implications for Sustainable Human Resource Development Nowhere in the world can we appreciate the enigma of social, economic, scientifictechnological, politico-cultural disparity than in the Asia-Pacific Region. In spite of the significant achievements made during past years, these imbalances are still conspicuous. Japan, the Republic of Korea and Singapore not only exceed world averages on many development indicators, but are also considered the precursors of technology. On the other hand, South Asia, which includes Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan, was described by Churton (2004) as ‘the poorest region, the most illiterate, the most malnourished, the region with the highest human deprivation and the most militarized region in the world’. Indeed, the widening inequality of opportunities, wealth and empowerment continues hounding the region resulting in a negative impact in the pursuit of sustainable human resource development. These dilemmas therefore need serious consideration.

3.1 Poverty A UNDP Human development report presented a comparative analysis among AsiaPacific countries: the poverty indices of Singapore and Brunei are negligible while those of Myanmar and Lao PDR (38.9 and 32.3, respectively) are quite high. The same report cited the poverty indices of Malaysia (14.2), Philippines (16.5) and Thailand (18.7), which are within the same range as Singapore, while those of Indonesia (27.7) and Viet Nam (28.7) are moderate (UNDP, 2003). The unequal distribution of wealth leads to unsustainability—both for the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. The ‘have-nots’, whose ratio still stands high at one in three Asians, are trapped in the vicious cycle of deprivation and vulnerability. Since they can hardly cope with survival, security and enabling needs, they inevitably become unsustainable. They are unable to participate in governance, which is necessary for peaceful development. On the other hand, the ‘haves’ can afford a higher level of sustainability since they can choose which actions to pursue. But more often than not, they are reluctant to adopt sustainable patterns of development and stubbornly adhere to malpractices of over-production and over-consumption.

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3.2 Disparity in Educational Access and Quality Education constitutes the core of strategies that promote values and could transform the well-being of the individual, society and the environment. Although the right to education is decreed in the constitution of most—if not all—countries, it remains disproportionately accessible. For a long time, the rare opportunity of attending schools has belonged to the ‘privileged few’, leaving the ‘insignificant many’ to the dark side of ignorance and illiteracy. The World Bank (2003) reported that over 1 billion children under the age of 15 require improved primary and secondary services, while 400 million young people between the ages of 17 and 24 require tertiary, vocational education and skills development. In rural areas, the number of children who do not go to school, the number of adult illiterates and gender inequality in education are high. The drop-out rate after primary level is also high because the impoverished farmer can no longer meet the cost of his children’s further education. And even if he can just afford the government’s school system, his children do not receive a good education. Families with a higher economic status benefit from higher potential and better opportunities in gaining access to education. The quality of education is also a factor to consider because it is the very instrument to create new relations for sustainable human resource development. Today, many institutions mushroom every year and there have been minimal checks on the quality of services that these offer. Most countries lack accreditation and certification systems to benchmark educational and training standards, to serve as a licenser by quantitatively and qualitatively evaluating them, to support workforce mobilization and to establish a clearinghouse of information and co-operation agencies (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2004).

3.3 Population and Migration from Rural to Urban Areas Although, remarkably, the population growth rate in the region is decelerating, the actual population continues to increase. Such a condition will intensify land use, thereby generating further pressure on natural resources. Mendes (2005) refers to a UN estimate that by 2015 fifteen conurbations in the region will become megacities with a population of at least 10 million each. In particular, South Asia already has mega-cities like Dhaka, Karachi, Kolkata and Mumbai that are expected to experience further sharp population increases due to migration as well as natural growth. Urbanization and rural/urban migration are some of the most pressing dilemmas thwarting a sustainable human resource development system. They have changed the economic structure leading to a remarkable decline in the agricultural sector and a shift to industrial and service sectors (Kaosa-ard & Rerkasem, 2000). This led to the intensification of the rural/urban gap and eventually the inequitable distribution of income and production assets. Moreover, it resulted in problems of uncontrolled growth, inappropriate waste disposal practices, lack of adequate drinking water


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supply and sanitation facilities, and flooding. The urban poor, who are most affected by these problems, contented themselves in the slums by constructing clusters of shanties wherever and however they could. In the Asia-Pacific Region, these slums are typically temporary structures made of cardboard or jute sacks lacking basic infrastructures and services such as water supply, sewage, drainage, roads, health care and education (WHO/UNICEF, 2001). Demolition of these shanties is common but not successful, since the slums either move to another place or come back again.

3.4 Lawlessness To live in an environment of peace and security is fundamental to human dignity. Countries in the Asia-Pacific Region are riddled with insecurities and armed conflicts, which have resulted in a significant number of human tragedies, displaced people, refugees and wars. Characteristically, corruption has debased fair and efficient economic transactions, undermined governmental legitimacy, threatened political stability and jeopardized socio-economic development in most AsiaPacific countries. According to the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (www.transparency.org), some countries in the region are high on this global list. Indeed, governance structures are highly militarized, devoid of transparency, and freedom of expression and debate do not exist. In another vein, there is an upsurge of crime and lawlessness related to juvenile delinquency as a result of drugs and alcoholism, unwanted pregnancies, etc.

3.5 Environmental, Health and Safety Hazards Health is wealth. A healthy population breeds a healthy nation. On the other hand, ill-health breeds a sick nation. It hampers economic and social development, triggering a vicious cycle that contributes to unsustainable resource use and environmental degradation. The tsunami-stricken developing countries of Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and Maldives have shown that they are vulnerable to natural hazards and disasters. Other countries of the region suffer from limited natural resources, heavy dependence on imports and limited commodities. Hunger, malnutrition, malaria, water-borne diseases, bird-flu, dengue fever, drug and alcohol abuse, violence and injury, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are common scenarios. According to the 2003 UNDP Human development report (UNDP, 2003), inadequate water supply and poor sanitation cause more than 500,000 infant deaths a year, as well as bringing a huge burden of illness and disability in the region. Cholera is prevalent in many countries, particularly those where sanitation facilities are poor, such as Afghanistan, China and India. Only an estimated 48% of the Asian population has access to proper sanitation—less than in any other region of the world. The situation is worse in rural areas, where only 31% of the population have improved sanitation, compared to 78% in urban areas.

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3.6 Non-availability of a Labour-Market Information System Occupational forecasting is extremely important and is an essential tool for addressing the occupational imbalances in the labour market. Recognizing the uncertainty of projection about the growth in employment demand and the need to develop an appropriate supply-side framework stands at the core of priorities in the area of labour-market information management system (LMIS). This would make the TVET sector responsive to labour-market needs. Making such predictions requires expertise in the application of economic analysis, modelling and forecasting.

3.7 Widening of the Digital Gap The issue of the digital divide, the lack of sustainability in efforts and the technical knowledge gap reflect the present-day scenario in the Asia-Pacific Region. During the past two decades, the world has witnessed a technological revolution that has provided mankind with totally new communications media. Through the use of networks, information in all forms is disseminated throughout the world. E-applications have created the potential to bring benefits to society, the economy and the State. In particular, e-government, e-health, e-education and e-commerce have been identified as services enhancing not only economic growth, but also promoting democratic and social progress and bringing sustainability. The dilemma is that in most of the developing countries of the CPSC the availability of ICT services is still at a very low level. The issue of the digital divide persists between the urban and rural areas of any one country and as well as between countries of the region. For example, access to the Internet by households in Afghanistan is below 5%, while in the Republic of Korea high-speed Internet connections are available to almost 80% of the population.

4 The Important Role of the CPSC as a Catalyst 4.1 CPSC Emergence The Colombo Plan Staff College was born on 5 December 1973 after twenty-six member countries agreed to establish a regional centre for TVET, through a resolution signed and agreed by the Colombo Plan member countries. The college was created as a specialized agency of the Colombo Plan to address issues in TVET with the following main functions (Park, 2004):

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Providing courses of further professional education and training; Conducting conferences on various aspects of TVET; Assisting in the conduct of projects in TVET; Promoting and co-ordinating research; Advising and assisting member countries in developing TVET; and Collecting and disseminating information on TVET.


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The CPSC activities thus focus on human resource development through training, consultancy work on major projects in the member countries, research and development in major areas of TVET and processing and dissemination of information in technical education and training.

4.2 Major Thrust Areas of CPSC Over the past more than thirty years, CPSC has accumulated a wealth of resources in various fields of technical and vocational education. Table 4 gives a glimpse of programmes conducted by CPSC over recent years in eight major thrust areas known as the ‘CPSC-RING’. The table only includes the CPSC regular in-country and regional programmes. It does not include consultancy work and other research and development activities conducted in that particular area. The programmes are prepared taking in to consideration regional trends, while the in-country programmes are prepared according to the specific demands of each member country. It is evident from Table 4 that there has been an attempt on the part of CPSC to cover all major thrust areas over the past five years. The ICT component is the most popular area among all the member countries of the region. This popularity laid the foundation for the development of the CPSC’s web-based teaching and learning system and the integration of information and communication technology in all programmes of the Colombo Plan Staff College. The second most popular thrust area is the project, programmes and the institutional management focusing on total quality management, knowledge management, ISO and accreditation and certification systems, and project preparation Table 4 CPSC-RING for technology transfer, education and training services Major thrust area

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implementation and monitoring. The trainee group that this area focuses on is the top and middle-level management of TVET systems.

4.3 CPSC Strategies over the Recent Past Human resource development itself is a challenging task. In order to bridge the technological gap and make its programmes sustainable, while meeting the challenges of sustainable human resource development, the CPSC has launched several initiatives under its Corporate Strategic Plan over recent years. In 2003, the CPSC launched the ‘4Rs Strategy’:

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Refocusing programmes, projects and activities to provide demand-driven, sustainable and innovative services for HRD; Repositioning for a lead role in the advancement of HRD in the Asia-Pacific Region so as to obtain the full benefits of emerging global trends and using cutting-edge technologies; Restructuring the organizational system through a quality management system, effective delivery of services, networking, global partnership and expansion of membership; and Reengineering for production of creative, practical, pioneering and technology oriented outputs in TVET responding to national, regional and international demands.

In 2004, the CPSC decided on even more proactive services through the ‘3As Approach’:

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Accelerated services to clienteles to transform amidst environmental changes; Advanced systems and best practices in HRD; Aggressive mind-set with determined actions for continual improvement.

In 2005, the two previous approaches were combined for a more focused, improved and specialized service through the ‘STELAH Services’:

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Supporting national and regional HRD programmes, projects and activities; Technology transfers to member countries; Expanding a web-based teaching and learning system; Labour-market information services; Accreditation and certification services; and Higher education service in technology education.

4.4 CPSC Innovative Web-Based E-Teaching/Learning System The web-based and e-teaching/learning system (CPSC WB TLS) is an innovative, flexible and lifelong learning system that has been developed with all in-house capabilities and resources. The system not only introduces technological awareness


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Fig. 6 Components of the CPSC web-based teaching/learning system (WB TLS)

and benefits to its participants as a by-product, but also exemplifies knowledgemanagement, economizing the cost of programmes and introducing the latest trends in teaching and learning. So far, CPSC has launched more than a dozen web-based teaching and learning programmes on different topics utilizing its in-house facilities and resources. The overall structure and design of the programme can be understood from Fig. 6. All CPSC programmes are becoming web-based to provide continuous learning, to make learning easy and interactive and accessible anywhere anytime. The interactivity of these programmes is one of its unique features that makes them an outstanding and unique form for common e-learning programmes.

5 Challenges for Sustainable Human Resource Development 5.1 Globalization One major challenge for sustainable HRD is globalization. This process is fostered not only by technological change and the continually falling costs of ICTs, but also by the decisions of developing countries in Asia and the Pacific and elsewhere to embrace market-oriented development strategies and to open up their countries increasingly to the world economy. The world is thus fast becoming one interdependent global market-place with rising competitiveness. A key contributor in the success of the competitive global market is the knowledge and skills of the workforce within national boundaries and within enterprises. Thus, compared to the past, nations and organizations will need to update much more regularly the skills mix of their workforce and employees to respond to the opportunities or threats created by globalization and rapid technological change.

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Indeed, intense global competition is reconfiguring the market-place and each enterprise must differentiate itself from its competitors by the quality of the human systems and processes behind their products and services.

5.2 Cross-Border Workforce Flow and Investment The Asia and Pacific Region has seen waves of investment by Japanese, American and European companies. It has also seen cross-border investments by the four Asian ‘dragon’ economies of Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan and Singapore pushed by labour shortages, rising wages and stronger exchange rates. The three ‘tiger’ economies of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are also investing overseas. As other Asian countries industrialize successfully, they will also undertake cross-border investments. There has also been an increase in regional co-operation zones in the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). With this scenario, synergies among the regional and international human resource development organizations like CPSC need to develop strategies and plans to cope with challenges of cross-border workforce mobility with standard skills (Park, 2005b).

5.3 Technological Environmental Changes The convergence of ICTs has ushered in a big revolution in every facet of human life. Given the magnitude of the environmental changes that these ICTs have the potential to induce, it is vitally important that we understand how this revolution has changed, is changing and will continue to change our primitive community to an e-community—and now the u-world. Technology leaders should be aware of the need to improve existing common and special infrastructures in support of pervasive computing, digital convergence and stronger bandwidth. The next generation of Internet communication services, infrastructures and growth engines will see wireless broadband service, radio frequency identification, system-on-chip, embedded SW, DMB and others. Moreover, faculty and staff need re-training and up-training so as to be responsive to the calls of the new technology in TVET institutions (Park, 2005a).

5.4 Enhancing International Networks The development of sustainable human resources requires concerted efforts and approaches from all national, regional and international training organizations. With the globalization of markets and economies, the challenges are not specific to any one country or institution. Hence, strong networks and partnerships among regional and international organizations and institutions are required for the development of sustainable human resources.


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5.5 Increasing Cross-Cultural Communication and Experiences The Colombo Plan Staff College, with its nineteen member countries, is a crosscultural organization with varied internalized values, attitudes and behaviours, communication media, etc. The joint programmes and ventures, integrated, flexible and interactive teaching/learning activities provide opportunities for increased crosscultural communication and sharing of experiences. The challenge is to meet the expectations of all stakeholders with varied levels of needs and demands (Mahmood, Kim & Park, 2004).

6 Concluding Remarks Human resource development is a concerted process. No single department at the national level and no single agency at the regional or international level can do the HRD job successfully alone. To make the HRD programmes and projects successful and sustainable, ICTs play a very important role and provide the potential to make them flexible. However, it needs to be ensured that the majority of people in developing countries obtain access to the Internet and the digital divide is minimized to the maximum possible extent. The idea of e-communities and e-textbooks is gathering momentum and their careful planning and implementation would bring promising results. The international agencies, like UNESCO-UNEVOC, ILO, ADB, CPSC and others, should jointly undertake collaborative programmes utilizing their resources. In sustainable development, the three key areas that need to be taken into consideration are: economic sustainability; environmental sustainability; and social sustainability. For economic sustainability, the TVET system, including all of its essential elements, should ensure that learners/participants develop a wider set of economically-related knowledge skills and attitudes. For environmental sustainability, the TVET system must raise the participants’ and the course developers’ awareness of the use of scarce resources and minimize wastage. It should thus include areas like environmental concepts, personal values and life-styles and skills for critical thinking and practical action in HRD programmes. Social sustainability means that the basic needs of all participants are satisfied, regardless of their gender, ethnicity or location (Peng Boo Tan, 1997). It provides an equal opportunity to all to develop and utilize their talents.

References Asis, M.M.B. 2005. When men and women migrate: comparing gendered migration in Asia. Quezon City, Philippines: Scalabrini Migration Center. Churton, M. 2004. ICT implications for culture and development for learning. Bangkok: SEAMEO-UNESCO. Hermalin, A.I. et al. 2002. The well-being of the elderly in Asia: a four-country comparative study. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

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Kaosa-ard, M.S.; Rerkasem, B. 2000. The growth and sustainability of agriculture in Asia. Manila: ADB. Kinsella, K.; Phillips, D.R. 2005. Global aging: the challenge of success. Population bulletin, vol. 60, no. 1. Mahmood, T.; Kim Myong Hee; Park, M.-G. 2004. A short method for building web-based teaching and learning systems: the CPSC experience. (Paper presented at the International Conference on ‘New Challenges in Technology Education for HRD in Asia and the Pacific Region’, 20–21 September 2004, Kolkata, India.) Mendes, M.R. 2005. Urban environmental management challenges in Asia. Kanagawa, Japan: Institute for Global Environmental Strategies. Park M.-G. 2004. CPSC as a catalyst for regional accreditation and certification of TVET institutions: prospects and challenges.(Paper presented at the International Conference on Accreditation and Certification for TVET Institutions, 2–3 December 2004, Seoul, Republic of Korea.) Park, M.-G. 2005a. Transforming TVET systems with CPSC in Asia and the Pacific Region. (Paper presented at the International Conference on ‘New Challenges in Technology Education for HRD in Asia and the Pacific Region’, 20–21 September 2004, Kolkata, India.) Park M.-G. 2005b. Environmental changes through ICT from e-Community to U-World. (Paper presented at the International Conference on ‘Developing e-Community Centers’, Agra, India, 2–6 May 2005.) Peng Boo Tan. 1997. Human resources development in Asia and the Pacific in the 21st Century: issues and challenges for employers and their organizations. (Paper presented at the ILO Workshop on Employers’ Organizations in Asia-Pacific in the Twenty-First Century, Turin, Italy, 1997.) UNESCO. 1999. Second International Conference on Technical and Vocational Education: final report. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO-UNEVOC. 2004. TVET for sustainable development. UNESCO-UNEVOC Bulletin, no. 8, April. United Nations Development Programme. 2003. Human development report, 2003. New York, NY: UNDP. United Nations Population Fund. 2002. World population ageing 1950-2050. New York, NY: UNFPA. World Bank. 2003. World development indicators, 2002. Washington, DC: World Bank. <www.worldbank.org/data/wdi2005/index.html> World Health Organization/United Nations Children’s Fund. 2001. Global water supply and sanitation assessment 2000 report. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO; New York, NY: UNICEF.

Chapter IV.5

European Action Programmes for Lifelong Learning Johanna Lasonen

1 Introduction Vocational education and training has been a part of the process of creating a European community since the 1950s. The European training programmes Erasmus and Comett were launched in the 1980s. After the Maastricht Treaty, agreed in 1992, such training programmes were expanded further at the same time as emphasizing their importance to the internationalization of education. With a view to promoting and intensifying educational co-operation, in 1995 the European Commission created two new educational programmes called Socrates and Leonardo da Vinci. Both are umbrella schemes that brought together previously separate action programmes in the field of education. Leonardo da Vinci has been a European Union (EU) action programme in the field of vocational education and training that replaced earlier schemes such as Comett, Eurotechnet, Petra, Force and a part of Lingua. Leonardo I ran from 1995 to 1999, while Leonardo II covered the years 2000 to 2006. Socrates has been the EU umbrella programme for co-operation in school and higher education. Socrates I (1995–1999) was followed by Socrates II (2000– 2006). Since 2007, the European education and training programmes were further merged under the title Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP), being a successor to the Socrates, Leornardo da Vinci and e-Learning programmes. The LLP covers the period 2007 to 2013 with a budget of about 7 billion Euros. The overarching LLP initiative consists of learning opportunities from childhood to old age. The purpose of these programmes has been to promote the international mobility of students, teachers and educational administrators, develop educational practices, and make European education systems more transparent through mutual learning. The target group of these programmes has been individuals in schools, colleges, universities and companies. The motives behind internationalization include sustainable economic growth, competitiveness, a need for an educated workforce and social cohesion. This chapter describes the development of European education and training programmes, especially in TVET, and assesses their effectiveness.

R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 IV.5, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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2 The Socrates1 Programme The European Economic Community, after its foundation in the 1950s, initially addressed educational matters only in the areas of vocational training and the transition from education to employment. When higher education became part of the European agenda in the 1970s, one of the first activities was to promote student mobility. Joint Study Programmes were established in 1976 and remained in operation for about a decade. They provided financial support for networks of departments that exchanged students for a period of up to one year and also included some funds—though on a modest scale. Subsequently, in 1987, the Erasmus programme was inaugurated. Its name not only reminded one of the Dutch humanist and theologian Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (1466–1536), but also served as an acronym for the European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students. Erasmus was intended to increase the quantity of European higher education activities and to broaden their scope. It rapidly became the most visible of the various newly emerging European educational programmes. Though its financial resources did not reach the amount needed to pursue the ambitious aim initially set by the European Community of supporting a temporary study period in another European country for 10% of higher education students, Erasmus became the largest student mobility programme hitherto established. A new chapter in the history of European support for temporary student mobility and trans-border co-operation between higher education institutions was expected to begin when the Socrates and Leonardo da Vinci programmes were established in 1995. Socrates integrated more than a dozen educational programmes which had been set up in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They were revised or supplemented to form two new large European programmes: Socrates for the different sectors of general education and Leonardo da Vinci for vocational education. Socrates absorbed Erasmus and Lingua, which became two of a total of five sub-programmes. The adult education sub-programme was the result of the restructuring of an already existing programme. The amount of funds available for adult education was substantially increased. Comenius was introduced as a sub-programme for the school sector, while open and distance learning were the most noteworthy additions to already existing programmes. The Socrates Institutional Contracts have covered a broad range of possible cooperation activities: organization of student mobility; teaching staff mobility; introduction of the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS); curriculum development, including curricula at initial or intermediate level; programmes at advanced level; and modules focusing on the history, society, culture, politics or economies of other European countries, as well as integrated language courses. Student and teacher visits to universities in Europe have been among the most popular of the activities funded under the Socrates programme. Between 1997 and 2000 European universities, acting within the framework of the Socrates programme, entered into a total of 4,823 co-operation agreements (Lanzendorf & Teichler, 2002, p. 34).

IV.5 European Action Programmes for Lifelong Learning

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The first phase of Socrates, the European education programme, lasted five years. The figures covering this time (1996–2000) indicate that 500,000 students undertook a period of study in another European university, 10,000 schools formed European partnerships and thousands of projects were developed to promote European languages (European Commission, 2005). When Erasmus became a sub-programme of Socrates, support for student mobility and co-operation in higher education was substantially increased. In addition, the mobility of teaching staff and curricular innovation were now also promoted in the context of a special emphasis on a broad development of the European dimension in higher education and efforts to make the non-mobile students also benefit from European exchange activities. The second phase of the Socrates programme started in January 2000 and ran for seven years until 2006 (European Commission, 2000). The programme budget for this seven-year period was 1,850 million Euros. The second phase has continued along the same path as the first one while also introducing some new features. Two key ideas were emphasized: the promotion of lifelong learning and the building of a Europe of knowledge. The aims of the programme have been:

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to strengthen the European dimension of education at all levels; to improve knowledge of European languages; to promote co-operation and mobility throughout education; to encourage innovation in education; and to promote equal opportunities in all sectors of education.

The Socrates programme has consisted of eight actions: (1) Comenius on general school education; (2) Erasmus on higher education; (3) Grundtvig on adult education and other educational pathways; (4) Lingua on the learning of European languages; (5) Minerva on information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education; (6) observation on and innovation in education systems and policies; (7) joint actions with other European programmes; and (8) accompanying measures that bring flexibility, synergies and horizontal priorities. The first three actions have corresponded to the three stages that constitute milestones of education throughout life: school, university and adult education. The other five actions have been horizontal. All eight have had common priorities. Socrates has taken account of all types of learning, whether formal or informal, and all levels of education from nursery school to university and adult education, which is becoming increasingly important. Socrates has been relevant to all those involved in education: teachers, educational staff, administrative and management staff, pupils and students, all playing an increasingly active part in European co-operation projects. Until 2006, there have been a total of thirty-one countries taking part:

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Three EFTA (European Free Trade Area) countries: Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway; Two associated countries: Bulgaria and Romania—(in due course, Turkey).

Socrates encourages the broad dissemination of information, ideas and good practice, for example through the setting up of networks. Since 2007, Comenius, Erasmus, Leonardo da Vinci and Grundtvig are the sectoral sub-programmes of the Lifelong Learning Programme—Socrates has been removed as a sub-programme.

3 The Leonardo da Vinci2 Programme The Leonardo da Vinci programme has been the first integrated community programme in the field of vocational education. The European Council approved the programme under Article 127 of the Maastricht Treaty, where it was stated that the Community must pursue TVET policies without harming the national legislation and decrees of the member states. The first phase of the Leonardo da Vinci programme was planned under the influence of earlier special programmes:

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Comett I (1986–1989) and Comett II (1990–1994) promoting co-operation between higher education establishments and industry; Eurotecnet (1990–1994) promoting innovation in education; Force (1991–1994) developing further education, continuing vocational education (CVT); Petra I (1987–1991) and Petra II (1990–1994) on vocational training of young people, initial vocational education and training (IVET) and transition from school to work; Lingua (1990–1994) on developing language skills.

Among the challenges faced in designing the Leonardo programme was integrating all these previous programmes into a single unified whole with a view to achieving a sharper focus on developing educational policy. Leonardo da Vinci is a vocational education and training programme whose legal basis was laid down in Article 10, paragraph 4 of Council Decision 94/819/EC taken on 6 December 1994 (European Commission, 1994). It was resolved that the development of educational policy would also be promoted through co-operation across national boundaries and through innovation and exchange activities. This came to form the practical basis for the Leonardo da Vinci programme, whose first phase lasted five years (1995–1999) and which was adopted as the main tool of European educational policy. The programme was allocated a budget of 620 million Euros with nineteen objectives. They included fostering the quality of and innovatory activities in the education systems of EU member states and promoting lifelong learning, the education of disadvantaged target groups, educational access, language education, equal educational opportunities, transparency of qualifications,


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open education and distance education, vocational guidance, and co-operation between higher education establishments and industry. The budget of the second phase (2000–2006) of the Leonardo da Vinci Programme was raised to 1,150 million Euros. The objectives of the second phase of the programme were:

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to improve the skills and competencies of people, especially of young people, in vocational training at all levels with a view to facilitating their integration and reintegration into the labour market; to improve the quality of and access to continuing vocational training and promote the lifelong acquisition of skills and competencies; to promote and reinforce the contribution of vocational training to the process of innovation with a view to improving competitiveness and entrepreneurship, also as a means of creating new employment opportunities.

A central feature and advantage of the Leonardo da Vinci programme has been its cross-national character. Each project was required to have partners from not less than two or three different member states. This has enabled the programme to influence educational practices in Europe through cross-cultural exchanges of experiences. In 2003, the Directorate-General for Education and Culture of the European Commission ordered the external interim evaluation of the Leonardo da Vinci II Programme. Between 2000 and 2002, the programme brought together more than 77,000 partners to work on a shared project idea (European Commission, 2004). Such partnerships have made it possible to establish permanent networks for collaboration across national boundaries and for the exchange of good practices. The programme has become well-known through its promotion of trans-border mobility, which has allowed participants to gain work and study experience abroad. The programme has provided funding for staff and trainee exchanges benefiting nearly 127,000 people in vocational education. Effectiveness improved in 2000–2002 compared to the previous programme period (1995–1999). The number of beneficiaries increased and the quality of mobility projects improved. The number of pilot projects increased between 2000 and 2002 (180 pilot projects in 2000 and 204 in 2001). The experiences acquired through these exchanges have fostered young people’s personal development, helped them to improve their self-confidence and language skills, and to understand different cultures, working methods and organizations. Project outcomes indicate that residence abroad has also had a positive effect on the participants’ employability. Further, the Council’s decision on the Europass certificate was specifically based on the outcomes of Leonardo da Vinci projects. The Europass certificate lists work experience accumulated in other countries. Similarly, the Green Paper on mobility and other initiatives broadening the opportunities of European students’ vocational education emerged mainly as a result of exchanges that took place as a part of the Leonardo Programme. The programme functioned also as a development centre for innovation and experimentation. Pilot projects were a central tool of the programme, with partners from different countries working on a shared project idea and testing it in practice. More than 2,500 innovative

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trans-border pilot projects generated a great number of different products, such as new curricula, study modules, information materials, manuals, study materials and work tools (European Commission, 2005). Disseminating the innovations identified in these products is a major future challenge. However, the most profound impacts can be achieved when project partners learn from cross-national activities. Intercultural learning in vocational education is a major step towards a citizens’ Europe, where exchanging experiences and promoting common goals are a part of daily reality. The enlargements of the European Union in May 2005 with ten countries and in January 2007 with two more countries have also been a central concern in programme development. A decision in 1997 by the relevant association councils allowed EU candidate countries to take part in the programme. Towards the end of 1999 the programme benefited from the participation of fifteen EU member states, three EFTA countries from the European Economic Area and eleven candidate countries, amounting to a total of twenty-nine countries. In the twenty-first century, some thirty-one countries could participate. In the candidate countries the programme has attracted widespread interest, and it has clearly helped these countries to prepare their education systems for EU membership. The Leonardo da Vinci Programme has been able to make a substantial contribution to the development of cross-national initiatives in the field of TVET and the internationalization of best TVET practices related to teaching quality and teaching contents, innovations and expanding the European dimension. However, in planning the new Lifelong Learning Programme phase, account has been taken not only of the strengths but also of the weaknesses of the first and second phases of the programmes. The difficulties that arose during the implementation of the first phase were due to the complexity of the centralized administration of the programme. Another weakness was that inadequate attention was paid to designing the programme with a view to complementing other schemes in the fields of education and training. The Commission has ensured that the experiences gained during the first phase were put to use in the second phase by simplifying procedures and continuing with the decentralization of programme administration. The Leonardo da Vinci Programme has been a central tool in the work to evolve lifelong learning strategies generating synergies between the EU’s educational and employment policies. Additionally, among the aims of the second phase was that of involving certain agents—particularly labour-market organizations and small and medium enterprises (SMEs)—more closely in vocational education across national boundaries. The Leonardo da Vinci programme has been a central factor in efforts to promote active citizenship encompassing the EU as a whole, at the same time as it has also been used to illustrate what a citizens’ Europe should mean.

4 The Lifelong Learning Programme (2007–2013) Lifelong learning ‘refers to all general education, vocational education and training, non-formal education and informal learning undertaken throughout life, resulting in an improvement in knowledge, skills and competences within personal, civic, social


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and/or employment-related perspectives. It includes the provision of counselling and guidance services’ (European Commission, 2006b, p. 6). The Lifelong Learning Programme consists of four sub-programmes:

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the Comenius Programme (1,047 million Euros) for pre-school and formal education up to the level of upper secondary education (ISCED-3); the Erasmus Programme (3,114 million Euros) for higher vocational and academic education, including trans-national student placement in enterprises; the Leonardo da Vinci Programme (1,725 million Euros) for vocational education and training in schools or enterprises; and the Grundtvig Programme (358 million Euros) for adult education.

Additionally, the LLP includes the transversal programme (369 million Euros) linking the four sub-programmes. The four key transversal activities consist of: (a) policy co-operation and innovation in lifelong learning; (b) promotion of language learning; (c) development of innovative ICT-based content, services, pedagogies and practice for lifelong learning; and (d) dissemination and exploitation of the results and exchange of good practices. Finally, the new Jean Monnet Programme (170 million Euros) supports institutions, mainly higher education institutions, in European integration (European Commission 2006a, 2006b). During the Leonardo da Vinci Programme, some 50,000 funding receivers in 2006 will be increased to 80,000 receivers in 2013. Each European Member State has a chance to increase trans-national activities in vocational education and training, The funding and activities of the LLP Programme are available to twenty-seven European Union member states, to Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway—and to Turkey. The programme period is seven years. The share of the Leonardo da Vinci Programme in the LLP budget (some 7 billion Euros) is about 25%. The Leonardo da Vinci Programme addresses the teaching and learning needs of all persons in vocational education and training, other than at tertiary level, as well as institutions and organizations that provide TVET. The difference between the previous and new programme period is the exclusion of tertiary education. The actions of the Leonardo da Vinci Programme comprise mobility of individuals, multilateral projects in development and transfer of innovations, networks and accompanying measures, such as dissemination and valorization activities.

5 Impact of the Leonardo da Vinci Programme on Enhancement of TVET The Leonardo da Vinci and other European education programmes have focused on countering social exclusion and under-achievement at school through the provision of support targeting disadvantaged groups and the promotion of equal opportunities for women and men. Special attention has been paid to language learning, particularly to the learning of those languages that are less widely used and taught. There has also been an emphasis on the importance of studying in a multicultural environment as one of the cornerstones of European citizenship. The new information and communication technologies (ICTs) have permeated the whole programme.

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The status of vocational education rose considerably in the 1990s; it was seen as a central means of responding to the increasingly rapid changes in society and the economy and of promoting employment, social cohesion and competitiveness. There was also a broadening awareness of the importance of lifelong learning in terms of knowledge, skills and qualifications. Lifelong learning has gained a central role also in vocational education because it made it possible to improve employment and adaptability as a part of efforts to formulate a European employment strategy. The European educational policy was articulated in two White Papers (European Commission, 2001, 1995).

5.1 The Effect on the Internationalization of Education Systems According to an external evaluation report and national reports, as well as reports by labour-market parties, the Leonardo Programme exerted important and substantial influence on, in particular, the people and organizations who actually took part in it and their immediate environment (European Commission, 2005). The effects involved primarily the internationalization of education systems, which also improved the external image of vocational education systems. As many of the applicants saw it, the innovations sought in the programme referred to the integration into vocational education of a European dimension or co-operation across national boundaries. The trade unions that took part in the projects considered that the programme promoted learning from other countries in the area of innovation and quality. Many reports make a particular mention of the positive effects that the programme had had on learning processes, such as the evolution of cross-national collaboration into networks and collaboration groups. As regards the contents of vocational education, the programme affected the scheduling of study modules, language education and the introduction of new technology in education. According to the evaluations, it was the effects of the mobility-promoting aspects of the programme that were felt most strongly; moreover, they were highly positive from the perspective of individual beneficiaries. Nearly all reports state that mobility projects across national boundaries succeeded in equipping students with new social and intercultural skills, enhancing their self-confidence, improving their access to the labour market, and making them more familiar with new working methods. Those students who were given a Leonardo da Vinci grant for a stay abroad described innumerable positive work and learning experiences. Some of their accounts point out that, through the experience gained by the programme participants, mobility has a highly important long-term effect on the quality of education. Simultaneously, this increases demand for mobility. Taking part in pilot projects affected learning in collaboration processes across country boundaries, while participation in mobility projects generated intercultural education and provided European young people with work experience. The success stems from the efforts made in the programme to base supra-national activities on a uniform approach. The fields where the effects of the programme were felt indicate that it was able to foster the development of European citizenship (European Commission, 2004, 2005).


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5.2 The Effect on National Education Systems and Esteem for TVET In the EU candidate countries, the effect of the programme on education systems was quite clear. As described in the reports submitted by these countries, the areas affected most strongly by the programme were the modernization of their education systems and—possibly most importantly—their EU membership process. In Romania, for example, the programme was explicitly associated with a reform of initial vocational education and recently issued draft legislation on further and supplementary education. In this context, an external evaluation credited the programme with having initiated change in the economic systems of these countries. In 2001, the European Union could look back on twenty-five years of promoting student mobility and cooperation in higher education, including vocational higher education. Within this quarter of a century the activities supported had expanded from involving about 100 departments and about 1,000 students to almost 1,800 higher education institutions and about 100,000 students spending a period of study in another European country each year. Though certain core functions have remained the same since the beginning, the nature of the activities and the organizational context of the programme changed in many respects over the years (Teichler, Gordon & Maiworm, 2001). Kämäräinen and Fischer (2008), who have studied the impact of the European programmes through research on knowledge accumulation of TVET, indicated that a section of ‘Surveys and Analyses’ of the Leonardo da Vinci Programme has produced the research results dealing with the issue of parity of esteem between vocational and general education pathways in Europe (see also Lasonen, 1996; Lasonen & Young, 1998). The issues of attractiveness of TVET and parity of esteem are still the priorities of European education and training policies (European Commission, 2006a).

5.3 Transparency of Qualifications The internationalization and multiculturalization of work and learning environments have contributed to a conscious attention to cultural competence. The discussions about key qualifications launched in the early 1970s focused on the renewal of occupational competencies and on knowledge and competence structures of a new kind. No particular attention was yet paid to the transparency of competencies across national boundaries, nor was (multi)cultural competence seen as a relevant topic in the then debate. Since the 1990s, there has been a continued emphasis on the significance of transparent TVET practices and qualifications. The Copenhagen Declaration in 2002 meant the start of a process of intensifying co-operation in the field of TVET in Europe. It is thought to have been stimulated by the Bologna Process in higher

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education that had been launched in 1999. There has been an endeavour to clarify qualification and competence requirements so as to make qualifications and competencies more readily understandable and more valued on the labour markets of Europe. Every EU/ETA country has named a NPR (national reference point for vocational qualifications) contact point that provides information about the country’s vocational qualifications and its recognition of occupational competence acquired in another EU/ETA country. The ENIC3 /NARIC4 network is responsible for degrees and matters pertaining to their recognition. The activities of ENIC are co-ordinated by the Council of Europe and UNESCO (ENIC/NARIC Network, 2005). As a part of and as concrete measures stemming from the Copenhagen and Bologna processes, a supra-national credit transfer system is being developed, both in higher education and in TVET. A start has been made on setting up a supporting system—the European Qualifications Framework (EQF)—for initial vocational education and training. Efforts to find out how the transparency, comparability and mutual recognition of qualifications across different countries and different levels of education systems can be promoted by developing common principles and indicators for assuring the standard of qualifications and study credits. These date from 2002, when the EU appointed a working group for the purpose. The Europass certificate was created in 1999 for use in the EU/ETA countries. In 2000–2003 the eighteen participating countries issued some 50,000 Europasses. For example, about 2,000 Finnish students have earned a Europass. Upper secondary students are an overwhelming majority (93.3%) among those who have completed study modules meant to qualify them for a Europass. To its holder, a Europass is a document certifying their working and educational career in a form that is identical in all EU/ETA countries. To education providers, it is a tool for organizing international study modules (Opetushallitus, 2005).

5.4 Towards a Multicultural Society Internationalization and multicultural co-operation are no new phenomena in national education systems. What is new is that in the last few decades internationalization has increasingly become an option available to everyone, including those teaching and studying in vocational education establishments. The Leonardo da Vinci Programme is an excellent example of internationalization in this area. Traditionally, vocational education provision has been local and national. This is because the contents of vocational competence are more mutable than those of, for example, general education. The ways in which expert workers are trained tend to change in response to shifts in national occupational structures, technological development, changing natural resources and economic factors, and the current employment situation. The factors that have led to the internationalization of vocational education and training provision include both trends towards democracy and equality and globalization itself—the internationalization of the economy. There is an indirect link


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between globalization and how the structures of vocational training and qualification requirements have been developed at national level. Workforce preparation is shaped by an increasingly international labour market, the exchange of consumer goods and services, and multinational commerce. European and national educational and exchange programmes designed with a view to boosting international co-operation, mobility and transparency have led to a substantial expansion in student and teacher exchanges and in multinational joint projects between educational establishments. The aim of multicultural education is to foster students’ cultural identity and offer every student a high standard of education. A meeting between different cultures is a meeting also between different world pictures, life-styles and practices. Unconsciously or consciously, education involves beliefs about and explanations of how we should handle otherness and value diversity, how we should treat a stranger who thinks differently from ourselves, and what we should teach future workers about the creation of a more just society and world. At its best, the diversity surrounding us exerts a benign influence on individuals’ and groups’ experiences, consumption patterns, life-styles and identity. Interculturality is seen as an opportunity to reform education and pedagogical strategies. Cultural competence is an occupational core competence. The effectiveness of intercultural co-operation depends on professional expertise and adaptation and interaction skills. It may be assumed that cultural competence emerges when intercultural awareness develops into the understanding and the knowledge and skills needed to operate smoothly in diverse environments, together with different people. Multicultural competence refers to attitudes, knowledge and skills and the social and cultural awareness required if one is to cope in intercultural situations. As regards the nature of multicultural competence, we may ask whether it is a separate field of expertise or whether it should be seen as an essential component of practical competence. It might be argued that cultural competence should be considered an internal element of every type of domain-specific expertise. Understood in a broad sense, competence covers personal characteristics, core competence and domain-specific skills. Occupational competence includes basic domain-specific skills, specialized competencies, technical and social rationality, interaction skills, and the ability to live with diversity and understand it in the context of production systems. Interculturality is an essential constituent of every field of occupational competence. As regards the qualifications of an expert, the various constituent elements of competence are integrated into an aggregate of knowledge and skills rather than representing separate and distinct catalogues of features. Multicultural competence is an inbuilt element of the given occupational domain and its practices and functions, rather than an external addition. This entails also an awareness of one’s occupational domain and job as a part of the global economy. In short, multicultural competence is competence of a high standard to operate effectively in multicultural work environments and learn there. However, the European education and training programmes have potential to contribute more to the development of coherent multicultural societies.

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6 Conclusions The internationalization of education is a process shaped by political, economic and cultural relations. Its political motives are linked—directly or indirectly—with foreign and security policies, the promotion of peace and mutual understanding, and the strengthening of national and regional identities. The aim of the EU action programmes in education and training has been to create links between various areas of education and stimulate co-operation in European matters across different education systems. As large umbrella programmes, they symbolize the extension, since the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, of the responsibility of the European Union to all areas of education. Education, training and learning make it possible to promote interculturality and social pluralism. At the global level, education contributes to the success of individuals, nations and economies. European and national educational programmes designed with a view to boosting international co-operation and mobility have led to a substantial expansion in student and teacher exchanges and in multinational joint projects between educational establishments. New contexts require a better understanding of multiculturalism, more interaction skills and more conflict resolution and problem-solving skills. Multicultural competence is a natural component of expertise and professional identity. The internationalization of education should involve as its by-product the fostering of students’ and teachers’ intercultural competence. A problem facing these efforts is the circumstance that internationalization at the system level, the multiculturalization of societies and the curriculum-level implementation of intercultural learning do not necessarily support each other; instead, they are handled as separate issues. Education for intercultural understanding is intended to train people to work as intermediaries between, as interpreters of and as fully empowered members of different cultures. Multiculturalism, anti-racism, the fostering of ethnic equality, intercultural understanding, globalization education, new forms of communication and sustainable development pose new challenges to education and training and to their exchange programmes.

Notes 1. Socrates was a Greek philosopher who believed in a humanist vision of the world and rejected dogmatism. His maxim ‘Know thyself’ is a fundamental basis for self-knowledge and respect for self and other people. 2. The programme was named to commemorate an Italian genius, Leonardo da Vinci, born in 1452 in Vinci in the Republic of Florence, who epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. He was a painter, sculptor, architect and engineer. 3. ENIC—Network of National Information Centres. 4. NARIC—Network of National Academic Recognition Centres.

References ENIC-NARIC Network. 2005. The European gateway to recognition of academic and professional qualifications. <www.enic-naric.net>


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European Commission. 1994. Council Decision No 94/819/EC of 6 December 1994, Article 10, paragraph 4 on a European Union programme on vocational education and training. Official journal of the European Union L 340, 29.12.1994/8–24. <europa.eu.int/comm/education/doc/ official/index en.html> European Commission. 1995. Teaching and learning: towards a cognitive society. <europa.eu.int/ comm/education/doc/official/keydoc/lb-en.pdf> European Commission. 2000. Decision No 253/2000/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 January 2000 establishing the second phase of the Community action programme in the field of education ‘Socrates’. Official journal of the European Communities 3.2.2000 L28/1–15. <europa.eu.int/comm/education/doc/official/index en.html> European Commission. 2001. European Commission White Paper: a new impetus for European youth. <europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/LexUriServ/site/en/com/2001/com2001 0681en01.pdf> European Commission. 2004. Report from the Commission: interim report on the implementation of the second phase of the Leonardo da Vinci Programme. <europa.eu.int/comm/education/ programmes/evaluation/evaluation en.html> European Commission. 2005. Evaluation of programmes and initiatives in the field of education and training. <europa.eu.int/comm/education/programmes/evaluation/evaluation en.html> European Commission. 2006a. Decision No 1720/2006/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 November 2006 establishing an action programme in the field of lifelong learning. Official journal of the European Union, 24.11.2006 L327/45. <europa.eu.int/comm/education/doc/official/index en.html> European Commission. 2006b. The Lifelong Learning Programme, 2007–2013. <europa.eu.int/ comm/education/programmes/llp/index en.html> Kämäräinen, P.; Fischer, M. 2008. Research on technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in the context of European co-operation. In: Rauner, F.; Maclean, R., eds. Handbook of technical and vocational education and training research. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Lanzendorf, U.; Teichler, U. 2002. The policies of higher education institutions. In: Teichler, U., ed. Erasmus in the Socrates Programme, pp. 13–28. Bonn, Germany: Lemmens. (ACA Papers on International Co-operation in Education.) Lasonen, J. 1996. Reforming upper secondary education in Europe: surveys of strategies for post16 education to improve parity of esteem for initial vocational education in eight European educational systems. Jyväskylä, Finland: University of Jyväskylä, Institute for Educational Research. (Publication Series B: Theory into Practice, no. 92). Lasonen, J.; Young, M. 1998. Strategies for achieving parity of esteem in European upper secondary education. Jyväskylä, Finland: University of Jyväskylä, Institute for Educational Research. Opetushallitus. 2005. Europass. <www.oph.fi> Teichler, U.; Gordon, J.; Maiworm, F. 2001. Socrates 2000 evaluation study. Brussels: European Commission. <europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/education culture/evalreports/education/2001/ soci-expost/soc1xpsum en.pdf>


Chapter IV.6

VET in the Baltic States: Analysis of Commonalities and Differences of Reforms in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania ¨ Frank Bunning and Berit Graubner

1 Introduction The development of vocational education and training (VET) is a major concern of the Lisbon strategy for the prosperity of Europe in the twenty-first century. As the Baltic States have been one of the focuses of attention for European VET policy after their application for accession to the European Union, reforms in VET have enjoyed special attention there. The enlargement of the European Union and related challenges have been key drivers for European policy. Since the Lisbon Council met in 2000, the development of VET has been high on the European political agenda. The Copenhagen Declaration of 2002 endorsed the commitment to intensify European co-operation in this area. The newest member states of the EU—among them the Baltic States—are now involved in the implementation of the Copenhagen Declaration and can be seen as a source of enormous (human) potential which will contribute significantly to the objective of greater co-operation. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are three neighbouring countries that have shared a recent common history. It seems of particular interest to analyse the attempts to reform their (vocational) education systems, since the dynamic and speed of reform is a significant impetus for the development of a common European era. This chapter describes approaches to reform of VET in the Baltic States. The socio-economic background of the Baltic States, aspects of lifelong learning and their correlation with European education policy form the backdrop to the outline of essential steps for VET reform in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Despite the commonalities that the Baltic States share, it would be a sweeping generalization to speak about the ‘Baltic VET’ reform. The three countries have launched their very own reforms to develop VET systems that meet the demands of twenty-first-century Europe. This chapter describes the reforms of the individual states, noting the diversity and commonality of approaches to reform.


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2 VET in the Light of the Socio-Economic and Political Situation Despite their status as independent states, their individual historical development, language and traditions, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania share much in terms of political, economic and social life. Their development in the twentieth century was very much determined by independence after the First World War followed by Soviet (and for a short time German) occupation during and after the Second World War. As a result of the latter, the three Baltic neighbours share a significant history resulting in similar political, economic and social structures. Consequently, the education systems, including VET, have, in the past, shown a general congruence. After more than forty years of Soviet occupation, however, they regained sovereignty and independence in 1990 (Lithuania) and 1991 (Estonia and Latvia), which allowed them to rethink and reshape themselves into democratic republics. All three set themselves the goal of accession to the European Union (EU). After all preconditions had been fulfilled, the three states were formally declared full members of the EU on 1 May 2004, a crucial cornerstone in the Baltic States’ history. Being now equal partners, they have been enjoying special attention in European policy. During the process of application for accession to the EU, each of the Baltic countries harmonized its legislation according to EU norms and principles. After regaining their sovereignty, the three countries started their development independently of each other. In each of the Baltic States decentralization has been one of the most urgent items on the agendas throughout society. This also applied to the education system in general and the vocational educational and training sector in particular. However, as the goal of ensuring mobility among students and the workforce gained importance, co-operation in VET became indispensable. In 1998, the agreement on the creation of a common educational space in general upper secondary education and vocational (up to higher education level) education within the Baltic States was signed. Like the political system, similarities can also be found in the countries’ economic development. Transformational processes from centrally-planned to a marketdriven economy began to establish themselves after the political changes and, in general, economic activity has increased steadily since the end of the 1990s. Surveys state that: ‘the hitherto consequent reforms have solidified the foundation of a market economy, created a stable macro-economic environment and garnered the trust of investors’ (Ramina, Hodireva & Silina, 2002, p. 9). Nevertheless, large-scale problems had to be overcome: inflation, which temporarily increased to a dramatic peak (e.g. 1,021% in Lithuania in 1992 compared to the previous year), had largely been fostered by the internal and external price convergence that accompanied price liberalization (Hamburgisches WeltWirtschafts-Archiv, 2006). Large-scale privatization programmes and policy strategies to support small and medium-sized enterprises have helped to considerably increase gross domestic product (GDP) in recent years. The economy at the turn of the millennium was characterized by a considerable growth in exports and a favourable economic situation: the moderate domestic inflation and the strong US dollar, coupled with expanding industries due to co-operation

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with international neighbours, increased activities in the oil sector and therefore the use of Baltic Sea terminals (e.g. Riga, Ventspils, Klaipeda, etc.) and this rapid diversification and dynamism had encouraging impacts on Baltic economies. In recent years, the focus of economic growth has shifted slightly from the domestic market towards an increase in exports to Western European countries. Owing to small domestic markets, exports—and thus international economic co-operation—have become more dominating. After successfully reorienting its export flow towards Western European countries, Lithuania, for example, increased its GDP by as much as 5.9% in 2002 and Estonia 6% in the same year (Statistics Lithuania, 2002; Annus, Jõgi & Tilmanis, 2006, p. 26). Preparations for the common EU market and efforts towards free-market competitiveness proved to be key drivers for positive economic development. In order to reach market economy competitiveness, companies and enterprises were challenged to restructure their business activities, to reorganize business processes and adapt them to market demands. Governmental programmes and foreign (especially EU) investment are still important sources of support for the Baltic economies, e.g. more than 50% of Latvia’s direct foreign investment comes from EU countries. Inflation still remains comparatively high today in Latvia, with 6.2% in 2004, whereas Estonia’s inflation rate has fallen steadily in recent years to 3.0% in 2004 and is expected to further converge towards the EU average of 2.1%. Lithuania’s inflation rate at 1.1% was even below the EU average (2004). Differences in GDP (data referring to GDP per head) are equally spread among the Baltic States: Estonia is ahead with 6,700 Euros, followed by Lithuania with 5,200 Euros and Latvia with 4,800 Euros, in comparison with the EU-25 average of 22,400 Euros (EDS-Europäischer Datenservice, n.d.). One consequence of the developments outlined above is far-reaching changes in the employment situation. Some economic sectors have experienced enormous declines, among them agriculture, construction and processing industries, while others, most of all the service sector, transport and communications, have benefited. Thus, employment figures in the declining sectors have shrunk drastically, while the developing branches have faced and are still facing the growing need for qualified workers. Technological progress has also contributed to some extent to the rise in unemployment figures. Despite various attempts and a number of successfully implemented strategies and programmes to reform and optimize the VET and labour-market training structures, one of the greatest problems still to be solved is the imbalance between supply and demand. While there are high unemployment rates, with a considerable number of youth, women and long-term unemployed, enterprises report a lack of sufficiently qualified labour. Alarmingly, the highest number of unemployed, especially in Latvia, is among young secondary vocational education graduates (41.8% according to the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia, 2001). This clearly highlights the mismatch between skills, experience and qualifications gained within education and training and the actual demands of the labour market. To this should be added a large socio-economic discrepancy between economic centres and larger cities, on the one hand, and rural regions, smaller towns and

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peripheral areas, on the other, in terms of investment, economic development, demography and employment. While education already plays a significant role in the organization of a society, it becomes even more important in the fundamental changes affecting the Baltic States. VET, as the educational sector that prepares young people for their professional lives and that guides employees throughout their working lives, must be given special attention. It is influenced by political, social and economic factors, but has itself social and economic roles and responsibilities. The current employment situation, present labour-market demands and the growing social and regional anomalies have an extensive impact on the further development of the vocational education and training system in all three of the Baltic States, as is shown in the following section.

3 Educational Reform Movements 3.1 Estonia Estonia’s education system has experienced significant changes since the beginning of the 1990s. The current education policy reflects liberal economic and political developments. Much attention is being paid to such issues as privatization and community responsibility for schools and cost efficiency in education. A number of initiatives in recent years (Learning Estonia, Education Scenarios 2010, Tiger Leap Programme and Education Forum) foster the new approaches of the post-Soviet era. In 1999/2000, the education strategy Learning Estonia was set up, developed by the Estonian Ministry of Education and the Education Forum Task Force (involving social partners and non-governmental organizations—NGOs). The draft of Learning Estonia had been the subject of discussion for two years (2000–2001) before it was adopted by the government. In 2001, the development strategy Knowledge-based Estonia, the Action Plan for the Development of Vocational Education, the Higher Education Reform Strategy and the National Development Strategy on Youth Work were approved and put into practice (Annus et al., 2001). The Action Plan for the Development of Vocational Education, 2001–2004, summarizes wide-ranging measures to improve the quality of vocational education. Much attention is paid to labour-market relevance and the broadening of access for all age groups. The Action Plan puts special emphasis on the development of regional training centres providing primary training for students, retraining for adults, pre-training for students in general secondary education, and vocational education and training for people with special needs. Detailed targets for the reform of the VET system were set in the Action Plan for Developing the Estonian VET System, 2001–2004. It defined a total of twenty-three tasks linked to specific targets to be achieved in the period 2001–2004:

r r

to increase the number of VET students by 8% per year; to decrease the drop-out rate from 13% (in 2000) to 8% by 2004;


r r r r r r

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to privatize approximately 30% of VET schools and providers by 2004; to change the student/teacher ratio from 12:1 in 2000 to 16:1; to increase the number of teachers with university degrees from 75% (2000) to 100% in 2004; to double the amount of foreign-language classes in all programmes; to increase the focus of VET programmes on vocational standards; to achieve more with public funding.

The implementation of this Action Plan and the extent to which the targets have been met is questionable (Annus, Jõgi & Tilmanis, 2006, p. 33).

3.2 Latvia After the national independence of Latvia in 1991, major changes were initiated in the education system. As part of the changes and reforms, the weaknesses of VET were addressed and objectives were identified. In 1997, the report on Vocational education and training reform in Latvia (Bernan Associates, 1997) identified the main weaknesses of the current vocational education and training system. In summary, they were as follows:

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Unsatisfactory legal foundation. The Law on Education, adopted in 1991, regulates only the administration of initial VET and stipulates its structure. The legislation does not integrate the social partners in VET curriculum development. Insufficient structure for the provision of initial VET, continuing vocational training (CVT) and retraining. An inadequate network of institutions (VET providers, research centres, etc.).

This analysis of weaknesses served as an impetus for the reform process. In particular, the co-operation of VET providers and employers was sought. In doing so, the Tripartite Co-operation Sub-Council for Vocational Education and Training Reform and Employment was established in 2000. This is a subdivision of the National Tripartite Co-operation Council, an institution aiming to foster co-operation between governmental bodies, employers and unions, as well as institutions concerned by national VET policy. Despite far-reaching reforms to strengthen VET in Latvia, it would appear that further restructuring would be beneficial to a coherent strategy. In particular, the management of VET under the jurisdiction of different ministries results in fragmented provision, ‘since, of course, the ministries, first of all, take into consideration the interests of their branch and then solve the VET administrative issues independently from other ministries: plan the network of educational establishments, enrolment of students, financial resources and, in co-operation with the educational support institutions under their jurisdiction, they plan curriculum and provide education quality control’ (Lanka & M¯urnieks, 2006, p. 66). This approach does not encourage coherent provision and could arguably be reviewed.

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3.3 Lithuania The reform of vocational education in Lithuania was initiated very soon after independence in 1990. The first steps in the reform were the development of a vocational education policy and strategy. The endorsement of international co-operation was encouraged. However, the early years in the reform had very limited impact on political decisions concerning VET. In the middle of the 1990s, reforms focusing on the principle of decentralization were launched. Much attention was paid to the modernization of the teaching curriculum and social partnership development. Furthermore, in the mid-1990s, increased attention was given to involving the participation of educational institutions in the reform of vocational education policies, strategies and the development of curricula. The Law on Vocational Education and Training was adopted in 1997. It provided the legal foundation for the current structure and administration of the vocational education and training system of Lithuania. The law fosters the co-operation of governmental institutions and social partners. It defines the provision of initial VET (oriented towards the continuous education of young people) and labour-market vocational training (oriented towards adult continuous and, in some cases, initial vocational training). The 1999 White Paper on Vocational Education and Training in the Republic of Lithuania set out the direction for the development of vocational education and training. One of the White Paper’s objectives is to ensure compatibility of education and qualifications with relevant recommendations within the EU, while at the same time retaining national identity. One of the challenges in the reform of the Lithuanian VET system has been the involvement of social partners. The lack of employers’ interest in VET has been addressed elsewhere and is not the focus of this chapter. Additional weaknesses are vocational counselling and the low esteem of VET in Lithuania. Prior to the reform, a vocational orientation system had been in practice. One deficit of the prior system was that it tended to advise only the weaker students to follow a career pathway in VET. In doing so, VET in Lithuania suffered from the reputation of being a pathway for the less academically privileged. The current problems are under-developed vocational counselling systems in general education schools, the lack of qualified counsellors, the lack of a vocational counselling strategy and methodology (Lauˇzackas & Danileviˇcius, 2006, p. 76). Closely linked with the efforts to reform the VET systems are the approaches to strengthen lifelong learning processes in the Baltic States as part of the transition to a market economy, while continuing technological progress has changed employment and occupational structures fundamentally.

4 The Lifelong Learning Perspective of VET in the Baltic States Recent discussions on VET policy and strategies show that its definition has changed considerably from the original narrow concept of ‘preparing young people for a fixed profession, a specific working place’ to the broader understanding of VET


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as a process that is not finished when a person obtains his or her certificate on successful completion of initial training. As outlined above, economic development in the Baltic States, as in any other modern society, is subject to constant evolution. The challenges of a modern market economy and technological progress have had substantial impacts on employment and occupational structures. VET graduates starting their professional career cannot expect to fill the same workplace all their lives, i.e. to be trained for one particular field of occupation that is going to secure their job for a lifetime. Reality shows that the constant changes in market demands, technology and employment structures, even in professions, set the agenda for different demands on today’s working population. VET needs to be reorganized and restructured in order to meet changing labour-market demands on the current and future workforce. As economic trends tend to change rapidly, it is difficult at each stage to predict what kinds of professions are needed and how many employees will be required for what field. That is why employers need workers who show a high degree of flexibility and mobility, the capacity to work with modern equipment and who keep themselves up to date with new technologies. They should also have a good command of their first and at least one or two foreign languages and possess skills in various occupational fields and profiles. VET must no longer provide only basic professional knowledge and skills, but it is even more essential to impart the capacity to learn, to teach learning strategies and to be able quickly to learn how to use new technology. People should be aware that school and vocational education only set the foundations for each individual’s further development. Education that clearly evokes an awareness of the need and that provides the necessary preconditions for lifelong learning is high on European political agendas. Thus, implementing policies to develop lifelong learning strategies is also one of the major goals in the Baltic States.

4.1 Latvia Latvia has developed the Lifelong Learning Memorandum, where the most important basic skills needed are listed, e.g. the ability to work with information and communication technologies (ICTs), the capacity to acquire, analyse and share information, knowledge of foreign languages, etc. (Ramina, Hodireva & Silina, 2002, p. 17). Continuing vocational training (CVT) has been given special attention since the Law on Vocational Education, which came into force on 1 September 2001. This includes a broadened focus on further education and training. There is no secure statistical data on the number of people who participated in CVT courses, but as far as businesses are concerned, the motivation and capability to invest in personnel training appears to be slightly higher in large enterprises, where the potential increase in profit acts as a stimulus. The Latvian Government has established the State Employment Service, an institution that organizes training and retraining for the unemployed aiming at improvement of employability and fast reentry into the labour market. Responsibility for adult education has been transferred to the regional governments. Since investment in the adult education sector is within

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the remit of local government, large regional differences occur—at best there exist well-organized and functioning, local government-funded adult education centres.

4.2 Estonia Similar to Latvia, Estonia, too, embodied continuing vocational training (CVT) in its legislation and worked out an Action Plan for Developing the Estonian VET System, 2001–2004, in which the main principles for restructuring were defined. However, as some experts have stated, its implementation ‘has been less than optimal. A coherent strategic and policy framework on CVT is still not in place’ (Annus, Jõgi & Tilmanis, 2006, p. 33). In order to foster adult education, several more programmes were adopted (e.g. Estonian National Development Plan, 2003–2006, or the National Employment Plans) all of which stressed the necessity for improving CVT and lifelong learning policies in order to improve qualification and employability of the country’s workforce. The necessary steps towards improved CVT demanded by these documents (e.g. favourable tax regulations, development of an adult education financing model according to those in other European countries, establishing a State-financed institution to co-ordinate adult education systems and co-operation among institutions and social partners, development of regulations for licensing and accrediting trainers, etc.) have either not been sufficiently implemented up to the present or have not yet had the anticipated effects—partly due to a lack of participation and motivation on the part of those concerned. Like Latvia, Estonia has also invested in the establishment of regional training centres that have already been mentioned before. CVT is one of these centres’ responsibilities.

4.3 Lithuania In Lithuania, the governmental body responsible for CVT and lifelong learning is the Ministry of Social Security and Labour (MSSL). The legal basis for its functions are the Law on Vocational Education and Training (1997) and the Law on the Support of the Unemployed (1990), both of which are implemented by the Lithuanian Labour Market Training Authority and the network of labour exchanges. This system’s main objective is support of the unemployed by means of training, counselling and guidance, as well as labour-market research. Although these institutions focus mainly on training and re-training programmes for unemployed adults and disabled people, a network of fourteen labour-market training centres and six labour-market training services also provides courses for CVT and lifelong learning for the employed, e.g. short courses for employees whose current qualification is in low demand or non-formal vocational training programmes. The criticism is often made that, instead of developing effective co-operation, these programmes are rather seen as direct competition for existing vocational educational institutes. An


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interesting innovation seems to be the labour exchange. This institution provides coordination between employers’ needs and potential employees. The main activities of the network of forty-six labour exchange offices throughout the country include the registration of unemployed citizens and job openings, labour-market forecasts, efficiency studies of training programmes and, not least, the disposal of finance from the State Employment Fund. However, since those involved complain about the low interest in their services, it is estimated that only about half of job seekers make use of it. Another weakness of the system appears to be the fact that the provision of appropriate training programmes is to a large extent subject to the availability of finance, and does not depend on urgent local needs. In order to overcome structural and content-related difficulties, foreign (mainly EU) expertise is used in all three Baltic countries, for example via the Leonardo da Vinci, PHARE, Comenius or Socrates programmes, as is illustrated in the following section.

5 The European Dimension Estonia’s VET development was backed up by several European programmes. PHARE offered substantial support for the reform of the (vocational) education system. The extent of the support for the significant PHARE initiatives can be illustrated as follows:

r r r

PHARE 2000: Project enhancing human resource development in the Ida-Viru (North-East) region. This initiative offered financial support of approximately 1.3 million Euros, including Estonian co-financing of 300,000 Euros. PHARE 2000: Project enhancing human resource development in the southern Estonian region. The project involved a budget of some 2.4 million Euros, including Estonian co-financing of 650,000 Euros. PHARE 2001: Project enhancing human resource development in the islands region, with a budget of approximately 1.2 million Euros, including Estonian co-financing of 24,000 Euros, providing essential financial support for the educational reform.

Similarly to Estonia, Latvia’s reform process of its education system was supported by European initiatives. Recent examples of PHARE 2000 projects in Latvia are the Qualification Infrastructure and Development of College Study Programmes. In Lithuania, the European Union has supported VET reform through the PHARE programme since 1993. A recent example for a PHARE initiative is the programme Vocational Training for Economic and Social Cohesion. The overall objective of this programme is to support Lithuania’s economic and social cohesion. The programme focuses on employment growth. The budget of 4.23 million Euros, including 1.19 million Euros of national co-financing, illustrates the priority paid to VET, continuing vocational training and lifelong learning.

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Here, the influence of the European Union was exemplified by PHARE initiatives. However, other initiatives, such as the Comenius, Socrates and Leonardo da Vinci Programmes, have also to be mentioned in this context. Furthermore, the European Training Foundation (ETF) and other national European research institutions provided significant expertise for the reform processes. The European Training Foundation developed a network of national observatories (watch-dog committees) in the countries concerned. Its analytic work culminated in a set of publications identifying key indicators of labour-market developments and progress reports of the reform movements. In summary, the reform of VET systems in the Baltic States started in the early 1990s and took into consideration EU standards. The development of VET systems in accordance with European standards has resulted in a favourable position for these countries’ vocational qualifications, compared to other European VET systems, which evolved more traditionally and appear to be at a disadvantage. For example, German vocational qualifications are particularly disadvantaged. According to the European-Level System, Dual Vocational Education Qualifications awarded in Germany after three years of training are classified as Level 2. Despite these reforms, the three Baltic States still face a number of problems in the area of VET. In particular, the perception of VET as a lower-status career option is an impediment to further development. As vocational education and training do not generally enjoy high esteem, it is not surprising that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are lacking qualified VET teaching and management staff. In 1990, the acceding countries for EU membership (of the former Eastern European Soviet bloc) launched significant reforms to restructure their VET systems. The results of this reform movement have been impressive, particularly when one considers that the starting date was only 1989. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have enjoyed special attention because geographically they occupy an important strategic position. Since the enlargement of the EU (European Commission, 2004), they are now serving as ‘outposts’ towards the east. This shared experience provided the foundation for (re-)establishing co-operation on various levels among these countries’ vocational education systems. Soon after regaining their independence, it became clear that co-operation in the area of VET was absolutely necessary in order to ensure mobility of the workforce (Neudorf, Krusts & Vincentas, 1999, p. 2). One result of this awareness was the Agreement on the Creation of a Common Educational Space in General Upper Secondary Education and Vocational (up to the Higher Education Level) Education with the Baltic States, which was signed in 1998. In 1999, a further step was taken with the Cesis Agreement. Mutual recognition of school-leaving certificates was agreed upon, as well as co-operation in general education, including VET. A very solid result of this co-operation is a comparative analysis of the different VET systems in the Baltic States. This survey was designed to facilitate co-operation in the field of education. Despite enormous efforts, mobility between the three Baltic States appears to be rather limited. It can be suspected that the language barrier inhibits cross-Baltic mobility.


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The EU has set itself the ambitious goal—set in Lisbon in 2000—of becoming the world’s leading ‘knowledge society’ by 2010. Member states are working towards it by reorienting their VET systems. However, when the Lisbon Council set the goal, the number of EU countries was fifteen. By 2010 it can be expected that this number will grow to twenty-eight. The deadline of 2010 requires a special investment in VET by ‘old’ and ‘new’ member states, as well as candidate countries. For a period of time, reform in the new member states has aimed to develop their VET to a standard comparable to that of the ‘old’ member states. However, little effort was made to truly work together on a common European VET framework. The Lisbon Council has set new priorities. The demand to meet these targets for almost twice as many countries has raised the stakes for VET in current and future member states (de Rooij, 2004).

6 Drawing the Threads Together Since the reestablishment of their sovereignty, the Baltic States have made enormous efforts to develop their VET systems in line with European standards and to harmonize their (vocational) educational policy with EU requirements. At the same time, while following the guidelines of the European Union, they have been endeavouring to retain their national identity. Thus, they may well serve as an example for a pro-European national VET policy and their expertise can certainly be of service to other EU accession candidates—and especially to transitional (former Soviet) countries (Council of the European Union, 2002). Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have initiated their very own reforms to develop their national VET systems, with the result that each has its own varying structure. For example, Estonia and Lithuania have transferred the responsibility of agricultural VET, including the related training institutions, from the Ministries of Agriculture to the Ministries of Education and Science. Consequently, most VET institutions are now under the jurisdiction of one ministry. In Latvia, the VET schools fall under the jurisdiction of different governmental bodies (Cabinet of Ministers, Ministry of Education and Science, especially the Vocational Training and Continuing Education Department, as well as the Professional Education Centre, not to mention the Ministries of Agriculture, Welfare, Culture and the Interior). Education and training programmes, levels and qualifications show only minor differences due to their orientation towards EU standards. More substantial variability has to be detected in the quality assurance systems. In Lithuania, accreditation and licensing measures function under the responsibility of the Ministry of Education and Science, while in Latvia and Estonia, effective quality assurance systems are yet to be established or will undergo significant improvement. Besides these differences, there are a number of similarities in the three states. It is significant that European education policy has supported and inspired the reform processes. Some difficulties appear to exist throughout the Baltic States: the very low esteem of VET; the difficulty of involving employers; and the need for qualified

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labour in the services and communications sectors. Despite far-reaching reforms, the negative image of VET is an impediment to its further development.

References Annus, T.; Jõgi, K.; Tilmanis, L. 2006. Vocational education and training in Estonia: reform processes and tendencies. In: Bünning, F., ed. The transformation of vocational education and training (VET) in the Baltic States: survey of reforms and developments. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Annus, T. et al. 2001. Modernization of vocational education and training in Estonia. Tallinn: National Observatory of Estonia. Bernan Associates. 1997. Vocational education and training reform in Latvia. Turin, Italy: ETF. Council of the European Union. 2002. Draft council resolution on the promotion of enhanced European cooperation in vocational education and training. Brussels: European Union. de Rooij, P. 2004. EU enlargement and education for the labour market. <www.etf.eu.int/ WebSite.nsf/0/CB6DB14948F21151C1256E6E00363870?OpenDocument> EDS-Europäischer Datenservice. N.d. <www.eds-destatis.de/de/database> European Commission. 2004. Education & Training 2010: The success of the Lisbon strategy hinges on urgent reforms. Joint interim report on the implementation of the detailed work programme on the follow-up of the objectives of education and training systems in Europe. Official journal of the European Union C, 104/5, Hamburgisches Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv. 2006. <www.hwwa.de/EU-Beitrittslaender/> Lanka, A.; M¯urnieks, E. 2006. Vocational education and training in Latvia: the problems and solutions. In: Bünning, F., ed. The transformation of vocational education and training (VET) in the Baltic States: survey of reforms and developments. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Lauˇzackas, R.; Danileviˇcius, E. 2006. Vocational education and training in Lithuania: reform processes and tendencies. In: Bünning, F., ed. The transformation of vocational education and training (VET) in the Baltic States: survey of reforms and developments. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Neudorf, R.; Krusts, G.; Vincentas, D. 1999. Comparative analysis of VET systems of Estonia. Turin, Italy: ETF. Ramina, B.; Hodireva, V.; Silina, S. 2002. The modernization of vocational education and training in Latvia. Riga: Latvian National Observatory. Statistics Lithuania. 2002. Statistical yearbook of Lithuania. Vilnius: Statistics Lithuania.

Chapter IV.7

Education and Training Needs of Rural Communities: A Situational Analysis of Selected Villages in Fourteen Provinces of Fiji Paula Cavu, Isimeli W. Tagicakiverata, Seveci Naisilisili and Viliame Rabici

1 Introduction The purpose of this research project was to conduct a survey of the training needs of people in rural communities of the fourteen provinces in Fiji. The rationale behind this exercise was to take the Fiji Institute of Technology (FIT), a training and education institution, to the homes of this target group, bearing in mind the advent of distance education and learning. However, it was also found that people in most rural communities did not fully understand the role of FIT, so the researchers had an opportunity to market the institute through awareness-raising in the villages. All the participants were grateful for the opportunity to meet and talk to professionals from FIT on various issues. Even very remote villages were among those visited. Questionnaires in the Fijian language were administered to 1,807 participants in sixty villages. The survey found that all participants wanted skills-training programmes to be conducted in their villages. It was also found that participants selected training programmes that were relevant and necessary to their immediate and future needs. The choice of training depended mainly on available resources, developmental needs, village and family needs and individual aspirations. This research gave all stakeholders—the government, non-governmental organizations, aid agencies, provincial offices and training institutions—an insight into the training needs in rural communities, as well as their developmental goals and aspirations. Training-needs assessment (TNA), the basis of this research initiative, is timely especially as communities in rural areas have often been disadvantaged in terms of educational opportunities and development. The most obvious cause for this disadvantage is the great distance from rural communities to educational centres, which in Fiji’s case are primarily clustered around towns and cities. Additional obstacles include the lack of transport, poor road conditions and the high cost of travel. Rural communities, especially Fijian villages, have visible differences in levels of development. However, there is no hard-and-fast rule about the degree of development in rural areas as some villages in outer islands appear to have better living conditions—with flush toilets, regular clean water supply and electricity—than some villages closer to urban centres.


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A significant similarity, however, is that both rural and peri-urban Fijian villages are beginning to experience an influx of school-leavers and dropouts, some with educational qualifications up to Form 7 and even tertiary levels. According to village elders, this influx is the result of examination failure and/or lack of employment opportunities. Some youths have, however, turned to farming and other schemes to earn a living, while some have become a burden to their communities through idleness and resorting to crime. The TNA conducted for this research was aimed at identifying the educational and developmental needs in rural areas, with special consideration for the culture and attitude of the dwellers. Results from this survey would provide stakeholders with significant data on much-needed training to be conducted and a solid base for its effective implementation.

2 Background Fiji has a population of over 868,000 (2003 estimate) and has a gross domestic product per capita of US$2,060 (2001 estimate). Life expectancy is around 69 years while the literacy rate is around 93.7% (2003 estimate). Major revenue earners are tourism, sugar and the garment industry, but in recent years remittances from Fijian people working abroad have become equally significant (Encarta encyclopaedia, 2004). According to the Fiji Islands Education Commission report (Fiji. Ministry of Education, 2000; Sharma, 2000; Tavola, 2000), education is well established in Fiji as it has existed for over 160 years. Some of the concerns, however, have been the uneven situation of educational provision between schools. This situation is the result of the diversity of authorities controlling schools, differences between rural or urban location and the resources available in each community. Ministry of Education records show that in 1999 47% of high schools were run by committees, 35% by religious groups and 8% by the government. In addition, relatively more diploma holders and new graduates were teaching in rural schools as compared to a higher number of degree holders with more experience in urban schools. It has become increasingly clear that rural dwellers are greatly disadvantaged, not only in terms of educational facilities and access to information but also in terms of physical infrastructure, such as housing, sanitation and transport. A result of these disparities reported in the Fiji Islands Education Commission report is that only 40% of students in rural schools passed the Fiji School Leaving Certificate in 1999, as compared to 62.3% in urban schools. At the national level, in terms of projected socio-economic development, stakeholders are concerned that of 17,000 school-leavers each year, only about 2,000 are able to find employment (Mausio, 2003). But school-leavers in urban centres still have an advantage in that they have easy access to various tertiary training institutions offering a wide range of programmes. School-leavers in urban areas

IV.7 Education and Training Needs of Rural Communities

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have many options to choose from, whereas those in rural communities often have only their villages to return to. Institutions such as the University of the South Pacific and the Fiji Institute of Technology have established centres in major towns throughout Fiji, but the problem of access to training programmes by those in remote rural communities still exists. Part of the problem is that many school-leavers in rural areas continue to seek white-collar job opportunities, but fail to recognize the value of working in their local environments. It is for this reason that various organizations, including FIT, are taking time to visit rural communities to introduce local dwellers to ways they can maximize the return from their resources in a sustainable way. Non-formal education (NFE) or continuing education has been acknowledged as a remedy as it has the potential to empower people by widening and deepening their range of skills and assisting them to increase their marketability and contribution in their community (Schoeffel, 1986). This is supported by Veramu (1997, p. 53; 1992) who says that ‘people need to be empowered to control their own destiny and to have a say in the appropriate type of sustainable development that suits them.’ The strength of NFE is its inclusiveness and accessibility. People in rural communities do not have to travel as training and trainers are brought to them. NFE complements formal education very well providing an avenue for everyone, especially school-leavers and drop-outs, to acquire skills relevant for an effective contribution and survival in their community (Hamadache, 1991). The government has committed itself, through its ministries, NGOs and training institutions, to implement programmes ranging from agriculture and small business administration to community health awareness (Veramu, 1997). The Fiji Institute of Technology, through its Research and Development Unit, also shares the vision that NFE has a major role to play in Fiji’s national prosperity and development. The training-needs assessment initiated by FIT was intended to strengthen the decision-making base for the planned training of communities in rural areas.

3 Methodology The team consisted of eight researchers who all work under the auspices of the FIT Learning Centre. The initial intention of the team was to conduct a training-needs assessment in mixed communities, but this had to be abandoned due to lack of resources. Instead, it was realised that a TNA survey conducted in Fijian villages would be within the team’s budget. A pilot survey to test the questionnaire was carried out in three villages. The results were analysed and the questions were modified to ensure reliability and validity. The pilot was also intended for team members to obtain experience of the real-life situation in villages and to try out methods. Upon completion of the preparatory stages, members of the team went in groups of two, three and occasionally individually to conduct the survey in the provinces. Prior to and during each visit all important officials and dignitaries were informed,

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such as elders, village chiefs, school-teachers and church leaders, to facilitate the team members carrying out their survey. All village surveys were conducted in the evenings with most of them ending late at night. Proper protocol was followed with formal presentations, then an explanation by the team leader, followed by filling-in of questionnaire forms and concluding with a long discussion session. It was observed that during the discussion sessions the elders always spoke first while the other participants took their turn in descending order of age and status. An open discussion among the villagers would only involve the elders; young people were never expected to air their views publicly. Ocitti (1990) calls this ‘vertical communication’, which expresses the difficulty of direct dialogue between the old and the young in indigenous societies. He also noted a ‘horizontal human relationship’, which exists primarily among one’s peers, where there is freedom to think, talk and act. In Fijian society, it is a sign of respect for the young to remain quiet unless spoken to. However, during the visits, the researchers managed to get a response from all present by posing direct questions to the elders, then the women and then the youths. All responses were directed back at the researchers. Noticeably, all general comments and suggestions came only from the elders and the chiefs, but none from the youth. The discussion was always lively and interesting as it was an avenue for people to ask questions on various issues and not just education. There were problems encountered by the research team, such as inadequate time in each village, lack of funds and treacherous road conditions, but the team were not deterred and managed to complete all field work on time. The researchers were aware that dealing with descriptive data from this survey would involve two general limitations in the form of validity and reliability. Therefore, in the initial stages of research formulation and preparations, key control mechanisms were put in place to ensure a satisfactory degree of validity and reliability. One of the key mechanisms for controlling validity and reliability was an emphasis on procedures throughout the process. During the initial stages of formulating the theoretical framework, the principal researcher and team made a number of consultation visits to principal stakeholders, which included key officials in various government ministries, training institutions and provincial offices. The visits ensured that research parameters were clear, indicators were defined precisely and all data-collecting instruments would lead to reliable results. A series of briefings involving all team members ensured that field-work procedures were precisely adhered to by all so that consistency and reliability of results were achieved. This was absolutely necessary as the team members were sent to different parts of Fiji. Another mechanism used for controlling reliability was the series of checks and reviews of research tools and items. Important decisions had to be made, especially regarding the questionnaire and its suitability for rural indigenous Fijians. After the pilot test and a retest, the final questionnaire was presented in Fijian vernacular and the team were satisfied of its suitability. The team also took into serious consideration issues such as question types, question lengths and time to complete the questionnaire. The clarity of items in terms of font size was reviewed to ensure that


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all participants were able to read the words clearly. This was necessary as people of all ages were intended as participants in this research. The researchers were aware that the issue of validity would emerge regarding sampling and representation. The major obstacle and limitation in sampling was the lack of funding to cover a bigger percentage of provincial populations. For this reason, the team had to be content with a target sample of 100 participants per province. This included both genders and all ages. Other control measures that research assistants had to ensure in all locations were:

r r r r r r

The venue of the research survey must be a village hall or school classroom. The atmosphere should be relaxed and casual so that all participants could contribute fully. All participants had to be provided with pencils for filling out the questionnaires. At least thirty minutes was allowed to fill out the questionnaire. Additional time was allowed for open discussions (debriefing after collecting the questionnaires). The necessary social protocol was to be adhered to in all villages and provinces.

Despite all the measures taken, the researchers acknowledge that there were limitations, such as intentional and unintentional biases in this research. It was possible that some data may have been inadvertently emphasized more than others and some may have been used to highlight a particular point of view. Additionally, the researchers acknowledge that there is also the possibility that the sample of participants in each province may not be an accurate representation of the entire populace. It is quite possible that items used in the questionnaire may not be variables of primary interest and may have affected respondents’ interests in different ways. Sensitive issues such as educational level and status may have posed problems for some participants. While every possible measure was taken to ensure reliability and validity in this research, the team acknowledges that there are limitations that may have had a bearing on the results.

4 Findings Thus, sixty villages from fourteen provinces were visited and a total of 1,807 respondents surveyed: 54% of whom or 974 were male; and 46% or 833 were female. Tables 1 and 2 present the training needs identified by respondents, as well as supporting data from the questionnaire. Due to the magnitude of the participation, the priority focus of the analysis was on training needs, ethnography and educational levels, and the logic behind choices Results identify specific training needs indicated by participants of both genders from each village and province. The villages visited in each province were some distance from each other in order that provincial summaries reflected a reasonable sample of the training needs among the general provincial populations. Analysis

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P. Cavu et al. Table 1 Training needs choices by province (female)

Flower arrangement

Sewing/screen printing

Cooking

Tourism/small business administration

Family education/ child-rearing

Basic English

Rewa Kadavu Naitasiri Lomaiviti Nadroga Ra

Kadavu Naitasiri Lomaiviti Ba Namosi Ra Macuata Bua 8 (57%)

Naitasiri Lomaiviti Ba Tailevu Nadroga Bua Namosi

Rewa Kadavu Naitasiri Ba Serua Nadroga

Lau Kadavu Ba Serua Tailevu Ra Macuata

Cakau

7 (50%)

6 (43%)

7 (50%)

1 (7%)

6 (43%)

Table 2 Training needs choices by province (male) Basic machine repair

Basic carpentry/ plumbing

Basic electrical

Tourism/small Resource business admanagement ministration

Time management

Rewa Kadavu Naitasiri Lomaiviti Ba Namosi Serua Ra Macuata Bua Cakau 11 (79%)

Rewa Naitasiri Lomaiviti Tailevu Nadro Bua

Rewa Naitasiri Lomaiviti Namosi Ra Cakau

Kadavu Ba Serua Tailevu Nadro

Lau Macuata Bua

Macuata

6 (42%)

6 (42%)

5 (36%)

3 (21%)

1 (7%)

by gender, age-groups and educational levels provided significant information for decision-makers. In terms of the differences in training choices, the most significant one was between genders in all provinces. However, comparisons at village and provincial levels displayed an interesting trend—that communities or villages along the coast, including the outer islands, had a different set of choices from communities and villages in the interior regions or mountains. This finding suggests that geographical location and available natural resources are significant factors that determine training choices. Other factors that became evident from the study are income sources and development or lifestyle needs. There was no correlation between training choice and educational level, nor between training choice and age. This suggests that choices were not solely based on individual needs but also on community aspirations (Plowman, 1992). The most popular training choice for men was basic machine repair (Table 2), while women had five popular choices which were: flower arrangement, sewing, cooking, small business administration and family education (Table 1).


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Table 3 shows that 327 teenagers (18.1% of total sample) participated in this survey. Of this figure, an alarming 80% or 262 are school-leavers and drop-outs. In the total sample of 1,807, this percentage translates to 14.5%. Levels of education for both genders vary slightly but a larger percentage of female participants had reached higher secondary and tertiary levels. A significant finding is that 98% of participants are educated above Classes 6–8, which indicates a high level of literacy in rural Fiji (Table 4 and Fig. 1). This suggests that trainers tasked with conducting training in rural communities would have few problems in terms of communication and delivery. It can be concluded from this survey that basic machine repair (Table 2) came out strongly as the significant/popular choice for men, while women had five choices of comparable significance (Table 1). In terms of age, a clear majority of participants (82%) were above 20 years of age, 25.7% of whom were over 41. This wide range Table 3 The number of participants by gender and age groups Participants by gender and age-groups Age group

16 – 19

20 – 30

31 – 40

41 +

Total

Number male (%) Number female (%)

192 (20%) 135 (16%)

350 (36%) 273 (33%)

194 (20%) 198 (24%)

238 (24%) 227 (27%)

974 (54%) 833 (46%)

Total (%)

327 (18.1%)

623 (34.5%)

392 (21.7%)

465 (25.7%)

1807

Table 4 Total participants by educational level Classes 1–5 Male

Classes 6–8

Female

30 8 3% 1% 2% of sample

Male

Female

292 225 30% 27% 29% of sample

Forms 3–4 Male

Female

321 267 33% 32% 33% of sample

Forms 5–7 Male

Female

321 316 33% 38% 35% of sample

Tertiary Male

Female

10 17 1% 2% 1% of sample

45 40 % of SAMPLE

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

CLASSES 1-5

CLASSES 6-8

FORMS 3-4

FORMS 5-7

LEVELS OF EDUCATION MALE PARTICIPANTS FEMALE PARTICIPANTS

Fig. 1 Comparative levels of education (by gender)

TERTIARY

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in age groups is indicative of the inclusive nature of non-formal education, coupled with adult education.

5 The Logic Behind the Training Choices in the TNA The choice of training by participants did not differ with age or educational levels, but reflected and depended upon a combination of the following key factors: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Gender. Local natural resources—forest/sea/farming, etc. Current income sources. Geographical location—coast or interior, and distance from urban centres. Developmental/lifestyle and educational needs (Fig. 2).

The major advantages of TNA-based training from the local to the national level can be summed up as follows: 1. Individuals in the village (community) will have an opportunity to acquire new skills that would help them improve their own standard of living and empower them in managing their sources of income. 2. For the community as a whole, this would result in overall improvement in the quality of life in the village, improved productivity and better management of natural resources. 3. For the provinces, this would result in better utilization of development funds, as villagers are now more informed and aware of their potential to implement relevant village projects effectively.

GENDER

NATURAL RESOURCES

INCOME SOURCES TRAINING NEEDS

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION

Fig. 2 Factors that determine training choices

DEVELOPMENT/ LIFESTYLE NEEDS


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4. For Fiji, this would result in skills training in rural communities, effective resource management, reduction in social evils, such as poverty and crime, and opening up further opportunities for growth.

6 Conclusion Results from this survey would provide useful information to key stakeholders, such as government departments, donor agencies and provincial councils, for decisionmaking on rural training and education. In addition, the training areas identified by participants have provided FIT, especially the Learning Centre, with specific areas for short courses that may receive accreditation. The most popular choices for courses include, amongst others, basic English, flower arrangement, basic plumbing, basic carpentry and tourism/business studies. Recommendations and projections discussed in this chapter would function as guidelines for the development and improvement of education and skills training for our rural communities over the next decade. Researchers from the Learning Centre have established a good working relationship with village elders, chiefs and provincial administrators throughout Fiji, and have inadvertently lifted their expectations of FIT. The onus is on key stakeholders to use the results of this survey as a basis for delivering effective relevant training to rural communities. The vision is that if our rural people were empowered with the necessary skills, they would become more independent and would play a leading role in developing and improving the economies of their own communities. For institutions, such as the Fiji Institute of Technology, the University of the South Pacific and the Training and Productivity Authority of Fiji, the results of this survey provide ideas for developing relevant courses targeted at school dropouts and rural dwellers. It is hoped that in the next decade more institutions and organizations would share this vision and pursue the delivery of skills training to our rural people.

References Encarta encyclopaedia. 2004. CD-ROM, Microsoft Corporation. Fiji. Ministry of Education. 2000. Learning together: directions for education in the Fiji Islands. Report of the Fiji Islands Education Commission. Suva: Government Printer. Hamadache, A. 1991 Non-formal education: a definition of the concept and some examples. Prospects, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 111–24. Mausio, A. 2003. Melanesia in review: issues and events: Fiji. The contemporary Pacific, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 440–47. Ocitti, J.P 1990. Is indigenous African pedagogy a real option? Adult education and development, vol. 90, no. 35. Plowman, K. 1992. Community groups and empowerment: adult education for a democratic culture. Canberra: Australian Association of Adult and Community Education. (Paper presented at the thirty-second AAACE National Conference, Canberra, 1992.) Schoeffel, P. 1986. Non-formal education in the Pacific Islands: an overview. Adult education and development, vol. 26.

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Sharma, A. 2000. Technical and vocational education and training. In: Fiji. Ministry of Education. Learning together: directions for education in the Fiji Islands. Suva: Government Printer. Tavola, H. 2000. Education in rural Fiji. In: Fiji. Ministry of Education. Learning together: directions for education in the Fiji Islands. Suva: Government Printer. Veramu, J. 1992. Let’s do it our way: a case study of participatory education in a rural Fijian school and community. Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific. Veramu, J. 1997. Adult education and community development in the South Pacific. Valelevu, Fiji: The Fiji Adult and Community Education Think-Tank Group.

Chapter IV.8

Social Partnership in Vocational Education and Training in Lithuania: Challenges and Perspectives Lina Kaminskien˙e

1 Introduction Social partnership in technical and vocational education and training (TVET)—that is to say co-operation and the interrelationship of functions and responsibilities among the State, employers and employees—has been set as one of the priorities of educational reform and is an important principle for the effective development of the vocational education and training system in Lithuania. Particularly in recent years, a change of roles has become apparent between the State and non-governmental sectors in the TVET system. According to the International Labour Office (ILO), there are three phases in the sharing of functions and responsibilities between the State and private sector in the vocational education and training system:

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The first phase: an unstructured and unregulated TVET system, where professional skills were acquired through the principle of apprenticeship. The second phase: a supply-driven TVET system (the State-dominated system). This phase describes the situation when the VET system does not adequately react to the needs of the vocational activity system,1 but decides alone what kind of training is needed for professions and qualifications. The third phase is characterized by a demand-driven system. This is a situation when a TVET system is directly influenced by the needs of the vocational activity required by the market economy, and thus tries to satisfy those needs by supplying the labour market with appropriate professions and qualifications.

However, today, a new tendency is clearly seen in Lithuania and other post-Soviet Eastern and Central European countries. This is an attempt to strengthen relationships between the TVET system and vocational activity system, while seeking new forms of co-operation.


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2 The Theoretical Background of Social Partnership in TVET 2.1 Social Partnerships as an Intermediary between Two Systems Social partnership in the Lithuanian TVET system is analysed from the perspective of different TVET models. Duties and responsibilities of social partners, as intermediaries between the vocational activity system and the education system are based on the theory of the duality of the vocation, which combines both its subjective and objective aspects. The subjective aspect of the vocation reflects the individual preferences of a person, i.e. his/her preference for a certain activity on the basis of a human being’s inner dispositions, often defining them as a human calling (Lauˇzackas, 1997). The objective aspect of a vocation focuses on work, its structure and the conditions under which it can be carried out. It is obvious that the interaction of the objective and the subjective aspects of vocation in the TVET system expresses itself on a different level than that of the vocation itself. At this level, the education system is likely to represent the subjective aspect, while the objective aspect is represented by the vocational activity.

2.2 Social Partnership in Supply, Demand or Co-ordination Models As a rule, the interaction of the educational and vocational activity systems defines the model of the vocational education and training system in a country, as well as the functions delegated to social partners. Three models of the interaction of the educational and vocational activity systems are distinguished: demand, supply and co-ordination (Fig. 1). The first model describes the situation when the vocational activity system plays a more active part in relation to the education system. The education system (or TVET system in this case) is directly influenced by the changes and needs of the vocational activity system and, thus, is adequately organized to react to these needs. This interaction model is called the ‘demand-driven model’ (sometimes the term ‘manpower-requirement approach’ is used) (Georg & Sattel, 1995).

2.2.1 The Supply-Driven Model The supply-driven model (or ‘social-demand approach’ according to Georg & Sattel, 1995) exists in a country when the education system is the dominating partner. Vocational education and training is organized and planned without any or without sufficient attention to the needs of the labour market. The supply-driven model characterizes the situation when educational establishments alone decide what kinds of qualification are needed. Such decisions are based not on an analysis of labour-market needs, but on the capacity of the existing TVET system (training classes, teachers, manuals, etc.).

IV.8 Social Partnership in Vocational Education and Training in Lithuania 1. Demand model Vocational activity system

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Qualification demand Education system Qualification demand satisfaction

2. Supply model Qualification supply Education system Qualification selection

Vocational activity system

3. Co-ordination model Qualification demand Surplus Vocational activity system

Education system

Qualification supply Qualification demand satisfaction

Fig. 1 Models of interaction of vocational activity with education systems

The first model seems to be the most attractive one; however, in reality it can only function in a stable economic and political environment. During the transitional period, which has been characteristic of Central and Eastern European countries (including Lithuania), this model could not resolve the existing problems in the vocational education and training system. The reason was that the labour market was not itself stable; companies had to survive in a very hard competitive market. For example, in 1997, the Vocational Education and Training Information Service noted that around 80% of employers were not sure of their future plans for two or three years ahead (VET Informational Service, 1997). For these reasons, neither employers nor their representive organizations participated in the early phases of the reform of the education system in Lithuania. The supply-driven model, which has been deeply rooted in Lithuania, did not help to solve the problem of unemployment. It gave employers wide possibilities to choose the necessary employees (labour force over-supply was extremely common until 2000–2002) and they provided workers with only minimal social guarantees (low wages, fixed-term contracts, etc.). The biggest drawback of the supply-driven model is that the school became isolated from the real working world and prepared workers and specialists who did not satisfy the new qualification requirements and could not adapt to the requirements, which were evolving rapidly due to changes and innovations following the impact of globalization on the economy, as well as IT development and other factors. The supply model thus isolated social partners from

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active participation in the vocational education and training system and their participation became fragmententary. Even in 1997, when the TVET Law was passed, it took a year or two for the first real co-ordination activities to start, under the initiative of the Ministry of Education and vocational schools—but not of the social partners themselves. Both the supply and the demand models have their advantages and disadvantages. Every State tries to balance and to regulate the relationship between its educational and vocational systems and the labour market. The third, ‘the co-ordination model’, expresses a certain compromise (coherence) between the demand and the supply models. According to Lauˇzackas (1997), this model seems to be the ideal one. However, achieving it requires a very flexible vocational education and training system in the country with the following features: (a) a mechanism to balance and co-ordinate the tasks and functions of the key players in the system; (b) a clear strategy for the TVET system; (c) a well-regulated legal basis; (d) a regular analysis of what is happening in economic sectors; (e) a well-established monitoring system of the labour market, etc. During the period 1991 to 2002, Lithuania tried to re-orient its supply model to align it with the demand one. Nevertheless, because of the changes taking place before and after 2004 (enlargement of the EU), during a period when the Lithuanian labour market lost about 200,000 of its active working-age population (there are no officially confirmed figures yet), discussions about the co-ordination model became more active.

3 Historical Background of Social Partnership in Lithuania 3.1 The Social Partnership Model in Lithuania before the 1990s During the Soviet era, social dialogue was of an artificial nature and based on the principle of ‘supervision’, which was organized in a centralized way. Industrial enterprises had a duty to supervise vocational schools, which were their suppliers of labour. Vocational education and training at that time was based on the Soviet labour theory, which said that a human’s activity is a link between the subject and the object—through activity a human being affects the surrounding world, as well as changing himself/herself. Actually, social partnership as it is understood today (cooperation and sharing responsibilities between the State, employers and employees) did not really exist in the Soviet period. During this period the TVET system was unified according to a Soviet model; consequently, very similar vocational education and training systems now exist in all post-Soviet countries. The typical features of the vocational education and training system in Lithuania before the 1990s were as follows:

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A planned economy; Centralized management; Close relations (based on supervision) with large enterprises; Monolithic teaching curriculum;

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Absence of unemployment; Low image of vocational education and training (Gurskiene, 2004).

In addition, the old system was associated with low productivity and an unsuccessful economy. ‘There was no competition in applying for a job. A person’s vocational career depended on both his/her competence and ideological criteria’ (Beresneviciene, 1999). Social dialogue in the Soviet vocational education and training system was artificial because there was no competition in the market; economic relations between enterprises and users were based on the principle of the planned economy—but not on competition. The labour force in Lithuania, as well as in the other Baltic countries, was not oriented to the needs of these countries but to satisfy the demands of the USSR or the other Soviet republics (within COMECOM—the trading bloc). It is also very important to say that the prestige of vocational education and training was very low, which consequently led to a rather superficial attitude at all levels of society towards the system.

3.2 Social Partnership in TVET from the 1990s until 1997 After regaining independence, most of the previous co-operation between educational establishments and enterprises collapsed because of ineffective organization and/or because many large enterprises went through a long restructuring process. New ways of co-operation had to be established. The collection of articles ‘National school’ was the first document, which tried to describe the principles of the educational reform in Lithuania starting from 1990. In 1992 the Lithuanian Educational Concept was prepared. This document was the first to introduce social partnership as part of the vocational education and training system in the country. This document stressed the following problematic and important areas, to which particular attention had to be paid:

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The foundation of private schools; The necessity of social dialogue; Development of a register of educational programmes; Independent evaluation of knowledge and competences (evaluation separate from the educational process) while transferring this function to social partners (employers); Ensuring continuity of education; Modular teaching (Dienys & Pusvaˇskis, 1998).

During the first years of independence (1990–1994), Lithuania failed to create and to develop a mechanism in order to ensure a harmonious relationship between the education system and the economy. Only after 1994, when employers’ organizations became stronger and started to appreciate their role in the TVET system, did social partnership acquire a more concrete form.

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In 1997 social partnership was formalized in the TVET system in Lithuania by the adoption of the law on vocational education and training. Almost in parallel, in 1998 ‘The White Paper on VET’—a manual for vocational training—was prepared. The idea of publishing such a document was inspired by the experience of the new economy, becoming acquainted with European systems of vocational training through the European Union’s PHARE programme, vocational training reform and other projects, as well as new experiments. ‘The White Paper’ described social partnership as an engine for the continuous renewal of the vocational education and training system. The principle of social partnership was described as co-operation and interrelation of the State, employers and employees, which would result in defining the boundaries of duties and responsibilities for each partner during the planning, organizing, implementing and evaluating of vocational education and training tools and programmes. The main condition for ensuring the quality of these tasks was based on co-ordination and negotiation of different vocational training interests (Lithuania, 1999, p. 19). Based on these strategic documents, social dialogue in Lithuania was organized at three levels: national-political; vocational-political; and vocational-practical. This model of social partnership still exists today.

3.2.1 The National-Political Level The Lithuanian Vocational Education and Training Council co-operates closely with the Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Social Security and Labour. This council is organized on a tripartite basis: an equal number of representatives of State institutions, employers and employees participate on this board. The Lithuanian Vocational Education and Training Council is a co-ordinating body ensuring that the interests of all social partners are represented. Employers and employees are represented by their organizations (chambers of commerce, confederations of industrialists, trade unions, etc.). At the regional level, the district vocational education and training councils play an advisory role. They provide expertise and perform consulting and co-ordination functions in regions.

3.2.2 The Vocational-Political Level Industrial boards (otherwise called expert groups) are also organized on the tripartite principle (TVET institutions, employers and trade unions from different economic branches). The aim of these groups is to develop policy for vocational education and training. Industrial boards form a part of the system for development of vocational education and training standards. Following decisions by the Lithuanian Vocational Education and Training Council and the Central Industrial Institute, a new board is organized in order to analyse the needs, development perspectives and qualification needs for each specific sector/branch. Fourteen industrial boards are established at the methodological centre for VET.


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3.2.3 The Vocational-Practical Level Working groups develop concrete vocational training standards (VET Information Service, 1998). There are two types of working groups: (a) vocational standards groups; and (b) vocational training standards groups. Both groups work on the basis of a contract with the industrial board. The first type (vocational standards groups) makes concrete vocational studies, prepares sectoral analysis, defines developments and trends in vocations and makes forecasts of the future need for specialists (Lauˇzackas, 1997). Vocational training standards groups prepare projects of the necessary vocational and vocational training standards (Fig. 2). The principle of social partnership is applied not only for the development of vocational training standards but also in the organization of practical training (apprenticeship), curriculum updating and in the final qualifications examinations process. Nevertheless, in the first years of the educational reform, TVET schools were more active participants in the system than the social partners. The period 1990–1997 was very difficult for companies and business-related organizations. On the other hand, companies did not meet fierce competition, which came later; particularly after the economic crisis in Russia in 1997–1998 and after joining the EU in 2004. One could say that the system of vocational education and training in the first years of the reform was prepared exceptionally by joint efforts of State institutions and schools. Only in 1998 did social partners become more actively involved in the TVET system.

Lithuanian Vocational Education and Training Council

Central Board (Expert Group)

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Working group

Board-2

Board-3

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Working group

Fig. 2 Model of the social partnership for developing vocational and vocational training standards

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4 The Present-Day Social and Economic Developments in Lithuania 4.1 Trends and Developments Influencing TVET Social partnership in Lithuania, as in other post-Soviet countries, is a rather new phenomenon, compared to such countries as Germany or Austria with long traditions of social dialogue. Today, social partnership development issues are discussed following the bottom-up principle. It is of primary importance to identify the main barriers which prevent successful development of social partnerships in vocational education and training. Employers should be attracted to the TVET system through their representative structures: trade associations, chambers of commerce, confederations, etc. Increasing competition, more active trade and co-operation in the EU and foreign markets have become the key factors today making employers more interested in TVET. Investments into new technologies, innovations in management and/or production processes increased the need for broader competencies. In 1998–2000 many Lithuanian companies had to re-orient their export markets from Russia to the EU. It became clear that only high-quality products corresponding to EU standards and directives could be sold in this new market. Lithuanian companies have experienced the impact of global economic changes, which are manifested by new technologies, the development of a knowledge society, international trade and more active involvement of the labour force. Thus, as rightly noted by the authors of the White Paper: ‘qualifications as established by high world standards and continuous learning became an exceptional condition of self-realization for each individual’ (Lithuania, 1999). The first practical steps in trying to co-ordinate the educational and vocational activity systems were implemented in 1998, when the State attributed several concrete functions in TVET to its social partners: the Lithuanian Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Crafts and, a few years later, to the Chamber of Agriculture. As Pusvaˇskis (2003) puts it, previously it was the schools themselves that conducted assessment according to general regulations set by the Ministry of Education and Science. This system made it difficult to ensure the comparability of qualifications awarded. To ensure a more consistent approach, the Ministry of Education and Science decided to involve the employers’ organizations and, in 1998, a reform in this direction was launched. By 2003 the modified examination system had been implemented throughout the country. A decree by the Ministry of Education and Science regulates the organization of the final examinations for TVET students, stipulating the responsibilities of chambers of commerce in this process. The chambers of commerce are responsible for monitoring the preparatory phase of final qualifications examinations by involving specialists from enterprises with expertise in vocational programmes and in developing questions for a theory examination. This is carried out in co-operation with vocational schools. In addition, chambers of commerce are responsible for the supervision of practical training in companies in order to ensure that TVET students gain the necessary practical skills. The overall model of the roles and functions of


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social partners while preparing and organizing final qualification examinations can be illustrated as in Fig. 3. This new way of conducting assessment has obliged schools to become more committed to meeting the qualification requirements set by the State and to pay more attention to labour-market trends. The participation of all the interested parties— employers, employees and school representatives—in the process stimulates further development through social dialogue. Within the labour-market training system, the first steps to transfer responsibility for the final assessment to the chambers of commerce have also been taken. The separation of responsibilities for training and final assessment is designed to enhance the effectiveness and quality of vocational education and training. This should help develop a mechanism to recognize and validate informally acquired competencies.

4.2 Key Players in Social Dialogue In Lithuania vocational education and training schools, which represent State institutions, are the active partners and initiators of social dialogue. According to the

Curriculum: Learning/teaching tasks. School.

Expertise of new or updated curriculum. Social partners.

Organization of the learning/teaching process. School.

Learning/teaching process. School.

Final qualification examinations. Social partners.

Theory exam

Practical exam

Practical training in a company. Social partners. Developing a database.

Composition of examinations questions, tasks based on the learning/teaching tasks of a concrete curriculum. Cooperation with social partners.

Summing-up of results. Social partners and schools.

Fig. 3 The organizational model for final qualification examinations

Selection of representatives from companies.

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Law on VET (Lithuania, 1997), the following State and State-supervised institutions are responsible for vocational education and training:

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The Ministry of Education and Science; the Ministry of Social Security and Labour; The Lithuanian Vocational Education and Training Council, composed on a tripartite principle of the State, employers’ and employees’ organizations; Other ministries, departments, district administrations and municipalities; The Methodological Centre for Vocational Education and Training under the Ministry of Education and Science; Industrial institutes; Labour-market training centres; The Employment Service under the Ministry of Social Security and Labour; Tripartite committees under the Ministry of Social Security and Labour; The Experts Council, the Ministry of Social Security and Labour and labourmarket training centres.

The number of the institutions and offices listed (which does not include the TVET schools) is evidence that the State is playing an active role in the organization of the TVET system. While this is a positive approach, showing that the State is responsible for education, on the other hand this rather centralized approach may discourage social partners from assuming more functions and responsibilities in the education system. Moreover, the State has the role of co-ordinator or moderator, being responsible for maintaining the balance of the above-mentioned structures. While delegating specific functions and responsibilities to social partners (for example, the organization of final qualification examinations is delegated to chambers of commerce and the chamber of agriculture), the State also has to find the appropriate financial resources. Employers’ organizations in Lithuania are comparatively young, having only been established since the first years of Lithuanian independence. Today, the Lithuanian Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Crafts (1992), the Confederation of Industrialists (1993) and the Confederation of Employers (1999) are the biggest and the most active employers’ organizations.

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The Lithuanian Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Crafts is the only nongovernmental organization in Lithuania benefiting from an individual law. There are five regional chambers of commerce with headquarters in Vilnius. Today chambers of commerce bring together over 1,500 enterprises. In 1999 the Law on Chambers of Commerce was supplemented by several articles allowing TVET schools and other types of training organizations to become members of chambers of commerce. The Lithuanian Confederation of Employers is a public organization uniting over 500 enterprises and about 100 associated structures. The confederation represents the interests of employers in various governmental committees, commissions, councils, ministries and other State organizations.


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The Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists is a union of associations. The confederation unites about forty trade associations, nine regional associations and about sixty non-associated structures. The confederation plays an active part in the lobbying sphere, as well as delegating experts from different branches to industrial boards working on vocational standards.

Vocational education and training, unfortunately, has not yet become a priority area of activity for social partners. This attitude has been influenced by the transitional period in politics and the economy, as well as a strong preference on the part of business organizations for lobbying and representation. Employees in Lithuania today are represented by various trade unions, which are united in four associations: the Lithuanian Trade Union Association; the Lithuanian Trade Unions Centre; the Lithuanian Labour Federation; and the Lithuanian Workers’ Union. Similarly, like employers organizations, trade unions have not paid much attention to vocational education and training issues. They are not adequately trained and prepared to participate as equal partners in social dialogue. During the first years of independence their major concern was to represent and to defend TVET as supplied by the State. Nevertheless, such organizations still lack information about their potential, or approach their functions and responsibilities for TVET in a different way. Recent discussions, while developing a new Law on TVET, only confirm this fact. Furthermore, trade unions had no administrative structures that could undertake these roles and functions in the TVET system. Neither did they have any experience of negotiation and participation in social dialogue. Meanwhile, today, chambers of commerce, confederations of industrialists and the chamber of agriculture are quite experienced and capable of sharing responsibilities.

5 Social Partnership in the Context of the EU Enlargement Process 5.1 Development of the Legal Basis for Social Partnership in Lithuania Legal conditions have already been created for social partners to participate in initial and labour-market vocational education and training in Lithuania. The first legal document in Lithuania describing the principle of social partnership was the Law on Inhabitants Employment Law, enacted in 1990. This law legitimated the principles of social partnership and functions of tripartite committees in the field of labourmarket policy. Participation of social partners in the vocational education and training system was first defined in the White Paper (Lithuania, 1999) and the Law on VET in

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Lithuania (Lithuania, 1997). Social partners have been attributed the following functions:

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to supply proposals to the Lithuanian VET Council, while defining requirements for TVET programmes (modules) and final qualification examinations; to organize final qualification examinations; to register practical training agreements/contracts between schools, enterprises and individuals; to supervise practical training agreements and their implementation.

According to this law, the term ‘a competent institution’ was introduced into the TVET system. The Lithuanian Chambers of Commerce, the Confederation of Industrialists and the Chamber of Agriculture were granted this status. In 1999 the supplemented Law on Chambers of Commerce and Industry allowed TVET schools and other training organizations to become members of these business organizations. In 1998 the Law on Non-formal Adult Education also foresaw roles and functions of social partners in continuous vocational education and training.

5.2 The Impact of PHARE, Leonardo da Vinci and Other EU Programmes Starting from 1994 to 1998, Lithuania, as well as other candidate-countries for European Union membership, benefited from the PHARE programme (this originally meant: Poland and Hungary: Assistance for Restructuring their Economies). The first phase of the PHARE programme was focused on modernization of vocational education and training in post-Soviet countries. Particularly, this reform aimed at:

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Audit/revision of the current curriculum and development of a new curriculum; The development of teaching qualifications at all levels of vocational training, including teachers, employers and members of trade unions; The modernization of educational equipment; Initiation of partnerships with educational institutions in the EU countries; The development of TVET strategic documents (Lithuania, 1999; Zimina, 2002).

After the end of the first phase of the PHARE programme (1995) in the candidate countries (Estonia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovenia), new vocational education and training laws were adopted. The PHARE reform gave impetus to involving social partners in the development of the TVET system in Lithuania and other countries. In almost all of these countries social partners, particularly employers, were involved in the management of vocational education and training through tripartite social partnership agreements at national, regional and local levels. Furthermore, the relationships between vocational schools and local enterprises were determined. In Estonia and Lithuania leading bodies under the Methodological Centre for VET were established fostering


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the assessment of vocational education and training needs in certain sectors of the economy (Zimina, 2002). A further reform, which started with the second phase of PHARE and other EU programmes, was mostly oriented towards the national qualifications systems (in Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia and Hungary). The problem of more active involvement of social partners still remains a problem for such countries as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Latvia and Lithuania—amongst others. From 1997 other EU programmes (mostly the Leonardo da Vinci Programme) allowed development of various sectors of the TVET system in Lithuania. These programmes contributed to the successful reform of TVET, as well as harmonizing the Lithuanian TVET system with other systems in EU countries. The Leonardo da Vinci Programme particularly contributed to the mobility of students and teachers, social partners in the EU countries, as well as considerably strengthening cooperation between schools and enterprises. These EU programmes allowed Lithuania to prepare for new challenges that appeared following the integration process resulting from economic and social developments.

6 Challenges for Social Partners in Lithuania 6.1 New Responsibilities for Social Partners Today, social partners meet with new challenges: increased competencies in TVET schools and enterprises; the appearance of new players in the TVET system; higher quality standards. All of these issues are outcomes of the reform in the TVET system, integration with the EU and more intensive regional and international cooperation. New tasks and responsibilities for social partners have opened up on three main levels: 1. Co-ordination of roles and functions on the decision-making level (political level); 2. Teaching/learning pathways at the structural level (standardization, qualifications framework); 3. Co-ordination of tasks and responsibilities to optimize the teaching/learning process (organization of practical training, final examinations, etc.). On the decision-making level it is very important to regulate and to balance supply and demand for the labour market, as well as creating a better mechanism to satisfy the needs of the vocational system. An effective co-ordination on the decisionmaking level requires fulfilling at least the following conditions: 1. A country should have a TVET regulating institution/board/council, where the interests of the social partners are represented.

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2. A country should develop a feedback mechanism in order to monitor quality issues in TVET. 3. Direct contacts and co-operation between enterprises and schools should be encouraged. At the level of structuring teaching/learning pathways, roles and responsibilities of social partners could cover the following aspects:

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contribution to the development of the National Qualifications Framework; contribution to the development of vocational training standards; contribution to the certification process (assessing formal, non-formal or informal learning).

On the level of optimizing the teaching/learning process, social partnerships could contribute to a better development of practical training, and new forms and places of teaching/learning. Having evaluated challenges on these three main levels, the following areas of activities for the development of social partnership can be identified: 1. Participation in the development of initial and continuing vocational education and training policy through direct relations: enterprise/educational institutions; through educational committees in chambers of commerce; and through TVET councils at national and regional levels. It is of primary importance to make the participation of employers more active in the regions. If on the national level the interests of social partners are more-or-less well-represented in the TVET councils, regional TVET monitoring structures lack the participation and contribution of social partners. 2. Participation in the work of expert groups (industrial institutes) for developing vocational standards. Because of the complicated mechanisms, long-term procedures and low financial compensation, employers are unwilling to participate in the development of occupational standards. Similarly, because of lowmotivation, employers are rather passive in providing expertise to vocational and labour-market programmes. These areas of activity require a new approach from all sides, both the State and employers. The input of social partners, while developing vocational standards, as well as while reviewing vocational programmes, allows new competences to be introduced in TVET schools and prepares the labour force for the necessary qualifications. 3. Participation in evaluation and making new vocational and labour-market training programmes coherent. 4. Participation in final qualification examinations. Though the function of organizing final qualification examinations has been delegated to chambers of commerce since 1998, many areas remain problematic. For instance, employers do not participate in preparing final examination questions and not all of them are acquainted with the educational content before the examination. The existing system for the organization of final examinations does not allow the acquired competences to be compared at the national level. This problem highlights the


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need to develop a unified system of final examinations. Projects of this type, supported by European structural funds, are taking place in Lithuania today. 5. Participation in the management of vocational education and training institutions. The involvement of employers on the boards of vocational education and training institutions is an exception rather than a rule. This is because of the Soviet stereotype of school ‘patronage’, which functioned before the 1990s. Employers must adopt a new attitude. 6. Better organization of practical training. There still exists a problem in ensuring the quality of practical training, as there is no guarantee that a student will gain the necessary skills and knowledge. In order to solve this problem, the Ministry of Education and Science, in co-operation with social partners, develops regulations for enterprises that are willing to accept apprentices. Only those enterprises that meet these regulations will receive students for practical training. A special database of such enterprises will be developed. The Lithuanian chambers of commerce and other business organizations should certify the appropriate enterprises. The above-mentioned areas of activity for social partners are the main ones—but not all. Changes to be introduced into the new Law on VET should allow a more active involvement of social partners at different levels of the TVET system.

6.2 Changes in the Legal Basis for Social Dialogue All the key players involved in the TVET system admit that the legal framework for TVET needs updating and improvement. At the end of 2002 the Ministry of Education and Science started preparatory work for amendments to the Law on VET. In 2004 a draft for the new law was confirmed (Lithuania, 2005). It is expected that the new law will eliminate the contradictions present in the old law. The main contradiction was that initial vocational training is completely separated from labour training, which makes the process of integration very complicated and heavy on the one hand, and, on the other, creates barriers for implementing the idea of lifelong learning. New changes also appeared because of the integration of Lithuania into the EU. The new law should focus on transparency of qualifications, mobility, the accreditation of qualifications, not only taking into account the Lithuanian education system, but other EU countries too.

7 Conclusions Although the Lithuanian vocational education and training system is still in a transitional phase from the supply-driven and demand-driven to the co-ordination model, social partners are involved in such activities as the development of vocational standards, the organization of final qualification examinations, supervision of practi-

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cal training, management of TVET schools, sharing costs in training and re-training, evaluating vocational training programmes, etc. During an eight-year period, the achievements of social partnership in vocational education and training system have been quite considerable. The following changes can be identified:

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change of the content of social partnership: relations between schools and companies became based not on supervision but on co-operation, which is typical of a market economy; changes to the curriculum, based on the needs of the economy, the new requirements; plus more active involvement of experts from companies in the development of vocational training standards; updated and expanded new TVET programmes; modernized TVET and practical skills formation processes; new and flexible teaching/learning methods implemented; practical training is organized in modernized schools or directly in companies; an independent system of assessment of knowledge and skills implemented; experts from companies are involved in this process.

Having evaluated the existing potential of employers and employees, while developing social partnership in vocational education and training system, the following steps should now be taken:

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training of employers and employee representatives in order to ensure their more active participation in the functions and responsibilities of social partners; developing local and regional co-operation between educational establishments, regional administrations and social partners; developing TVET departments within chambers of commerce, industry and crafts and chambers of agriculture in order to carry out the delegated functions fully; promoting social partnership, explaining its aims and tasks in a vocational education and training system; involving social partners in different committees, councils and other structures related to vocational education and training issues; regularly updating and improving the legal basis for the development of social partnership with the active participation of social partners in this process; ensuring financial support for sustaining social partnership; involving social partners in various national and EU projects; and developing research activities in the field of social partnership for TVET.

A new culture of social partnership has emerged in Lithuania and other Eastern and Central European countries. The involvement of social partners in the vocational education and training system is a logical outcome of the free-market system. Social partnership in Lithuania has already contributed to the overall quality of the vocational education and training system. This process is still going on so that social


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partners respond to new challenges by trying to co-ordinate the interests of TVET institutions, employees and employers’ organizations.

Note 1. The term was first used in Lithuania by R. Lauˇzackas (1997), while speaking about the labourmarket system.

References Beresneviciene, D. 1999. New possibilities for adult education and continuous development in Eastern and Central Europe. Vocational education: research and reality, no. 2. Dienys, V.; Pusvaˇskis, R. 1998. Changes in Lithuanian vocational training system during the first stage of educational reform. Vocational education: research and reality, no. 1. Georg, W.; Sattel, U. 1995. Arbeitsmarkt, Beschaftigungssystem und Berufsbildung. In: Arnold R.; Lipsmeier, A., eds. Hanndbuch der Berufsbildung, pp. 123–42. Opladen, Germany: Leske & Budrich. Gurskiene, O. 2004. Initial vocational education and training policy in Lithuania and the EU. Vocational education: research and reality, no. 8, pp. 38–51. Lauˇzackas, R. 1997. Reform of the vocational education and training curriculum: didactic features. Kaunas, Lithuania: Vytautas Magnus University. Lithuania. 1997. Law on Vocational Education and Training in Lithuania. Vilnius. Lithuania. 2005. Law on Vocational Education and Training in Lithuania. Draft. Vilnius. Lithuania. Ministry of Science and Education; Ministry of Labour and Social Security. 1999. White Paper: Vocational education and training. Vilnius: Ministry of Science and Education. Pusvaˇskis, R. 2003. The chambers are in charge of the final examinations for students at vocational schools. CEDEFOP info, no. 3. VET Informational Service 1997. Preliminary report: role of social partners developing VET in Lithuania. Vilnius: VET Information Service. VET Information Service. 1998. Report on VET in Lithuania in the social and economical context. Vilnius: VET Informational Service. Zimina, N. 2002. Features of VET development in countries-candidates to European Community. Vocational education: research and reality, no. 5, pp. 118–27.


Chapter IV.9

Integrating Education and Work: The Status of Vocational Education in Brazil Luc´ılia Regina Machado and Carlos Roberto Jamil Cury

1 Introduction This chapter aims at providing an insight into the implementation of policies that take into account adapting technical and vocational education and training to the technological changes taking place in the Brazilian economy. Here, general statistical data, legal measures and concepts function together in order to tackle the present situation, and make a general statement that may start a dialogue with UNESCO’s Member States.

2 Rethinking Formal Education and Training for Work In the past, formal education and training for work have been linked to each other in order to confirm that both are necessary to enhance the quality of human life and to provide the right circumstances for maintaining the community. This association can also found in legal documents and in speeches by governmental authorities, sometimes to cement this close relationship and, at other times, to break it apart. Examination of actual historical situations will reveal the peculiarities of each particular situation. Formal education today has its place in the governmental agendas of all countries. At the same time, science and technology are affecting most productive processes, so it is necessary to re-examine the close relationship between formal education and training for work and, whenever applicable, to remove any divergence that may harm preparation for work. Brazil, an heir to this dualistic tradition, intends to take advantage of the close relationship between the two. It is believed that such an approach will overcome the traditional view of vocational education and make it an integral part of basic education—the right of every citizen.


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3 Legal Measures in Favour of Vocational Education According to the Federal Constitution of Brazil, education of any sort ‘aims at the full development of the individual, his training for the exercise of citizenship and his qualification for work’ (Federal Constitution, Article 205). This principle appears again in Article 2 of the Basic Directives Act, immediately after acknowledging the importance of the link between school and the world of work. Therefore, vocational education should be regarded as one element in the nation’s efforts to provide equal access by all citizens to the full range of social services. Because vocational education forms part of a world where technological innovations are taking place at an ever-increasing speed, affecting nations, institutions and individuals, there is an urgent need to invest in people’s qualifications to become builders of the economic and social wealth of the country. Vocational education cannot be seen as a parallel educational network within a dual system, set apart from basic education. Basic education is a right for all citizens, as is laid down by law. In Brazil, there are three stages of basic education: early childhood education; fundamental (or primary) education lasting eight years; and secondary education lasting three years. As a minimal requirement for the recognition of oneself as an equal member of society, the Federal Constitution in Article 7, para. 33, prohibits any type of work for young people under the age of 14—except as an apprentice. The combination of vocational education and primary education represents an achievement that has enjoyed a long history of parallelism, duality—and prejudice. In a society such as Brazil’s, still suffering from the residue of a slave culture and a hierarchical class division, vocational education has been viewed as second-class education. Existing social barriers consigned vocational education to the role of a ‘network’ training labour for menial jobs, subject to stereotypes and even prejudices. The ‘other network’, on the other hand, was a stronghold of the ruling classes and reserved for an elite. This perverse tradition of a ‘double network’ is now forbidden by law.1 However, we still have a long way to go before we reach a situation where vocational education would be chosen voluntarily by individuals who saw the advantage of its benefits, thus ‘enhancing’ the value of human work, according to Article 170 of the Federal Constitution. One of the steps to achieve this situation is the legal obligation to progressively introduce universal secondary education (Article 208, II of the Federal Constitution), as well as lengthening compulsory schooling. For that very reason, a 1996 act gives every citizen the ‘possibility of access to vocational education’ and further states that ‘candidates who have completed secondary education or equivalent’ are eligible to admission to higher education. This tends to confirm the present trend that expects vocational education to be a regular route to higher levels of education. Furthermore, a decree dating from 1997 states clearly that every citizen should receive a secondary education, also clarifying that vocational education courses should be parallel to or follow on from general secondary education.2 At that time,

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it was discovered that it was actually illegal to have regular secondary education and vocational education at the secondary level. Taking into account this irregularity, the government felt obliged to revoke this decree and replace it with another one allowing regular secondary education and TVET to exist at the secondary level, associating education for work with the education of young people and adults. This new decree clearly conforms to the National Curricular Guidelines for Vocational Education. It is eventually hoped to adopt an Organic Law on Vocational and Technological Education that will represent a ‘solid, permanent and coherent body of legislation’. Since 2003, several initiatives have been launched towards adopting such a law, especially a document on public policies for vocational and technical education. This document expressed the need for a policy that combines vocational and technological education with basic education. This integration should consist of an organic, universal and democratic sub-system of this same vocational and technological education in all its levels and forms. Whenever offered by the public sector, these courses should be free of charge. A similar statement contained in the Fundamentals of the Organic Bill reads as follows: Vocational and technological education attempts to present technology as a historical and social process; to provide the worker with knowledge so as to inform him about his role as an agent in the transformation of production and of work, providing information on scientific and technological discoveries. Based on such principles, vocational and technological education will contribute to the complete education of the individual, promote the transition from school education to actual work, and place emphasis on aspects regarding work, technology and innovation, so that the worker will be properly qualified for vocational practice.

Vocational education, as a measure to reduce social inequalities and to promote the economic development of the country, is seen as a responsibility that falls upon public schools under a policy for ensuring good quality. Due to its importance, these measures are the subject of constant debates between members of the government and other stakeholders through forums and public hearings. Still another project aims to promote educational networks that will transform the present Fundamental Education and Teacher Valorisation Development Fund (FUNDEF) into a Basic Education and Teacher Valorisation Development Fund (FUNDEB) through a constitutional amendment to be followed by proper legislation. The constitutional amendment proposes that vocational education will receive public resources intended to develop educational networks. Besides this broad fund, the bill provides for the creation of a Vocational and Technological Education Development Fund aiming, among other things, to promote the training and qualifications of teachers. One of the networks that forms a sub-system at the national level is the Federal Network of Technological Education, with its federal centres of technological education, the federal technical schools, the federal agro-technical schools and the decentralized educational institutes. It is also worth mentioning here that there are some vocational schools in the state and municipal networks, as well as

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schools and foundations maintained by the private sector and by non-governmental organizations. Concerning the organization of curricula, the Bill of Law states: The curricula of vocational education and of vocational technical education at the secondary level will be organized with a view to including scientific, technological, social and humanistic knowledge that will form the common core of general and universal knowledge, in addition to specific knowledge and skills reflecting actual work and production activities.

Since vocational education courses at the higher education level are already provided for, the Bill of Law goes on to say clearly: The curricula of vocational technological education at the higher education level involve, in addition to the training of technologists, other modalities of undergraduate and graduate studies linked to the technology area, the licensing of teachers in these subjects, as well as applied research and the extension education.

The teacher-training component is very important since, in order to attain the objectives of the different forms of education, both pre-service and in-service teacher training will be necessary. Pre-service training will always take place at the higher education level and the administrations of the respective systems will be responsible for providing in-service education aimed at teacher updating and improvement. The Bill of Law also mentions a specific evaluation system. This system foresees the conduct of surveys on vocational education, the compiling of updated information and data, as well as the establishment of quantitative and qualitative indicators for the courses. The evaluation of technological courses, on the other hand, will take place under the provisions of the National System of Higher Education Evaluation Act (SINAES). Vocational education is therefore called upon to become a full and qualitative element in the education system. According to the law, access to vocational education at the secondary level is an integral part of the process to achieve universal secondary education in all its forms. However, in spite of advances made on the legal aspects, there are still two major obstacles to be overcome: (a) the inadequate numbers of students who actually reach secondary education; and (b) the circumstances and competitive nature of the market place. It is incumbent on public policies at each level of government to acknowledge the importance of TVET as an instrument both for educating citizens to achieve vocational competence and as a strategic measure contributing to national scientific and technological development so that Brazil is on an equal footing with other countries.

4 Diversified Networks of TVET Institutions Technical and vocational education and training in Brazil are offered through a wide and diversified network of institutions. Approximately 3,948 institutions were registered in the Vocational Education Census (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 1999). Of


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these, 2,034 offered courses in initial and continuing training (formerly basic) with 2,045,234 students enrolled and 1,567,888 graduate students (Posthuma, 1999). The School Census of Technical Courses (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 2003) reported the existence of 2,789 educational institutions offering technical courses.3 The number of courses totalled 6,446 with an enrolment of approximately 600,000 students. In 2002, 248,000 students graduated from their respective courses.4 The Higher Education Census (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 2002) counted 636 courses training technicians. The total number of students enrolled in these courses totalled 81,348 with 12,673 successful graduates.5

4.1 The Federal Network Established in 1909 by the then President of the Republic Nilo Peçanha, the federal network has existed for nearly 100 years and is present in twenty-two Brazilian states comprising 139 schools classified as follows:

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thirty-six agro-technical federal schools (EAF)—these independent bodies operate preferentially in agriculture and cattle-raising activities offering technical courses with initial and continuing training as well as secondary education; thirty-four federal centres of technological education (CEFETs)—these federal independent bodies offer higher education in technology at undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as training for teachers and specialists in technical and technological education; thirty technical schools linked to federal universities (schools without administrative, financial or budgetary autonomy offering technical courses, as well as regular secondary education); thirty-eight decentralized educational units (UNED). These are schools with their own sites but dependent, in administrative, pedagogical and financial terms, on the CEFET to which they belong; and one federal technical school.

As of October 2004, modifications were introduced in the structure of federal technological education, in order to insert the thirty-four CEFETs into the federal system of higher education that, from now on, comprises colleges (faculdades), technology colleges, integrated colleges, institutes and higher education schools, university centres and universities. Thus, the CEFETs now have access to the research and graduate sectoral funds, as well as to greater incentives for the qualification of teachers and for the expansion of higher education courses. This will enhance their role as reference centres for the diffusion of scientific and technological knowledge and encourage local and regional development. According to the Vocational Education Census (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 1999), 103 of the Brazilian institutions offering initial and continuing training courses (formerly basic) belonged to the federal sphere, corresponding to only 5.1%

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of the total number of institutions offering such courses, and to 3.6% (72,966) of the total enrolment with 59,757 graduates. According to the School Census of Technical Courses (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 2003), these institutions represented 5% of the provision of technical courses in the country. However, in terms of their student body, their participation was more significant representing 13.2% of the 600,000 students enrolled in technical courses in Brazil. Concerning the offer of higher education technology courses, however, participation of the federal institutions was quantitatively more significant with 143 courses representing 23% of the country’s total, according to the Higher Education Census (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 2002). The number of students enrolled in these courses reached 16,895 (20.8% of the country’s total). In that year, 1,228 students graduated from federal technician training courses (9.7% of the country’s total).

4.2 State Networks According to the 1999 Vocational Education Census (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 1999), 800 state institutions offered this form of education (20.3% of the total of such institutions in Brazil). Approximately 23.4% of these (187) taught initial and continuing training courses (formerly basic) representing 9.2% of the Brazilian institutions offering such courses. The number of courses reached 889 representing approximately 3.2% of the courses taught in the country. The number of students enrolled totalled 120,999, of which 62,578 completed the course (5.9% and 4.0% of the Brazilians respectively). The participation of state educational institutions is larger regarding the offer for technical courses. The School Census of Technical Courses (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 2003) showed that this percentage equals 19.8%. The number of students in state schools corresponded to 27.5% of the total of 600,000 enrolled in the country. As to the courses for training technologists, according to the Higher Education Census (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 2002), enrolment totalled 14,170 corresponding to 17.4% of the total number of students in such courses in the country. Among these students 2,394 graduated (18.9% of the total).

4.3 Municipal Networks According to the Vocational Education Census (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 1999), of the 3,948 institutions offering vocational education in Brazil only 342 were municipal, representing 8.7% of the total. Among these municipal institutions 199 (58.2%) offered initial and continuing training courses (formerly basic), which means that the municipal networks totalled 9.8% of all the Brazilian institutions offering this type of course. However, this proportion was less significant if examined from other angles: only 3.4% of the courses offered (930 in 27,555), 3.9%


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of the total enrolment (79,790 in 2,045,234) and 3.6% of the graduates (56,495 in 1,567,888). According to the School Census of Technical Courses (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 2003), the participation of the municipalities in the provision of technical courses in relation to the other networks is smaller than that concerning the offer of initial and continuing training courses. Only 4.1% of the educational institutions that offer technical courses in Brazil were municipal. In terms of the number of students, this participation represented only 3.3% of the 600,000 students enrolled in such courses in the whole country. Even smaller, however, was the participation of this network in the supply of higher education courses in technology. According to the Higher Education Census (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 2002), only eleven courses were available at municipal institutions—1.7% of the Brazilian offer. The enrolment reached 1,296, corresponding to 1.6% of the total and the graduates numbered 130 (1%).

4.4 The Private Network According to the Vocational Education Census (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 1999), this is the largest network of educational institutions offering vocational education in Brazil, consisting of 2,656 institutions and corresponding to 67.3% of the total. The greater part of them (56.2% or 1,545) offered initial and continuing training courses (formerly basic). This group represented 76.0% of the educational institutions offering these courses in Brazil. In 1999 the number of courses totalled 24,189, 87.8% of the offer available to the Brazilian population. Consequently, private institutions numbered 1,771,479 students enrolled, corresponding to 86.6% of the enrolments in courses of this type and the number of graduates totalled 1,389,058. The participation of the private network in the provision of technical courses is also very significant. According to the 2003 School Census of Technical Courses (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 2003), 71.1% of the Brazilian institutions offering this type of education were private, accounting for 55.1% of the 600,000 students enrolled in such courses. The private network also leads the offer of higher education courses in technology. Data from the Higher Education Census (Brazil. Ministry of Education, 2002) indicate that the number of students enrolled totalled 48,987 (60.2% in relation to the country as a whole), among which 8,921 reached completion.

4.5 The S System The SENAI network (Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Industrial) now comprises 765 operational units (SENAI, 2004). There are 230 vocational education centres,

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38 technology centres, 369 mobile units and 128 training centres/agencies. In 2003, SENAI received 1,918,363 enrolments, 69% of which were in vocational improvement courses (specialization and vocational initiation); 36.6% in initial and continuing training (formerly basic); 3% in industrial apprenticeship; 2.4% in technical courses; and 0.3% in higher education courses in technology. The SENAI courses that grew most in relation to previous years were apprenticeship courses (34%) and the higher education technology courses (44%) (www.senai.dn.br). SENAC (Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje Comercial) has a national network of 474 institutions, 59 of them mobile, and it received 1,783,294 enrolments in 2003 (SENAC, 2004) (www.senac.br). In order to ensure the evolution of micro and small enterprises, the SEBRAE (Serviço Brasileiro de Apoio ao Empreendedor e Pequeno Empresário) assigned priority to educational actions that are developed by the Education and Development Section of the Entrepreneurial Culture Unit (UEDCE). These courses are directed towards the development of competence in business management in a continuing education perspective and use diversified educational techniques and different media, including distance education. Other than courses, SEBRAE develops educational projects aiming at the dissemination of an entrepreneurial culture (www.sebrae.com.br). SENAR (Servicio Nacional de Aprendizagem Rural) develops vocational training in rural areas by means of non-formal approaches in occupational areas such as agriculture, forestry, aquaculture, mining, agro-industry and cattle–raising. The courses are directed exclusively to the rural producers who work in family businesses, to the rural workers and their families (www.senar.org.br).

5 Sources of Funding for TVET Funding for public vocational education stems from several sources, since the Basic Directives for National Education Act do not provide for the financing of this form of education. It has no exclusive or specific sources of financing, nor does it have a fund of its own. These sources are therefore: public budgets (federal, states and municipalities); financing from international agencies such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IABD); from private enterprises, workers’ unions, co-operatives, social movements and non-governmental organizations. However, the most significant sum comes from a para-fiscal system, a monthly and compulsory social contribution levied by the Department of Social Welfare on the total of the wages paid by the firms from each sector to employees exclusively for the management of the institutions of the so-called S System. These resources are subject to widely different systems and models of management due to the existence of parallel systems of training, as well as to the fragmentation of public policies resulting from the lack of a single financing policy and from the piecemeal application of resources in programmes and initiatives that in some cases duplicate each other.


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In the absence of a public policy for vocational education, several emergency programmes and funds6 sprang up in order to finance these activities. Among the funds specifically directed to that end are the following: the Expansion of Vocational Education Programme (PROEP)7 of the Ministry of Education; the National Qualification Plan (PNQ)8 of the Ministry of Labour and Employment; the Vocationalization of Nursing Workers Project (PROFAE);9 and FINEP’s PROEDUC—Education for Competitiveness Programme.10 Other programmes can also be mentioned, whose general scope is not primarily the financing of vocational training but which nevertheless reserve part of their resources to that end: the Tourism Project of the National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES); the Programme for the Support of Industrial Development (Prodesin); the Support to Economic Infrastructure Programme (Proinfra); the Encouragement to Research in the Area of Health Programme financed by the Sectoral Health Fund; and the Induction of Regional Development Programme of the Ministry of National Integration maintained by the Constitutional Fund for Financing the Northern Region (FNO) and the Bank of Amazonia (BASA). Another important source of resources for vocational capacity-building is the FUST—the Universalization of Telecommunications Services Fund—managed by the Ministry of Communications that receives 1% of the gross revenue of all telecommunications companies with the sum of R$3 billion available for its main task, which is fighting illiteracy and the digital divide. There is also FUNSET—Fundo Nacional para Segurança e Educaça˜ o no Trânsito—having, among other sources of financing, 5% of the total of all traffic fines collected, which are used for the application of resources in the formulation and promotion of projects and programmes for training and improving the personnel in charge of the engineering, education, computerization, policing, supervising, operation and administration of traffic. With a view to the consolidation of a public policy of expansion, diversification and improvement in the quality of the supply of vocational, technical and technological education in the country, the federated units (the states and the Federal District) are monitored and oriented by the Ministry of Education. Each one of these units, based on updated analyses of social demand and managerial information, must define its own plan, implement it and revise it periodically. Due to the size and complexity of the work to be developed, it was deemed necessary to promote the institutional and technical strengthening of the state systems as well as the exchange of experiences, one of the reasons for the establishment of the Expansion of Vocational Education Programme (PROEP) of the Ministry of Education. Since 1998 the UNESCO Office in Brazil, by the means of technical co-operation agreements, has been monitoring and participating in these actions, offering advice to several of these federal units through their State Secretariats of Education and/or Science and Technology (UNESCO, 2003). To that end, the federal units have discussed and adopted diversified legal models of state management in an attempt to solve financial, administrative and educational

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difficulties that have caused a series of breakdowns and lack of dynamism in the implementation of the guidelines prescribed and in the application of the covenants. In most of the federal units, with the exception of the more successful ones, there is no solid tradition in the provision of this kind of education. Moreover, the states are not legally obliged to provide it either. For these reasons, the state administrations have no strong motivation to implement vocational education or to provide it with stable and continuous financing. The result is a weak dynamism and precarious administrative and educational structures in the state agencies responsible for the management of these policies and also in the schools created for this purpose. The functioning and maintenance of the vocational schools financed by PROEP must be ensured by the state administrations as a response to the investments in infrastructure, equipment, capacity-building, consultant activities and services made by this programme. Without budgetary provision and/or the creation of specific state funds for vocational education, the educational and administrative problems that affect these school centres cannot be avoided. A new policy for the financing of vocational, technical and technological education is being discussed by the Federal Administration, which sees it as a fundamental condition for a qualitative leap forward: the establishment in the Brazilian states’ legislation of constitutional or legal responsibility for the financing of this form of education, as well as the unification of the different resources financing it into a specific national fund. Co-ordinated by the Ministry of Education and oriented towards a pluralistic management that is open to negotiation, this fund would seek to ensure the democratic participation of all the representative parties (the various governmental sectors, employers, workers and educators), as well as transparency and the ethical commitment, with a view to the expansion, the fairness and the control of the distribution of resources.

6 Conclusion The government is faced with unemployment, with the fact that through lack of opportunities workers are being relegated to the informal economy, with finding work for a great number of vocational workers and with finding a solution to the vocational training of future generations. If it is truly concerned about this situation, it cannot reduce vocational education to a mere technical exercise that ignores the competences required by a labour market requiring higher levels of skill and, therefore, the conscious participation of all. Valuing vocational students is necessary for their self-esteem, their self-respect and their future responsibilities within the labour market. The vocational student is also a citizen who is concerned, as a social being, with the future of society. For this reason, vocational education, instead of being divorced from school education, should be integrated into it as a higher form of qualification.


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Notes 1. Article 29 of the 1937 Constitution explicitly mentions a double network with parts reserved for different social groups. 2. This decree provided for three levels of vocational education: basic, in the form of separate courses; technical, at secondary education level; and technological, at the higher education level. 3. According to that census, the two richest Brazilian regions, the Southeast and the South, have 84.2% of all these institutions, 67.6% and 16.6% respectively. The State of São Paulo itself has 41.7% of the schools offering technical courses in Brazil. The Northeast represents only 7.9% of the total and the Center-west and the North, 3.8% and 2.1% respectively. 4. According to that census, 95.3% of these courses were located in urban environments, whereas only 4.7% were in rural areas. Health courses are the ones with the largest enrolments, 25.5%, representing 27.3% of the total number of courses. Next come industry and management with 18.6% and 14.8% of the total number of students respectively. The distribution of enrolment according to sex is relatively proportional: 51% of the students are male and 48.9% are female. Women outnumber men in specific vocational areas: health (76.9%), management, arts, communications, social development, leisure and tourism. On the other hand, men outnumber women in the areas of industry (87.6%) and agriculture and cattle-raising (76.3%). This latter area concentrates younger students (68.4% are under 19 years of age). The area of health receives older students (28% were over 30). In the total enrolment, 31.1% of the students belonged to the 20–24 age bracket. 5. According to that census, the courses are distributed in the following areas: 269 courses (42.3%) in sciences, mathematics and computer science; 163 courses (25.6%) in engineering, production and building; 110 courses (17.3%) in social sciences, business and law; 46 courses (7.2%) in services; 20 courses (3.1%) in humanities and arts; 19 courses (3.0%) in health and social welfare; and 9 courses (1.4%) in agriculture and veterinary medicine. 6. The FAT, Assistance to Workers Fund, represents an important reference for the financing of vocational education in Brazil for two basic reasons: (a) the sum of money it collects; and (b) the democratic management model it establishes—the tripartite (government, employers and workers) and equal representation in its Governing Council (CODEFAT). 7. Launched in November 1997 with resources of approximately US$500 million, half of which coming from a loan by IABD, and the rest from the Brazilian counterpart—Ministry of Education and FAT, of the Ministry of Labour budgets. It aims at providing the vocational education centres with infrastructure, equipment and qualified personnel, and also at adapting and updating curricula. 8. Financed by the Assistance to Workers Fund (FAT) with counterpart contributions required from each project. Between 1995 and 2001, it involved 15.3 million workers. The resources invested in this programme grew from R$28 million in 1995 to R$493 million in 2001. In 2002 these resources totalled R$153 million and in 2003 R$186 million. 9. Established in 2000, with a total cost of US$370 million, of which US$185 million come from IABD financing. In 1999 Brazil had 460,000 workers in the nursing area, however, 74% of this total were assistants qualified for clerical tasks only. 10. FINEP—Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos—is a public company linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology. Through the PROEDUC—Promotoria de Justiça de Defesa da Educaça˜ o—it has financed nineteen projects benefiting over 21,000 student-workers through fundamental and secondary education programmes offered by the firms.

References Brazil. Ministry of Education. 1999. Censo da educaça˜ o professional. Bras´ılia: Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais An´ısio Teixeira.

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Brazil. Ministry of Education. 2002. Censo da educaça˜ o superior. Bras´ılia: Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais An´ısio Teixeira. Brazil. Ministry of Education. 2003. Censo escolar dos cursos técnicos, 2003. Bras´ılia: Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais An´ısio Teixeira. Posthuma, A.C. 1999. Qual o rumo da formaça˜ o profissional no Brasil? Análise do primeiro quadriênio do PLANFOR. (Paper presented at the twenty-third Annual Meeting of the Associaça˜ o Nacional de Pós-Graduaça˜ o e Pesquisa em Ciências Sociais (ANPOCS), Caxambú, Brazil, 1999.) SENAC. 2004. Relatório geral do Senac, 2003. Bras´ılia: SENAC. SENAI. 2004. Relatório anual do Sistema SENAI, 2003. Bras´ılia: SENAI. UNESCO. 2003. Atuaça˜ o da UNESCO na a´ rea de educaça˜ o professional: relatório. Bras´ılia: UNESCO Office Brazil.

Chapter IV.10

China’s Higher Technical and Vocational Education: Development and Reform Jing Mi and Aihua Wu

1 The System of Chinese Vocational Education and Training China is a developing country with a population of 1.3 billion and 9.6 million square kilometres of land. In the last twenty years, under its policy of opening up to the outside world, carrying out reforms and developing a socialist market economy, China has made great advances in economic and social development, and in people’s standards of living. The economic development of China is constantly accelerating, and vocational education and training (VET) are developing rapidly too. Chinese children follow nine years of compulsory education starting at the age of 6. Elementary school lasts six years and junior secondary school three years. Senior secondary school (general high school or secondary vocational school) usually lasts three more years. Higher vocational education can continue for two or three years and a bachelor’s degree at university is obtained after four years. VET is an important part of the Chinese education system, since it plays a significant role in the continuing growth of the Chinese economy and society. In China, VET is divided into three streams which take place post-elementary school, post-junior secondary school and post-senior secondary school. The government pays particular attention to the post-junior secondary school level by emphasizing the establishment and spread of the vocational system that covers both vocational formal education and vocational training, and establishing linkages between VET and other educational streams (see Fig. 1). Formal vocational education leads to the award of academic credentials in junior secondary vocational schools, senior secondary vocational schools and higher vocational schools. Secondary vocational education is carried out in secondary technical schools, secondary vocational schools and skilled worker’s schools. Higher vocational education is carried out by higher professional training schools, vocational and technical colleges, professional and general universities.

r r

Junior secondary vocational education enrols elementary school graduates for three years of study. Senior secondary vocational education enrols junior secondary school graduates for three years of study (some schools for four years).


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Independent higher VE institute Adult higher college Ge ne erra all Gen H .E.

Hi gher VE

Other higher VE in University All kinds of vocational training General secondary VE school

Senior G. S..H HS S G.S

Adult secondary VE school

VE All kinds of vocational training Junior VE school

G. J..H HS S G.J

JJuunniioorr VE

VE in general junior school All kinds of vocational training

Fig. 1 A diagram of the Chinese vocational education system

r

Higher vocational education mainly enrols senior secondary school graduates or those with an equivalent educational level for two or three years of study. It also enrols junior secondary school graduates for five years of study.

The Chinese Government has decided to make senior secondary vocational education the core of its policy to expand higher vocational education, and to leave the management of junior secondary vocational education to the responsibility of local governments.

2 Structure and Scale of Tertiary Vocational Education in China To meet the need for the practical and skilled workers required by China’s modernization process, efforts have been made to develop tertiary vocational education over the past twenty years. At present, there are six streams for tertiary vocational education: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Independent, system-reformed adult colleges; The same course at universities; Tertiary vocational education conducted by colleges The same course at ordinary universities; The experimental units of tertiary vocational education in five-year technical colleges; and

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6. The new pattern of direct linkage between secondary and tertiary vocational education. One can note that these courses are mainly at college level at present (two or three years). The aim of tertiary vocational education in China is to serve social and economic development, particularly by guaranteeing students entry to immediate employment after graduation. It is hoped to achieve a satisfactory combination of production, teaching and research. The objective of tertiary vocational education in China is to train a highly-skilled workforce for jobs in the modern economy. Students graduating from high school should be trained to enter advanced practical employment with a wide-range of competency and aptitudes for occupations on the cutting edge of production, management and service. Tertiary vocational education is an important part of Chinese higher education policy. There are three kinds of admission to higher vocational education in China:

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The national entrance examination for senior middle-school graduates (pursuing two or three years of college learning); The local entrance examination for secondary vocational school graduates (pursuing two or three years of college learning); The local entrance examination for junior middle-school graduates (pursuing five years of college learning).

There are five kinds of school systems: full-time, part-time, correspondence/selfstudy, e-learning and those conducted by regular higher education institutes. From 1998 to the end of 2005, new student enrolment in vocational and technical colleges increased by more than four times, from 0.54 million to 2.68 million (Fig. 2); total student enrolment increased from 1.17 million to 7.13 million (Fig. 3). By the end of 2005, there were 1,091 independent vocational and technical colleges throughout the country, 921 of these were at tertiary level (Fig. 4). In addition, there were more than 600 regular universities conducting vocational and technical education (Fig. 5). It has been planned that there should be at least one vocational and technical college in each city (prefecture). The number of colleges, new student enrolments and total student enrolments for regular vocational and technical colleges 3 2.68 2.5 2 1.5 Million

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Fig. 5 Structures of technical and vocational education providers in 2005 Source: <www.moe.edu.cn/>

TTV College College Adult HEIs


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throughout the country account for 60.8%, 43% and 53% of those of regular colleges and universities respectively. This represents nearly half of the higher education institutions in China.

3 Tertiary Vocational Education Policy in China The Vocational Education Law of the People’s Republic of China (China. Ministry of Education, 1996) was adopted in 1996. In recent years, the Chinese Government has paid much more attention to vocational education than before. In July 2002, the State Council National Conference on Vocational Education pointed out that China should organize a modern vocational education system and expressed some specific requirements. After the National Conference on Vocational Education held in June 2004, authorized by the State Council, the Ministry of Education and seven other ministries and committees printed and distributed the Several opinions on further strengthening of vocational education (Ministry of Education and Seven Other Ministries, 2004). After that, the State Council formally authorized the establishment of a Cross-sector Joint Conference on Vocational Education, responsibility for which will be undertaken by the Ministry of Education. These measures laid the foundations for the development of vocational education as a priority system. In November 2005, the State Council National Conference on Vocational Education was held once more. It emphasized that China should make developing vocational education a key factor in economic and social development and the foundation of its educational strategy. Thus, China will make further efforts to set up and improve ‘the modern vocational education system conforming to the Chinese approach’. The present policies on higher vocational education that are being carried out by Chinese government are listed below.

3.1 To Strengthen Collectivization, Market-Orientation and Growth The decision of the State Council to place strong emphasis on the development of VET means that China should: (a) positively promote the reform and innovation of this system; (b) promote the integration and re-structuring of existing public vocational schools; and (c) revise the structure of school management. Profitable co-operation should be encouraged between tertiary vocational institutions, as well as co-operation between colleges and enterprises. Private capital and foreign capital should be used positively to build groupings of vocational education institutions offering a range of training activities. Vocational education groupings should be encouraged to adopt the structure of non-profit organizations, such as the University Alliance, as well as integrating and re-structuring their educational resources in order to take advantage of each other’s strengths and to become more efficient through the sharing of resources. Furthermore, groupings of vocational education

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institutions are encouraged to adopt the methods of a business enterprise, such as a franchise, and to plan the educational provision as a whole, unifying the standards for running schools and employing the latest management methods (State Council of China, 2005). Such groupings of tertiary vocational education institutions will encourage the promotion of higher levels of college/industry collaboration in the interests of resource sharing and synergy. For colleges and enterprises it is a ‘winwin’ situation. It is also beneficial for the establishment of educational contracts for training in tertiary vocational institutions, for facilitating the employment of graduates, for promoting co-operation between colleges and universities in eastern and western China and the development of both.

3.2 To Develop the Dual Qualification System Other priorities that would create favourable conditions for employment are the search for an approach that combines national employment standards with professional teaching curricula, improves the training provided, innovates with new training methods, makes teaching correspond to the expectations of the workplace, and ensures the quality and diversity of human skills. This has to be accomplished without prolonging the period of schooling or increasing the teaching hours. At the same time, the supervisory and guidance services of the local education, labour and social security departments are called upon to implement ‘dual qualifications’ in local tertiary education institutes and ensure that this process is carried out smoothly. The Ministry of Labour and Social Security and the Ministry of Education will disseminate successful innovatory experiences from experimental projects, strengthen research into the classification of occupations and occupational standards, modify employment standards in keeping with developments in science and production techniques, and step-by-step introduce comprehensive vocational qualifications adapted to job-clusters.

3.3 To Strengthen the Combination Production/Teaching/Research Over several years and on three separate occasions, the Ministry of Education has held a Conference for Exchanging Experience on the Combination Production/ Teaching/Research in tertiary vocational education. These meetings defined the guiding principles for the development of tertiary vocational education as follows: ‘the aim of tertiary vocational education in China is to serve social and economic development. Its objective is the students’ immediate employment after graduation, and its development will be carried out through the combination production/teaching/research.’ Tertiary vocational institutions are expected to use their initiative to satisfy the demands of economic and social development. They are to train people to be highly-skilled in practical abilities and possessing professional ethics, who can meet the immediate demands of the production, construction, management and service industries. These people should also be reliable and functional.


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3.4 To Develop Exemplary Tertiary Vocational Institutions The objective of building exemplary tertiary vocational institutions is to benefit from the enthusiasm of local governments and vocational colleges in promoting policy directives. The plan is to select and build about 100 tertiary vocational institutions, each with distinctive characteristics, that should be well supported by society and correspond to the directions in which tertiary vocational education is expected to develop. They will be important centres providing human resources for local social and economic development and they will be the most important tertiary vocational institutions in China, also having an international impact. They should play a leading role in the building of Chinese tertiary vocational education systems and take the lead in introducing training models combining production/teaching/research. They are equally expected to take the lead in introducing teaching and educational reforms, educational resource sharing and international communications, so that tertiary vocational education in China can reap the benefit. At the same time, the Ministry of Education will reinforce the preparation of an exemplary curriculum. Over recent years, the Ministry of Education has licensed 415 professions as ministry-level educational reform experimental sites, 62 professions as national projects of excellence and 75 curricula as being of national interest for tertiary vocational institutions.

3.5 To Develop Practical Training for Vocational Education Economic and social developments in China have raised the urgent need for skilled personnel who have mastered advanced technologies. However, the practical conditions for vocational training in China are unable to satisfy the demand for highquality skilled workers. It is for this reason that the country has brought together the financial and physical resources to build a series of practical training institutes to accelerate vocational education. The intention is to improve the quality of vocational education, making a greater contribution to economic and social development. The objective of setting up this infrastructure is ultimately to have some 15,000 vocational institutions in the country (including secondary vocational schools) and to develop college/industry collaboration so as to foster employment. It is hoped that eventually some 200,000 professionals would be available to provide practical training for more than 20 million students. To give full scope to the available educational resources, the planning of local governments will be strengthened, and excellent material and resources made available. The central government will also provide help with the financial input. These national-level practical training institutes for vocational education will be distributed throughout different regions, and incorporate teaching, training, occupational skill tests and technology services under one roof. Building started in 2004 and is designed to be completed in five years. The guidelines for these practical training institutes are: the cost-benefit ratio, orientation, lifelong education and active development.

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3.6 To Improve Teaching Staff in Tertiary Vocational Institutions Each tertiary vocational institution should adopt effective measures to promote timely in-service teacher training so as to improve practical abilities. At the same time, the tertiary vocational institutions should recruit professionals or technicians with wide practical experience in a profession, enterprise or society as part-time teachers (this includes retired people). Local education departments should set up a system for the evaluation and recruitment system of ‘dual-mode teachers’ in accordance with the needs of tertiary vocational education. They should be able to confer academic titles and recruit teachers, and provide policy support for building teams of ‘dual-mode teachers’. The Ministry of Education has established six teacher-training institutes for tertiary vocational education in the country. The mission of these teacher-training institutes is principally: (a) to provide training that will improve the theoretical level, practical ability and professional skills of tertiary vocational education teachers; (b) to conduct training in modern educational technology; and (c) to award a second bachelor degree and provide graduate education.

4 The Long-range Development Objectives of Tertiary Vocational Education Now that China is well on the road to industrialization, it may soon be the largest manufacturing country in the world. Its economy is undergoing thorough modernization, and new industries and skills are being developed all the time. It can be seen from the development of higher education in China that the country has passed through the stage of universalizing higher education. Higher education is now changing from society-based, market-based development towards balanced development, from caring about the number of skills to achieving a balance between the supply of higher education graduates and the demands of the labour market. This also means a balance between training a highly skilled workforce and meeting the demands of the majority of young people for access to higher education, as well as the balance between academic education and vocational training. Up to the year 2020, there will be a major expansion in the scale of TVET, with enrolment eventually accounting for about half of the places in higher education. The TVET system will be optimized through diversification and alignment with the lifelong learning system. Thousands of skills will be inculcated so as to support the industrialization and the transformation of economic growth in China. Further efforts will be made to build an affluent society and to raise quality in the interests of the whole population of China.

References China. Ministry of Education. 1996. Vocational Education Law of the People’s Republic of China, 1996. Beijing. (Adopted at the nineteenth Meeting of the Standing Committee of the eighth National People’s Congress on 15 May 1996.)


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Ministry of Education and Seven Other Ministries. 2004. Several opinions on further strengthening vocational education. Educational newsletter of China, no. 1, 14 September. State Council of China. 2005. The decision of State Council on vigorously promoting the development of VET. People’s daily, 10 November.


Chapter IV.11

The Adoption and Adaptation of the Work-Team Concept in Urban Thai Workplaces Chitrlada Burapharat

1 Introduction An organization always seeks the best possible mechanism to implement changes and to improve organizational performance. In this era, where knowledge and learning are the focus of attention, many organizations have begun to realize that their competitive edge depends very much on the knowledge and capacities of their staff. Through their abilities to learn, to apply their knowledge and their work experience, employees possess knowledge that can become organizational wisdom—as well as intellectual property. Nowadays, the trend towards learning organizations and knowledge-management becomes a very important strategy in business competition. Many Thai enterprises in various professions, such as computers, hospitals, banks, etc., are attempting to turn theory into practice by adopting such strategies in their management. The usual practice is for organizations to aim at creating web-based communication to help generate learning and information—a minor step in creating a learning organization. The question is how an organization in Thailand can create a working environment to stimulate and sustain sharing and learning abilities. The purpose is to achieve product or management innovation. Many companies are seeking ways in which they can improve their organizational operations. To create such an environment, Thai enterprises require teamwork from every employee. Teamwork is the focus. For instance, it is possible for adults to learn through other means than classroom-based lectures—it was once thought that this was the only way that learning can be delivered. Different strategies, such as informal learning, participation and brain-storming, are now incorporated into the design of group-dynamic training programmes. Individuals also have an opportunity to participate in workshops, to contribute and to share their knowledge in an environment of peer support and egalitarianism (Burapharat, 2003).


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2 Learning is Required at All Levels Generally, the main goal of education and learning is to reduce the educational gaps among people and to reinforce democracy by stimulating the individual’s participation in the larger society. Wilson (2003) and Hawley and Paek (2005) suggest that a learning workplace needs knowledge workers and this, in turn, demands the reform of secondary and post-secondary education, especially technical and vocational education and training (TVET). The most recent report from the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) shows that basic education in Asian countries did not usually prepare employees with entry-level skills, while the labour market demanded technically skilled workers (Hawley and Paek, 2005). This implies that a person recruited into a company still has knowledge and skills gaps—either managerial or technical—compared to the real needs of the organization. Unfortunately, to be able to compete in the global market place, an enterprise cannot wait for changes to take place in governmental policies on secondary and post-secondary education, but must ensure that the employee acquires technical and basic skills using various forms of training, either formal or informal. The promotion of learning in an organization highlights the theory of adult education—one of the most talked about theories in the world of business management today. Adult education concepts have long been one of the key areas for human resources development (HRD) in Western management studies. In Asia, especially in Thailand, applying this concept in the area of management has been very slow. It has been at Chulalongkorn University (CU), Srinakharintarawirot University (SWU) and Chiang Mai University (CMU) where most adult education theories have been developed, mainly for community development. Perhaps, it is time to become more familiar with the concepts of adult education in order to understand more about value differences between cultures. Adults require and obtain knowledge through different learning styles, such as experiential learning, self-directed learning, etc. While promoting learning, an organization has to keep in mind these differences, because it is the channel for an individual to take in information, as well as providing it. Knowles’ model of adult learning (1973) advocates that education must be learner-centred and constructed to accommodate the diverse needs and interests of learners. Thus, it is the job of managers and others involved to find ways of tapping into this hidden intellectual capital, to find the means to sustain lifelong learning and to create a positive environment for knowledge-sharing. The wisdom of an organization could be hidden anywhere. Sometimes, it is the quiet person, usually good at observing, who can suggest creative answers to problems. Thus, the promotion of learning and sharing at all levels may create learning opportunities in order to cultivate wisdom drawn from people’s knowledge and experience.

3 Learning as a Change Strategy Adult educators believe that education and learning are the means to bring about change because they raise awareness of the self, which empowers individuals to

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make change (Freire, 1969). Individual learning brings about change because people become aware of what needs to be changed as a result of the education and information they have received. Knowles (1973) stated that most of the time adult learners viewed themselves as non-learners, because they failed to consider themselves as possessing learning potential. On the contrary, an adult will achieve a higher level of intellectual performance because of the experience of life. This can be renewed, if not increased, and thus heighten his/her ability to learn and enquire. Mezirow’s (1978) theory of transformative learning stated that ‘individuals change their frame of reference by critically reflecting on their assumptions and beliefs. Based on this process of critical reflection, the adult learners then consciously change their behaviours to accommodate their newly defined world.’ That is how change begins. It is fair to say that, nowadays, everyone has the opportunity to access different forms of education and information, either e-learning, web-based learning or groupbased learning. In reality, employees at many levels in an organization may have been neglected or may have refused to share information, especially those who are considered as incompetent and different. For example, an individual who cannot comply with performance appraisal criteria may be viewed as incapable. The concepts of learning and development have also been misunderstood and misinterpreted. The printed form used in performance evaluation is often copied directly from foreign sources. In many cases, it results in bias in the design and implementation of the performance appraisal process. Such bias may cause rifts in labour management and unfairness in justifying an employee’s self-development opportunities. On the other hand, managers—in many cases the bosses—often forget about bureaucratic procedures when evaluating their favourite group. In such situations, standard rules of appraisal can be waived. Many people who are not complying with office politics may be excluded from new information and training or may not be invited to participate in brainstorming sessions. Many employees are ‘marginalized’ in this way. It is time to adopt this word in organizational studies, since this is what it means when people are ignored in a social organization. To sustain change, learning and sharing are the keys. ‘In the complex enterprises of the new millennium, learning has moved from the periphery—from something which prepared people for employment—to the lifeblood which sustains them’ (Boud & Garrick, 1997, p. 1). This, in turn, transforms the nature of work in which the employees are engaged to create new working practices and ways of production. The culture of learning is necessary to overcome development barriers. Thus, the construction of an environment supporting various learning styles and various forms of inquiry is very crucial to support lifelong learning in an organization. A team environment can create a culture of knowledge-sharing and synergy.

4 The Team as an Environment for Learning and Knowledge-Sharing Other than attempting to accomplish business goals and re-skilling their employees, today’s modern enterprises may also have higher responsibilities—to foster the

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development of an individual as a whole person. Regardless of their educational background, employees or adult learners come to work from diverse backgrounds, with different levels of education and literacy, as well as of work and worldly experience (Knowles, 1973). They also come with many strengths embedded in their language, upbringing and culture. It is the manager’s job to find ways to tap into their skills and tacit knowledge and to make the most of their learning abilities. One of the channels is through collective means. Learning alone, however, cannot stimulate change. It has to happen together with sharing to create dynamics of information flow for further knowledge creation. Modern management gives importance to working together (Senge, 1994; Wenger, 2002) as the grounds on which to create such opportunities. That immediately gives importance to the team setting. For example, group participation can enhance the attitudes of employees and their performance (Green, 1998). Participation is a way of encouraging worker involvement in decision-making, which has long been a topic of interest to theorists concerned with enhancing the attitudes of employees and their performance in the workplace. Participation has been associated with motivation and leadership. There are many successful workplaces that actively involve members in participation and decision-making processes throughout the organization. In a regular hierarchical organization, a team helps build bridges between an individual and organizational performance (Fig. 1). When we look at the transformation taking place in the nature of work, it is noticeable that the trend is increasingly in favour of creating teams. A team is seen as a crucial means to drive changes in larger organizations. Synergy can be achieved through teams when the members join together to create work or accomplished through results that individuals could not have carried out by themselves alone. To create human relationships and participation opportunities, an organization has to improvise because positive relationships are the mechanism for bringing about knowledge-sharing and learning environments. A team is not merely a group of people who are working together to achieve the group’s goals and objectives or produce high-quality work, but the ideal place to start the stimulation of learning for both individuals and organizations (Burapharat, 2003). Working as a team requires many skills since teams are not just the act of bringing individuals together and working on a certain project or task. Team skill is undeniably one of the crucial basic skills needed. It means a healthy

Organization Group(s)/team(s) Individual(s)

Fig. 1 The team as a bridge


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relationship and positive environment in which people can have confidence in each other and support each other. A team today also has the responsibility of creating a culture of knowledge-sharing and learning to build healthy community-of-practice networks. Not only is a trusting environment created and supported, but at the same time positive ground is formed for people to participate. Working together has always been part of human nature. The question often asked is ‘how can one create a better team?’. This is realised in creating and managing the relationship, encouraging cohesive co-operation and lessening communication barriers. To construct a team environment with positive energy, the building of good relationships is of the essence. Developed from group therapy theory, ‘group dynamics’ offers opportunities to focus on team members’ relationships. This adoption and adaptation of the concept includes small-group theory and team learning. They focus on the ability to hold dialogue and skilful discussion that can help enhance the learning and articulation capabilities of an individual. Due to different abilities to express themselves, some individuals in a team need support and encouragement from their colleagues to express their opinions.

5 Dialogue within a Team is Crucial A team needs an environment that stimulates the learning atmosphere. This has to be generated by the team members—only they can do it. The climate within a team should be such that individuals can express themselves freely and feel in a dynamic relationship with the other members of the group. The greatest emphasis in building a positive environment for learning within teams should be placed on achieving the right atmosphere through communication. Effective communication ‘is a prerequisite for every aspect of group functioning’ (Johnson & Johnson, 1997, p. 140). Alan Webber adds: ‘conversation is the means by which people share and often create what they know’ (cited in Isaacs, 1993, p. 1). Concerning the transfer of knowledge, Senge (1994) wrote that two primary media with which teams build their learning capabilities are ‘dialogue’ and ‘skilful discussion’. Reflecting the essence of Buddhism, many contemporary thinkers, such as Senge (1994) and Bohm (1996) amongst others, see dialogue as a tool to encourage people to pay more attention to others’ ideas that might normally be ignored, especially contradictory ideas. This is because people are usually preoccupied with defending their own ideas—a lack of awareness that encourages confusion and problems. In Metcalf’s opinion, our perception of the world comes from an accumulated pool of knowledge which gives us a sense of meaning and individuality passed from one person to another. By creating awareness, an individual can gather relevant information and organize it into a meaningful understanding through such processes as dialogue (Metcalf, 1999). By being more conscious of our own thoughts, we can learn from different opinions to create a setting for a collective learning environment. Dialogue as collective learning and inquiry is defined as: ‘A process for transforming

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the quality of conversation and the thinking that lies beneath it. Dialogue opens a new possibility for shared thinking or exchange thinking’ (Isaacs, 1993, p. 2) Dialogue plays a big part in creating positive relationships and interactions that are at the heart of effective group and team development. Isaacs (1993, p. 3) points out that dialogue requires creating a series of increasingly conscious environments. These environments can develop as a group of people become aware of the requirements and discipline needed to create them. Dialogue is seen as a means to explore the underlying irrationality of thought and action that causes conflict between team members. Dialogue has been claimed to be the primary aspect that a team should concentrate on improving, as the value of the individual will be recognized through the dialogue process. An environment can be created that is open and encourages individuals to offer opinions and take risks in putting forward ideas and to learn from each other through trust, respect and sharing goals. When communicating, people will normally defend their own ideas and assumptions against people who have different ideas and point of views (Bohm, 1996). Each individual has different opinions and assumptions—assumptions regarding basic ideas such as the meaning of life, self-interests, the national interest, religious interest, or whatever is deemed important. These assumptions are defended when they are challenged (Bohm, 1996, pp. 2–3), a behaviour that can create conflict between individuals in teams. According to Bohm (1996) and Isaacs (1993), people may over-react when defending their assumptions and opinions in the face of another team member’s opinion—even when they know that they are not right. People generally choose to defend their own points of view and do not judge the merit of other’s opinions. Such behaviour causes them to lose their grip of certainty about all views, including their own (Isaacs, 1993, p. 3). For example, if an individual hears somebody else who has an assumption that seems outrageous to them, the natural response might be to get angry or to react in some other way. This reaction was triggered only because the other person came up with an opposing opinion (Bohm, 1996, pp. 12–13). This may be due to the fact that ‘words can be interpreted in many different ways. And, of course, this is the basis for many misunderstandings’ (Johnson & Johnson, 1997, p. 52). Dialogue can be used to get at the root of different assumptions and provide a means for team members to deal with them openly. ‘Dialogue actually involves a willingness not only to suspend defensive exchange, but also to probe into the reasons for it. In this sense, dialogue is a strategy to resolve the problems that arise from the subtle and pervasive fragmentation of thought’ (Isaacs, 1993, p. 2). It is suggested that individuals should suspend their assumptions and concentrate on thinking together. What the team members need is to let ‘authenticity’ flow freely in the belief that, in order for teams to discover insight, free communication should be encouraged in the group. ‘Authenticity’ is defined as the ability to speak openly without concealing disagreement. Dialogue is more than just the way people talk, communicate and exchange ideas and information among team members. Isaacs (1993), Bohm (1996) and Senge (1994) emphasize ‘dialogue’ as an appropriate means of authentic communication among


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members of a group. By doing so, individuals can learn together, can interact with each other and discover how the team functions. This can accelerate the learning process and lead to the achievement of collective understanding (Senge, 1994). Most informal learning theory stresses the need for an ‘authentic’ setting to produce genuine communication, which plays a big part in creating the ‘basis for rich learning experiences that have the potential to be robust and highly transferable’ (Garrick, 1999, p. 19). The main element in team learning thus encompasses communication strategies as being ‘authentic’ among the team members. The concept of dialogue can be applied effectively in the workplace, especially in teams. Bohm (1996, p. 14) concludes that people should attempt to suspend their own opinions and to look at the opinions of others: listen to everybody’s opinions and try to see what they all mean. If different individuals can understand the scope of the varying opinions, then they are sharing a common content, even if they do not entirely agree. In reality, the opportunities for authentic dialogue mentioned by Bohm (1996), when applied in real situations, could be very difficult because of organizational hierarchy, bureaucracy, personal preferences, etc. At the conversational level, socialization, according to Takeuchi and Nonaka (2004), means sharing and acquiring tacit knowledge through direct experience from individual to individual. In the Thai setting, there are some socialization elements that can enhance the sharing atmosphere.

6 The Thai Setting Thai educational and vocational institutions produce graduates with skills that are inadequate for the needs of business. The ‘twenty-first century requires the education and training of knowledge workers—those who are able to use logicalabstract thinking to diagnose problems, research and apply knowledge, propose solutions, and design and implement those solutions, often as a team members’ (Wilson, 2003). It would be wise to find ways in which to support the collectivistic nature of Thai society using team techniques. Many collective mechanisms are already in place, for example, the roles of peer support in the form of the informal third person and pseudo-sibling relationships (Burapharat, 2001). Complementing Thai cultural behaviour will help people feel more able to express themselves. Many Thais admit that they cannot discuss things openly or speak directly to others, particularly Westerners. They also feel uncomfortable communicating in public or with certain people, such as those with a higher level of education than themselves or with a dominating character. The focus then should be on the patterns of dialogue typical of the Thai nature. The nature of Thai participation is obviously different from participation in other cultures. Hofstede (1994) observed that Thais have a collectivistic nature. He defined collectivism as ‘standing for a society in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which throughout people’s lifetimes continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty’ (p. 225). Triandis, McCusker and Hui (1990) described collectivism as: ‘A social pattern consisting

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of closely linked individuals who see themselves as part of one or more collective (family, co-workers, tribe, nation); are primarily motivated by the norms of, and duties imposed by those collectives; are willing to give priority to the goals of these collectives over their own personal goals; and emphasize their connectedness to members of these collectives’ (p. 2). Many writers have described the collective characteristics and behaviour of people from East Asia as group or socially oriented, and as promoting the goals of others, with the emphasis on public roles and relations (Hofstede, 1994; Triandis et al., 1990). Generally, collectivism refers to emotional dependence on family, kinship, structure, organization and, finally, on the social system. A highly collectivist culture emphasizes social interdependence, connectedness and mutual deference or compromise as dominant values. In the workplace, the collective nature also applies. Burapharat (2003) concludes that, after examining many cultural and behavioural mechanisms, urban settings both support and obstruct collective procedures. Upon further investigation of Thai relationships in urban enterprises, it was found that the nature of collectivism and value functioned quite differently from Western individualistic behaviour. Knowledge exchange, Thai style, needs both supportive personal relationships and a supportive environment to create an informal atmosphere in which people feel comfortable enough to share their knowledge and experiences. In order to develop a learning atmosphere in a team, Thais need constructed patterns of mutual interdependency and emotional dependence. The special characteristic of kinship also plays a part. Burapharat (2001) found that one of the most interesting themes emanating from research is the brotherhood/sisterhood or pseudo-sibling relationship, which acts as the basic relationship among team members. This unique behaviour within the workplace demonstrated that an intimate and interdependent relationship affects the level of authenticity towards one another. By calling each other ‘big brother/sister’ (Pii) and ‘little brother/sister’ (Nong), employees feel very comfortable in assuming one of these two roles and feel part of an intimate, collective group. The words Pii and Nong are genderless language, and are usually attached to the pet name or nickname of the person, such as Pii Paul or Nong Ann rather than simply using the first name. Most Thai people have both a first name and a nickname or pet name. Referring to each other in such a manner creates a warm and friendly atmosphere with an immediate sense of being a family member. This is something that takes place immediately when people start talking. Beyond smiling, it works as an icebreaker strategy when people first meet. Both of these Thai terms, usually determined by ages and job ranks, are used at all levels in organizations. If somebody did not understand the relationship, perhaps mistakenly referring to an older person as Nong for instance, no harm is done. There can be some adjustment or it can be left like that. For example, a staff member may mistakenly call a younger person Pii, but does not change to Nong after learning that person’s age. In many cases, the word Pii is used to show respect for a person who has greater experience and knowledge.


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The brotherhood/sisterhood relationship creates an atmosphere allowing people to be open to each other and communicate the information in their mind. They can communicate when offered the opportunity and when they are close enough to one another. As one staff member mentioned, she felt free to communicate her mind within her department where she was familiar with her colleagues more than in other groups of which she did not form a regular part. The sense of authenticity depends on the level of closeness. Team members can trust one another; here is a secure place to be truthful where ideas are not dismissed. This relationship eases the tension related to losing face and reduces the problem of non-assertiveness. Such a relationship creates a warm and relaxed atmosphere for people to feel at ease with each other. For dialogue to take place, team members have to be open to the others’ opinions and hold back their assumptions, to listen and try to understand while being able to voice their own opinions. Within the brotherhood/sisterhood relationship, a sense of a family is generated in which members can overlook statements that seem to create conflict by looking on the other as their own siblings. Another noticeable aspect of the brotherhood/sisterhood relationship is that when the sibling relationship functions the organizational hierarchy recedes into the background. Managers and staff feel on equal terms and comfortable in assuming their social identity, rather than respecting hierarchical roles. While employing the sibling relationship, team members demonstrate some sensitivity in dealing with the other team members. Caring action is also part of building an authentic and intimate relationship. In a manager’s case, the evidence shows that even outside the office, his brother role continued, such as showing an interest in the welfare of his staff-members’ families. In conclusion, the fundamental nature of being a Thai supports working together and is worth taking advantage of to create a positive team environment at work. In practice management needs to be carefully designed to complement the best of the team members’ nature, while being aware of many national cultural traits that can obstruct the transfer of information. In the Thai setting, the pseudo-sibling relationship plays a vital part in building an authentic atmosphere. By so doing, learning through sharing and exchanging knowledge and information can be encouraged. Although the relationships are rather informal, they seem to encourage authentic dialogue among those involved. The particular Thai brotherhood/sisterhood interrelationships are a form of friendship with multiple layers of closeness and trust. Within a team, this enables the team members to communicate with each other through an authentic atmosphere. They feel comfortable to talk to each other. This relationship also concerns the barrier in an organizational hierarchy between the boss and employees, as well as among the employees themselves. In building an authentic setting to enhance learning, the academic literature has rather focused on building dialogue between individuals rather than the characteristics of the interrelationships between them. The prevailing theories need to expand their boundaries to acquire more information about other elements involved in building an authentic atmosphere and dialogue.

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7 Designing a Team-Learning Workshop Most teams have a fundamental problem with encouraging good co-operation among their members. Frequently, they experience bad communication, conflict, no pleasure in working together and prefer working alone, while communication skills have been neglected. Carrying out a short-term group dynamics workshop provides fundamental understanding about the importance of learning in an organization through the use of groups and teams, as well as having adult education applications. Most workshop and training sessions adopted from Western institutions have often been copied in their totality—imposed on a different cultural environment without modification. Such knowledge transfer has taken the form of teaching that did not help individual development because it merely communicated content. The adoption of Western concepts in different cultural environments is challenging due to the lack of correspondence to the social etiquette embedded in diverse behavioural protocols. For example, research findings show how Thai team members should be approached respecting their cultural style. Team members have built a layer of brotherhood/sisterhood relationships to enhance dialogue during their collective behaviour. They need an authentic atmosphere to exchange information and learn from one another. Western literature on dialogue does not explicitly discuss building informal or other kinds of relationships as a means to pursue an authentic atmosphere. However, the Thai sibling style stresses the importance of building informal relationships as the gateway to having trust in each other. Many management change programmes applied in Thai settings concentrate on working and operational processes, rather than preparing human resources for change. One of the reasons might be that a basic understanding about the theory and practice of adult education has been overlooked. Individual adult employees need workshops that help stimulate the use of their knowledge and experiences. They need common ground for getting to know each other and a positive environment for discussion. An intervention and change programme has to be designed, researched, planned and evaluated to complement Thai collectivistic characteristics. This workshop attempts to create an informal atmosphere with some humour and to encourage dynamic communication, while adding new skills such as presentation, teamwork, interpersonal relations, leadership, problem-solving, communication, creativity and innovation. However, what skills are to be emphasized depends on the needs of the group. Facilitation skill is also stressed in order to demonstrate different means of communication and knowledge-sharing. Activities are designed for participants to experience different means of learning and to reinforce their relationships with different people with whom they are not familiar.

8 Case Studies Many teams expressed their initial frustration over the problems of working together. Even though the groups were composed differently, similar problems were


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repeated: personal conflicts, lack of communication, divisions within the group and low cohesiveness. This was an indication that there was a need to improve relationships among the team members. To accommodate and facilitate interrelationships among individuals, group dynamic workshops were conducted with several different teams in a financial enterprise. The contents and activities were designed to match the special requirements of each group with different teamwork problems. The main purposes of these groupdynamic workshops were to expand participants’ knowledge about the learning organization and the roles of individuals and groups/teams in it. Another purpose was to create an opportunity for every member to get to know their colleagues so as to enhance cohesion. Frequently, there was limited communication between individuals whose work was not related, so many of them never talked or associated with one another at work. The workshops tried to facilitate communication by using different activities, such as group activities, games and brainstorming. These activities were designed to arrange different group combinations in order to mix individuals together as much as possible. The reasons for this strategy were to make group members work together with people with whom they were not familiar. Individuals learned to know each other better. With the help of ice-breaking and brainstorming sessions, each participant had a chance to talk to other team members he/she had never talked with before, and to share their knowledge. Valuing other people’s ideas was also a purpose of the workshop, since the workshop talked about the creation of a positive team environment—but did not create a sibling-like environment. In one case, a team faced many problems affecting their whole working relationship. Ninety-four members of this department had been transferred from other departments because they were viewed as problematic. Being treated in this manner, these individuals were full of anger and resentment; had low motivation; low morale; there was no communication; they were unhappy; had no pleasure in working; and lacked the will to work with one another. They displayed aggressiveness and procrastination. They felt valueless and failures with no career future, etc. The average age of the whole group was over 45. As a result, many of them kept to themselves and never talked to anybody at work—no smiles, no laughter and no fun. Their educational backgrounds ranged from Grade 4 to bachelor’s degree. Antagonism and grievances were omnipresent. The implementation of the one-day workshop was designed to provide different perspectives towards learning and knowledge-sharing, including team-building. The workshop was also designed to include many strategies to support different learning environments in a flexible timeframe, such as learning through humour, informal learning, learning by doing and learning from experience. It was focused on increasing the participants’ motivation and basic soft skills: especially articulation; and communication abilities such as self-expression, presentation, facilitation, public speaking, brainstorming, listening and speaking in combination with applause, compliments and rewards for those who participated in brainstorming sessions. In the brainstorming session, learners’ experiences were written on flipcharts. Participants learned the theory and practice of facilitation skills. These ninety-four

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people were divided into smaller groups of eight or nine—recommended numbers. The assigned facilitators had to write down the knowledge from the rest of the group on the flipcharts, with the idea of bringing out the best of each participant. Individuals have a psychological need for their ideas to be acknowledged and respected. Recording their ideas on the flipchart says that these ideas have been recognized. People had to patiently listen to those who had difficulties in reading and expressing themselves. They all felt more relaxed and involved in such an environment. Individuals were also more open to their colleagues’ opinions. Other soft skills, such as presentation skills, were another way to stimulate their self-motivation. The presenter becomes the ‘star’ and, for a moment, he/she feels proud. Through the workshop, individuals learned more about each other. For example, one group found out that one of their colleagues had a problem with near-sightedness and was so very shy about it that they always hid behind a newspaper and communicated to no one. The group adopted a more understanding attitude, as well as finding a solution to help this person. This fact was communicated to the departmental manager who changed his negative perspective about this individual. It also came to light during the training session that many of the team members were illiterate. Feedback after the workshop and follow-up upon return to the work settings seemed to indicate some improvements in their relationships. When they returned to their daily work, the participants became less aggressive, opened up to each other’s opinion, showed more co-operation and were open to each other’s requirements. Individuals were more relaxed around each other and most groups reported that their relationships were getting better. There was more communication, more smiling, motivation and enthusiasm to work with each other. After their adjustment to their new environment, they became more collaborative in working together and showed more confidence in work. They also created a community of practice to learn from each other, such as teaching each other new computer or report-writing skills. On top of these soft skills, this group was very lucky to have a departmental manager who supported their development by adding a variety of informal and formal training sessions. Formal training sessions were for core competencies such as negotiation skills, calculation, legal knowledge, etc. Many teaching and learning programmes arose from learning together. For example, employees who were experts in the Excel programme were asked to teach and to tutor peers who had no such skills. Individuals who knew more about accounting and mathematics were asked to help those who were weak in these skills. Peers were asked to assist each other in writing reports and proposals. Making use of individual expertise, even if that expertise is seen by others as insignificant, is very important to those who need basic knowledge and computer skills. Later on, this department, apparently composed of people stigmatized as ‘useless’, was able to develop and was rewarded for making a high profit for the enterprise. The objective to increase soft-skills had been met—socialization skills like speaking and listening to compliment and stimulate Thai collective nature. About 90% of the participants agreed on the usefulness of the programmes in terms of increased positive relationships. Individuals had better relationships and gained positive feelings from sharing learning. From the personal to the team level, positive


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relationship-building was very important to cement ties between individuals to foster the transfer and creation of knowledge. Individuals learned to be interdependent and to share knowledge with the rest of the team. Through hands-on experience, they received knowledge about facilitation skills. Moreover, the surprising finding about workplace illiteracy indicated a lack of very fundamental skills for work. This unexpected finding caused concern about the quality of the formal education system. Does it produce a workforce with skills to match current requirements and does it make employees keen to adjust themselves to the real work environment?

9 Conclusion The case study showed that Western theory, such as group dynamics based upon a background of adult education theory, can be applied to the Thai environment. The theories accommodate different learning requirements and encourage self-directed learning, rather than forcing people to learn and change. Different aspects of the theory complement the Thai collectivistic nature, perhaps because they were close to Buddhist philosophy, the key determining factor in Thai cultural development (Blanchard, 1958; Klausner, 1987; Mole, 1973). Programmes and activities designed to complement the collectivistic nature and self-expression in the Thai setting need to include group-dynamic concepts, together with adult education and team concepts. The workshop had to allow everyone to be themselves as much as possible while socializing. It focused on learning and sharing while adding soft skills and practising team working. An organization can create such a change by creating more positive opportunities for people to talk. While an organization can create plans and policies, this does not guarantee moving ahead as one big team to promote change. Many firms focus on profit-sharing, rather than their human resource development. An enterprise has to rethink its management directions and commitments to human resource training and development so as to support both the organization’s performance development and profit-making. An enterprise has to have some way to balance profit-sharing and development of its human resources. This is very important since, in practice, a training programme may reach the bottom-line workers whom the organization had neglected to ask about their development needs. It is time for a Thai enterprise to review its management strategies for tapping into the tacit pool of knowledge its workers possess, and support its employees to become the source of knowledge for the organization. The experience of the people working as front-line employees and the learning capabilities of an individual can guarantee change in an organization, if the management encourages the building of a learning culture. The workshop provided an example of an open learning environment where the team can be the grounds for positive and supportive mechanisms. It can be concluded that individuals need a positive opportunity for ideas to flow. This calls for good communication skills, such as speaking and listening to each other’s ideas. Skills, such as being aware of local social etiquette, help improve

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the interrelationships among the team members and that is the way to bring out tacit knowledge. At the same time, a team is the best place to start practising those skills. The concepts and practices discussed in this chapter might make it feasible for human resource developers in other cultural milieux to adopt—and adapt—the approach pioneered in Thailand. One caveat is that ‘Western’ and even Japanese notions of work teams will not work well unless tailored to local cultures.

References Blanchard, W. 1958. Thailand: its people, its society, its culture. New Haven, CT: Hraf Press. Bohm, D. 1996. David Bohm: on dialogue. London: Routledge. Boud, D.; Garrick, J. 1997. Understanding learning at work. London: Routledge. Burapharat, C. 2001. The importance of sibling relationships in developing an authentic setting in Thai workteam. (Paper presented at the fifth International Workshop on Teamworking (IWOT-5) organized by the Catholic University Leuven, Belgium, 10-11 September 2001.) Burapharat, C. 2003. Patterns of learning and knowledge exchange in Thai work teams: a study of team members communication and relationships etiquettes. (Unpublished Ph.D., Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada.) Freire, P. 1969. Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum. Garrick, J. 1999. Informal learning in the workplace. Asia-Pacific journal of human resources, vol. 37, pp. 118–20. Green, M. 1998. Organizational participation: myth and reality. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Hawley, J.D.; Paek, J. 2005. Developing human resources for the technical workforce: a comparative study of Korea and Thailand. International journal of training and development, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 79–94. Hofstede, G. 1994. Business cultures: every organization has its symbols, rituals and heroes. UNESCO courier, vol. 12, no. 5. Isaacs, W.N. 1993. Dialogue: the power of collective thinking. The systems thinker, vol. 4, no. 3. Johnson, D.W.; Johnson, F.P. 1997. Joining together: group theory and group skills. Toronto, Canada: Allyn & Bacon. Klausner, W.J. 1987. Reflections on Thai culture. Bangkok: Amarin. Knowles, M.S. 1973. The adult learner: a neglected species. Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing. Metcalf, G.S. 1999. A critique of social systems theory. Mezirow, J. 1978. Perspective transformation. Adult education, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 100–10. Mole, R.L. 1973. Thai values and behaviour patterns. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Company. Senge, P. 1994. The fifth discipline fieldbook: strategies and tools for building a learning organization. New York, NY: Bantan Doubleday Dell. Takeuchi, H.; Nonaka, I. 2004. Hitotsubashi on knowledge management. Weinheim, Germany: John Wiley. Triandis, H.C.; McCusker, C.; Hui, C.H. 1990. Multimethod probes of individualism and collectivism. Journal of personality and social psychology, vol. 59, no. 5, pp. 1006–20. Wenger, E. 2002. Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, D. 2003. Knowledge workers and knowledge management in the workplace. (Paper presented at the Symposium on Adult Education: Learning Opportunities for the Future, Canadian Defence Academy, Kingston, Ontario.)

Chapter IV.12

Globalization of the Labour Culture in the Republic of Korea: What ‘Tripartite Relations’ Mean for Workers Phoebe Moore

1 Introduction The economic crisis of East and South-East Asia in 1997 had a rapid and significant impact on the security of the ‘culture’ of labour forces, which includes relations between management, government and workers; and the stability of workers’ employability and re-employability. This was particularly relevant for the Republic of Korea (hereafter ‘Korea’) where workers suffered a drastic rise in unemployment, which rose from 2.0% in 1996; to 7.7% in 1998; to 8.1% in the fourth quarter of 1998 (UNDP, 1999, p. 40). More than 3 million Korean people were unemployed in 1998 (Amnesty International, 1998), which is a significant number in a country with a population of 48 million (Deen, 2003). Whilst layoffs have not been scarce in the Korean labour force over time, the reason for the layoffs changed as a result of the economic crisis. Prior to the crisis, job loss was usually attributed to the situation of the national economy, but following the crisis, individual workers were blamed for not having the necessary skills and attitudes required in the new global economic landscape to either retain or regain employment in the ‘new labour culture’. The leaders’ passion to promote the globalization of this ‘tiger’ knowledge economy has begun to alter the idea of employability itself, as though it were an immutable requirement for the transformation of an entire culture. In fact, the culture of tripartite relations between management/government/worker has not actually been altered, but merely involves a worker-mandate shift that places the responsibility of ‘self-improvement’ into the hands of workers, thus saving the government from the need to pursue its welfare-state role. Instead, workers have been blamed for their lack of preparedness for the future of the labour culture. The crisis of 1997 across Asia inspired reform-driven restructuring of vocational education and training (VET) to become part of a Ministry of Labour (MOL) manufactured ‘labour culture’, which has come about in partnerships with international organizations that advocate Korea’s globalized stance. New requirements for training and workplace norms were expected to give workers the tools to adopt new forms of learning for renewed employability. In this way, VET to adapt to the new labour culture is conceptualized as a mechanism of the concept of trasformismo as defined within the neo-Gramscian literature.


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This chapter looks at a specific project designed by the Korean MOL just after the economic crisis, entitled the ‘new labour culture’, in which leaders have attempted to restructure knowledge through an imposed cultural shift. The third section focuses on transnational relations between VET specialists through looking at international educational strategies, and notes that employability has become based on workers’ ‘knowledge’ of specific and newly introduced skills, due to the transition from manufacturing to a knowledge- and information-based economy. The chapter goes on to investigate exactly which skills for learning and work attitudes have become employable in the culture of the changing job market, as employment has become increasing unstable. The crisis recovery period following 1997 thus marks Korea’s decision to unabashedly enter the global ‘knowledge economy’ as a competitive player but, unfortunately, the Korean culture of work has not been transformed, and continues to demonstrate a culture of continuous power struggles with little improvement in workers’ position on the political landscape.

2 The ‘New Labour Culture’ The following discussion of the ‘new labour culture’ (hereafter NLC), introduced by the MOL, includes information obtained during a semi-structured interview held by the present author in December 1999 with the then Vice-Director of the Korean Labour Management Co-operation Division. The reason for conducting the interview was to gain a greater understanding regarding this proposed new form of culture publicized in the Korean media after the crisis. An NLC can be seen as a project attempting to display unions’ and management’s needs for cultural restructuring and the internationalization of work norms. This process requires workers’ strict co-operation with the government, and despite the construction of a Tripartite Commission which still meets regularly in 2005,1 the project aims potentially to converge a multitude of voices, and to provide limited concessions within an age of uncertainty—but ultimately is designed to circumvent workers’ upheavals. The MOL introduced the idea of the NLC in July 1999, and companies were given two months to respond according to the ‘three phases’ printed in the Korea Herald (Kim, 1999, p. 18) (see Fig. 1).

Phase One:

Phase Two:

Phase Three:

Laying the foundations: developing and introducing principles (July-August 1999)

Education, publicity: changing old thoughts and practices (SeptemberDecember 1999)

Reinforcement: awarding model companies with administrative and financial incentives (2000+)

Fig. 1 Three phases for the creation of a new labour-management culture

IV.12 Globalization of the Labour Culture in the Republic of Korea

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Companies were given a matter of months to educate workers and to ‘change old thoughts and practices’, and were expected to receive awards given to model companies after the millennium. A sudden adoption of a globalized labour culture, modelled after Japan and the United States (according to the Vice-Director), was the MOL’s prescription for business survival in what he called the ‘IMF age’: an age of reform that would prevent future upheavals. The Minister presented the three principles of the NLC:

r r r

Trust and esteem: the basic level to facilitate easy relations between labour, management and government. Co-operation and engagement: the action programme. Autonomy and respect: the goal to be achieved between management and labour to eliminate the need and/or possibility for the government to intervene into business affairs by establishing a worker/management relationship.

The principles of the labour culture require a shift in traditional power relations between the three agents: workers, management and the government. The Korea Herald article (Kim, 1999) quotes a Minister of Labour: ‘Korea must observe a new paradigm of labour relations in which employers and workers are partners in every sense of the word’. The Minister also stressed that ‘increased [. . . ] aggressive employee training’ is a prerequisite to healthy labour relations. As the MOL is a government body, the composition of this proposal is from its origins embedded in unequal relations but, ultimately, the ministry wants to encourage management and workers to find ways of negotiation and resolution between themselves. So, bi-partite relations are a distinct indication of how the ‘culture’ of labour would progress. The Vice-Director offered a more complete explanation of his use of the term ‘culture’ by first listing the basic activities of labour relations, including collective bargaining and strikes, and human resource management. He claimed that companies should invest in labour culture training with the intention of ‘making trade unions co-operate’. A 12.2% decrease in trade union membership in 1998 may have indicated a higher level of co-operation, or that union members are learning to co-operate with policy-makers. Alternatively, perhaps workers are choosing not to join unions, despite the notion that it is their only chance to enjoy legitimate representation. To achieve autonomy, as the third principle of the above list indicates, perhaps workers need labour unions as a tool to negotiate with the government if they feel that their autonomy is being challenged. The Vice-Director stated that the autonomy supposition is a goal, not reality. He mentioned that labour leaders do not respect union laws, and often use violence to pass their message, which is ‘intolerable’. As a solution, The Vice-Director said that union members would have to change their ‘minds’2 and become more flexible toward leaders’ decisions that were, admittedly, made in haste and with international consultancy. The most significant change, he stressed, would be union members’ co-operation with laws and government policy. Trade unions are learning; they have gradually started to conform to labour laws and to realise that violence will not help. The Minister referred to percentages

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of trade union membership, company investment and the models of modernization (Fig. 2) for the NLC. Because Korea’s labour history is considerably shorter than that of the United States and Japan, Korea would have to accelerate its development of ‘modern’ labour relations. The final outcome of the labour culture project was intended to cultivate ‘modern’ labour relations. The Vice-Director presented the model, ‘Composition of the future-oriented labour-management community’ which was also published in the Korea Herald in late 1999. The question now is whether workers can quickly adapt to new institutional requirements, and whether their way of thinking and culture can or will easily incorporate the new ‘education’ and ‘training’ of work habits—the relatively ambiguous terminology that represents the ‘new labour culture’. Companies must invest in new forms of VET if they wish to remain competitive and stable. There is ‘no choice’, and the minister claimed that Korea faced few choices as a result of the economic crisis and IMF restructuring. But the crisis was the main reason for the need for a transformation of labour relations.

Trust

Esteem

Responsibility Create 21

Autonomy

Engagement Co-operation

3 elements for modernization

Perspectives

Practices

Fig. 2 Composition of the future-oriented labour/management community Source: Kim, 1999, p. 18.

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What quality marks the beginning of co-operation? Trust, according to the model prepared by the MOL. As a result of on-going tensions over many years, there has been very little trust between workers, management and policy-makers in Korea. Since 1987, co-operation has been attempted but without trust there can be no success in labour relations. Trust will take time, but someone should make the first move and ‘management’ was the target. Management should learn to trust the government’s economic policy and implement policies within their companies. Labour flexibility became a core theme in the restructuring of labour and remains a priority for policy-makers. Lay-offs are usually justified as a temporary remedy for economic difficulties in Korea and on-going restructuring of labour is a crucial element for the continuation of capitalism. The possibility of being laid off, however, makes people work harder, and while they feel stress and fatigue now, the recognition of necessary changes within VET will stabilize their positions, the Vice-Director stated. One change within the post-crisis era is that workers must become more cognisant of the significance of their behaviour for company survival. In the past, workers and management alike were not as concerned about keeping their companies alive, partly because the government propped up lagging companies, and partly because there was less dependence on foreign investment. In the contemporary age, workers will have to take on increased responsibilities for their own employability, as well as the well-being of their companies. Unions must be government partners in the NLC. But would new laws implemented in the crisis-restructuring era reflect the needs and desires of workers? The Minister stated that institutions must change before laws can be made. The Tripartite Commission exists to facilitate policy changes; legal changes will be considered within the infrastructure of the Commission. It will take time for changes to truly affect relations. The interviewer reminded him of the lack of time that he had emphasized previously, of the urgency to change the labour culture to meet the standards of the United States and Japan. But with the same vision, he said, practices can be changed, since change depends on people’s minds. If workers do not follow the lead of management, and management neglects to follow the lead of the MOL’s NLC mandates, then businesses, especially those that are foreign-invested, will fail and workers will lose their jobs. That was the message from this prominent civil servant. Perhaps the reality is a reminder to workers and management of who is still in control: the Korean Government and the leading managerial class, and workers are excluded from development dialogue.

3 The Restructuring of Ideas In the mid-1990s, in order to accommodate the State’s objectives for globalization, the Korean MOL began accelerating relations with international organizations with a goal to model Korean VET programmes to those seen within the culture of the

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‘convergence club’3 (Magariños, 2001). Korean President Kim Dae Jung (1997– 2003) reasoned that ‘the ideas and the modus operandi of the industrial society of the past will not prepare us for adaptation and adjustment [. . . ] the time has come for us to positively transform our consciousness to fit the coming century’ (Kim, 1997, p. 205). The knowledge society comes about through becoming a ‘learning society’. Everybody (researchers, managers, workers) contributes to that process through sharing their distinctive insights and know-how in building institutions and social systems capable of holding/memorizing, mediating and continuously constructing new knowledge (Nyhan, 2002, p. 20). The need for new forms of knowledge within the workforce arises with changes in production. During the age of Fordism, workers were trained to work on mass assembly-line production. Nyhan (2002) states that the crisis of European industry in the 1970s and 1980s was due to a lack of appropriate knowledge for the changes that technology began to have upon work expectations. Enhanced interest in ‘knowledge’ in education systems is a ‘timely reminder of some of the fundamentals that have been lost’ (p. 30), which involves out-of-date assumptions that adaptation will occur outside of clearly defined training. The World Bank and OECD’s (2001) review of Korean progress since the economic crisis shows that some amount of reform of education has been implemented, but more was needed to guarantee an appropriately skilled workforce for the growing knowledge economy. Recommendations include the integration of skills instruction such as ‘communication skills, capability to utilize ICTs, as well as increased possibilities for gaining field experience’ (World Bank/OECD, 2001, p. xv). These international organizations also advise partnerships between universities and industry, the enhancement of pedagogical training with an emphasis on new knowledge and information and communication technologies (ICTs), the development of performance-based pay systems, knowledge sharing systems, and the expansion of exchange programmes between Korean and foreign educational institutions. At this ideational level, these powerful institutions recommend several actions to improve Korea’s chances of composing the work force needed and to ‘provide better co-ordination between needs of the labour market and industry, and the supply of education’ (p. xv). With this in mind, the Korean Government sought to build on international partnerships. In partnership with UNESCO-UNEVOC and other international organizations, the MOL aimed to standardize and reform VET programmes to give them a more globally competitive edge (ROK, 2001, pp. 61–62). Korea’s greatest resource for development is manpower, according to experts at UNESCO, but it is unrefined in its potential. The Asia-Pacific coalition of UNESCO-UNEVOC emphasizes ‘innovativeness, creativity, adaptability, and self-learning’ as the most attractive performance indicators for workers in the knowledge economy, and holds meetings for educators to discuss implementation. The first principal strategy for training is ‘entrepreneurship skills development’— one of the primary components of neo-liberal economic growth, as entrepreneurs are often the strongest negotiators of capital and the ‘brains’ behind the system.


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OECD emphasizes that knowledge and information as ‘assets’ are becoming increasingly valuable for nations to position themselves as competitive players in the global knowledge economy (OECD, 2000, pp. 12–13). As the value of assets has shifted from tangible to intangible, workers’ supposed ‘lag’ in adjustment to expectations of what knowledge is, appears to require government-led strategies to provide training that can quickly train capability and efficiently (Leadbeater, 1999, p. iv). The implications of a knowledge-based economy or the ‘new capitalism’ (Leadbeater, 1998, p. 384) are that very specific types of worker knowledge and behaviour are expected for effective utilization of human capital for development, and will enhance national economies’ competitiveness. The new capitalism, that of the Knowledge Economy, will be driven by the discovery and distribution of rival intangible goods—information and knowledge—created by largely intangible assets—human and social capital. These knowledge-intensive goods are best produced through collaboration and competition, partnerships and networks, which bring together public and private (Leadbeater, 1998, p. 384).

In this context, the Korean government has adjusted investment strategies, and has restructured VET programmes, requesting that workers and civil society co-operate with its incentives (ROK, 2001, pp. 12–13). Industry in Korea has been changing, the ‘Republic of Korea’ states in one of its government booklets and, therefore, the government is changing investment strategies to prioritize research and development surrounding this issue. ‘Until now’, the booklet continues, Korea has ‘focused on research and development in mediumhigh tech industries, such as electronics, automobile, machinery and ship-building, in which it retains relatively high competitiveness’ (ROK, 2001, p. 7). ‘Recently,’ however, the government has changed its strategic investment into ‘fields of new technology, such as IT’. When the share percentage of ownership of the total market by ‘foreigners’, or non-Korean investors, rose from 2.24% in 1983 to 9.11% in 1997, jumping to 18.6% by late 1998 (the highest percentage since 1983),4 the ‘market’ required a critical overview of the workforce. This influx of foreign capital is located in the knowledge industry more predominantly than in any other sector and this has created an increase in demand for skilled ‘knowledge workers’ (ROK, 2001; Lee, 2001), thus changing the nature of what it means to be ‘employable’ in Korea. In response to these changes in industry-specific investment, new demands have been made of the labour market, and the very concept of employability and what constituted re-employability has been quickly thrown into disarray. If workers could not keep jobs in the insecure post-crisis situation, they were expected to join VET programmes that would make them ‘employable’. If workers were privileged to remain in positions of employment, they were expected to attend developmental VET that would aid in maintaining their ‘employability’. The government’s hegemonic project intended to involve the workers by providing the means for them ‘to help themselves’. A senior researcher at KRIVET focused on the workers’ situation with regard to training and how the researcher, in an ‘elite’ position conducting governmentsponsored research, understood employability. She stated that management had developed different expectations and needs for training than the workers in the

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post-crisis period. Workers were expected to seek qualifications and training for lifelong learning, which would increase their mobility. Management in the restructuring scenario sought workers who could prove that they had gained training in what were called ‘international skills’. This expert reflected on a July 2002 newspaper article about the end-of-the-contract system for labour, which stated that the average age to leave a job had become 38. Thus workers may want to gain new skills in order to keep up with changing expectations occurring in the increasingly flexible labour market with a high rate of worker turnover. The KRIVET researcher mentioned that people in the automobile and computer industries were more likely to keep their jobs. However, the reasons for layoffs had changed, she stressed. During the economic crisis, many educated people lost their jobs due to external forces. Unemployment subsequently became the result of actual unemployability of individuals. Unemployed workers after the economic crisis were forced to accept their own ‘unemployability’ in the face of new skill requirements, and had to enter VET programmes that taught internationally accepted knowledge and ideas for self-improvement and skills development. Post-economic crisis Korean VET programmes were designed to prepare workers to play an active role in integration into certain fields of technology that are seen to require flexible workers who commit to a lifelong plan of learning in order to remain employable. Knowledge itself thus has become a commodity in post-industrial society, and would be provided by the public sector to the private (Leadbeater, 1998, p. 379). State guidance for this process became increasingly important due to ‘its [the State’s] role in producing knowledge, through the education system’ (p. 379). Jessop (2001, p. 63) notes that knowledge becomes a commodity when it is artificially made scarce, as opposed to the commodification of labour power that occurs when it enters the labour market and becomes submerged in the labour process. The commodification of knowledge brings about an unprecedented role for the State, if it is to inspire a ‘profound social reorganization [. . . ] required to turn it [knowledge] into something valuable’ (Schiller, 1988, p. 32). In 1997, 13,888 firms were entitled to offer a ‘Vocational Competency Development Programme’ to employees (KOILAF, 1999a, p. 109). This programme involved training workers for new work styles of individual performance and ‘competence’ (p. 109). However, the increase in demand for knowledge workers drastically exceeds the demand for the ‘unskilled’ (ROK, 2001, p. 14). Furthermore, ‘the wage gap between production workers and managerial/white-collar employees has begun to widen since 1998, because production workers suffered more severe pay cuts’ (Katz, Lee & Lee, 2001, p. 232). Thus, restructuring of knowledge and skills in Korea involved the government establishing relations with international agencies whose intentions focus on the convergence of production relations, including employable skills.

4 Restructuring the Content of VET Programmes The promotions of new characteristics of labour performance include several elements that contrast with the Korean cultural expectations of workers. Rowley and


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Bae (2002) observe how core ideologies of human resource flows, work systems, evaluation and reward systems, and employee influence can be systematically contrasted to new characteristics. Traditional Korean work practices include: the prioritization of an affiliate organization over the individual him/herself; emphasis on collective equality; and community orientation over individual equity and market principal orientations. Kim and Briscoe (1997) note that traditional human resource management in South Korea is based on an emphasis of group harmony (in hwa). Incentives and bonuses were based not on individual performance but on that of the group. Team spirit was the formula for excellence in the traditional workplace— cultural norms that were bound to change with the MOL’s NLC. The major changes introduced by VET programmes are in the areas of performance appraisal and payments systems, lifelong learning and individualization of work. These cultural shifts are reflective of the post-Fordist age wherein modes of control over the process of work have been rewritten. In the post-Fordist production age, the stipulation for manual skills has become nearly completely replaced by the demand for individuals’ ‘knowledge’ (Aronowitz & DiFazio, 1994, p. 83). New work styles have changed promotion and compensation techniques to fit individual performance, which were to be appraised by managers who were equally inexperienced in the new standards (Kim and Briscoe, 1997).

4.1 Performance Appraisal and Payment Systems Perhaps the two most difficult requests made by the government for labour discussed by the first Tripartite Commission in negotiation for restructuring of culture were labour flexibility and changes to the traditional payment system toward a performance-based system. People with intelligence, skills, creativity and willingness—the knowledgeable— are critical for sharpening the competitive edge in the era of infinite competition. It is becoming increasingly important to lay a solid ground for economic recovery through remodelling corporate infrastructure and creating an atmosphere where workers of ability are valued (KOILAF, 1999b, p. 11). In November 1997, just as the economy began its dangerous slide toward a crisis, the MOL took a renewed interest in vocational programmes designed to achieve the above competences. The Vocational Training Promotion Act of 24 December 1997 began a trend by changing the titles of the VET facilities to vocational ability development training facilities, and the term ‘vocational training’ became vocational ability development training (ROK/MOL, 1999, 2005). ‘Ability’, a relatively ambiguous term used repeatedly in the emerging training institutions, refers to a particular work ethic included as part of training procedures. Workers were increasingly expected to assume new responsibilities and skills for the international work standard, regardless of their rupture with the past work culture in Korean corporations and businesses. A KOILAF publication recommends some ‘basic directions’ for the implementation of a performance-based wage system. Guidelines are:

r

Help workers and employers to find common ground for the introduction and operation of a performance-based system.

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Ensure that the procedures for adopting a new wage system comply with the law and any counter-productive effect is averted. Induce a simplified wage system (KOILAF, 2002, p. 11).

Employers and workers were encouraged to introduce a profit-sharing system wherein profits exceeding targets could be shared equally. Management was requested to run business openly and with transparency, so that workers could easily identify what types of performance would be expected of them. These suggestions aimed to democratize the performance-based system, requiring an entirely new set of performance requirements that expect individuals to take responsibility in the restructured economy.

4.2 Individualism and Lifelong Learning After the crisis, individualism and lifelong learning became crucial worker qualities that are sought in the knowledge economy, and workers were expected to demonstrate those skills. Korean workers have historically not been judged according to individual performance evaluations, which are a new requirement in many restructured companies. Traditional Korean culture is said to be more community-oriented than individual-oriented. However, workers are struggling to adopt individualistic attitudes. Korea has no time to account for cultural work styles, or for its Korean ‘spirit’. Koreans will have no choice in the matter because of unlimited competition around the world. Nonetheless, individualism was to be emphasized in the workplace. A higher quality of education would be offered to the younger generation so as to distinguish the workforce of the future. Employees increasingly need to be ‘creative, and they will also need to be able to adapt to rapid changes in society [. . . ] employees should be given various opportunities to study continuously in order to adopt self-directed learning methods for absorbing new information’ (Lee, 2001, p. 4). Twenty experts and officials at the Korea Labour Institute (KLI) were brought together in 2003 to form a research team under the Qualification System Reforms Task Force (KLI, 2003). The research team intended to come up with visions and innovations for the qualification system and to review changes to VET since restructuring in 1997 and beyond. The study notes the shift towards learning for life and work, which is centred on the individual and states that ‘decent work underpins individuals’ independence, self-respect and well-being, and, therefore, is a key to their overall quality of life’. The study notes that every individual has a right to VET and compares Korea to several other nations, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Guatemala, Italy, Mexico and Spain, whose national constitutions accommodate this. This right is also acknowledged at the international level, for example in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the American Declaration of Human Rights and Obligations (1948). In the most recent phase of VET in Korea, researchers at the KLI have decided that education is the right of


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citizens and is a crucial way to find access to employment, reducing the likelihood of unemployment and with significant increases in life-cycle earnings. The study claims that economic, social and technological factors cumulatively account for the growing emphasis on the individual in Korean VET. The production of goods and services in any contemporary economy has begun to rely on human, rather than physical, capital, or ‘on its workers’ individual and collective endowment of knowledge and skills’. The ‘individual’ is the new citizen of society and has been granted a central place in statements of learning and training objectives. So the process of formal education and training in 2003 was no longer limited to the passing on of information, but envisions a society that prioritizes a scenario of ‘individuals learning to learn so that they can find out for themselves’. Factual knowledge itself is no longer enough, but individuals are encouraged to learn how to analyse, access and exploit information and in turn to devise and create new knowledge. Taking charge of one’s own learning and ability to learn is the only way to survive or to ‘live and work in the knowledge and information society’. VET makes individuals employable and productive and helps them escape poverty through mobility and choice. These statements, perhaps, do not sound controversial at first reading. But who decides what VET curricula should be provided and to whom? Who decided that ‘individuals’ were to become the primary producers in Korea? ‘Individuality’ was not only part of a new concept of the culture of employability, but was concretely associated with ‘citizenship’. According to the EU Memorandum on lifelong learning, active citizenship refers to how ‘people participate in all spheres of economic and social life, the chances and risks they face in trying to do so, and the extent to which they feel that they belong to, and have a fair say in, the society in which they live’. This incorporates ideas of participation as well as replacing ownership, similar to the ownership that is increasingly expected of nations’ development (see Cammack, 2001, 2002a, 2002b). So individuals are now expected to take responsibility for their own employability and the government has declared that VET is an important factor in this process. ‘Lifelong learning’ is the way in which workers can adapt to rapidly changing economies over time, and the government (ROK, 2001, p. 42) suggested a widespread series of facilities to support and incorporate lifelong learning into the very core of Korean culture. National and regional lifelong education centres and lifelong learning halls were to be developed. Libraries, self-governance centres, social welfare halls, women’s halls and citizens’ centres were to be strengthened. A pilot project entitled ‘learning clubs for turning local culture into lifelong learning’ was suggested. An information network was intended to result from this campaign, as well as a database to organize information on professors, lecturers and education programmes of lifelong learning institutions. One booklet, ‘Occupational World of the Future’, offered workers access to available VET and other forms of education so that they, as citizens, could prepare themselves for new employability requirements in the knowledge economy.

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4.3 Incentive Structure But in a nation with such a tumultuous history of unrest, how would workers react to drastic changes and reform in the employment structure and labour market? The government quickly homed in on aspects of employment that would prove to be the most volatile, and tried to create an incentive structure to circumvent uprisings. Through framing the government-required training programmes as positive incentives for personal development, and in the post-crisis era as a means to remain or to become ‘employable’ after the enormous amount of lay-offs, the government applied a ‘strategy on the part of the dominant power to gradually co-opt elements of the opposition forces—a strategy known in Italian politics as trasformismo’ (Cox, 1999, p. 25). ‘Trasformismo can serve as a strategy of assimilating and domesticating potentially dangerous ideas by adjusting them to the policies of the dominant coalition and can thereby obstruct the formation of class-based organized opposition’ (Cox, 1983, pp. 166–67). The Korean government sidelined potentially dissident groups by providing a social safety net taking the form of VET programmes to appease laid-off workers who were most likely to oppose elite-led accumulation strategies. About half of the employers surveyed (Park, Park & Yu, 2001, pp. 144–45) stated that the most difficult subject for firms undergoing employment adjustment was to convince workers of the necessity for employment adjustment. The following matters were ranked as the second, third, and fourth most difficult things in the implementation of employment adjustment: ‘consultation about the criteria to select who are to lose their jobs’; ‘consultation about the compensatory package for workers to be adjusted’; and ‘consultation about the number to be adjusted’. These were not favourable signs for the application, ease or effectiveness of ‘adjustment’. Management realized that sudden layoffs are not easily accepted by workers, and sought ways to appease and help prevent backlash and resistance to what they had been told was a market-driven inevitability. Employment adjustment includes attrition, ‘honourable’ retirement, dismissal and ‘others’—which refers to spin-offs or early retirement (Park et al., 2001, p. 128). Management created regulations that introduced the idea of voluntary participation with incentives for involvement in training schemes, which in some cases provided a rare option to secure employment in the midst of the crisis. New incentives were introduced under the Employment Insurance System (EIS), a system designed to reduce the risk of job loss after the lifetime employment laws had been revised (KOILAF, 1999c, p. 112). The EIS ‘purports to popularize vocational training and enhance firms’ competitiveness [. . . ] provides incentives such as subsidies and financial assistance to encourage individual firms to invest in the internal labour force, thereby improving labour productivity, employment stability and the firms’ competitive edge in international markets’ (p. 58). But the ‘hottest issue’ was how to encourage workers to participate voluntarily in the vocational competency development programme (KOILAF, 1999c, p. 110). To encourage voluntary participation, the government offered businesses two alternatives: (a) support for implementation of the subsidization for implementation


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costs to employers; and (b) paid leave for training (p. 110). One KRIVET report shows that workers who do not attend the training programmes stated that they did not do so simply out of lack of desire, and out of deliberate resistance to requirements for attendance. The study shows that 47.4% of attendees of training went due to mandate, whereas 14.9% attended training programmes voluntarily. The study ‘Educational and training program situation in Korea’ (KRIVET, 2000) also shows 15.9% of companies have taken part in internationalization strategies via vocational training programmes. There are 191 new types of programmes being implemented and the number of companies that now require participation in these is increasing every year. Laid-off workers were opposed to forced training programmes because of unwillingness or because of a suspicion of the limited short-term benefits— demonstrating the lack of consensus for these initiatives. This study has claimed that Korea’s VET reform has been managed by a government that was not immediately able to consolidate hegemonic consensus or commonsense, but led a programme of passive revolution. The government has shown that, once again, it is almost completely unswervingly taking unilateral charge of recovery at the guidance of the IMF. Its introduction of an NLC involves an explicit request for workers’ co-operation with management and the government, and for an adaptation to the knowledge economy VET-taught employable skills.

5 Conclusion ‘The twenty-first century’, the Korean MOL website reads, ‘is the era of knowledge and information! In this era, superior human resources are the basis of individual, corporate, and national competitiveness’ (ROK/MOL, 2005). Vocational ‘ability development’ is ‘preparation for productivity increase, employment stability and a prosperous future’. The NLC, a framework for tripartite relational changes, was intended to reverse a history of intense labour conflict and to ultimately achieve ‘superior human resources’. Simultaneously, it introduced globalization of expectations in the workplace, introduced through ‘voluntary’ training programmes that employees were required to attend, in order to maintain or to rediscover individual employability in the impending knowledge economy. Has this strategy been effective, ultimately? Has the government’s strategy resolved the issues of unemployment and labour struggles that it set out to address? In late December 2004, the Korea Employer’s Federation held a survey with eighty-eight human resources management officers. This survey predicted unstable labour-management relations by 2005 (KOILAF, 2004a). Some 60% of officials indicated that they expected industrial relations to be less stable by 2005, and only 11% predicted improvements. The survey also showed that the primary difficulty in resolving on-going labour-management strife was due to ‘the struggle-oriented tendency of unions’ (28%), ‘influence from higher-level labour organizations’ (25%) and ‘irrational laws and systems’ (19%). From these comments, it seems as though the intentions of the NLC have not been completely realized. In terms of unemployment, in October 2004, Korea suffered a three-year high as farms and non-service

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industry sectors continued to dismiss workers (KOILAF, 2004b). Is this because workers have failed to become employable? Or has the economic crisis reached new levels of magnitude? While the NLC was implemented to encourage tripartite communication between involved parties, it does not appear to have promoted harmony of social dialogue within the Tripartite Commission. In 2001 at the meetings of the third Tripartite Commission, which had been reformulated after a series of failed attempts to complete negotiations since its first meetings in 1998, leaders discussed the issue of vocational training. The ‘government’ promised to ‘look for ways of enhancing the efficiency of operation of systems, including efforts made for stabilization of insurance for projects of job-skill development, [and] rationalization of the system’ (ROK/Tripartite Commission, 2001). ‘Management’ promised to cultivate an environment that would encourage workers’ voluntary education and training, with the recognition that ‘such education and training will form the basis of the nation’s industrial competitiveness in the future’. These statements demonstrate the on-going impulse to expect workers to meet the challenge of maintaining individual employability for the sake of their nation’s sustained development. But while the government and management have been clearly represented at the commission’s meetings, unions have not demonstrated the same appearance. One of the two most prominent umbrella labour unions, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) has not rejoined the commission after withdrawal in 1999 due to members’ disapproval of its decisions at the first meetings. In 2005, the leader of the KCTU resigned after confrontations at a special meeting called to discuss whether this important organization should rejoin the Tripartite Commission—despite its history of disappointment and the paralysis of union representation. The leader sought ‘agreement or disagreement’ from union members, but in protest some members poured flammable liquid on the floor. These members perhaps feel that the KCTU’s membership of the commission will turn out to be a double-edged sword and will not promote worker representation, but will represent complacency toward the passive revolution of changes taking place in the Korean ‘labour culture’. The failure to include worker representation in restructuring and development plans, through the promotion of their employability but without inclusive and representative union involvement, demonstrates an on-going hegemonic crisis. Several pressures have contributed to ruining these relations, including the impulse to globalize and to become increasingly competitive within the knowledge economy. Nonetheless, without hegemonic resolution, attempts to locate an inclusive forum for negotiation of globalized development strategies will continue, and ideally may play a role in the formation of true democracy in this small but volatile nation.

Notes 1. The First Tripartite Commission was established on 15 January 1998. Management, government and union leaders met to negotiate the restructuring of the Korean economy at that time. Issues brought to the table included wage stabilization and the promotion of labour-management


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co-operation, enhancement of ‘basic labour rights’ and also the enhancement of ‘labour market flexibility’. 2. In ‘Kunglish’, or Korean inspired English, ‘mind’ means ‘way of thinking’. 3. The notion of convergence, or nations’ abilities to replicate industrialized countries’ development trajectories, was both implicitly and explicitly a part of IMF restructuring schemes such as that applied to the Republic of Korea in 1998 and onward. Members of the ‘convergence club’ are advanced industrial countries, and the benchmarking of best practices for the creation of wealth emanate from them. 4. Statistics provided during an interview the author conducted with a senior researcher at the KRIVET Asia-Pacific regional headquarters in Seoul, 9 August 2002.

References Amnesty International. 1998. Republic of Korea (South Korea) arrests of trade-union leaders. 21 July 1998. <web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA250241998?open&of=ENG-KOR> Aronowitz, S.; DiFazio, W. 1994. The new knowledge work. In: Ahier, J.; Esland, G., eds. Education, training and the future of work-1: social, political and economic contexts of policy development, pp. 76–96. London: Routledge. Cammack, P. 2001. Making the poor work for globalization? New political economy, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 397–408. Cammack, P. 2002a. The mother of all governments: The World Bank’s matrix for global governance. In: Wilkinson, R.; Hughes, S., eds. Global governance: critical perspectives, pp. 36–53. London: Routledge. Cammack, P. 2002b. Attacking the poor. New Left review, vol. 2, no. 13, pp. 125–34. Cox, R.W. 1983. Gramsci, hegemony and international relations: an essay in method. Millennium: journal of international studies, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 162–75. Cox, R.W. 1999. Civil society at the turn of the millennium: prospects for an alternative world order. Review of international studies, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 3–28. Deen, T. 2003. United Nations: Advocates ‘social safety net’ in Third World. Third World Network, 2003. <www.twnside.org.sg/title/safety-cn.htm> Jessop, B. 2001. The state and the contradictions of the knowledge-driven economy. In: Bryson, J.R. et al., eds. Knowledge, space, economy, pp. 63–78. London: Routledge. Katz, H.; Lee, W.; Lee, J., eds. 2001. The changing nature of labour-management interactions and tripartism: is co-ordinated decentralization the answer? Seoul: Korea Labour Institute. Kim, D.J. 1997. Address to the Nation, 19 December 1997, Article 6 #2. In: Sohn, C.-H.; Yang, J., eds. Korea’s economic reform measures under the IMF Program: government measures in the critical first six months of the Korean economic crisis, pp. 203-10. Seoul: Korea Institute for International Economic Policy. (Translated by the Blue House.) Kim, M.H. 1999. Employers and workers are partners: new labour culture seeks co-prosperity through coexistence. Korea Herald, Wednesday, 24 November, p. 18. Kim, S.S.; Briscoe, D. 1997. Globalization and a new human resource policy in Korea: transformation to a performance-based HRM. Employee relations, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 298–308. Korea International Labour Foundation. 1999a. Changes in the employment structure: recent developments, current labour situation in Korea. Seoul: KOILAF. <www.koilaf.org/ publication/link16.htm#4> Korea International Labour Foundation. 1999b. 1999 guidelines for collective bargaining: labor, management and the government. Seoul: KOILAF. Korea International Labour Foundation. 1999c. Labour relations in Korea. Seoul: KOILAF. Korea International Labour Foundation. 2002. 2002 collective guidelines for collective bargaining: labour, management and the government. Seoul: KOILAF.

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Korea International Labour Foundation. 2004a. 61% of personnel or HRM managers predict unstable labor-management relations for 2005. Labor today, no. 239, 31 December 2004. <www.koilaf.org/index2.htm> Korea International Labour Foundation. 2004b. Unemployment unchanged at 3.5%. <www.koilaf.org/index2.htm> Korea Labour Institute. 2003. Learning and training for work in the knowledge society. <www.logos-net.net/ilo/150 base/en/report/rep toc.htm> Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training. 2000. Educational and training program situation in Korea. Seoul: KRIVET. Leadbeater, C. 1998. Who will own the knowledge economy? Political quarterly, vol. 69, no. 4, pp. 375–85. Leadbeater, C. 1999. It’s not just the economy, stupid. New Statesman, 27 September, pp. iv–vi. Lee, K. 2001. New direction of Korea’s vocational education and training policy. (Paper presented at the International Conference on TVET, Adelaide, Australia, 2001.) Magariños, C.A. 2001. Managing UN reform: UNIDO’s need-driven approach. (Paper presented by the Director-General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization at the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House, London, 21 September 2001.) Nyhan, B., ed. 2002. Taking steps towards the knowledge society: reflections on the process of knowledge development. Luxembourg : Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2000. Knowledge management in the learning society: education and skills. Paris: OECD. Park, D.J.; Park, J.; Yu, G.-C. 2001. Assessment of labour market response to the labour law changes introduced in 1998. In: Park, F. et al., eds. Labour market reforms in Korea: policy options for the future, pp. 125–50. Seoul: World Bank and Korea Labour Institute. Republic of Korea. 2001. Human resources development strategies for Korea: human resources knowledge new take-off. Seoul: Republic of Korea. Republic of Korea. Ministry of Labour. 1999. Labour sector reforms gaining speed: MOL decides to operate the second-term Labour Reform Task Force. Seoul: International Co-operation Division. <www.molab.go.kr/English/English.html> Republic of Korea. Ministry of Labour. 2005. Vocational ability development overview. <www.molab.go.kr:8787/labor/labor 06 01 01.jsp> Republic of Korea. The Tripartite Commission. 2001. National initiatives concerning social dialogue on training. <www.logosnet.net/ilo/150 base/en/topic n/t23 kor.htm> Rowley, C.; Bae, J.S. 2002. Globalization and transformation of human resource management in South Korea. International journal of human resource management, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 522–49. Schiller, D. 1988. How to think about information. In: Mosco, V.; Wasko, J., eds. The political economy of information, pp. 27–44. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. United Nations Development Programme. 1999. Social safety net for the most vulnerable groups in the Republic of Korea. Seoul: UNDP. World Bank; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2001. Korea and the knowledge-based economy: making the transition. Washington, DC: World Bank/OECD.

Chapter IV.13

Involvement of Labour-Market Partners in TVET in the Russian Federation Olga Oleynikova

1 Introduction The present chapter is based on a number of independent surveys and reports of international projects implemented in the Russian Federation (henceforth Russia) in the field of VET, as well as the author’s personal experience. To date, no analysis of the problems mentioned in the title has been performed in Russia. The vocational education and training (VET) sector in Russia is made up of two major types of institutions, initial VET schools1 and lyceums (ISCED, level 4) and VET colleges and technicums (ISCED, level 5B). VET schools are all State schools that serve both to provide young people with basic technical skills making them employable on the labour market, and to accommodate the social-support needs of youngsters from disadvantaged families. Both levels provide access to higher education. To obtain a coherent picture of VET/enterprise interaction in contemporary Russia, it may prove worthwhile to take a retrospective look at the interaction between the VET sector and labour-market partners in the days of the planned economy within what used to be called the ‘command-administrative system’ characterized by tight control on the part of the State of all spheres of life and subsystems of society, including education and training. It was mandatory at that time for all State enterprises—and there were no other ones—to co-operate with and support schools at all levels of the education system (including kindergartens, general schools, initial VET schools and technicums), including universities. All enterprises were twinned with a number of local general and VET schools and offered schoolchildren vocational orientation and training in basic skills. VET students were provided with work experience during the course of study and jobs upon graduation. Enterprises were also obliged to have instructors on their staff who would supervise the practical training periods conducted in the enterprise. Apart from these arrangements, enterprises were supposed to support VET school workshops with machines, tools and other equipment, and provide materials and supplies. Almost all big enterprises had affiliated to them technical/vocational schools or institutes of higher education that provided pre-service and in-service training for their workers.


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This streamlined interaction worked practically without a hitch aimed at both training the workforce for the labour market, and at providing a social security net for children and youth from disadvantaged families, or those with learning problems or deviant behaviour. The above situation mirrored both the social and economic system in place in the country, and the needs of the industrial economy in which one would acquire one occupation that lasted a lifetime, with in-built trajectories of in-service training and promotion.

2 The Changing Context With the collapse of the socialist economy, the repercussions immediately ricocheted off onto education and training. On the one hand, the State relaxed its grip on the economy and new processes in the society and economy evolved—particularly chaos and instability. New forms of ownership emerged and enterprises changed hands and ownership. On the other hand, a large number of enterprises either had to close down or opt for conversion from producing one type of goods to another. Transition from total State ownership to multiple forms of ownership plunged the economy into uncertainty that reshaped the system of labour relations, entailing new roles for employers, employees and the State, as well as their interaction. The overarching uncertainty diverted enterprises, preoccupied largely with survival and staying afloat, from the priorities of education and training. Confusion was omnipresent and it took about ten years for the economy to settle down. During these ten years the culture of the VET/labour-market dialogue was very much diluted and new mechanisms were very slow to take shape. The situation was exacerbated in 1998 when a major financial crisis broke out that further distanced most enterprises from education and training. However, new private enterprises that managed to recover from the crisis more quickly than others were the first to give the lead in addressing education and training needs and began to include training in their development strategies, relying on their goodwill and common-sense, as well as learning from best international practices. However, there was no standard model of co-operation with the system of education in place (National Observatory for Professional Education, 2004). As of 2000 the economic situation began to stabilize and grow, with the result that employers were showing once again interest in the qualifications of the workforce. In this improving context enterprises began to be more selective in their hiring practices and developed an awareness of the added value of in-service training and upskilling. It should be pointed out, however, that the above refers to the ‘average’ tendency. There were enormous variations due to the size of the country and regional differences that are conditioned by geographic, social and economic factors. Also, due to the level of development and awareness of their social responsibility, marked differences were observed between different sectors in addressing education and training issues (Analytical Centre ‘Expert’, 2005a).

IV.13 Involvement of Labour-Market Partners in TVET in the Russian Federation

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More advanced and development-oriented companies from both traditional and new sectors that were well established on the market (about 5 to 8% of the total number of enterprises in the country) began to build close links with VET schools and colleges. These, as a rule, are large companies or corporations consisting of dozens of enterprises (Analytical Centre ‘Expert’, 2005b). Smaller companies simply cannot afford to spend time and effort on interacting with colleges and universities and they make do with the workforce available on the labour market. VET schools, for their part, try to keep up links with enterprises established in the ‘old’ days, often without due regard to the changed situation—and sometimes governed by the paternalistic thinking that enterprises ‘owe’ them something.

3 The Degree of Involvement of Labour-Market Partners Certain sectors and companies are more outspoken about their requirements regarding the workforce, and proactively interact with the external environment to change it for the better. Others are traditionally ‘introvert’ and remain focused on their internal processes. The first category is actively exploring the concept of a learning organization and considers education and training as an investment. It is common for the more advanced companies in this group to accuse the VET system of inability to produce adequately trained specialists and they rely on their own training schemes, including in-service staff training. Generally, the following types of employer/company/VET co-operation can be identified (Analytical Centre ‘Expert’, 2005b): 1. Close co-operation, resulting in graduates meeting most of the employer’s skill requirements. This concerns such sectors as finance and insurance, the production of high-tech equipment, the fuel industry and metallurgy, where there is new recruitment of personnel and a high demand for skills. This type of co-operation is observed in big companies that can afford to invest in education. 2. Weak co-operation: graduates often failing to meet the employers’ requirements. This affects rapidly developing sectors involving a wide range of employers. However, the latter are not in a position to invest in education (construction, media, parts of the IT sector, trade, marketing and consulting, tourism, hospitality, etc.). 3. Fairly close co-operation: graduates meeting company skills requirements up to 50%. This particularly concerns sectors with monopolies: telecommunications, railways, air transport, etc. This group differs from the first group in that the market is not developing as rapidly due to the monopoly of companies. 4. Very weak co-operation: skills of graduates failing to meet requirements of the world of work. The sectors concerned are often facing stagnation or uncertainty: most of industrial production requiring engineers, including the chemical sector, machine-making, forestry, etc. As a rule, these sectors are made up of numerous enterprises with only limited financial resources and lacking a culture of networking. VET schools and colleges training specialists for these sectors are not

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particularly aware of the work-market requirements but, as a rule, are confident that they know what the sector needs better than the people in the sector themselves. Employers can neither invest in education, nor offer competitive salaries, which is a demotivating factor for both schools and graduates. It should be pointed out that, apart from factors indicated earlier, the reluctance of enterprises—with a few exceptions—to become involved with education and training is also due to other reasons: (a) a lack of legal provisions for enterprises to participate in the distribution of funds allocated for VET at all levels; and (b) a lack of tax benefits for enterprises that invest in education and training, including support for VET schools and colleges. Another factor having a negative impact on VET/enterprise co-operation relates to the structure of the labour market in the country, and specifically to the high rate of unemployment among college and university graduates that allows employers to be able to pick and choose from this ‘surplus’. The result is that college and even university graduates often fill jobs requiring lower levels of education and training. It should be added that the graduate’s education and training qualifications are not taken into account in terms of the salary offered in such cases. According to the State Statistics Committee, in recent years about 30 to 40% of the total number of unemployed consists of university or college degree holders, while about 5% of the total unemployed population are young graduates from all levels of vocational education. As of end of 2005, of the 5.7 million unemployed, one-third represented higher education graduates (State Statistics Committee, 2005).

4 Communication or Discourse? The discussion that follows is aimed at showing that it is too early to speak about a discourse between the VET system and the world of work. At this point in time we can only speak of initial steps towards establishing communication channels between the two systems taken by the most proactive players on both sides. Both systems—that of employment and VET—have not developed a co-ordinated and informed interpretation of the concept of social partnership/social dialogue that would lay the foundation for articulated and coherent communication. For the most part, VET schools interpret social partnership narrowly as links with enterprises and, occasionally, with employment agencies. Links with enterprises are often limited to inviting employer representatives to sit as members of examining boards, and organizing work placement of students in companies. It is only very recently that VET schools have begun to ask enterprises about their requirements concerning the skills and competences of workers and specialists. However, these attempts have not yet been supported by VET standards, which remain largely shaped by the VET system itself. Furthermore, there are neither legislative nor institutional mechanisms to support VET/enterprise links, which has a negative impact on the situation.


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As such, both sides lack a culture of co-operation. The recovery and gradual growth of the socio-economic environment, with urban areas taking the lead, shows signs of the business community organizing itself. Umbrella or branch organizations have been formed covering self-employed, small, medium or large businesses. Practically all of them show interest in initiating co-operation with education and training. One positive example is the Russian Union of Entrepreneurs and Industrialists,2 embracing 328,000 physical and legal entities from all sectors of the economy and all regions of Russia. Spurred by its members, in 2005 the union instituted two committees, one for the development of occupational and VET standards, and the other for enhancing quality in VET. Both committees aim at fostering links between industry and the VET sector. It can be expected that the joint efforts of employers and VET in developing outcomes-based VET standards will contribute to dealing with the most acute problem, namely that of overcoming the skills mismatch in the labour market. The lead given by the Union of Entrepreneurs and Industrialists has been followed by the Union of VET Principals, representing about one-half of Russia’s 2,800 VET colleges, which is actively involved in both committees. Other major employers’ associations, such as the Co-ordinating Council of Associations of Employers of Russia (uniting thirty-two Russian companies, sectoral and inter-sectoral employer organizations and NGOs) and about eighty smaller associations of entrepreneurs and industrialists, do not have education and training issues on their agendas, nor does the Tripartite Commission—a traditional social partnership body representing the government, employers and employees (represented by the Federation of Independent Trade Unions). The Tripartite Agreement for 2005–2007 does not mention education and training issues (Komarovsky & Blasum, 2005). In two sectors, employer associations, being dissatisfied with the quality of training, have initiated a movement towards VET. One is the catering sector, where the Federation of Restaurant Owners and Hoteliers developed occupational standards as early as the end of the 1990s with the support of the Ministry of Labour. The other—the Association of Construction Workers initiated by the German construction company Knauf, an active player of the Russian market—undertook to develop occupational standards for a number of building trades. Unfortunately, both occupational standards have failed to have any impact on standards, but are widely used by VET schools that have accommodated the employment needs in their training programmes. The Federation of Restaurant Owners and Hoteliers is currently launching another project in conjunction with the NGO Centre for VET Studies to update the standards and pilot the catalogue of occupations and qualifications for this sector, to be further complemented by a catalogue of training modules. It is interesting to note that on the sector level employers are more aware of an urgent need of a shift towards market-oriented competence-based VET system than the VET system itself. However, at the grassroots level, the first steps towards social dialogue are often made by proactive VET schools and colleges.

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The above endeavours are well in line with the policy declarations of the federal government urging closer links between education and training and the labour market as a pre-requisite for making the Russian economy more competitive and the welfare of society more comprehensive. These declarations are contained in such policy documents as the National Doctrine of Education, the Strategy of Educational Modernization, the Strategy of Social and Economic Development of the Russian Federation for the medium-term period, and the Priorities for the Development of Education in the Russian Federation (Lomonosov Moscow State University, 2002). The first practical steps to bridge the gap between the world of work and VET have been taken only recently when the federal government adopted an Action Plan for VET Development that envisaged the setting of basic occupational standards. It has to be noted, with a degree of regret, that before the restructuring of the federal ministries in 2004, the former Ministries of Education and Labour had started a dialogue about the relevance of VET for the labour market. However, as a result of the restructuring that took place in 2004, the Ministry of Labour was abolished, leaving behind only a Federal Employment Service and a division within the Ministry of Health and Social Development to address labour-market issues. As it is, the Federal Employment Service is dealing mostly with unemployment, while the above-mentioned division has not yet shown visible signs of activity in areas relating to occupational standards. Apart from emerging attempts by employers to co-operate with education and training, and by the government to regulate this co-operation, a certain movement is observed on the VET side under the impact of international projects, especially those supported by the European Community (the Tacis Programme). Among major multi-national projects, some have in real terms contributed to fostering VET/labour-market links:

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the Tacis project ‘VET Reform in the North-West of Russia’ supported by donors from different European countries and co-ordinated by the European Training Foundation; the Tacis DELPHI-I and DELPHI-II projects; the Tacis Institution Building Partnership Programme (IBPP) Russian-Finnish project ‘Social dialogue in VET’; the Tacis IBPP Russian-Irish project ‘Adult education’ (European Commission, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c).

Due to these projects’ input:

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labour-market orientation of VET institutions has grown by means of piloting skills, needs analysis procedures and competence-based VET curricula; VET content has been reviewed in a number of occupations; employers’ motivation and involvement has grown for the logistical, information, personnel and social support of VET schools; employers began to be more actively involved in the governance of VET institutions and in accreditation procedures;


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skills councils have been established in a number of regions in such sectors as catering, construction, the clothes industry, the chemical industry and machinebuilding to address the issue of supply and demand of skills, assessment of competences and content of VET. At this stage the councils unite small and medium enterprises, employment services, trade unions and VET schools and, in a few cases, officials from the regional administrations (departments of labour). These councils have been made possible by the DELPHI-II project. The first year has proved a success and led to the assumption that, once employers see the benefits and returns of co-operating with VET, they will respond by investing their time and resources. It can be expected that, with time, these councils may lead to the establishment of sector councils on the federal level that would institutionalize the dialogue mechanism of enterprises/VET co-operation.3 More and more VET schools are involving employers in their governing bodies (boards of trustees, advisory boards).

As has been indicated earlier, there is no legal framework for the involvement of labour-market partners in VET, except for an internal regulation of the Ministry of Education, ‘On social partnership at secondary VET schools (colleges)’, stipulating that colleges develop social partner mechanisms and conclude agreements with enterprises to ensure the provision of work experience placements for students, as well as some other issues. On the regional level, some attempts have been made to institute joint bodies that would assist in bridging the gap between the supply of and demand for skills and promote education and training, including on-the-job training. As a rule they are affiliated to the office of the regional governor or to the regional administration. These bodies, bearing a variety of names (co-ordinating council, council for the framework policy, consultative councils, regional sector councils for employment policies, initial VET councils, etc.) in different regions, unite companies, local administrations and VET and higher education institutions. However, whatever organisms have been put in place locally or regionally, for the most part they do not address fundamental issues of VET—co-operation with enterprises (i.e. building a dialogue between the two systems)—limiting themselves to identifying the quantitative demand for occupations and jobs and translating them into target intake figures for VET schools. This is in most cases largely a ‘hit and miss’ undertaking as, first, there are no reliable methodologies to anticipate labourmarket developments and, second, enterprises themselves are, for the most part, unable either to articulate their vision of the future or to anticipate changes in the demand for skills. One of a few exceptions is the Co-ordinating Council in Kemerovskaya Oblast, which is involved in planning and organizing the training of workers and specialists for the coal-mining enterprises of the region (coal-mining being the key sector regionally). Other examples of communication between the labour market and VET players are the various agreements concluded regionally or at the municipal level between employment service agencies and VET administration bodies,4 or tripartite and

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sector agreements (e.g. in the Moscow region) to promote the training of unemployed youth in an occupation relevant for the local labour market. There are also direct agreements between individual VET schools and employer enterprises (on internships for students, staff (re)training, the supply of materials and shared use of equipment, etc.). About 60% of VET colleges have agreements with employment agencies and enterprises. These and other forms of effective enterprise/VET co-operation are explored in more detail below.

5 Samples of Best Practice As has been indicated above, one format of VET/enterprise co-operation is the socalled ‘training under contracts with enterprises’ that can take a number of forms: one is training of students in specific occupations established by the enterprise. The advantage of such training is that enterprises can in this case ‘dictate’ their requirements on the content of training (of course, within the limits of the present VET standard), or they can initiate training for a new occupation relevant for the enterprise or courses meeting specific company needs. Under agreements with VET schools, companies are known to have introduced courses into the curriculum aimed at familiarizing students with the functioning of the enterprise and its corporate culture, with a subsequent certification of students by the enterprise. Students studying under contracts with enterprises usually begin working for the company during their final years of training. Sometimes agreements for training target groups for the enterprise are concluded between local authorities on whose territory the company is situated and the VET school/college. In this case tuition as such is free of charge. However, the enterprise may offer some sort of financial support, both to students and to the school, especially if the enterprise wants a new course to be introduced. This form, attractive as it may look, has one major weakness: contracts signed between the enterprise, the VET school and the student are legally binding only for the enterprise and the VET school in the part relating to financial obligations, while having no legal obligations for the student whose tuition has been paid for by the enterprise. Hence, if upon completion graduates refuse to work for the enterprise, they cannot be made to repay the costs of training. This is the way the law currently functions and, naturally, attempts are being made to amend it, under pressure from major corporations who invest heavily in VET and higher education contracts. Contracts are also signed for in-service training of the staff of the enterprise at VET schools and for upskilling VET teachers at the enterprise. Unfortunately, the latter has not become common practice and is not mandatory. However schools practising this model have appreciated its added value. It should be stressed that such training contracts emerge only when a sustainable zone of trust between the school and the enterprise has been formed. It is common for VET schools and enterprises to jointly perform vocational orientation measures for schoolchildren and first-year students. However, these measures mostly envisage visits by representatives from the enterprise to general secondary


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schools and study visits by schoolchildren and young students to the enterprise. Only a few enterprises provide extensive information support for vocational orientation, except for large developing enterprises that are committed to a systemic approach in attracting candidates to VET schools that are part of the corporate infrastructure (such as the Norkickel Company, or RUSAL (Russian Aluminium) Company, for example) (Analytical Centre ‘Expert’, 2005a). Well-established developing companies are becoming increasingly aware of their social responsibility and initiate innovative actions to interact with regional administrations in support of VET and higher education. For example, in 2004 the government of St Petersburg adopted a regulation ‘On measures to develop the system of secondary VET in St Petersburg for the years 2004-2007’ aimed at enhancing the market orientation of VET schools and colleges. The regulation has resulted in co-operation agreements concluded by a number of leading companies with the regional government aimed at shared financial support of a number of VET schools and colleges (on a 50/50 basis). Proactive companies are also known to equip special workshops at their enterprises for the practical training of VET students or to modernize workshops in VET schools—as most VET schools cannot afford new equipment, materials or supplies themselves. On the whole, both proactive enterprises and VET schools are very serious about the work placement periods for students, as the companies take advantage of these periods to pick the best candidates for employment at the enterprise, and thus minimize the adaptation period that may take from one to three years, depending on the company. We may contrast this with companies that have failed to perceive the added value of co-operating with VET schools and who may even charge for accepting students for work experience. Some companies and VET schools agree to share the responsibility for training specialists: VET schools deliver theoretical training and all practical training is covered by the enterprise. During the first two years costs of practical training are met by the VET school as students do not yet have qualifications of use to the enterprise, while during years three and four the costs of practical training are covered by the company. A number of companies—though not many—pay VET schools for every graduate who has worked at the enterprise for over six months. Attempts are made, for example by the RUSAL Company, to establish their own corporate universities that would embrace programmes at five levels:

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level 1: vocational orientation; level 2: VET (to train workers and line managers, and upskill them); level 3: higher education; level 4: in-service education; level 5: individual training for top managers/executives (State Statistics Committee, 2005).

The company is currently devising standards for all levels of training. Such efforts can only be commended. However, they arouse certain concerns relating to the com-

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patibility of these standards with the State education and training standards and, hence, the future mobility of the workforce may be in jeopardy. It should be stressed that proactive companies often choose to set up training centres of their own affiliated to the company, having little trust in State VET schools. Such training centres would offer training in most occupations of initial VET and may also commission training from VET schools in those occupations that these schools are known to deliver to the standard acceptable by the company. Such training centres may be launched in locations where there are no State VET schools, providing training in occupations required by companies based there. Other types of communication between VET and labour-market players can be summed up as follows:

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to motivate students to stick with their occupation of training, big companies (such as, for example, RUSAL, Sibneft, Vneshtorgbank and others) establish scholarship schemes for students who commit themselves to working for the company upon graduation;5 competitions of student projects (grant competitions) initiated by companies to pick the best undergraduates as prospective job candidates; to ensure high standards of teaching, companies may offer grants to teachers, arrange study visits and training for the faculty at enterprises, or send their specialists to teach at educational establishments; joint projects carried out by students for the benefit of the company; companies may provide temporary summer jobs for students to replace workers/employees while the latter are on vacation, and organize visits to the company on a regular basis.

Summing up the emerging labour market/VET communication channels, it can be concluded with a certain amount of confidence that signals coming from both ends of the scale are numerous and diversified—and sometimes contradictory! It is obvious, though, that the zone of trust between VET and labour-market partners is not yet adequate. The key reasons for this are input-based standards and lack of awareness of its added value by both parties. The initiative of proactive companies taking the responsibility for training (complementary as it may be) carries a latent threat to the State VET system, undermining its credibility. Also, such companies can by no means meet the country’s education and training needs. Corporate education and training puts a huge number of small and medium enterprises at a disadvantage because they cannot afford to invest in VET and have to rely on the State system. In this situation, the VET system should pay more heed to the signals coming from proactive enterprises and respond to them flexibly.

6 Signals from Enterprises Independent surveys tell us that companies are more often dissatisfied, not so much with the occupational/technical competences of VET and higher education graduates, but with their soft skills/competences. Advanced and sustainable companies


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are more concerned with the candidate’s ‘potential’ and personal qualities, than with technical skills and knowledge, especially if the company has a training centre of its own where candidates can be brought up to company standards. Another ‘gap’ identified by employers is the graduates’ lack of knowledge and understanding of the way companies function. This is often a result of the fact that VET schools and colleges are either unaware of these issues, for lack of communication with the world of work, or do not bother to find out how companies operate in terms of major business processes and the roles of qualified specialists within the hierarchy. It is an open secret that teachers delivering theoretical subjects have often not worked at enterprises for more than a dozen years—if at all—and hence teaching and learning are organized in a way that is little related to the real world. Many VET schools would claim, however, that their graduates are doing well on the labour market as they do not receive any direct complaints from companies. Such VET schools overlook the fact that employers in most cases simply have no choice and have to make the best of the available graduates in a situation of fairly low labour mobility in the country. As it is, VET schools lack systemic tracer studies and hence have no data about how well their graduates fare on the labour market. Dissatisfied with educational modernization, leading Russian companies are implementing their own models of personnel development that may or may not involve VET schools. These models embrace company training centres, corporate universities, continuing training and adaptation schemes and aim at addressing training needs of companies that are often more dynamic than the supply provided by the State or private providers. Education and training schemes taken on board by companies and implemented through their training centres primarily focus on developing such skills as personal efficiency and management skills that VET schools have failed to equip their students with. Big companies that can afford it extensively resort to distance learning and multi-media courses that the individual can master at the work place, or at a university/college where he/she is doing a course of study. Contrary to the VET system, companies commonly opt for modular training schemes. Practically all companies complain about the VET standards, as does the VET sector itself. Most companies claim that businesses should dictate their requirements to the State system of education, and the latter should match these requirements. Companies that use their profits to invest in training complain about a lack of tax incentives and suggest that the State and business should share education and training costs, explaining that they have, apart from other things, to re-train VET graduates before the latter can be effectively employed in the company. Both the VET sector and companies are affected by:

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the low-prestige of qualified workers and a shortage of the workforce in such occupations as machine operators, welders, metalworkers, blacksmiths, and some others that benefit from low demand; a lack or shortage of VET schools and curricula in certain occupations (e.g. ichthyology);

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an outflow of young people from rural areas into bigger cities; a lack of labour-market forecasting tools.

In the context of the labour-market players’ growing concern about the quality of VET graduates, the VET sector has to be more proactive in proving its relevance for enterprises by:

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changing its approach to VET standards, making them market-oriented and flexible and introducing competence-based VET; institutionalizing and supporting best models of VET—enterprise co-operation building on the best practices already available across Russia and ‘products’ yielded by international projects;6 taking on board practical tools to engage and motivate employers and their associations; matching and updating VET content to the regional labour markets’ demand in terms of occupations for training and the quality of outcomes; initiating measures to support training specialists in occupations enjoying low popular demand (possibly by sharing costs between the State and companies).

It is also in the interests of the VET system to actively lobby for amendments to the Tax Code relating to tax benefits for enterprises involved and investing in VET. However, it may well be expected that companies and corporations are better-placed to do this themselves. Nevertheless, if the VET system fails to contribute to the process, the eventual amendments are likely to be of benefit only to large companies, leaving small and medium enterprises (SMEs) on the ‘outskirts’. Thus, the cleavage between large proactive and profitable companies and smaller ones that are supposed to constitute the bulk of the market economy would be widened, with ensuing negative consequences for the economy, society and citizens. Today is the right time for the VET system to consolidate and show its role, with the modernization processes well under way, including the optimization of the network of VET schools and the decentralization of governance.

7 Conclusions Despite objective economic and psychological problems that account for differences between sectors, regions, VET schools and companies, there is a fundamental problem that impedes adequate skills supply by the system of education, namely a lack of a national qualifications framework (NFQ) that would assign uniform requirements to every level of qualifications of the work force, and would be linked to awards at every level of education. The NFQ would assist in identifying generic requirements to skills and competences of VET and university graduates as needed by employers and could be used to formulate educational standards, thus bringing the two societal systems nearer together. It is also obvious that teaching and learning should be brought closer to the working environment, which can be achieved by intensifying and streamlining practical


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training periods/work assignments of students, as is already done by proactive companies and VET schools. Another issue is teacher qualifications that have to be enhanced. Incentives have to be devised to attract younger generations to work for VET. More company employees and executives should be involved in teaching. This is not feasible for SMEs that would not have enough staff to release for these purposes. However, SMEs should promote networking and closer links with big companies that have already demonstrated examples of best practices in addressing this issue. On the whole, business/educational co-operation is an issue directly related to the social responsibility of both parties, and the sooner they develop an awareness of it, the better it will be both for education and for companies. To this end, more information support should be provided highlighting this perspective on the co-operation and disseminating of best practices both from Russia and abroad.

Notes 1. VET school is the generic name for various types and levels of VET institutions in Russia that will be used in the chapter, unless otherwise specified. 2. The Union was set up in 1990 to unite companies and enterprises from most sectors of the economy, including industrial, financial, business, insurance and leasing ones. It includes about 100 branch offices and corporate associations. 3. It should be stressed though that chambers of commerce are practically uninvolved in the promotion of enterprise involvement with education and training. The only positive example can be attributed to the outputs of the Delphi-I project in Samarskaya Oblast (the Volga Region), where the local Chamber of Commerce and Industry initiated the regional law on ‘Participation of Enterprises of Different Types of Ownership in Training, Re-training and Upskilling Workers and Specialists in VET Schools’ (European Commission, 2005a). 4. Employment services purchase training from about 3,000 VET schools across Russia, selected through a tender (National Observatory for Professional Education, 2004). 5. The percentage of graduates taking jobs in occupations other than their occupation of training remains high and, in some periods (e.g. end of the 1990s), reached up to 80%. 6. The most effective instruments for ‘catching the eye’ of employers, as shown by the international VET projects, include the following: – skill-needs analysis (regular skill-needs analysis has proved to establish improved links between education and the business community); – involvement of enterprises in the development of the content of training; – participation of enterprise staff as part-time teachers at VET schools; – involvement of employers in assessing student competence; – internships of VET teachers and trainers at enterprises.

References Analytical Centre ‘Expert’. 2005a. Curricula and education and training technologies of Russian corporations. Moscow. Analytical Centre ‘Expert’. 2005b. Universities and employers on graduates and reform of education. Moscow.

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European Commission. 2005a. Final report of the TACIS IBPP project ‘Adult Education’. Brussels. European Commission. 2005b. Final report of the TACIS IBPP project ‘Social dialogue in VET’. Brussels. European Commission. 2005c. Recommendations of Delphi II project ‘Development of education links and initiatives in VET and higher education’. Brussels. Komarovsky, V.; Blasum, E. 2005. The role of Russian employers in promoting social dialogue. Moscow: Analytical Centre for Developing Social Partnership. Lomonosov Moscow State University. 2002. Modernisation of Russian education. Moscow: Lomonosov Moscow State University, Higher School of Economics. National Observatory for Professional Education. 2004. VET update: stocktaking report. Moscow. State Statistics Committee. 2005. Labour market data, 2000-2005. Moscow: Official Publications.

Chapter IV.14

Strengthening TVET to Achieve Lifelong Learning for All: Historical Snapshots and Recent Initiatives in Myanmar Naing Yee Mar

1 Introduction In order to keep pace with developments in the world, there are currently moves to make TVET a vehicle for meeting emerging needs in the livelihoods of young people and adults. To some extent, this will also benefit the national social and economic situation. Countries often hope that the potential of TVET and the impact of its contributions in achieving these aims can be fully realized not only by improving the quality of TVET programmes but also by promoting lifelong learning opportunities for every individual. This chapter therefore examines the importance of TVET in promoting vocational competencies as part of the lifelong learning process for all, and explores its dynamic in developing countries, with particular reference to the situation in Myanmar. The TVET system in Myanmar is based on shared responsibility by different ministries through a variety of forms of delivery, with the result that its curricula are highly diverse. Not many empirical studies have been conducted as yet to evaluate the effectiveness of TVET in Myanmar. As a result, there is very limited documentation on issues relevant to vocational policies and practices that focus on a competency-based lifelong-learning oriented approach. This implies that the availability of statistical information in the field of technical, agriculture and vocational education is a limiting factor. Therefore, the scope of this study focuses rather on secondary and post-secondary school-based vocational education and training programmes offered in the areas of technical, agricultural and vocational education by the different specialized ministries in Myanmar. These programmes aim to enable learners to cope with the emerging challenges relating to job opportunities in the various economic sectors. They also encourage lifelong learning for all through the creation of flexibility and accessibility to TVET.

2 Why TVET? Traditionally, technical and vocational education carries the principal responsibility of developing the labour force in a country. This, in turn, improves productivity. Notwithstanding, current changes in technological, socio-economic and cultural R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 IV.14, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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environments, including profound changes due to the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the computerization of society, have stimulated the role of TVET to go beyond traditional approaches and practices. This is particularly true in relation to policy formulation and implementation, and the relevant strategies and structures (UNESCO, 1999, p. 61). In reviewing the issues of TVET on aspects of lifelong learning, the Dakar Framework for Action on Education for All (EFA) consists of six goals stressing the importance of both accessibility to learning opportunity and continuous learning possibilities for all young people and adults beyond primary school. Along with the Dakar Framework for Action on EFA, the Millennium Goals (UNESCO, 2000) encapsulate eight main ways of assisting developing countries in achieving economic and social development. Those that are particularly important relate directly to the quality of education.

2.1 TVET in Relation to Environmental Variables What the concept of promoting TVET as part of the lifelong learning process actually means for a community or an individual differs from one country to another. Each country has its own unique set of environmental forces—socio-cultural, political-legal, technological, economic—which have a strong impact on the educational environment. These variables in the societal environments may not constitute national educational activities in the short term, but can, and often do, affect the long-term development of education. In addition to these societal considerations, governments, local communities, educational suppliers and learners, as well as trends in labour markets, directly influence the effectiveness of education and, in turn, are affected by it. In essence, countries apply different approaches to reform and promote TVET as an essential component of the total educational process. To give some examples: countries like Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, India and Myanmar provide more TVET opportunities at the secondary and post-secondary levels, compared to the importance placed on expanding compulsory education in countries such as Cambodia, Viet Nam and Laos (Cheng, 2005; Mar, 2004). Countries such as Ghana, Senegal and Swaziland have decided to incorporate a measure of vocational content into general education programmes at the primary or lower secondary level, in order to prepare young people for wage employment or self-employment, if they do not continue with their schooling (Atchoarena cited in Wilson, 2005, p. 76). In Ghana, Kenya and Botswana, the drive for vocationalization has been strongest at the junior secondary level (Lauglo, 2005). Since countries have expressed great concern about the future development of their TVET systems, it is important that these systems are able to meet the needs of both adults and young people, and secure the basis for future development. These concerns relate to: (a) how individuals can be encouraged (and assisted) to fully participate in the digital age; (b) what efforts can be made to reach individuals who are often ‘hidden away’ from view in different corners of their country, mainly in

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rural areas; and (c) to what extent they can retain young people in the education system for as long as possible and offer flexibility of learning. Overall, TVET needs to evolve through the educational process by initiating a future-oriented policy and strategic educational planning to foster the all-round development of nations. It should also provide a sound foundation with further opportunities in education for those individuals who may wish to profit from lifelong education. Whether ‘education and training’ are delivered through formal, non-formal or informal means, they aim to develop human resources in the interests of employability and better citizenship. They will also inculcate a continuum of improvements concerning initiatives for each individual’s livelihood and will encourage them to live and work harmoniously with others.

2.2 TVET in Relation to Vocational Competencies The broad concept of vocational competency is concerned with an individual’s ability to cope with, and capitalize on, the unique challenges and opportunities demanded by the working environment. Vocational competency is an important characteristic of human capacities that TVET can provide exceedingly well. It is a key strength that can be embedded in any individual and may be carefully built on and accumulated over time. It may also be called a core capability, because it includes a number of constituent skills (Wheelen & Hunger, 1998, p. 160) that can be a means of securing the necessities of life. What is classed as vocational competency is also, at least in part, context-specific, in that the competencies required by an individual to function effectively in his or her society depend upon the social and economic context of that society. In reviewing vocational competencies in the context of developing countries, trends in the economic sector of society can have an obvious impact on the vocational competencies of individuals, especially in a country like Myanmar. It is, therefore, important to develop both understandings, not only based on what is expected of individuals in their various working environments, but also the individuals’ capacity to extend their capabilities.

3 TVET and Its Implications for Lifelong Learning in Myanmar 3.1 Societal Considerations The size of Myanmar’s population1 was 40.76 million in 1990 and had increased to 53 million by 2004. Geographically, Myanmar, with an area of 676,553 square kilometres, is divided into fourteen administrative areas—seven states and seven divisions. Broadly speaking, the seven different states are each dominated by a major ethnic group, whereas the seven divisions are dominated by the largest group—the Barmar.

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Myanmar is a country with enormous indigenous ethnic diversity, consisting of over 135 ethnic groups. Some 73.4% of the population lives in remote and rural areas. Thus, one of the matters of increasing concern in the Myanmar education sector is to focus on how such a diverse population can be motivated to take increased responsibility for its own effective lifelong learning. This is particularly important in the perspective of developing sustainable economic livelihoods. Gender wise, women in Myanmar account for 51% of the total population and are taking more and more initiatives. They are playing an active role in society to better their own living conditions in parallel with the continual evolution of socio-economic conditions. It is estimated that 64.1% of the population is engaged in the agricultural sector, while Myanmar’s industrial workers account for just 8.4% of the population. The service sector involves 18% of the population. This structure has remained largely unchanged over the past two decades. Traditionally, the Myanmar economy relies on the primary sector: agriculture, livestock, fishing and forestry. The structural characteristics of the labour force, presenting the employed population by industrial groups as reported in the ‘1990 Labour Force Survey’, showed that almost 60% of the total labour force is engaged in the primary sector. This sector is the main contributor to gross domestic product (59.9%). With the population growing at about 2% per annum, this translates into a per capita income increase of about 4% per year. Public expenditure has been restricted by a low and declining rate of revenue collection, which, at 5.1% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1999–2000, was among the lowest in the world. The structure of the economy has not evolved much since market reforms began and led to an average annual growth rate of 5.1%. As a consequence, public revenue has been insufficient to allocate public expenditure to important public services, in particular, education and health. In turn, the demand for specific levels of investment in skills, knowledge and education may directly affect the growth or decline of productivity in these different sectors. During the Four-Year Economic Development Plan Period (1992–1996), the productivity of the different sectors in GDP—namely, production, services and trade—was approximately 60%, 18% and 22% respectively (Myanmar. Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development, 1998). The agricultural sector has contributed approximately 38% of total GDP in that period, whilst the manufacturing sector generates only 9%. To accompany these figures, statistical information, such as members of the working population who have completed a vocational course to at least secondary vocational training level, or employment/unemployment by educational level, is still not available. In an agro-based country like Myanmar, the role of self-employed family workers is of particular importance. This is most critical where agricultural holdings are operated on a household basis and where self-employed labour in various agricultural activities is most common. Most of these self-employed family workers reside in rural areas. A new economic policy and development situation has been introduced since 1988 through a series of reforms. As a result, Myanmar has increasingly turned


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its attention to raising productivity, as well as modernizing and upgrading skills, especially in the primary sector. This is important not only because the country needs to improve its levels of productivity by making the best use of the available resources, but also because the problems of limited access to knowledge and skills are making it more difficult to respond appropriately to changes resulting from the information age.

3.2 Prospects and Concerns in Myanmar Education 3.2.1 Structure of the School and Reforms Following the 1998 educational reforms, by 2004 schooling in Myanmar had been changed from ten to eleven grades in basic education. This now consists of five years of primary and six years of secondary schooling (lower secondary consists of grades six to nine, and upper secondary of grades ten and eleven). These are followed by several types of higher education institutions. The Ministry of Education (MOE) is functionally the main sponsor of education and training, especially in the areas of basic education and teacher training. The major higher education institutions, which numbered sixty-four in 2004, also fall under the responsibility of the MOE. Ninety-nine other institutions are currently under eleven different ministries and the Public Services Selection and Training Board. Although the activities of these higher education institutions are decentralized and administered by thirteen different ministries, academic and administrative policy relating to higher education is centralized and managed by two councils: the Universities’ Central Council; and the Council of University Academic Bodies. Traditionally, the administrative process throughout the education sector has been centralized, but in recent times there have been moves to decentralize management and responsibility. This is also designed to promote active community participation. However, educational decisions and initiatives remain largely the province of central ministerial departments. In order to lay the foundation for an education system that is well co-ordinated and equitable, the Myanmar Naing-ngan Education Committee was established in 1991. This committee has overall responsibility for major policy matters, establishing budget priorities and general supervision of the whole educational process. The underlying goal of educational reform was to create an education system that would generate a learning society capable of facing the challenges of the ‘Knowledge Age’ (Myanmar. MOE, 2004). This was initiated by holding annual seminars in both basic and higher education sectors attended by administrators, teachers and educational specialists. Overall, the objectives of the various educational promotion programmes (EPP) stress not only bringing about quality education at all levels and for all, but also improving the accessibility of a range of educational options for all individuals. Within the framework of these EPP, the MOE has also developed the long-term plan for the education sector (2001–2031) with the aim of transforming the whole of Myanmar society into a lifelong learning society.

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3.2.2 Myanmar EFA Through innovative actions, such as various literacy campaigns and the Myanmar EFA National Action Plan, the literacy rate in Myanmar continues to increase steadily—from 89.7% in 1999 to 93.3% in 2004. Literacy partly contributes to increased output per worker. Thus, attempts to achieve improvements in literacy and EFA may be one of the best efforts a country can make to promote its future economic growth and sustainable development. For example, ‘farmers with four years of primary education produce about 13% more than those without such education’ (Financial Times, 1980, quoted in Stonier, 1983). The results and recommendations of the EFA Forum, EFA Task Forces and EFA Working Groups have all contributed to an upgrading of basic education. Primary school enrolments have increased from 91% of the cohort (1998–2000) to 96.56% (2004–2005). As all individuals are entitled to access to learning on a lifelong basis, it is notable that post-primary schools, over-aged-children-to-primary-education programmes, and the one-school-in-one-village objectives have been initiated since 2001–2002. These initiatives have addressed situations where access to public schools is difficult. The quality of basic education is being promoted through curriculum reforms. Since 1998, pre-vocational education and the MOE’s newly introduced life-skills curriculum have been redesigned and expanded, particularly in lower and upper secondary formal (general) education. To guarantee a broad view of competencies during the basic system, co-curricular activities are primarily focused on the three main areas—basic communication skills; expansion of knowledge and skill; and attitudinal development—in both the lower and upper secondary school systems. Monastic education in Myanmar, which follows the official curriculum under the supervision of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, traditionally plays a major role in primary education, as well as in civil society. It is a means of helping individuals to learn social competencies, underpinning Myanmar’s attempts to introduce social sustainability. Evidence shows that Myanmar’s EFA strategic activities and policies reflect preventive, reactive and remedial approaches to facilitate and promote lifelong learning. These are under the supervision of the MOE, in collaboration with nine related ministries. For example, the present retention and completion rates indicate that less than 60% of children complete the full five-year primary cycle (Myanmar. MOE, 2003a). As shown in Fig. 1, for many years drop-outs have been highest in the first grade (KG) and this number has declined from 23% in 1989/1990 to about 18% in 2000/2001. However, dropouts continue to be highest in the first grade. However, a positive sign is that the drop-out rate in lower secondary level (by the end of grade nine) is decreasing and the education sector review (Myanmar. MOE, 2003a) cited that between 97 and 98% of pupils graduate from lower secondary schools. In addition, 83–84% of those who pass examinations continue their studies at upper secondary level. It also stated that the remaining 15% who left the school should not be considered as drop-outs.


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30.0 25.0 20.0 15.0 10.0 5.0 0.0 89–90 90–91 91–92 92–93 93–94 94–95 95–96 96–97 97–98 98–99 99–00 00–01 KG

G1

G2

G3

G4

Fig. 1 Drop-out rates in primary schools Source: Myanmar. MOE, 2003b.

Questions have been raised about these school-leavers. Are they joining TVET schools or not? This underlines the importance of integrating the pre-vocational curriculum into general education, which could be seen as useful for all schoolleavers. Notwithstanding such considerations, and as is the case with other developing countries, unfortunately in Myanmar there are still pockets of out-of-school primary, secondary and post-secondary school-aged youths, who cannot be accommodated by the existing education system. This occurs for a variety of reasons, including poverty, language problems due to membership of different ethnic minority groups, and hardships associated with living in rural areas or in isolated locations with no ready access to education. These are fundamental issues that must be addressed if the overall quality of EFA activities is to be improved so that all primary education leavers are able to engage in income-generating livelihoods. As a result, non-formal education has become one of the four main EFA goals in Myanmar. 3.2.3 Efforts in Non-Formal Education One of the main challenges in strengthening TVET as part of the lifelong learning process is its relationship with non-formal education (NFE). NFE in Myanmar focuses on basic educational services for all children, youth and adults who, for various reasons, have not been reached by the formal school system. This includes those who could not afford schooling or have dropped out of school, as well as those who completed primary school but could not continue further. The Myanmar Educational Research Bureau (MERB), which is one of the departments within the MOE, is the focal point for NFE in Myanmar.

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In co-operation with the Myanmar Literary Resource Centre (MLRC), MERB is also responsible for training volunteer adult facilitators by conducting a series of national workshops, such as: the National Workshop on Preparation of Vocational Learning Materials; the National Workshop on Preparation of Literacy Learning Materials on Agriculture; and the National Workshop on Development of Strategies for Continuing Education in Myanmar. NFE programmes include: functional literacy; income generation and qualityof-life improvement programmes; skills-development programmes; individual interest improvement programmes; and future-oriented programmes through continuing education. Learning materials for these continuing education programmes have been developed by MERB through its own facilities. Alongside the traditional mode, since 2002, MERB has been experimenting with using distance education methods to provide NFE programmes for its facilitators using data broadcasting systems. These programmes are delivered not only through the 640 e-education learning centres, but also through the 750 community learning centres and multimedia classrooms situated in basic education schools in every township. There are 324 townships in the country. Emphasis still needs to be placed on the necessity of upgrading training opportunities to improve the quality of NFE facilitators. It is also important to enhance the flexibility and effectiveness of existing programmes with regard to the skill development programmes. Viewing NFE at grassroots level, it is one of the crucial factors in realising the goals of TVET for out-of-school youth and adults as part of EFA. Qualified training instructors and ICT learning-support materials are in great demand.

3.3 Approaches to Strengthening TVET in Myanmar 3.3.1 TVET Structure and Reforms TVET in Myanmar first dates from 1950, shortly after achieving independence from the British (1948). At that time, Myanmar was among the fastest-growing Asian economies since it was well-endowed with natural resources in the 1950s and had a highly literate population. The State was expected to play a leading role in industrializing the economy, while fulfilling the manpower needs of the country was a major concern. However, the current structure of TVET in Myanmar originates in the early period of Burmese Socialism (1972), when the government launched the Twenty-Year Plan. According to this plan, within the framework of Burmese Socialism (1962–88), various reform measures were adopted in a priority shift from heavy industry back to agriculture and the commercialization of State enterprises. In 1998, to intensify educational reforms, the sixty-five technical, agricultural and vocational institutes and schools (plus one technical teacher-training institute) under the Department of Technical, Agricultural and Vocational Education (DTAVE) were transferred to the other relevant ministries, such as: the Ministry of Science and Technology; the Ministry of Agriculture; the Ministry of Co-operative Affairs; the Ministry of Social Welfare; and the Ministry of Livestock Breeding


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and Fisheries. The original DTAVE remained, but was renamed the Department of Technical and Vocational Education (DTVE) under the Ministry of Science and Technology, which had been established in 1996. In order to accommodate changes occurring in the economy, currently fifty-six higher-level institutions exist under this ministry, including five technological universities, two computer universities, nine governmental technical institutes (GTIs), twenty-six governmental technical colleges (GTCs) and twenty-four computer colleges. The ministry also has responsibilities in vocational training. Like some other developing countries (for example, Singapore and Taiwan), Myanmar provides the majority of its vocational and technical training opportunities at the secondary and post-secondary level. If young people are unable or unwilling to continue onto higher education, there are opportunities for them to join various vocational schools and institutes after leaving the general school system, having completed primary and secondary levels. After the educational reform in Myanmar, the formal (general) school cycle has been changed so that students who pass the matriculation examination at the end of the secondary level can join different universities or TVET institutes providing various professional qualifications beyond basic competencies and skills.

3.3.2 TVET Initiatives in Myanmar Pre-Vocational Education Some key TVET initiatives in Myanmar are worthy of mention. At the secondary level, the school curriculum has been redesigned and expanded to include prevocational subjects (at least 13% of class time is allotted to these subjects per week). However, effective vocationalization in general education has yet to be fully implemented in most of the country’s middle and high schools. Even when practical subjects are offered, in some schools these are often constrained or are less effective than anticipated due to limited facilities or a lack of interest on the part of students. Nevertheless, creating opportunities for pre-vocational and vocational education at all levels of basic education is one of the focal points in the Myanmar Long-Term Thirty-Year Education Development Plan (2001–2031) for the basic education sector (Myanmar. MOE, 2004). Relating to curriculum reform, vocational subjects such as industrial arts, agriculture, home economics and fine arts (painting and music) were introduced at the lower secondary level, aimed at providing a foundation for the future. To ensure that a broad range of competencies are covered, co-curriculum subjects at the primary and secondary levels concentrate on three main areas: basic communication skills; expansion of knowledge; and skill and attitudinal development. The desirability of including ICT skills in the curriculum is also becoming increasingly accepted. Life-skills education at both the primary and secondary levels, as part of the core curriculum, has also been introduced to promote social skills. This includes problem-solving, creative thinking, critical thinking, decision-making, communications, self-awareness, interpersonal skills, empathy and the ability to cope with

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emotions and stress. Myanmar monastic education has traditionally played a major role in equipping individuals with desirable social competencies. Since 1998, national centres for human resource development (NCHRD) have been introduced under the MOE. The NCHRDs aim at facilitating the satisfaction of community needs by launching vocational, professional and technology-based courses that are in demand. These centres provide a number of courses in partnership with foreign and local private enterprises. The NCHRD are located at universities, educational institutes, degree colleges and colleges under the MOE. These centres offer a wide variety of options in the form of certificate, diploma or degree courses in the fields of foreign languages, computer science, computer engineering, accountancy, business management, environmental studies, multi-media arts, gemmology, cosmetic technology, law and teaching—all with a strong emphasis on promoting vocational skills. These are income-generating courses that enable the institutes involved to provide supplementary remuneration for their staff. These courses are undertaken by students in addition to their regular courses at these institutions. They develop more options and consequently more career choices for the young people of Myanmar. Technical Education Currently, nine governmental technical institutes (GTIs) under the Ministry of Science and Technology offer two-year courses to gain the GTI certificate, replacing the three-year courses that were offered before the reforms. The number of courses provided in these institutions has been expanded from eight in 1987/1988 to fifteen since 2003/2004. This represents a significant increase in enrolments compared to 1987/1988 (Table 2). After the reforms, all the technical high schools were upgraded into governmental technical colleges (GTCs) to meet the needs of those students who have graduated from lower secondary schools but who did not continue their education at upper secondary schools. Twenty-six GTCs have gradually been introduced in all states and divisions throughout Myanmar to provide technical education. In the decade following 1987, the rapid establishment of industrialized zones in many states and divisions has brought about a noticeable increase of enrolment in these institutes and colleges (Myanmar. MOE, 2001). The curricula of the GTIs and GTCs are designed with a theory/practical ratio of 40:60. The curriculum, syllabus and instructional materials have been updated, and students have been encouraged to carry out more practical exercises related to their chosen subjects. It is evident that existing courses do not adequately provide the knowledge and skills needed for employment and, therefore, re-training is often required once the individuals involved have found employment. The breakdown of the intake by type of courses offered in GTIs in 2003/2004 is shown in Table 1. Although trends cannot be readily discerned in the choice of each subject from a single year, nevertheless current statistics indicate a significant increase in the number of students studying technical subjects. The average numbers


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Table 1 Intake by type of course in the government technical institutes (GTIs) in 2003/2004 Type of course

Intake

Civil engineering Electrical engineering (power) Electrical engineering (electrical & communications) Mechanical engineering (power) Mining engineering Mechatronic Information technology Food and chemical Plastic and rubber Architect Textile Petroleum Metallurgy Bio Gas

Male

Female

Total

797 1,353 794 1,632 22 382 207 19 28 33 33 86 48 119

892 809 694 303 − 156 424 56 36 115 48 − 24 54 264

1,689 2,162 1,488 1935 22 538 631 75 64 148 81 86 72 173 1,316

Total (%) 16.1 20.6 14.7 18.5 0.2 5.1 6.0 0.7 0.6 1.4 0.8 0.8 0.7 1.7 12.6

Source: Prepared by the Myanmar UNEVOC Centre/MERB, 2004. Table 2 Teaching staff and students in the government technical institutes (GTIs) and government technical colleges (GTCs) Academic year

No. of GTIs & GTCs

Teaching staff

Enrolment

Average no. of students

No. of teachers

Teacher/ student ratio

1984/85 1985/86 1986/87 1987/88 2003/04

7 8 10 10 35

202 288 424 426 3,378

4,374 4,819 5,721 6,493 23,225

625 602 572 649 664

29 36 42 43 96

1:22 1:17 1:13 1:15 1:7

Source: Prepared by the Myanmar UNEVOC Centre/MERB, 2004.

of teaching/learning hours per week prescribed by DTAVE are thirty-two for a student and eighteen for a teacher in the GTIs. Table 2 also shows the average number of students and teachers per GTI/GTC and teacher/student ratios. These were favourable over the 1984–2004 period in comparison with the higher-education average of 1:20. Agricultural Education Since Myanmar is basically an agricultural country, there is a great demand for middle-range technicians in that sector. To fulfil this need, in 1954 the Myanmar Government, with assistance from the Ford Foundation, established a State Agricultural Institute offering a three-year diploma course in agricultural technology. There is also a great need for skilled workers in the agriculture sector. Consequently,

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the Myanmar Government has opened agricultural high schools (AHSs) and State agricultural institutes (SAIs). A series of interviews conducted by the author of this chapter with key stakeholders in the Ministry of Agriculture, as well as with students, revealed that the major reason for students not being interested in joining the SAIs was: ‘no opportunity to get a proper job after completion of the training period’. It is no doubt for this reason that between 1984 and 1988 enrolment levels decreased dramatically—though enrolment in 2003/2004 has improved (Table 3). The seven SAIs under the Ministry of Agriculture offer three-year courses in agriculture and animal husbandry, granting a diploma in agriculture after the successful completion of the course. The curriculum and instructional materials used in the SAIs are based mainly on traditional methods of cultivation and are highly theoretical, rather than reflecting advanced techniques in agriculture. Concerning the quality of skills development in the agricultural sector, the curriculum of the SAI programmes is designed with a theory/practical ratio of 40:60. Table 3 also shows the average number of students and teachers per SAI. Teacher/student ratios were favourable over the period 1984–1989 in comparison with an average ratio in higher education of 1:20. The average numbers of teaching/learning hours per week prescribed by DTAVE in the SAIs are forty-four for a student and twenty-two for a teacher. The subject ‘rural education’, which includes farm management and agricultural extension, accounts for only 9% of the total teaching time. Graduates receiving a diploma in agriculture are eligible for employment in the Myanmar Agriculture Service as extension agents at the level of the Deputy Township Manager. However, experience has shown that graduates lack many of the practical skills actually required to carry out the job. Recent statistical information on the AHSs is not readily available. Nevertheless, it is known that enrolments in these schools have been declining, from 1,216 in 1996/1997 to 648 in 1997/1998. A key assumption concerning decreasing enrolments in agricultural schools and institutes includes the massive introduction of ICTs elsewhere in the education system through the involvement of computer companies. As was pointed out earlier, the agricultural certificate awarded does not adequately qualify graduates to find reasonable jobs and, of course, most jobs are necessarily available in rural areas. Table 3 Teaching staff and student relationship in the State agricultural institutes (SAIs) Academic year

No. of SAIs

Teaching staff

Enrolment Avge. of students

No. of Teacher/student teachers/SAI ratio

1984/85 1985/86 1986/87 1987/88 2003/04

6 6 7 7 7

96 140 155 170 193

1,152 907 790 695 2,972

16 23 22 24 Not yet available

192 151 113 99 Not yet available

Source: Prepared by the Myanmar UNEVOC Centre/MERB, 2004.

1:12 1:6 1:5 1:4 Not yet available


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A persistent criticism of the agricultural education provided is that the facilities of the programmes and schools are not attractive to the younger generation, with particular reference to the lack of practical exercises provided by schools. An ICTbased learning environment might encourage learners and teachers to achieve better performance levels. However, computer-based teaching/learning is still very limited in the agricultural sector compared to technical education, and teaching methods are less advanced. Vocational Education Non-industrial training, including commercial training, is carried out either on-thejob or in vocational schools that follow a very practical non-academic type of course that does not correspond to the traditional academic years. For the last ten years the number of vocational schools has tripled, while total enrolment has increased by four times. Except for commercial schools, the semi-skilled training provided by DTAVE falls into two basic categories:

r r

Post-primary schools offering vocational training to those young people who have completed part or all of their primary education; and Post-middle schools for students who have obtained a middle-school certificate. These schools offer an artisan type of training.

In 1997, to intensify educational reforms, the vocational training schools formerly under the Ministry of Education were also transferred to the relevant ministries. Table 4 shows the number of graduates who have successfully completed these respective TVET institutions (diploma level) and schools existing during the reporting period under various government ministries. Table 4 Skills training in TVET institutions under various government ministries Institution Ministry of Co-operatives Commercial schools Myanmar Lacquer-ware Institute Weaving schools Co-operative colleges Co-operative training schools Ministry of Science and Technology Handicraft schools Machinery repair and maintenance schools Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement School of Home Science

1997/98

1998/99

1999/00

2000/01

2001/02

2002/03

749 39

1490 37

555 49

881 36

578 27

420 25

137 – 699

129 511 832

89 369 685

353 541 846

233 620 541

212 714 573

1244 180

556 85

984 80

707 102

566 72

519 62

1900

1424

1287

1619

1883

1367

Source: Myanmar. Ministry of Labour, 2005.

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4 Lessons Learnt from the Myanmar Experience During the educational reform process, the decentralization of responsibilities for technical, agriculture and vocational schools, training centres and institutes under different ministries represents an attempt to achieve a more cost-effective, practical and applied way of teaching and learning through TVET. The ministries have been steadily playing a greater role in the planning phase. This process is continuing and ministries are now more able to embrace a systematic alignment of overall management, education policies and processes, mindset and culture, organizational structure, technology and budgets. As a recent education sector review mission (Myanmar. MOE, 2003a) reported: ‘this—the 1998 education reform—is considered a turning point in Myanmar educational history’. With the implementation of plans for the promotion of education, TVET institutions have undertaken vast reforms in areas such as curricula, teaching methods, facilities, research and management. Teaching methodologies, like problem-based learning encouraging critical thinking, analytical, creative and research skills, are being promoted. The assessment system has also been reviewed and replaced with a credit system so as to be in line with international practice and to give students more flexibility. This also facilitates entry and re-entry into TVET institutions. Special attention has been given to meeting the needs of those who live in remote regions, in particular to improving literacy among the various ethnic groups (up to 93.3% in 2004). Myanmar acknowledges the need to lay a proper foundation for populations who are mainly involved in the primary sector of the economy. Under the supervision of the MOE and in collaboration with related ministries, Myanmar EFA strategic activities and policies have therefore been adjusted to reflect preventive, reactive and remedial approaches to education in order to facilitate and promote lifelong learning and skills development, especially for out-of-school youth and adults. Concerning the ICT infrastructure in education, since 2001 a Satellite Data Broadcasting System has been introduced in collaboration with the Ministry of Information, so that, by 2004, 619 e-education learning centres had been developed. The MOE is increasingly using e-learning and multi-media facilities to provide short-term training and education programmes for teachers working under the MOE. One of the main challenges in strengthening TVET in Myanmar is the importance of non-formal education which promotes a continuing education concept in the context of lifelong learning. This concept focuses on young people who have not participated in the regular school system, or who have dropped out of the regular school system before completion for various reasons. Those who could and should take advantage of the new opportunities for TVET are not only dependent on their own initiative, but are actively stimulated and directed by local communities. A number of lessons and best practices that emerge from the Myanmar experience may be of value to other developing countries at similar levels of development. Among the lessons learned, it is clear that evaluation and assessment practices related to competence-based education are critical to achieving successful TVET for all in the information age. A transformation to TVET is not implemented overnight, and there are many challenges and potential pitfalls which must be addressed to


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achieve successful lifelong learning. The study identified the following key lessons from the Myanmar experience: 1. TVET for all: TVET in support of lifelong learning in Myanmar is an important ongoing process (for all), whether through formal or non-formal means. The various TVET programmes can therefore improve the range of skills and knowledge of underprivileged groups, young people and adults who are not able to continue their general education opportunities, or who want to undertake an alternative learning possibility. Greater emphasis still needs to be placed on the necessity of upgrading training possibilities, the provision of qualified instructors and advanced teaching materials in order to strengthen the quality of TVET education in a geographically large country like Myanmar. 2. The selection of TVET programmes: Differences in the levels of enrolment in TVET schools and institutes in Myanmar suggest that the location and type of schools and the educational facilities offered by the programmes, the availability and competence of qualified teachers, the interest and social composition of students, current economic trends and the opportunities available for further education, either locally or abroad, are all important considerations for students when they select a TVET programme. 3. Continuing support for student-centred learning in TVET: The approaches adopted by Myanmar educational programmes are increasingly favouring studentcentred learning. However, the resources available for practical classes (within schools or those linked to the business environment), which are of special interest to learners, are still rather limited. Consequently, the system of final assessment gives more emphasis to theory than to practical activities. This relative lack of emphasis for on-the-job learning is said to have a negative impact on the livelihoods of youth and adults. Evidence from this study suggests that one of the best ways of creating on-the-job learning is to achieve effective partnerships between education and the business sector. 4. Learning interaction combining practical experiences from the field and theoretical studies: From a learner’s and a teacher’s point of view, in general one of the main reasons for choosing technical and vocational education is a wish to learn more about practical subjects and to acquire skills based on practical, hands-on experience through education. However, the dominant learning and teaching culture in Myanmar is still one where learners and teachers learn from books rather than from practical activities. 5. The digital divide needs to be bridged: It is important to take into account the accessibility of appropriate learning resources, in terms of both the available technology and sufficiently qualified trainers to support the lifelong learning process of an individual. On the other hand, Myanmar has learnt that familiarity with technology can also become a barrier to developing vocational skills effectively, and that the digital divide needs to be bridged in order to allow traditional learners to become involved with technology-supported learning environments. 6. Monitoring of the labour market: Evidence presented here suggests that an accurate monitoring of labour-market demand and opportunities should be one of

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the top priorities for all TVET providers. The TVET system should promote efficiency in supply for the labour market. 7. Financial implication for TVET: Myanmar’s experience shows that learning beyond the basic competencies should increasingly be the responsibility of learners and employers. Given the rising demand for lifelong learning processes and skill improvement, several principles should therefore guide future educational financing. 8. Absence of empirical studies: It is regrettable that few, if any, empirical studies have been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of TVET in Myanmar. As a result, there is an absence of reliable hard data to help improve the less effective elements in the training offered, or to help better focus the TVET offered to meet those training needs that are already particularly well served.

5 Conclusions Drawn It may be said that TVET initiatives in the educational process are not new to Myanmar, although, as a result of recent educational developments and reforms, it is new to some teachers and learners, both in terms of the curriculum and modes of delivery. The TVET system is firmly established in Myanmar in both the formal and non-formal modes of delivery. Nevertheless, the country has to cope with the fact that it has enormous indigenous ethnic diversity, with a high proportion of the population living in remote and rural areas. Therefore, one of the growing concerns in the Myanmar education sector concerns how these individuals can be provided with an opportunity to take an increased responsibility for their own learning throughout their lifetime, so that they are equipped to earn their living effectively. The concepts of continuing education, community involvement and technological assistance all play crucial roles in the Myanmar education system. Furthermore, there is the issue of adopting a more methodical approach throughout the implementation process, which includes basic financial planning and learner-based planning, both of which are essential if TVET is to be an important vehicle for achieving lifelong learning for all. However, more attention needs to be given to how technical and vocational education is perceived in relation to promoting continuous learning opportunities in a way that is appropriate and attractive to the individuals.

Note 1. The population statistics presented in this section are based on the 1973 and 1983 censuses.

References Cheng, Y.C. 2005. New paradigm for re-engineering education: globalization, location and individualization. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. (Education in the Asia-Pacific Region Series.)


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Lauglo, J. 2005. Vocationalised secondary education revisited. In: Lauglo, J.; Maclean, R., eds. Vocationalisation of secondary education revisited. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Myanmar. Ministry of Education. 2001. Thirty-Year Long-Term Education Development Plan, 2001-2030. Yangon. Myanmar. Ministry of Education. 2003a. Education Sector review. Yangon. Myanmar. Ministry of Education. 2003b. Education for All: national action plan. Yangon. Myanmar. Ministry of Education. 2004. Development of education in Myanmar. Yangon. Myanmar. Ministry of Labour. 2005. Handbook on human resources development indicators, 2004. Yangon: Department of Labour/UNFPA. Myanmar. Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development. 1998. Review of financial, economic, and social conditions for 1997–98. Yangon: Printing and Publications Distribution Enterprise. Mar, N.Y. 2004. Utilizing ICTs to achieve lifelong education for all: a case study of Myanmar. Educational research for policy and practice, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 141–66. Stonier, T. 1983. The wealth of information: a profile of the post-industry economy. London: Methuen. UNESCO. 1999. Final Report, Second International Conference on Technical and Vocational Education. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO. 2000. The Dakar Framework for Action. Paris: UNESCO. Wheelen, T.; Hunger, D.J. 1998. Entering 21st century global society: strategic management and business policy. Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. Wilson, D. 2005. Promise and performance. In: Lauglo, J.; Maclean, R., eds. Vocationalisation of secondary education revisited. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.


Chapter IV.15

Technical and Vocational Education and Training and Rural Development Lavinia Gasperini

1 Introduction Poverty is mainly a rural phenomenon since 70% of the world’s poor are rural (IFAD, 2001). Rural/urban inequalities are also a major obstacle to sustainable development. Unless they are addressed as key development actors, requiring appropriate competencies and skills to play a role in national socio-economic and cultural development, rural people are most likely to be among those who are not reached by the drive towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Skills development for rural youth and adults is a lifelong learning process which plays an important role not only in increasing economic returns, but also in social outcomes, such as enhanced representativeness of rural livelihoods in the national arena, social cohesion, health or peace-building. Most of the labour force in least-developed countries (LDCs) is in the agricultural and rural sector. The dimension of rural poverty and the mutually reinforcing relationship among improved skills for rural people and food security and poverty reduction (Burchi & De Muro, 2007) are driving a change in technical and vocational agricultural education and training (TVAET) towards a clear focus on contributing to reaching the MDGs. Rethinking TVAET and rural development in a way that is consistent with the challenge of poverty reduction, as well as the magnitude of the challenge, will require new responses by governments and donors, since simply scaling up existing provision patterns would be neither affordable nor cost/effective.

2 Rural Stigma, Urban Bias The concern for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and rural development is not new. For decades many authors have pointed out the urban bias of education systems and the urgency to address the basic learning needs of rural people (Lê Thanh Khoi, 1974; Ahmed & Coombs, 1975; Dumont, 1976). At the same time, rural development specialists have been insisting on the need to address rural people, not as a marginal group but as a neglected majority, whose contribution to national and international food security and economic and social development is critical. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 IV.15, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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In former colonial countries, TVET had usually been offered by the government as the second-best opportunity of a two-track system, targeting mainly indigenous people. Such people were stigmatized as more apt to undertake manual work. Therefore, skills development in agriculture was mainly directed at them. After the independence processes during the 1960s and 1970s, TVET was considered by many countries as an important aspect of modernization, catalyzing a significant share of national education budgets and international aid. Many countries, however, displayed a contradiction between the declared education policy— emphasizing equity and the universalization of primary education—and a development paradigm that placed priority on investments in industrialization, industrial TVET and higher education, which were considered as more likely to speed up growth and modernization. Concurrently, the inadequate resource allocation for agricultural and rural development accentuated the decline in this sector. This coincided with an important reduction of investments for TVAET, which became more evident during the 1980s and 1990s. Several other interacting factors contributed to aggravate the crisis for TVEAT, the most important being the overall decline in public spending for TVET as a consequence of the structural adjustment policies of the World Bank sector policy paper (World Bank, 1991). In addition, a common misunderstanding of the aims and strategies of the 1990 World Conference on Education for All and its Declaration emphasized investments in primary education and overlooked basic non-formal education, including skill training for youth and adults. In the following years, the increasing educational gap between urban and rural people, for whom formal and non-formal agriculture courses were often the only education available, contributed to increasing rural poverty and to overall national food insecurity. Today agricultural education and training suffers a crisis that in many ways reflects the general crisis of TVET public providers. Similarly, the main interacting obstacles to efficiency and effectiveness have been: (a) unequal access to TVAET for urban and rural students; (b) a predominantly male student clientele; (c) poor infrastructures, poor training quality and low staff capacity; (d) lack of market-relevant courses; (e) weak linkages with employers and off-campus situations; (f) outmoded curricula; (g) weak experiential learning; (h) a supply-driven orientation; and (i) overall, inadequate funding. In addition to these aspects, TVAET is also affected by a low level of collaboration between education, research and extension institutions, farmers and rural communities in promoting mutual learning. This particularly concerns generating, sharing and utilizing agricultural and rural development-related technology, as well as knowledge and information in seeking solutions for rural poverty. This is reflected in the lack of interaction among different providers of TVEAT, such as Ministries of Education, Labour and Agriculture, as well as between technical schools, vocational training centres, post-secondary education, non-formal education, extension programmes, farmers’ associations and agricultural and rural development research institutions (FAO & World Bank, 2000).

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3 Poverty and the Rural Challenge Rural poverty is prevalent among small farmers and landless families. Much of the poverty found in urban areas is a consequence of rural deprivation and rural economic decline, which trigger migration to cities (United Nations, 2005, p. 34). In the poorest developing countries, the population will continue to be predominantly rural for decades to come. Agriculture is still the world’s largest employer, involving about half of its workforce (about 1.2 billion people). In developing countries the overall agricultural workforce is much higher in percentages: in Africa, for example, agriculture employs two-thirds of the total workforce. Women alone account for 20 to 30% of the global wage agricultural workforce. Considering that half of the people of the world are under 25 years of age and that the majority of the world’s youth is rural, making farming more productive, profitable and rewarding and life in rural areas more attractive for young people, and especially for women, is a crucial step towards reducing poverty. At the same time, it would curtail the large-scale migration of young people to urban areas. Policies that favour urban investment would need to be reviewed, given that most of the world’s poor will continue to be rural over several of the coming decades. The change that TVAET is undergoing can be better understood in relation to the role of rural people in agriculture, rural development and sustainable livelihoods. This reflects an important shift aiming to make a more effective contribution to poverty reduction and food security—and to the MDGs in general. Defining a few key terms helps to better understand the predominant TVAET reform processes, as well as their aims, target groups, main problems and strategies. By common definition, rural areas are dominated by farms, forests, water, mountains and/or desert. Typically, rural people have agriculture as their main occupation; they are farmers, nomads, pastoralists or fishermen; they deal with animal production, transformation and marketing of food and non-food products and services. Rural communities are diverse culturally, socially and economically. By and large, their labour is cheap because gainful employment options are limited, and many rural groups are marginalized. Rural people often lack access to adequate basic social services because rural areas have low national priority, because rural people do not have political voice, especially the poor, and because providing services to them is more expensive. This happens despite the fact that they are the majority of the population in developing countries and despite their critical role in determining food security and environmental sustainability, agriculture being the primary interface between people and the environment. Although rural people play a crucial role in national survival—food and raw materials for clothing and shelter— for themselves and for urban people, their social status and standard of living are lower and their self-identity is affected by discrimination. Disadvantage in rural communities is magnified by other characteristics of life in the countryside, such as geographic isolation affecting education and the provision of health services. High rates of poverty and scarcity of resources often result in a lack of appropriate services—including education and training—and

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qualified providers. These are some of the reasons explaining the fact that more than 80% of the world’s out-of-school children live in rural areas, as well as the vicious circle that exists between poverty and illiteracy. Some 70% of existing child-labour is to be found in agriculture with many children engaged in hazardous work. Among rural dwellers are millions of children and adolescents exploited as workers on cocoa, tobacco or banana plantations, sometimes forced to work more than twelve hours a day in conditions bordering on slavery. Skills training can prevent these children from joining the ever-growing ranks of illiterate adult farmers. Rural people’s disadvantage in access to, retention in and completion of basic education is one of the main reasons why they rarely proceed to agricultural and rural development-related post-primary and higher education courses, which are mainly attended by urban students. Ensuring that the needs of all rural young people and adults are met through appropriate learning and skills development programmes—not necessarily requesting a formal qualification to access them— would contribute to achieving the MDGs, as well as the Dakar Framework for Action goals. The sustainable agriculture and rural development approach, as developed from the Earth Summit to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, has four pillars: cultural, social, economic and environmental. Sustainable1 agriculture and rural development (SARD) is understood as a process of constant change and transformation of rural areas. It encompasses a wide range of long-term processes and programmes, expanding beyond agriculture and based on empowering the poor, such as:

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Enhancement of governance at the local, district and provincial levels, including linkages with the private sector, civil society and governmental agencies. Development of productive sectors: agriculture,2 non-agricultural industry, mining, tourism, natural resources, environmental management, etc. Development of institutions and their capacities in key areas, i.e. education and training, health, research and extension, marketing, savings and credit, environment, transportation, etc. Development of rural infrastructures for roads, electricity, telecommunications, housing, water, sanitation, etc. (Avila & Gasperini, 2005).

SARD, as opposed to other production-driven approaches, is centred on people and focuses on improving livelihoods in terms of satisfying the cultural, social, economic and environmental needs and aspirations of present generations without endangering the ability of future generations to do the same. Such definitions recognize the primary importance of local stakeholders in rural development and poverty alleviation strategies. As in all people-centred approaches, there is broad agreement about the need for fostering the knowledge and skills of the rural population—the key actors in development efforts. Improved access to education and skills development for rural people has a critical role also in the sustainable livelihood approach, as a critical step in placing people at the centre of their own development. Livelihoods are defined as comprising the capabilities, assets and activities required for a means of living. They


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are considered sustainable when they can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and maintain or enhance their capabilities and assets (Chambers & Conway, 1991).

4 From TVAET to Skills for Rural Development While the impact of globalization on the rural labour market has led to a diversification of employment patterns, characterized by the decline of wage employment and the expansion of self- and non-farm employment, the sustainable livelihood approach has contributed to broadening the conventional TVAET approach. A change process is thus going on in several countries to broaden traditional TVAET (see Atchoarena et al., 2003), focused mainly on agricultural production, to include a wide range of skills needed to promote SARD, and to embrace all those living in rural areas and involved in farm and off-farm employment, such as extension personnel, the staff of rural institutions, farmers’ and women’s associations and civil society organizations. In spite of many setbacks in rural development, as well as in the TVET agendas, three international events shaped a policy environment that contributed to relate the TVAET change process to the global agenda of poverty reduction. These were the World Food Summits (Rome, 1996 and 2002) and the Earth Summit (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), which closely connected the food security challenge3 and the need to increase agricultural productivity with environmental, economic and social challenges. These events addressed the economic growth and international competitiveness of the agricultural sector, not in isolation, but to be addressed together with soils, forests, coastal areas and sustainable natural resources management, as well as with employment generation, poverty reduction and building social capital. Within such a framework, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 2002) developed the SARD approach. The pro-poor Millennium Development Summit (2000) development framework, the MDGs and the Millennium Project (2005) reiterated and reinforced the main message of previous events. The Millennium Project explicitly addressed skills for rural development within the chapter ‘Launch a global human resource training effort for the Millennium Development Goals’, where the training of ‘village specialist in health, soil nutrients, irrigation, land reclamation, drinking water, sanitation, electricity, vehicle repair, road maintenance and forest management’ are addressed as a first priority (UNDP, 2005, p. 235). The awareness that the skills needed by rural people can only partially be addressed by traditional secondary and tertiary education and training has led several countries to consider that Goal 3 of the 2000 Dakar Framework for Action on EFA— focusing on ‘ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through appropriate learning and life-skills’—should give priority to basic education and skill-training needs for all those who live in rural areas through a multiplicity of delivery systems, formal and non-formal, including extension, literacy and post literacy.4

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Vocational education and training are often dealt with by urban education and training specialists, who frequently declare themselves unfamiliar with the agricultural and rural development context and prefer to work on TVET for industry and services, targeting mainly urban people. Conversely, agricultural trainers dealing with basic skills for rural development are often unaware of the latest debate on TVET reform and have limited pedagogical knowledge and skills. This dichotomy is mirrored by the lack of collaboration between formal and non-formal education courses run, for instance, by the Ministry of Education and those run by the Ministry of Agriculture, more often denominated as extension courses. This results in the duplication of cost and a lack of efficiency for countries. Agricultural extension is the ‘function of providing need- and demand-based knowledge and skills to rural men, women and youth in a non-formal, participatory manner, with the objective of improving their quality of life’ (Qamar, 2005). Considering that ‘extension’ is the expression adopted by agricultural institutions for denominating their non-formal delivery system of education and training for rural people, inter-sectoral collaboration with other providers, such as the Ministry of Education and civil society, would allow savings for the country and lead to overall greater efficiency and effectiveness of skills development for rural people. So as to contribute to address through inter-sectoral collaboration the complexity and the challenges of the rural environment and provide some promising experience, FAO and the International Institute for Educational Planning (UNESCO-IIEP) co-published the study ‘Education for rural development: towards new policy responses’ (Atchoarena & Gasperini, 2003). The study provides the research base for the Education for All flagship partnership on ‘Education for Rural People’ coordinated by FAO and implemented in collaboration with UNESCO5 and 270 other partners, which promotes collaboration among the education, agricultural and rural development sectors to ensure basic education and skills training to all rural people. The initiative focuses on research, capacity-building and the sharing of good practices. An on-line ‘tool kit’6 with teaching and learning materials for formal and non-formal TVAET for teachers and instructors, farmers, extension personnel and the vast public was made available. The issues addressed are at the core of the basic skills in demand among rural people, such as: plant biology and forestry; water; soil and land rights; animals and pastoralism; biodiversity; rural finance; agro-business and marketing; book-keeping; fishery; food and nutrition; as well as other aspect important for sustainable livelihoods, such as HIV/AIDS, gender and peace education and training for conflict management and communication.

5 Diversified Skills for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development Skills development needs and consequent policies differ substantially within a country, but also between industrialized and developing countries. The post-industrial human resources requirements are predominant in the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, where the transition from the indus-


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trial age to the information age is now underway. The situation is quite different in developing countries where the boundaries between manual and mental work are not fading away so quickly, and where the information and knowledge society is still far from being a shared reality. In such countries, rural people are faced with the challenges imposed on their livelihoods by the ‘global village’, which marginalizes and neglects them and requires the adoption of new technologies to ensure competitiveness, efficiency and access to markets. To overcome the process of marginalization, however, rural livelihoods need to ensure that natural resources are managed in a sustainable way, and that their local, diverse, traditional, agro-industrial knowledge, competencies and skills are cross-fertilized by universal knowledge and modern science and technology. In a world that changes very rapidly and requires resilient citizens, a diversified and constantly updated curriculum is thus a response to the variety of knowledge and skills in demand among rural people from different agro-ecological systems and socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Participatory curriculum planning and updating exercises have been promoted in TVAET, based on a methodology involving the key actors living in the rural environment, and includes a range of skills and competencies far beyond the traditional ones (FAO, 1998). Acknowledgment of the importance of including diversified skills in TVAET and of the complexity of the challenge of rural development have also led to complementing the traditional core agriculture-related technical skills with a range of additional skills that are increasingly in demand, such as communication, facilitation, negotiation and leadership skills. These are critical for forging non-formal education practitioners (such as extension and literacy staff), rural youth and community leaders and, overall, for empowering rural people. Other essential skills are necessary for fostering innovation and change and developing effective participation citizenship and welfare, such as: entrepreneurship skills; income-generating, micro-finance and other business skills needed for self-employment; population education, gender issues; HIV/AIDS prevention; and mitigation or critical thinking and awareness about social, political and legal institutions and basic rights. The participatory curriculum development methodology, favoured by decentralization processes, allows a selection to be made among a range of these skills, as well as of a number of core basic competencies and skills for agriculture, food security and sustainable rural development on the basis of the demand and characteristics of the training needs required by rural livelihoods and the labour-market context.

6 Some Examples of TVAET Basic Competencies and Skills Since this chapter is intended mainly for educators, who are less familiar with agricultural and rural development issues, the following paragraphs provide some examples of issues addressed by TVAET core competencies and skills. These are related to crop and livestock production, forestry, fishery and aquaculture, water control, food quality, food processing and food storage, rural infrastructure and marketing information.

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Basic skills training and extension on crop production addresses a large spectrum of activities aimed at improving land productivity in a sustainable way, allowing the farmer to obtain the maximum profit by producing plants, feed and cereals which provide nutrients for humans and good forage for herbivores. Teachers and students are faced with issues that are politically sensitive and critical for health, the environment and food safety, such as ensuring adequate and balanced crop nutrition, applying fertilizers and replacing nutrients lost by extraction through harvesting and by soil erosion, by leaching below the root zone and emissions to the air. In addressing insect infestations, knowledge of traditional methods of plant protection and the use of pesticides is complemented by integrated pest-management (IPM) techniques. Farmer field schools (FFS) are communitybased, practically-oriented, field-study programmes providing an opportunity for farmers to learn IPM together, using practical, hands-on methods of discoverybased learning, initiated in the IPM domain and subsequently expanded to other agricultural practices. Started around the 1980s, they are rapidly expanding in Asia, Africa and Latin America.7 Irrigation can be addressed from an interdisciplinary perspective, cutting across crop production, livestock and water management. Irrigation is an opportunity to reduce the unit cost of growing crops by increasing yields and improving their quality. Students can also learn how to diversify crops and plant selection to improve pastures. Since large herbivores are mainly found in cropping areas where land for pasture is scarce or non-existent, crop residue straw remains a single major resource used for feeding herbivores. Maximizing profit from agriculture and environmental protection will need local adaptation of good agricultural practices, such as crop rotation and integration of crop and animal production. This includes livestock production and household activities such as bee-keeping and rabbit, geese, duck and chicken production, fed with locally available feed resources and by-products. Additional good agricultural practices may include agro-forestry, conservation agriculture and crop association practices. Livestock provides an appreciating asset, a source of income, food and insurance, as well as important inputs to farming, such as manure and draught power to many poor people in developing countries. Furthermore, it can provide employment and stimulate trade. Small livestock farming is a common practice in rural villages, where large numbers of sheep, ducks, pigs and, above all, chickens surround the houses. They provide their owners with meat, milk, eggs and money. But when animals are of small size, this often means that they are not of a good breed, are poorly fed or that the animals are ill. When an animal has a contagious disease, it will spread to all the others in the village. To address such problems, basic skill training and extension in livestock builds capacities that go from the breeding of animals (cattle and small livestock species, such as goats, etc.) to feeding and nutrition, reproduction, conservation and processing of their own products; to recognizing zoonotic and zoonoses diseases.8 Within the skills-development framework, artisan fishermen and the small-scale fisheries sector—producing over one-third of the entire food fish consumed world wide—are often overlooked. In developing countries, there are as many


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as 30 million artisan fishermen. This labour-intensive activity is frequently characterized by low individual productivity and high levels of wastage and spoilage, due to limitations on infrastructure, craft, gear and fishery techniques. Most small-scale fishermen lead a precarious existence at or below subsistence level. Often they live in remote areas and lack access to supplies and services for their daily needs—and markets for their products. They lack also access to basic skills training and technical advice and assistance from extension workers that could help them to improve their efficiency and to generate incomes, market their products, as well as feed themselves and their families. Basic skills training and extension in small-scale fishery include simple techniques such as hand-lining. This apparently simple procedure involves a lot of forethought in order to select the hook, line and sinker that are suitable in size and strength to the fish that one intends to catch. In addition, the fishing technique must be developed to ensure that fish attracted to the bait are actually caught. Trapping is another one of the oldest fishing techniques. Training allows both traditional and modern techniques to be used, since there are many different kinds of traps. Vessels and on-board equipment are essential to operate the traps and to transport the fish back to shore. Fish can also be farmed, and in this case it is necessary to know what is the best place for a pond, how to dig the pond, how to fill it with water, and how to take care, drain and fertilize it. In aquaculture students learn what kind of fish to raise, how to introduce the young fish into the pond, what and how to feed them, how to harvest the fish and how to raise one’s own young fish to start the process over again. Basic skills for aquaculture are in the curriculum of some rural primary schools—such as the Colombian Escuela Nueva. Forestry vocational education and training has a special long-standing tradition in formal and non-formal courses, but it is also experiencing the impact of change. Students of traditional forestry TVET—in many cases of urban origin—were taught to produce, grow, plant, manage and harvest trees and process timber. Graduates would fill positions in forestry research, management, plantation establishment, timber harvesting and industry. The forests were a public good entrusted to, managed and protected by the State. Traditional forestry education included degrees, diplomas, certificates and in-service training. Sub-degree or diploma-level education prepared students for work in forestry and the forestry industry—sawmills, plywood factories, furniture-making, nursery management and machinery operation and maintenance. Certificate training in developing countries prepared forest guards (rangers) hired by the public sector, which was a major employer of graduates. The changing role of the public sector, the demand of civil society and the decentralization and participation approach connected to the sustainable rural development approach has had implications also for forestry education. Its vision and clientele have broadened, ranging from basic to higher education students. Forestry education and training delivery systems have readjusted to better contribute to reducing rural poverty and promoting rural development. They also address basic skills development for all those who live in the rural environment. Rural people in many areas have long been involved

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in the conservation and cultivation of trees on agricultural land and in forested areas. In many countries, rural people traditionally plant trees for a multiplicity of household uses, above all for cooking and keeping warm. But planting trees means also the possibility to obtain a variety of commercial construction materials, charcoal and fuel wood production, and for many other activities such as pit-sawing, sawmills, woodworking, tree farming, and the gathering and selling of fruits, timber, resins, gums and other forest products for commerce. Environmental degradation and the depletion of tree cover are sometimes symptomatic of poverty and a lack of comprehensive traditional tree and environmental management systems, which can be strengthened by basic forestry education and skills training. The deterioration of forest land leads to the loss of fodder, shade, fruit and other benefits. An understanding and perception of the long-term consequences of deforestation and mastering practices to promote the natural process of re-growth and re-generation of forest and techniques in managing certain types of trees, such as coppicing and pollarding, as well as the ability to identify a large number of species of trees and the role they play in people’s lives, are some of the basic knowledge and skills required by people living in forested areas. TVAET addresses skill training in food quality, processing and storage as important issues for rural livelihoods, as well as for urban consumers. Food and water that urban and rural people consume need not only to be adequate in amount, but also safe and of good quality for the producer to sell as well as the consumer to use. Foods eaten at home or in public eating places may appear to be safe but may also show evidence of contamination. If food, beverages, dishes or utensils are unclean, if the food looks or smells bad, if a food that is meant to be eaten hot is served cold, or if the environment where the food is served has flies, cockroaches or evidence of rodents, or if food servers have dirty hands and clothes, then it is likely that the food being served is unfit. In every household, but especially in those with less than ideal sanitation, some knowledge about food-borne disease is very important. Through basic skills training, rural people can improve the storage techniques associated with different products and climates. For example, in temperate climates much of the production of fruits and vegetables is confined to a relatively short growing season and storage becomes essential for the provision of fresh produce outside of the harvest season. In tropical countries production is often extended, but storage may still be necessary. Products may be stored for a few days or weeks, but some temperate produce may also be stored for periods of up to twelve weeks. Not all fresh products are amenable to storage and some products may require specific post-harvest treatments, such as ‘curing’ or ‘waxing’ prior to successful storage. There are various different storage techniques, the choice of which will depend on cost and the produce to be stored. Skill training develops the capacity to master such techniques. Water control is another critical area where skills are needed to learn the various methods that can be used according to local circumstances to gain the maximum benefit. This requires knowledge on crop-water requirements and yield responses to water, as well as on the correct use of the appropriate equipment for different irrigation techniques. These include a range of options such as: (a) using


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a watering-can on very small plots of land, such as vegetable gardens that are near to a water source; (b) basin irrigation, commonly used for rice grown on flat lands or terraces on hillsides; (c) furrow irrigation, meaning small channels carrying water down the land slope between crop rows; or (d) sprinkler irrigation, similar to natural rainfall where water is pumped through a pipe system and then sprayed onto the crops. Skill training in water control allows farmers to improve the quality of their lives and their incomes by making informed decisions on the most appropriate use of the different techniques. Rural infrastructures (roads, telecommunications and reliable market facilities) are poor in rural areas. Improving rural infrastructures is critical for expanding the range of market opportunities available to producers, improving linkages between producers and traders, reducing both input and support services delivery costs. Basic skills training contributes to improving increased access to and use of appropriate low-cost technologies—such as animal power instead of hand power, a well and low-cost treadle pumps to maintain the water supply in villages and techniques of low-cost road maintenance. Basic skill training in the use of ITCs, such as radios, computers or cellular phones, which are very useful to obtain updated market information and other information important to improve rural livelihoods, are often included in skill-training activities for rural people. Marketing information for rural people is very important to negotiate products and prices with farmers and traders. Basic skill training in marketing enables small farmers to make the calculations necessary to decide whether or not they should plant different crops, or plant existing crops at different times, and how to grow new crops which may attract good market prices. Sometimes rural farmers find difficulties in finding out where to buy seeds for new varieties of crops and information about their profitability. Knowledge and market information on harvesting and post-harvesting costs, as well as out-of-season production of perishable horticultural crops, or farm storage for less-perishable staple crops, such as rice, maize or potatoes, are examples of basic skills training on marketing to help rural farmers to decide whether or not to store in any particular year. This same knowledge can also be used to help them decide whether or not to invest in building a storehouse if they do not already have one. Storing crops without the correct storage facilities is usually a bad idea, as quantity and quality losses may mean the farmer will not be able to benefit fully from higher seasonal prices. This information is essential for rural farmers before going into new, possibly risky, business ventures.

7 Critical Issues and Policy Options Today’s challenge is that of transforming traditional agricultural education and training into a skills development system responsive to rural people’s needs, which contributes to poverty reduction, food security and the achievement of the MDGs.

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Success depends on how countries will face a combination of critical issues and policy options, which can be synthesized as follows:

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Privileging the rural poor by broadening the EFA national plans to explicitly focus on skills for rural people, and specifically on rural youth and adults. Considering basic skills development for rural people as a public good, which allows communities to reduce their vulnerability and cope with man-made and natural disasters, as well as changing economic and social conditions. Developing synergies between formal and non-formal skills development run by educational and agricultural institutions, civil society and the private sector (encompassing literacy and basic skills training, extension, agriculture and rural development schools and colleges, polytechnics, universities, etc.) and expanding such collaboration also to health, infrastructure and finance ministries. Reducing the emphasis on academic pathways and credentials and increasing the recognition of non-formal and informal learning. Collaborating with agricultural research to promote knowledge, information, competencies, skills and values for better farming and improved livelihoods. Updating the curriculum to address multiple scenarios and diversified capacities in farm and off-farm skills and technologies, as well as a range of life-skills dealing with interpersonal and social issues. Addressing post-training support. Shaping new responses, such as improving the training capacity of non-governmental providers to address the magnitude of the challenge. Promoting positive discrimination measures to address rural/urban and gender inequalities. Developing a holistic approach to agriculture and rural development skills development. For example, the training of farmers has implications for higher agricultural education. Conversely, people with university education are needed for curriculum reform in primary, secondary, TVAET and teacher training. Their leadership can reinforce change at the other levels, including skills development. Addressing the vocational education and training needs of rural people within poverty reduction strategies and sector-wide approaches as the way to address the learning needs of the majority of the world’s people who play a key role in global sustainability and food security. Reviewing policies that favour urban investment, given that most of the world’s poor will continue to be rural over several of the coming decades.

However, skills training for rural people and reform processes for greater effectiveness depend also on a supportive surrounding macro-economic environment (remunerative prices to producers, fiscal and monetary policies) and sector polices (enterprise development support, credit, meritocratic access to jobs, infrastructure, etc.), which promote rural development and employment. Acquiring education and skills without the chance to use them can contribute to fostering civil strife and migration to cities. These take us far beyond the world of schools and classrooms, to a partnership between education and agriculture and rural development policy-


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makers and planners, managers and practitioners. In such an alliance, who can ensure that skills and knowledge acquisition are followed by skills and knowledge utilization? Acknowledgments Inputs and/or comments to this chapter were kindly provided by David Atchoarena, Caterina Batelo, Daniela Bruni, Riccardo del Castello, Malcolm Hazelman, Annalisa Planera, Maria Grazia Quieti and Marcela Villarreal.

Notes 1. From the Latin sustinere: sus means ‘from below’ and tenere ‘to hold’. 2. Agriculture is broadly defined to include the production, conservation, processing and marketing of crops, livestock, forestry and fish products. 3. National food security is achieved when a sufficiently stable and safe supply of food is available in the country to satisfy: (i) consumption requirements normally filled from on-farm production and home gardens; (ii) market demand; and (iii) relief distribution needs. Household food security is achieved when all household members have sufficient means to obtain all the food they need from some combination of their own production, traded or purchased supplies, and gifts or donations, and when they know about and put into practice the principles of good nutrition. Sustainable food security exists when domestic markets are performing well and households possess sufficient assets and income-earning opportunities to meet all their basic needs from their own resources. 4. See: <www.fao.org/sd/erp/ERPotheractivities en.htm> 5. See: <www.fao.org/sd/erp/> 6. See: <www.fao.org/sd/erp/ERPtktoolkit en.htm> 7. FAO introduced the FFS approach in Africa in 1995 and since then it has been taken up by a range of government and development programmes. The impacts range from increased knowledge and uptake of agricultural practices to various forms of demonstrated empowerment, including spontaneous growth of farmer networks and associations. 8. Zoonotic disease can be transmitted to any vertebrate and infection may be naturally transmitted also between animals and humans. Zoonoses are diseases that are transmitted to humans through food or water. All kind of diseases have an impact on human health and on national and household economy because of reduced production.

References Ahmed, M.; Coombs, P.H. 1975. Education for rural development: case studies for planners. New York, NY: Praeger. Atchoarena, D.; Gasperini, L., eds. 2003. Education for rural development. towards new policies. Rome: FAO; Paris: UNESCO/IIEP. Atchoarena, D. et al. 2003. Strategies and institutions for promoting skills for rural development. In: Atchoarena, D.; Gasperini, L., eds. Education for rural development: towards new policy responses. Rome: FAO; Paris: UNESCO/IIEP. Avila, M.; Gasperini, L. 2005. Skills development for rural people: a renewed challenge. (Background paper for the Working Group for International Co-operation in Skills Development. 10–11 November 2005, FAO. Rome.) Burchi, F.; De Muro, P. 2007. Education for rural people: a neglected key to food security. Rome: Università degli Studi Tre. (Working paper, no. 78.)

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Chambers, R.; Conway, G. 1991. Sustainable rural livelihoods: practical concepts for the 21st century. Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies. (Discussion paper 296.) Dumont R. 1976. Training for agriculture and rural development. Rome: FAO/UNESCO/ILO. Food and Agriculture Organization; The World Bank. 2000. AKIS/RD strategic vision and guiding principles. Rome: FAO/World Bank. Food and Agriculture Organization. 1998. Participatory curriculum development in agricultural education. A training guide. Rome: FAO. International Fund for Agricultural Development. 2001. Rural poverty report 2001: the challenge of ending rural poverty. Rome: IFAD. Lê Thanh Khoi. 1974. Education in rural development. Paris: UNESCO. Qamar, K. 2005. Modernizing national agricultural extension systems: a practical guide for policy makers of developing countries. Rome: FAO. United Nations. 2005. World Youth Report 2005: young people today, and in 2015. New York, NY: United Nations. United Nations Development Programme. 2005. Investing in development: a practical plan to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. New York, NY: UNDP. World Bank. 1991. Vocational and technical education and training. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Chapter IV.16

An International TVET Programme Development by the International Baccalaureate Organization Monique Conn

1 Introduction The success of the curriculum models developed by the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), addressing the academic needs of students in the 3 to 19 age range, is now well known. IBO programmes, and specifically the two-year pre-university Diploma Programme, grew out of international schools’ efforts to establish a common curriculum and university entry credential for geographically mobile students. International educators were also motivated by an idealistic vision: they hoped that a shared academic experience emphasizing critical thinking and exposure to a variety of points of view would encourage intercultural understanding and acceptance of others by young people. The IBO has grown rapidly and now provides, through the medium of three working languages (English, French and Spanish), three related programmes that represent an educational continuum for students from 3 to 19 years of age: the Primary Years Programme (PYP, for ages 3 to 11/12), the Middle Years Programme (MYP, for ages 11/12 to 16) and the Diploma Programme (for students aged 16 to 19). The last is designed as a two-year academic preparation for university. A great deal of interest has recently been raised by those reviewing curricular provision in some national systems, as well as in the private sector, in adapting the IBO’s educational models and principles for technical and vocational education, particularly at the upper secondary level. In collaboration with some authorized schools and partner institutions the IBO has now embarked on the development of a framework of international education that will incorporate the vision and educational principles of the IBO into local programmes that address the needs of students engaged in technical and vocational education.


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2 What Are the Aims of an IB Technical/Vocational Framework? 2.1 Providing a More Inclusive Provision for Students Aged 16 to 19 In its efforts to develop a coherent educational continuum for young people aged 3–19, the IBO recognizes that there is currently a hiatus between its two programme frameworks, the Primary Years Programme (for 3- to 11/12-year olds) and the Middle Years Programme (for 11/12- to 16-year olds), which are both inclusive, whole-school programmes, and the Diploma Programme which is clearly academic in nature and design and, in some schools, selective. Working in partnership with schools and local authorities to broaden access to the kinds of learning fostered in the Diploma Programme would potentially respond to the needs of many young people who are currently excluded from the experience of the Diploma Programme.

2.2 Responding to the IBO’s Mission Statement As an organization devoted to the development of international education worldwide, the IBO adopted an ambitious mission statement in 2002: The International Baccalaureate Organization aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people, who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. To this end the IBO works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment. These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right. <www.ibo.org/mission/>

This mission statement echoes the concerns expressed by UNESCO itself in its 1945 constitution, which states: ‘The wide diffusion of culture, and the education of humanity for justice and liberty and peace are indispensable to the dignity of man and constitute a sacred duty which all the nations must fulfil in a spirit of mutual assistance and concern’ (UNESCO, 1945). It is clear that these ambitious aims should inspire educational programmes for all students—not just those bound for academic university programmes. The strategic plan of the IBO includes the development of new pathways to help more students access an education that responds to these values. In its design and through its implementation in local contexts, the IBO’s technical and vocational framework will foster the attributes of the ‘IBO learner profile’ (Box 1), which defines learner outcomes for all IB programmes.

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Box 1. The attributes of the International Baccalaureate learner profile The aim of all IB programmes is to develop internationally minded people who, recognizing their common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet, help to create a better and more peaceful world. IB learners strive to be: Inquirers

They develop their natural curiosity. They acquire the skills necessary to conduct inquiry and research and show independence in learning. They actively enjoy learning and this love of learning will be sustained throughout their lives. Knowledgeable They explore concepts, ideas and issues that have local and global significance. In so doing, they acquire in-depth knowledge and develop understanding across a broad and balanced range of disciplines. Thinkers They exercise initiative in applying thinking skills critically and creatively to recognize and approach complex problems, and make reasoned, ethical decisions. Communicators They understand and express ideas and information confidently and creatively in more than one language and in a variety of modes of communication. They work effectively and willingly in collaboration with others. Principled They act with integrity and honesty, with a strong sense of fairness, justice and respect for the dignity of the individual, groups and communities. They take responsibility for their own actions and the consequences that accompany them. Open-minded They understand and appreciate their own cultures and personal histories, and are open to the perspectives, values and traditions of other individuals and communities. They are accustomed to seeking and evaluating a range of points of view, and are willing to grow from the experience. Caring They show empathy, compassion and respect towards the needs and feelings of others. They have a personal commitment to service, and act to make a positive difference to the lives of others and to the environment. Risk-takers They approach unfamiliar situations and uncertainty with courage and forethought, and have the independence of spirit to explore new roles, ideas and strategies. They are brave and articulate in defending their beliefs. Balanced They understand the importance of intellectual, physical and emotional balance to achieve personal well-being for themselves and others. Reflective They give thoughtful consideration to their own learning and experience. They are able to assess and understand their strengths and limitations in order to support their learning and personal development.

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2.3 Filling a Gap in International Education The OECD (quoted in Vidovich, 2004) defines the internationalization of education as ‘an international orientation in content, aimed at preparing students for performing (professionally and socially) in an international and multicultural context, and designed for domestic students as well as foreign students’. Schools also need to rethink the international and intercultural orientation of pedagogy, as well as content knowledge, ensuring an ‘open flow of people and ideas between the school and the international arena, using both educational and non-educational (especially business and industry) sources [. . . ] and extensive individualized networks across the globe’ (Vidovich, 2004). While the Primary Years Programme and the Middle Years Programme meet the needs of the whole 3 to 16 age group, the Diploma Programme is designed for the academically oriented students aged 16 to 19. However, even in developed countries, 30 to 70% of this age group opt for vocational studies, therefore being beyond the current reach of international education. In a changing global economy, it is essential that students preparing directly for active employment develop a good understanding of world issues and contexts and an understanding of their responsibilities as global citizens. Several groups (and particularly schools) engaged in international education have already stressed the need for internationally recognized qualifications in areas currently not addressed by an academic programme like the IB Diploma Programme. Several areas of study and activity, such as business and administration, information technology and tourism, are often subject to relatively similar guidelines globally. Consequently, there are numerous internationally recognized diplomas at the polytechnic and university levels that have helped to standardize such studies. There is, however, no international qualification in such areas at the secondary level. While the IBO is not ready at this stage to develop such a range of courses itself, it wishes to explore ways of working in partnership with agencies and schools in order to develop ways of internationalizing local technical and vocational studies at the upper secondary level. Through its experience in developing programmes, assessment and teacher professional development internationally, the IBO is well placed to create these contacts and connections to provide students with a truly international experience.

2.4 Reducing the Academic Versus Vocational Divide Banking on its experience and reputation in curriculum and assessment development through international collaboration, the IBO can contribute positively to technical and vocational education by challenging the perception (still prevalent in many parts of the world) that technical and vocational education is of lesser status than academic studies. By using and adapting chosen elements of the IBO’s Diploma Programme, a carefully designed educational framework will now engage students who have chosen technical and vocational education in challenging learning and rigorous assessment through a programme of international education.


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3 What Are the Characteristics of Learning in Such a Framework? 3.1 Preparing for Work in a Knowledge Society It is increasingly recognized that to prepare students to become effective participants in the rapidly changing twenty-first century society, schools must equip them with the tools and the learning dispositions to cope with, but also to manage and influence, change. An IB technical and vocational programme framework will need to: (a) develop a range of broad work-related competencies as well as deepen understanding in general areas of knowledge; (b) help students develop flexible strategies for knowledge acquisition and enhancement in varied contexts; (c) prepare students for effective participation in the changing world of work; (d) foster attitudes and habits of mind where students become true lifelong learners willing to consider new perspectives; and (e) involve students in learning that develops the capacity and will to make a positive difference.

3.2 Technical and Vocational Education The IBO is working with schools and local authorities to develop a pilot programme framework for generic, broad-based technical and vocational education, rather than a specific skills-based vocational training. On successful completion of the course, students will be able to enter employment directly or to progress to further studies in higher education. It is important that this programme framework prepares students for flexibility and mobility in a range of employment opportunities, as well as continuing lifelong learning. This means integrating broad, general learning areas, as well as specific vocational content in the programme, developing a challenging programme for high achievers, ensuring that participating schools work in close collaboration with higher education institutions and the working sector locally and internationally.

3.3 A Flexible Framework As technical and vocational education is subject to the pressures, priorities and requirements of diverse national and local economic contexts, it is important to achieve an appropriate balance between prescription of common programme elements, national or local requirements and school or student choice. Where there is a high degree of governmental control through examinations, such a balance is harder to achieve, but there is a growing trend to allow more local autonomy to schools. The IBO’s experience with government and university recognition of its Diploma Programme is a positive factor in the development of such locally accredited international programmes in technical and vocational education.

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The programme framework will be based on basic qualities of the Diploma Programme:

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a balance of breadth and depth of learning; a coherent mix of required elements and school or student options; explicit statements for values, aims, orientations and learning outcomes allowing the sustained development of concepts, skills, understandings and attitudes; a strong emphasis on learning fostering intercultural understanding; the development of critical thinking, inquiry and research skills; varied pedagogy, including collaborative learning; an exploration of human endeavour, through the school-based experience and work-based learning activities; strong student involvement in self-assessment and reflection; an encouragement of entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation; a sustained experience of community involvement and service; rigorous assessment through a blend of external as well as internal assessment methods; varied, dynamic pedagogy, supported by appropriate in-service teacher development; school/IBO collaboration in programme development and quality assurance supported and enhanced by an international network of like-minded schools and organizations.

4 Who Are the IBO’s Partners? 4.1 The Creation of a Programme in Finland Finland recognizes and promotes English-language education in general, as well as vocational upper-secondary education. In addition, there is in Finland a recognized need for upper secondary technical and vocational education programmes with a wider international focus. The Oulu Business College (OBC) and representatives from the municipality of Oulu (a city located in central Finland), as well as from the Finnish Ministry of Education, met with the IBO in December 2002 to discuss the development of a locally-based international programme in business education in co-operation with the International Baccalaureate Organization. This request was fully supported in principle by Oulun Lyseon lukio, a local IB world school which uses the IB Diploma Programme. Discussions and seminars were held over the next year, while teachers and administrators in the business school were becoming familiarized with the orientations of the Diploma Programme through attendance at IB teacher-training workshops and the study of curriculum materials in collaboration with the IB world school. A first invitational symposium on vocational education in an international context was held at the IBO’s curriculum and assessment office in Cardiff (United Kingdom) at the end of June 2003. This symposium brought together twenty-two participants


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from the IBO and the OBC, as well as individual educators and specialists in vocational education from Australia, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. In the meetings in Cardiff and, subsequently, Oulu (December 2003) a steering committee was formed and a two-phase pilot project developed: 1. Preparation phase, July 2003–July 2004: The Oulu Business College, in cooperation with the IBO and the Finnish educational authorities, continued the design of an experimental three-year programme, the ‘Business and Administration International Programme’, which complies with the Finnish requirements for their vocational qualification and contains elements of the academic IB Diploma Programme. The IBO’s contribution to this development consisted in encouraging and supporting the local IB world school staff in their participation in planning groups; it also provided OBC staff with access to further IB Diploma teacher-training workshops; it organized curriculum development meetings and started planning the research and evaluation processes associated with this new initiative. 2. Implementation phase, August 2004–August 2007. The pilot programme ‘Business and Administration International Programme’ is now being taught at OBC in co-operation with Oulun Lyseon lukio, while curriculum development continues in key areas and research is put in place. The OBC offers a threeyear course focusing on issues such as customer service and marketing. Students taking this course also study the IB business and management course, English and economics (the latter being an elective for students). These IB courses start in the first year of study, except for economics which starts in the second year. Students also take a course focused on critical thinking in the world of work, a course being developed in collaboration with the IBO. Finally, they are engaged in community service activities, take part in a locally developed course about intercultural communication and complete a final project reflecting on their educational and work-based experience. It is planned that four cohorts of students will follow the pilot programme. A final evaluation of the pilot project will take place in August 2007, when a decision will be made on the continuation, amendments to, and potential expansion of, the agreed framework for this pilot. The first and second cohorts number about twenty students each. For the full duration of the pilot project, the IBO has authorized the local IB Diploma school to teach IB courses to the OBC students, who are registered as certificate candidates for the IB Diploma and undergo the regular assessment processes associated with their choice of courses. The IBO continues to provide OBC staff with access to teacher-training workshops. It participates in the biyearly steering committee meetings and organizes seminars, workshops and curriculum development meetings with teachers involved in the project and other experts.

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4.2 Development of a Similar Partnership in Quebec, Canada The seminars organized within the development described above and another invitational symposium held in 2004 included participants from other IB world schools. Among them, two IB Diploma schools in Quebec declared their interest in launching a similar scheme in collaboration with the IBO and, indeed, with the OBC in Finland, in order to extend the values and the benefits of an IB international education to students engaged in vocational education within their institutions. In the education system in Quebec (which is under the jurisdiction of the provincial ministry of education) students obtain a secondary school leaving certificate at the age of 16/17 and can then continue their studies in a Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel (Cégep), where they opt for a two-year pre-university academic programme or a three-year ‘technical’ programme that leads either to direct employment or to a range of programmes in tertiary education. The Collège François-Xavier Garneau in Quebec City and Collège Laflèche in Trois-Rivières are two such Cégeps which, as authorized IB world schools, offer their pre-university academic students the option of taking the IB Diploma instead of the provincial programme. The two schools have developed a very close working relationship and drafted the pilot framework together, with the intention that this framework of studies would eventually become an option for students engaged in any of their many technical programmes. They have based these efforts on the explicit aim of helping their students who choose a technical and vocational programme (the majority of the student population of Quebec’s Cégeps) to develop an international and intercultural outlook as they prepare themselves to be citizens and professionals in an increasingly pluralist world. A steering group was formed with representation from the two Cégeps, the Quebec Ministry of Education, the IBO and also the local association of IB world schools in the province in order to shape the development of, and support for, the pilot programme framework. The project was facilitated by the fact that both institutions are already authorized IB world schools, very experienced in the teaching of the Diploma Programme, as well as in technical and vocational education, and very confident in the merits of blending elements of both. At the time of writing this text, the project has been approved by the IBO’s governing body, is fully supported by the Quebec Ministry of Education, and the two Cégeps will start recruiting about forty students each for the first year of implementation of the programme, which was due to begin in September 2006. For the first year, it is planned that the students will come from the following technical and vocational programmes:

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Police technology; Correctional and youth services intervention; Fashion design and marketing; Hotel management; and Tourism.

The students’ three-year programme will feature all the required elements of their respective technical and vocational options, as well as a common core developed


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in collaboration with the IBO within the principles of the international framework. They will study the IB’s French A1 (mother tongue and literature course) as well as an IB second-language course with the other IB students engaged in the Diploma Programme. They will also follow the critical-thinking course developed in collaboration between the participating schools and the IBO, as well as specially designed local courses on ethics and multiculturalism, sustainable development and physical health. An intercultural experience (living and/or working in a different cultural environment) will be required by the schools (within the programme’s community service activities, on-the-job training or as a special project) in order for the students to get a better understanding of the organizational differences, the customs, rules and codes for the practice of their profession in different cultural contexts. Like their Finnish counterparts, the students will also complete a final project at the end of their programme, reflecting on chosen elements of their experience.

5 The IBO’s Framework for a Programme of International Education 5.1 Extending the Pilot The two contexts described above present opportunities for the IBO to deepen its understanding of how an international dimension can be incorporated in technical and vocational studies, and of how the organization can contribute to this process through its experience in international curriculum and programme development, professional development and research. Indeed, the organization’s strategic plan states its intention to increase access to the values of the IBO to students who would not normally follow one of its mainstream programmes, particularly the Diploma Programme. As the two pilot projects progress and benefit from each other’s experience through a collaborative process of development, evaluation and research, it will be advantageous to gain insight into the applicability of this experience in other national and cultural contexts through controlled expansion of the pilot. The IBO has therefore developed a generic framework which could be proposed to other interested parties, either IB world schools themselves wishing to extend the benefits of international education to students in technical and vocational studies (as in Quebec), or institutions forming a close formal partnership with IB world schools (as in the Finnish project). These partnerships will involve a range of agencies, including schools, colleges, local or regional education authorities, national education ministries (providing organizations), to develop programmes which combine:

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locally or nationally validated technical and vocational qualifications; mainstream subjects from the IBO’s Diploma Programme; a range of other elements which reflect the values of the IBO.

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5.2 Components of a Career-Related Programme Following approval by the organization, all technical and vocational education programmes (normally spread over two or three years of full-time study) developed in collaboration with the IBO will include the components shown in Box 2.

Box 2. The components of all IBO technical and vocational programmes Required elements of the local or national qualification. Mainstream IB Diploma Programme subjects:

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a modern language from group 2 (foreign languages); one or more other subjects from any other hexagon group (individuals and societies, experimental sciences, mathematics, the arts).

The Diploma Programme subjects (except for mother tongue and group 2 languages) will be examined in English, French or Spanish. Other mandatory elements:

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the critical-thinking course developed by the IBO; community involvement and service; an extended piece of reflective writing or a presentation.

Where appropriate, as agreed with the IBO to fulfil the requirements of the programme framework, school-based elements:

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locally devised units or courses of study developed specially for this programme.

This framework will be developed through the IBO’s usual collaborative processes, where schools and teachers contribute to the development, share ideas and resources, participate in international professional development events and engage in regular discussion and debate through technology. It is interesting to note that the pilot project already crosses the language barriers and fosters dialogue and collaboration between Finnish and French-speaking schools and teachers. This is a powerful way to help schools develop and integrate an international dimension into their programmes.

5.3 Assessment and Certification Due to the combination of locally-determined and IB elements of the programme framework, there will be a blend of direct IB assessment of student learning (for IB mainstream Diploma courses) and of internal assessment performed by the schools themselves: for some elements of the programme (such as the critical-thinking course, community involvement or other locally-developed courses) student work


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will be authenticated by the school and endorsed by the IBO. The organization will develop common generic criteria for these aspects of the programme and will monitor this internal assessment through the organization of a process of guided peer review of school documentation, within a collaborative form of programme evaluation. The partnership between schools, local authorities and the IBO will be reflected in student certification upon completion of the programme. In addition to the local or national technical and vocational qualification, a student will receive:

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certificates for Diploma Programme subjects taken; a certificate of international education with the logo ‘In collaboration with the IBO’, provided specific conditions are satisfied; a record of achievement produced by the school or providing organization summarizing all the activities successfully undertaken by the student during the course of study on the international programme.

5.4 Conditions for School Participation A set of criteria will form the basis for an authorization process for all future schools or partners requesting authorization to offer this programme framework for their students. In so doing, the IBO aims to ensure that the proposed local programmes are well aligned with the organization’s mission statement, learner profile and the Diploma Programme’s general aims and objectives. The school or agency will be asked to demonstrate the added value that the programme would bring, and how the IBO’s core values would be embedded in student learning. In this process, the IBO is using its experience in developing collaborative processes of quality assurance through initial programme authorization and evaluation. The school or agency will need to provide evidence of the financial, human and technological resources that will be allocated to the programme, including on-going curriculum development, student support and teacher professional development.

6 What Are the Issues Related to the Development of Such a Framework? The IBO’s motivation in the development of this pilot programme framework is obviously to use the leverage of partnerships with like-minded organizations and experienced IB world schools to understand better how an international dimension can be incorporated in, and influence, technical and vocational studies. This experience will be essential to get an understanding of the ways in which the organization’s educational programmes can benefit a broader range of students at the upper end of secondary school.

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Several important issues have been identified for study and research, for example:

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How will the teaching and learning styles of the Diploma Programme courses compare with those used in local technical and vocational contexts? Will they form a coherent educational experience for the students? What elements of critical thinking will be most adapted to the needs of young people already involved in the world of work? What will be the role of problem-based learning in such a context? How can active inquiry and learner involvement be best fostered in both academic and work-related learning? Will adult learners in technical and vocational education find the programme meaningful and interesting? How should courses and approaches be adapted for a wide age range? How can metacognition and reflection related to work-related learning be fostered? How will students develop learning dispositions that will make them effective lifelong learners in their context? How can effective professional development and mechanisms for collaboration be developed for academic and technical and vocational studies teachers? How can we reach a balance of valid and reliable school-based and external assessment? How will different national and cultural contexts view this blend of local and international assessment and qualification? How can international mindedness be fostered in specific work-related environments, and what should be expected of students? More generally, are there specific areas where a truly international curriculum can be developed to help students participate in emerging forms of work in the global arena? How can the IBO contribute to this development?

6.1 Evaluation and Research At the same time as the development of the pilot project is taking place, the IBO is engaged in establishing the parameters for a thorough evaluation of the course, as well as defining areas of relevant research, in collaboration with the schools themselves and with local universities. There are six evaluative aims, outlined as follows:

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To determine the nature of student learning, together with formative and summative achievements, in the academic and core elements of the programme. To monitor the development of student perceptions of international mindedness throughout the period of the programme. To identify teacher pedagogy and perceptions of the programme, and their changes over time. To explore the administrative, management and organizational issues arising from the implementation of the programme within the institutions.


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To identify patterns and choices for employment/higher education both for students participating in the international programme and for other students. To explore employer/higher education expectations of skills, attitudes and knowledge of students recruited from the international programme and to evaluate their achievement in practice.

Research methods will include interviews of different constituent groups, questionnaires, teacher comments on student progress, formative and summative assessment results, and surveys on attitudes regarding elements contributing to international mindedness. The longitudinal research will involve constituent groups within the programme, as well as control groups in all institutions. In addition to English, both Finnish and French will be used in the research, through the collaboration of the schools themselves, as well as local universities.

7 Conclusion: Future Directions The pilot programme framework described above clearly constitutes an opportunity for the IBO to explore ways of developing new approaches for reaching a large number of young people (and potentially a number of adults as well) engaged in pre-tertiary programmes of study that had not been developed so far by the organization. The time may come when the IBO itself may develop an international technical and vocational qualification in a number of areas of study. However, the current approach of blending local and international elements might well be seen to serve the needs of students better, at least in a large number of areas: it may be the best solution to allow local economic, cultural and educational choices to be made according to the local context. At the same time, such a flexible framework will create a dynamic network of internationally-minded schools sharing a vocabulary and educational aims for lifelong learning and responsible citizenship, collaborating to develop a truly international educational experience for their students. There is little doubt that with time and experience, this new provision will influence the Diploma Programme itself. The IBO continues to review and develop its programmes to make them suitable for twenty-first century learners. Human endeavour and particularly the world of work are changing realities that students must explore in order to develop a ‘range of broad employment-related competencies which [. . . ] provide the basis for 1) effective participation in emerging forms of work and work organizations; 2) access to a range of education and training pathways, both initially and subsequent to commencing employment; 3) improved flexibility and mobility in employment; and 4) effective participation in adult life generally’ (Munro, 2003). The classic distinction between academic preparation for university and more work-orientated study will likely become increasingly blurred and irrelevant. The IBO’s current investigation in collaboration with its partner schools and agencies, therefore, may have wide-ranging implications for the future development of its programmes of international education for the upper secondary school.

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References Munro, J. 2003. Constructing a core curriculum for vocational education in an IBO Context. (Paper prepared for the Conference on Vocational Education for an International Context, Cardiff, United Kingdom, 26 June 2003.) (Unpublished.) UNESCO. 1945. Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Paris: UNESCO. Vidovich, L. 2004. Towards internationalizing the curriculum in a context of globalization: comparing policy processes in two settings. Compare, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 443–61.

Chapter IV.17

A Profile of TVET in the Asia and Pacific Region: A Survey of Progress, Innovations and Promising Practices Chris Chinien, Elspeth McOmish, Mohan Perera and Alex Chinien

1 Introduction Given the importance of human capital and skills development for economic growth and social cohesion and inclusion, in 1999 UNESCO convened a group of experts from around the world to the Seoul Congress for a collective reflection on critical reforms necessary for adapting changing labour market needs and growing public expectations. The recommendation which emerged from the Seoul Congress was used to update UNESCO’s standard-setting (normative) instrument for TVET (UNESCO, 1999). This instrument was further updated in 2002 through a collaborative effort between UNESCO and ILO (UNESCO/ILO, 2002). Various initiatives were undertaken to encourage Member States to implement this recommendation. In 2003–2004 UNESCO conducted a survey to assess the extent to which its Member States had implemented the recommendation as part of major reform initiatives to cope with the demands of the new economy. More specifically, the survey attempted to gather information on the extent of policy and programme reforms undertaken since the second International Congress on TVET held in Seoul in 1999. The survey was divided into four sections, each focused on a different set of issues, namely: (a) policy, planning and management of TVET systems; (b) access to TVET; (c) relevance and quality of TVET systems; and (d) monitoring progress with TVET. The survey questionnaire was sent to all Member States. Fifty per cent completed and returned the questionnaire. Results of the survey responses from nineteen countries (representing a response rate of 58%) were used to generate a profile of TVET for the Asia and Pacific Region. The countries included in the analysis were: Australia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Solomon Islands, Thailand, Tonga, Vanuatu and Viet Nam. All responses that could be summarized into frequency counts and percentages were used to make comparative analyses. The open-ended questions that yielded more qualitative information were analysed for recurrent themes, which contribute to the understanding of TVET reform initiatives in the region and numerous


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innovative and promising practices being implemented throughout the Asia and Pacific region to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of TVET.

2 An Overview of TVET in the Asia and Pacific Region Two-thirds of the countries have implemented a national strategy to oversee policy formulation and the planning and management of TVET in the Asia and Pacific Region (Fig. 1). Over half of the countries had established specific initiatives to ensure that TVET was relevant to the world of work and to monitor progress against some established benchmarks. Access to TVET has received the most attention among the four key issues under consideration. This is not surprising in the context of the MDGs and Education for All (EFA).

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Fig. 1 The planning and management of TVET in the Asia and Pacific Region

As shown in Fig. 2, the monitoring of TVET programmes was the area where there was most significant variation between the developing and least-developed countries. It is noteworthy that less was being done in the least-developed countries for monitoring programme outcomes. Also of significance is the fact that both the developing and least-developed countries were slightly more engaged in various initiatives to increase access to TVET.

IV.17 Profile of TVET in the Asia and Pacific Region 80%

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Fig. 2 The involvement of developed, developing and least-developed countries of the Asia and Pacific Region in TVET

3 Policy, Planning and Management of TVET Systems 3.1 Goals of National Strategy/Plan Human resources development was the theme for the development of a national strategy or master plan for TVET in all countries. In this context, TVET is positioned to contribute to the development of a highly skilled workforce to support a strong performance in the global economy.

3.2 National Strategy/Master Plan for TVET As shown in Fig. 3, a significant number of countries (78%) have also developed a national development plan for TVET, with the most developed countries of the region more likely to have already completed such a plan. In general, the developing countries were in the process of implementing their plans. All national framework documents for the region also bind TVET to the two major Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): the fight against poverty and discrimination against women. In some countries the development of the TVET master plan is carried out in collaboration with an economic planning unit under the responsibility of the Prime Minister’s office and the plan is based on a national development strategy. Increasingly, TVET is perceived as an enabling instrument on the road to becoming an

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78%

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40%

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20% 11%

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0% National Development Plan

Education for All (EFA) Plan National body to co-ordinate TVET

Fig. 3 Countries in the Asia and Pacific Region with various national development plans for TVET

industrialized nation and for improving the living conditions of the poor, especially those from rural areas. TVET is also increasingly being seen as an instrument for promoting environmentally sustainable development. TVET institutions are being encouraged to use more formal and systematic planning that is in strategic alignment with each country’s national development plans. Below are listed some specific goals forming part of the national strategy/plan identified by Member States:

r r r r r r

To address labour turnover, skills shortages and mismatch, changing workplace due to technological innovations, changes in industrial structures, employment security and social valuation of workers; To align all agencies strategically to address skills shortages and mismatch; To ensure an adequate supply of human resources to support progress in IT and other growing fields; To establish a system to support workers’ career development and lifelong learning needs; To reconcile employers’ short- and long-term needs with that of employees’ career life-plans. To develop vocational awareness among young people

3.3 A National Body for TVET Some 67% of countries have established a national body for TVET. However, in some countries plans establishing such an entity are still pending government approval. The mandate of this body is to ascertain the availability of a skilled labour

IV.17 Profile of TVET in the Asia and Pacific Region

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force to support economic growth and to ensure social cohesion and inclusion. Such an entity allows countries with decentralized jurisdictions to maintain a national focus on TVET. The establishment of a national body for TVET has resulted in a net increase in public and private skill-training institutions. The national body can also take the form of a national council chaired by the minister of education and involving many other ministries. When a national body is not in place, it is usually the ministry of education that has the overall responsibility for TVET. In some countries, TVET is administered by the ministry of labour. Countries with no national body were less likely to be engaged in the development of a national plan for TVET. Some international funding agencies are recommending the establishment a national body for TVET as part of strategic development plans. Under enabling legislation, some national bodies have the mandate to make decisions on strategic policy, establish national objectives and priorities for the training system, co-ordinate programmes, develop and expand TVET, and ensure programme quality on a national basis. Typical responsibilities of the national body include:


To co-ordinate all TVET activities; To develop guidelines for the reform of TVET; To provide labour-market information; To contribute to policy development; The financing of TVET; To establish training funds; Curriculum development; The development of learning materials and other resources; To design teacher-training strategies; Training and staff development; Programme monitoring and evaluation; To be responsible for a management information system; To liaise with all key stakeholders.

With the support of the Commonwealth of Learning, senior vocational education officers from the Asia-Pacific Region have established the Pacific Association of Technical, Vocational Education and Training (PATVET) as a regional body to support the improvement and development of skills development in the region. A resolution has also been made that a national body should be established on each island State to strengthen TVET.

3.4 The Contribution of TVET to EFA EFA, with its strong focus on primary education and remedial education for adults, is not universally embraced in the TVET sector and was only included in the national strategy of two small island States (11%). However, all countries were involved in various initiatives to improve access and equity in TVET, which in effect is consistent with the goals of EFA.

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4 Facilitating Access: TVET for All 4.1 Funding Expansion Eighty per cent of the countries indicated that there has been some funding to increase education and training opportunities in general. While in some countries TVET funding has increased, it has generally remained stable in others. No decline in funding was reported. In some countries new facilities were under construction and others were being planned. Expansion of funding for TVET is clearly related to the health of the economy. The output of TVET is a key consideration which is often overlooked when considering the expansion of TVET. How many TVET graduate can be absorbed by the labour market in a given economic situation? In one instance, the TVET share of the total education system was established at 20% to address this issue. This much was necessary to match TVET output to corresponding growth in business and industry. Lack of adequate government support and funding for TVET is a major problem for small island States. In some developing countries, especially these small islands, although no substantial national government funding has been appropriated for TVET, financial support from the World Bank, the European Union, the Asian Development Bank and other foreign donors is helping the expansion of TVET. More wealthy countries in the region are also helping smaller States in building the capacity of their human resources in TVET. Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) have also launched skill-development programmes, particularly at the community level. A topology of expansion drawn from the survey responses includes the introduction of new courses, renovation, expansion and modernization of existing facilities and establishment of new centres and institutions, Some TVET institutions are attempting to generate income to cover their basic operational costs. For example, some TVET institutions have introduced a timesector privatization concept, which allows the public and private sector to utilize TVET facilities to deliver staff training under an agreed payment scheme. Other cost-saving initiatives include: (a) merging institutions into multi-campus facilities to enable the sharing and mobilization of resources; and (b) the fusion of agencies to reduce overlapping in skills development activities.

4.2 Efforts to Change the Image of TVET Given the general belief that TVET can give a country’s economic and socioeconomic development a huge upturn, various initiatives are being undertaken to improve the image of TVET and to encourage young people to consider a skilled trade as a career of first choice. In some countries TVET policies are being modified to promote lifelong learning by developing pathways between different educational levels, or the articulation of TVET with higher education. Other initiatives include:


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Using the context learning approach in the teaching of mathematics, science and technology to encourage more students to take these subjects; Introducing pre-vocational education in general education to help inculcate a culture of skills development among young people, especially among girls; and Offering programmes supporting the school-to-work transition.

4.3 Improving Access and Equity for Designated Target Groups Although few countries indicated that the goals of EFA were integrated in the national strategy or master plan for TVET, results showed that there were a considerable number of initiatives that have been implemented to increase the participation of designated target groups in TVET, namely: women and girls; poor people from rural areas and remote communities; people with disabilities; people with nonEnglish speaking backgrounds; conflict-affected people; and ethnic minorities— when applicable. Lack of support for TVET from the public and from politicians has been an obstacle for increasing government assistance for improving access to TVET. Some programmes are being established by training institutions without government support. Fig. 4 shows that considerable efforts were being deployed by countries to increase the participation of disadvantaged target groups in TVET. The level of effort for people affected by war reflects the fact that fewer countries of the region were involved in war or armed conflict, rather than a lack of interest to meet the needs of this target group. Fig. 4 provides a brief overview of these accomplishments related to TVET for All. 100

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4.4 Women and Girls Eighty-nine per cent of the countries reported having implemented various initiatives to attract women and girls to TVET. The following measures are illustrative of these efforts:

r r r r r r r r r

Committees were formed to promote the participation of women and girls in TVET. In some cases, the policy was built into the national strategy, or became an additional strategy that was added to the national plan; Women included in planning and decision-making at all levels; female instructors were encouraged; Develop special TVET programmes for girls who have dropped out of schools; Offer gender-sensitive training to TVET personnel; Implement a gender-friendly training environment in TVET; Establish polytechnics for women; Provide financial incentives to encourage employers to give women greater access to apprenticeship in non-traditional occupations; Introduce female-friendly trades, such as tailoring, hairdressing and weaving, to increase women’ participation in TVET; and Provide assistance to parents of school-aged children.

4.5 Poor People from Rural Areas and Remote Communities Almost all countries (94%) had implemented programmes to encourage the participation of poor people from rural and remote communities in TVET. A summary of specific initiatives that have been implemented is as follows:

r r r

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Integrating a national poverty eradication programme into the national strategy or master plan; Investments to strengthen communities and regions economically and socially disadvantaged through learning and employment; More formal programmes, such as apprenticeship training, are often concentrated in urban areas where most businesses and industries are located. Incentives are provided to encourage employers to hire apprentices from rural areas. Incentives are also provided to hire apprentices from rural areas to address skill shortages in these regions; Employment facilitation programmes introduced to train disadvantaged target groups, such as small farmers or fishermen, to augment self-support abilities and enhance employability; Flexible training delivery and establishment of community-based training centres; Taking training to people in rural areas with mobile training units; Imparting income-generating skills; Annexing skill-training programmes to secondary schools;


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Running campaigns to motivate youth and adults to participate in training programmes; Facilitating access to training for people with little or no education; Using mobile training teams to train trainers; and Agriculture-based programmes for poor people living in rural areas.

4.6 People with Disabilities In most countries, equity policy is mandated by law and TVET training for people with disabilities is enacted in specific legislations. Seventy-eight per cent of countries have implemented specific programmes to remove barriers that have excluded people with disabilities from involvement in TVET. Some programmes for people with disabilities are run by non-governmental/voluntary organizations. The range of activities implemented to improve access to people with disability to TVET in the region includes:

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Incentives to encourage employers to sponsor apprentices with disabilities; Purchasing training places in TVET that are dedicated to people with disabilities; Injecting more TVET funding targeted to people with disabilities; Established a co-ordinating system to facilitate the routing of people with disabilities from school to TVET and employment; and Establishing special skill-development programmes.

4.7 Conflict-Affected People Given that the great majority of the countries in the region have not been involved recently in war, armed conflict or civil unrest, only 33% reported programmes to address the skill-development needs of people affected by conflict. Only six countries in the region reported having to deal with war-affected individuals. Where applicable, the following provisions were made:

r r

Establishment of a quota system for admitting war-affected persons in TVET; and Establishment of skills-development programmes for people affected by ethnic tension.

4.8 Ethnic Minorities Eighty-three per cent of the countries were engaged in special initiatives to include ethnic minorities in TVET. However, it appears that in some countries ethnic minorities are more interested in general education rather than TVET. The following inclusion initiatives were reported:

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Making funds available for the provision of inclusion; Establishing mechanisms to give minorities a voice in decision-making; Establishing employment equity programmes that provide pre-vocational training to job-seekers encountering barriers; Incentives to encourage employers to sponsor apprentices from ethnic minority groups; Establishing training programmes to enable ethnic minority groups to overcome deficits in literacy, numeracy and language skills; and Programmes to integrate foreign workers.

4.9 Equity Policy for TVET The mandate to address socio-economic needs and labour-market requirements with relatively modest resources places considerable pressure on TVET. Eighty-nine per cent of countries have implemented equity policy to facilitate access to TVET. In many cases, equity policy was encapsulated in the national strategy for TVET. The goal of the equity policy is to combat exclusion and discrimination and to promote inclusion, which is one of the basic axiomatic principles of UNESCO. The equity policies reported aimed at the traditional designated target groups, namely: women and girls, poor people, people with disabilities, war-affected people and ethnic minorities. In addition, other important sources of discrimination were also addressed, such as: learning disability, over-age, cultural differences, language, literacy, numeracy, religion, unemployment, the incarcerated and people living in isolation. Below is a list of specific approaches implemented to address the issues and concerns related to equity:

r r r

Establishment of specialized agencies to oversee the implementation of equity policy; Reporting outcomes on a regular basis to ensure accountability; and Providing scholarships and financial assistance to allow poor people to participate in TVET.

4.10 PLAR Only 56% of the countries in the region reported having implemented a system for assessing and recognizing prior learning (PLAR). Again, the health of the economy seems to be a key determinant for offering PLAR services in TVET. Some countries have enacted special legislation incorporating PLAR services in TVET, which is available to applicants upon enrolment. Countries that have successfully established PLAR services have in most cases also established some form of vocational qualifications framework, which has been used as a basis for setting national standards for occupational skills. These standards are used for assessing and recognizing prior learning. PATVET is attempting to introduce a regional qualifications framework for


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the Pacific islands. It is assumed that this framework will enable workers from small island States to migrate to wealthier countries. This can be an important source of income for countries which rely heavily on remittances. Two other initiatives closely associated with the PLAR system are: (a) career counselling; and (b) providing multiple-entry/exit to TVET programmes.

4.11 Other Initiatives to Increase Access Other initiatives to increase access to TVET include the following:

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Flexible delivery to accommodate the needs of disadvantaged groups; Adopting instructional methods to meet the special needs of designated target groups; Providing professional development to equip teachers with the knowledge and skills to work with and teach people with special needs; Offering dual-track high-school programmes, which prepare students for both academic and TVET options: school-based apprenticeship programmes; Incentives provided to employers in support of the training and hiring of older workers who are welfare recipients, redundant or re-entering the workforce.

5 Relevance In general, all countries were committed to forging strong links with the world of work so that TVET graduates would be equipped with the skills needed to enter wage employment and self-employment. Most countries (72%) have held some form of national consultation for capturing the input of key stakeholders in order to enhance the relevance of the TVET system and its programmes. Typical consultation formats include: (a) a national forum; (b) a national council; and (c) a ministerial commission. Some countries are establishing sector councils to identify and address current and anticipated challenges for skills and learning, and to implement longterm human resources planning and development strategies for their respective sectors. At least four countries—Australia, Japan, Malaysia and the Philippines—have developed occupational standards as part of their workforce development strategy. These occupational standards are used for developing: (a) a national qualifications framework; (b) training standards; (c) benchmarks for establishing prior learning assessment and recognition of skills acquired on a non-formal and informal basis; and (d) for training provision and certification. Below are listed some initiatives introduced to increase the relevance of TVET:

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Obtaining industry collaboration in training delivery, such as an advisory input. Curricula are reviewed every five years in collaboration with industry to ensure the authenticity of occupational requirements; Promoting cross-industry collaboration;

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Facilitating flexible mixes of skills; Predicting and addressing skill shortages; Developing skills to support innovation in industry; Use of competency-based approaches for learning and learning assessment; Paid professional leave enables TVET instructors to participate in industrial training to update their industrial knowledge and skills. They are expected to share the skills acquired with other instructors and students.

5.1 Flexibility in TVET Delivery In their efforts to increase the flexibility of TVET, at least 50% of countries were offering various scheduling options, such as day and block release and sandwich programming, which allows learners to combine on-the-job training with schoolbased training. In most of these countries (83%), TVET programmes were available either in the evening or on a part-time basis (Fig. 5). It is noteworthy that in most countries the majority of TVET students study on a part-time basis.

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5.2 Use of ICTs in TVET Only one-third of countries were using radio, television, the Internet and other open and distance learning (ODL) modalities, in spite of the potential capacity of ICTs to increase the flexibility of TVET delivery (Fig. 6). Some public and private providers are delivering training content only by distance and others are using a blended strategy. In general, the major emphasis of policies for integrating ICTs in education is


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Fig. 6 Mode of TVET delivery using ICTs

very much at the university level. While some countries were planning to introduce ICTs for on-line learning in TVET, others had no provision for making a commitment to more flexible means of delivery.

5.3 Comments on Developing Countries Small island States were less likely to use ICTs in TVET, but there was a belief that ODL is extremely important for small island States, irrespective of their size.

5.4 New Competencies in TVET A significant number of countries have introduced specific initiatives to identify and incorporate generic broadly transferable skills in TVET (Fig. 7), such as communication (78%), teamwork (72%) and technology skills (78%). Other approaches being used to infuse new competencies through TVET include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Collecting, analysing and organizing information; Communicating ideas; Planning and organizing activities; Solving problems; Learning to learn; Innovation skills; Entrepreneurship skills.

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78%

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73% 72% 72% 71% 70% 69%

Communication skills

Teamwork skills

Technology skills

Fig. 7 New competencies acquired through TVET

UNESCO’s Asia and Pacific Regional Office in Bangkok has organized capacitybuilding workshops and professional development to train TVET teachers so as to infuse and facilitate the development of new competencies. Some TVET systems have introduced compulsory courses and extra-curricular activities allowing students to learn new competencies. Efforts are also being made to design and develop curricula for teaching new and emerging technical competencies, such as mechatronics (mechanics and electronics technology) and autotronics (automotive and electronics technology).

5.5 Micro-Business, Farming and Artisan Skills Approximately two-thirds of the countries have implemented micro-business (61%), as well as farming and artisan skills (67%). These initiatives include communitybased training for enterprise development, which aims to prepare TVET graduates for creating enterprises that may provide a livelihood immediately after completing their training programmes. Entrepreneurship, which is central to this approach, is fast becoming an integral part of TVET. Entrepreneurship training is sometimes included in compulsory general foundation courses, which also include rural development and environmental protection, as well as financing and setting up microbusiness and artisan trades.

6 Monitoring A substantial proportion of the countries (61%) have already established national goals or benchmarks against which to measure the provision of TVET. Some coun-


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0 National statistical system Collection of distinct sets allowing data on TVET to of data on full- and partbe collected separately time learners

Collection of data on Collection of post-training programme completers data on programme outcomes and non-completers

Fig. 8 Measuring TVET

tries have also developed an action plan and key performance measures for assessing the national strategy or plan. Through PATVET, member countries are sharing knowledge, skills, experiences, resources and information on TVET. This will provide useful benchmarks for assessing TVET. Some TVET systems are using ISO 9001 management system certification to ensure quality and effective delivery of services. As shown in Fig. 8, it is noteworthy that 83% of the countries have a national statistical system that allows data on TVET to be collected separately. Not all countries (33%) were collecting statistical information distinguishing part-time from full-time learners. However, a substantial number of countries (67%) were tracking programme completers and non-completers. Surprisingly, only 44% of the countries were conducting tracer or follow-up studies to determine the rate of placement and graduates’ degree of satisfaction with TVET programme.

6.1 Impact of UNESCO’s Recommendation for TVET The purpose of UNESCO’s Revised Recommendations for TVET was to assist its Member States in adapting TVET to meet the needs and expectations of a rapidly changing global economic environment (UNESCO/ILO, 2002). There are many similarities between countries’ national development plans and UNESCO’s recommendations for TVET. The Seoul Congress on TVET (UNESCO, 1999) and UNESCO’s recommendations gave some impetus for TVET reform in many

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countries. Since the recommendations were adopted, all Member States of the AsiaPacific Region involved in this survey have undertaken major initiatives for policy and programme reforms in TVET. In some countries, especially the developing and least-developed ones, the recommendation had a direct impact on TVET reforms. In more developed countries, the labour-market demands had a stronger influence on TVET development. However, the thrust of UNESCO’s recommendations is generally consistent with the reform of TVET systems. Although the nature of the reforms was consistent with the UNESCO’s Education for All movement and the UN Millennium Development Goals, there were no indications that these two international benchmarks for development were used as a primary reference for developing national TVET plans. It should be said here that a few countries were unaware of the existence of UNESCO’s recommendations. Experience has demonstrated that a national seminar is an effective way of disseminating major recommendations for TVET reform, as it facilitates consensusbuilding between government/industry/labour/institutions/educators/administrators and service receivers on key priorities, from educational reform to the establishment of an action plan to address needs. All the countries that were aware of UNESCO’s recommendations for TVET unanimously embraced this standard-setting document. In the developing and leastdeveloped countries, lack of funding and shortage of trained staff are minimizing the impact of the recommendations and slowing the rate of progress in TVET reforms. In spite of these barriers, all countries of the Asia and Pacific Region are making vigorous efforts to strengthen TVET in strategic alignment with their national human-resources development plan and labour-market requirements. UNESCO’s recommendations provide a most valuable blueprint for the development and improvement of TVET in its Member States.

References UNESCO. 1999. Lifelong learning and training: a bridge to the future; final report of the International Congress on Technical and Vocational Education; Seoul, 1999. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO/ILO. 2002. Technical and vocational education and training for the twenty-first century. Paris: UNESCO; Geneva, Switzerland: ILO.

Section 5 Learning for Employment and Citizenship in Post-Conflict Countries

David Johnson and Lyle Kane Department of Education, University of Oxford, United Kingdom


Chapter V.1

Overview: Vocational Education, Social Participation and Livelihoods in Post-Conflict Countries David Johnson and Lyle Kane

1 Introduction The collection of papers in this section is concerned with the well-being1 of youth in those developing countries that have suffered violent conflict. We know that violent conflict and poverty are inextricably linked (Buckland, 2005), that conflict retards economic and social development and is a key obstacle to achieving Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals (UNDP, 2003; World Bank, 2003). We know too that youth are at once the primary victims and primary actors in conflict2 and are therefore central to any approach to human development. In its recent World development report: development and the next generation (World Bank, 2007), the World Bank explores the importance of ‘investing’ in young people and argues that the decline in fertility rates in most developing countries means that many will see a larger share of people of working age with fewer children or elderly dependents to support. This raises new challenges, but also, it asserts, provides ‘an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate growth and reduce poverty’. We aim, in this overview, to outline the promises and pitfalls of vocational education aimed at young adults in conflict-affected countries. In so doing, we take the social sciences concept of ‘youth transitions’3 with the aim of examining three critical and overlapping aspects thereof—education, work and citizenship—in those countries with fragile economies and human relationships. The World Bank argues that these transitions are ‘critical for poverty reduction and growth because they relate to building, maintaining, using, and reproducing human capital’ (2007, p. 40). This notwithstanding, the paper argues that while we know that they are an important source of human capital and vital to economic growth and human development, we have not been able to answer with confidence or precision some crucial questions about the effects of conflict on the participation of youth in education, economics and civil society. Nor have we, as a research community, been able to articulate clear policy choices for governments, aimed at improving learning, work and life opportunities for youth in the developing world. This was confirmed in a conference on Education and Conflict: Theory, Policy and Practice, convened by Oxford University in collaboration with UNICEF in April 2006 (see Johnson & Van Kalmthout, 2006). The conference concluded that we have only rough measures of youth well-being at our disposal. As a consequence, policies and services aimed at R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 V.1, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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young people in conflict-affected countries are crudely targeted and operate on a ‘rule of thumb’ (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006). Those practitioners involved in post-conflict reconstruction were extremely conscious of the limitations of our current knowledge base and the lack of evidence-led approaches to development planning and programming.

2 Equality of Opportunity Thus, the first theme that we are concerned with in exploring the potential of vocational education is equality of opportunity and the well-being of youth in conflictaffected developing countries. In particular, we are concerned with the opportunities available for youth to continue to learn (in diverse ways) beyond primary school, and the extent to which such learning offers continuities to work and to productive citizenship. Simply put, equality, or rather ‘inequality of opportunity’, in access to education, to work and earnings, and to participation in civil society, defines the issue. For us, economic growth and human development is more than simply a reduction in absolute deprivation. A sound understanding of relative deprivation or inequity is of critical importance in building human capacity. When inequity becomes deeply entrenched in a society, this threatens stability and the opportunity for human development and economic growth. The fact of the matter is that inequalities between different groups in society, or ‘horizontal inequalities’ (Johnson & Stewart, 2007; Mancini, 2005; Østby, 2003; Stewart, 2000) have been shown to be a source of violent conflict (Marshall, 2005). Indeed, horizontal inequalities in educational access are a particularly important form of inequality since they lead to other horizontal inequalities—in income, employment, nutrition and health, as well as political position. Thus, the education sector plays a critical role in conflict-affected or conflict-prone societies: on the one hand, its values and structure can reflect inequalities in power;4 on the other hand, it is pivotal in affecting these values and inequalities, potentially offering a way of breaking from the past. Education is a powerful influence over identities, both through its content and its structure. Moreover, it is a source of power and of income in contemporary societies. Access to jobs depends on the kind and level of education attained and, similarly, political participation at higher levels, particularly in the civil service, depends on education.

3 Vocational Education The second theme explored here focuses more directly on vocational education in war-affected countries and the role it might play in bridging horizontal inequalities. It seems that the educational preparation of youth for work and life is at a very low level in developing countries, particularly among the poor. Many are not learning as much as they should and, specifically, they are not learning what might be

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relevant to the demands of a rapidly-changing global economy. The outcome is that many begin work too early in low-skills jobs and find that they are unable to make progress along the skills ladder to enhance their earnings. For many governments, development partners and international NGOs, the favoured response is more education and training, especially vocational and skills-based training. Yet, a survey of war-affected youth in Uganda—SWAY (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006)— questions the internal logic of this approach. It suggests that: While those with vocational training are doing relatively well economically, it is not necessarily the case that an expansion of these programs will lead to more meaningful livelihoods to youth. Rather, the association between economic success and vocational training may be spurious—trained youth may be doing well not because of their training, but because they were more talented and entrepreneurial in the first place. A more rigorous evaluation of programs will be required to assess whether vocational training has any positive impact at all.

This suggests that we would be wise to look beyond supply-side factors alone and consider instead such demand-side factors as human capability and agency, if we are to offer a more considered set of proposals for enhancing young people’s well-being in the developing world. Hence a number of questions arise. These are: 1. What are the continuities between vocational education, work and citizenship in post-conflict societies? 2. What policies have been adopted in a range of conflict-affected countries that might account for differences in the patterns of youth transitions (continuing to learn, engaging in work and exercising citizenship)? 3. What role does individual agency and human capability play for those youths who do and for those who do not participate in vocational education in postconflict societies? To understand better these questions, we propose a conceptual model of vocational education as a learning system in fragile, conflict-prone and post-conflict countries. Four main contexts in which vocational education as a holistic learning system might function are identified. We shall return to the questions themselves. The first context in which vocational education and training might occur is as an educational solution to the impact of on-going, low to high intensity conflict. The classic response here is ‘skills development’. An example of this approach is identified by Yarrow (in this section) in the provision of vocational education for refugees or internally displaced persons. The second context of vocational education and training in countries experiencing conflict can be seen as more future-oriented systems planning and policy work. Here, planning for the return of refugees for example, or ideological concerns about the nature of a future curriculum, the relevance to the world of work and economic growth are all important issues for VET (see Barakat, in this section).

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Second, the role of TVET in the study of educational reconstruction and transformation in post-conflict environments is interesting. In practical terms, the provision of vocational education comes as a result of fire-fighting or short-term policy solutions for education and training that are very often ill-defined or only tenuously linked to the search for longer-term economic forecasting (see Barakat, Kane and Inglis in this section) or the rebuilding of identity and the forging of a new democratic citizenship (see Paulson in this section). The third context in which VET might function is as a strategic driver of human development. In this case, the vocational education response is not an isolated response. Here it is necessary for more ‘joined-up thinking’ about VET as a learning system, and as a more integrated delivery system. This is not as yet fully appreciated between NGOs and frontline agencies (see Karpinska in this section). The fourth context in which VET might function is in the re-building of a nation in the aftermath of conflict. There is a growing body of theoretical work on education as a process in rebuilding civil society and TVET’s role in this has been identified by some as crucial (see Humphreys & Weinstein, 2004). Because access (or the lack thereof) to education and training gives rise to conflict in the first place, and because of its role in building peace and minimizing the horizontal inequalities discussed above, the role of TVET in securing peace and stability is an important focus of enquiry. We offer, in Fig. 1, a conceptual model of the field of education and conflict studies.

Fig. 1 A conceptual model of the field of TVET and conflict studies

4 Overview of the Contributions Framed by the conceptual model discussed above, we return to the three questions raised earlier and consider how they are variously addressed in this section.


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V.2 From Assessment to Planning: Hope for TVET in Uganda, by Bilal Barakat, Lyle Kane and Alex Inglis The first of the questions above is explored by Bilal Barakat, Lyle Kane and Alex Inglis. The authors stress the need for improved assessment tools to advise TVET planning in post-conflict situations. Using the case study of Uganda, where the most thorough study of war-affected populations to date has taken place (The Survey for War-Affected Youth or SWAY), this chapter discusses the importance of reliable data and ways in which it has the potential to shape TVET programming in northern Uganda so as to be contextually appropriate in terms of supporting social reintegration and matching opportunities in the economy.

V.3 Linking TVET to Economic Opportunities in Post-Conflict Liberia, by Lyle Kane The theme is further taken up by Lyle Kane in this chapter. He further explores the need to design TVET programming around the specific economic context of the target population. He explores the problems facing the TVET programmes associated with the United Nations’ Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) initiatives in Liberia, the mismatch between training and economic opportunities, and the way the aid system can bridge that mismatch through more contextually appropriate TVET programming and nurture and create economic opportunities.

V.4 Deepening the Divide: The Differential Impact of Protracted Conflict on TVET Versus Academic Education in Palestine, by Bilal Barakat Continuing this line of exploration, Bilal Barakat’s chapter aims at illustrating the varying impact of conflict on TVET compared to general education. The chapter makes the point that TVET is negatively perceived among Palestinians in terms of both national aspirations and personal emancipation as compared to academic education. In the case of the continuing ‘low intensity’ Palestinian–Israeli conflict, these issues are of great importance.

V.5 Co-ordinated Programming for Skills Development and Livelihoods in Post-Conflict Societies: What Promise Does TVET Hold for Southern Sudan? by Zuki Karpinska Karpinska’s chapter engages with the second theme. She examines the difficulties of government, external agency and NGO co-ordination in providing cohesive and effective TVET. The chapter uses the region of Southern Sudan as a case study, a context rife with complicated political, economic, physical and social challenges.

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While grim in her description of the current state of TVET implementation in the region, Karpinska is hopeful that recent co-ordination efforts have created a setting for improvements in service delivery.

V.6 Vocational Training in Post-War Sierra Leone and Liberia, by Andrew Benson Greene Jr. In his chapter, Andrew Benson Greene further mines this line of enquiry. He discusses the need for TVET programming to take advantage of new technologies, while nurturing and developing traditional craftsmen, such as blacksmiths, to support the agricultural sector. The chapter uses a set of existing programmes to paint a picture of TVET in post-conflict Sierra Leone, emphasizing existing programmatic solutions to the contextual obstacles facing war-affected populations, such as support for amputees in the form of prosthetics, and the need to design programming around local social and cultural structures.

V.7 TVET and Community Re-Integration: Exploring the Connections in Sierra Leone’s DDR Process, by Julia Paulson Julia Paulson furthers the discussion of the third theme outlined above. Her chapter discusses the ways in which TVET acts as a tool for reintegration of ex-combatants, using as a lens the DDR initiatives in Sierra Leone. Paulson goes on to pose the question of how TVET can be more effective in the reintegration process.

V.8 TVET, Women and Conflict: Palestinians in the Lebanese Civil War, by Rachel Yarrow The question of individual agency is further taken up in Rachel Yarrow’s chapter. This chapter describes and analyses the activities of two NGOs providing TVET to Palestinian women during the Lebanese Civil War. Yarrow discusses the extent to which these two case studies effectively capitalized on the opportunities offered by the post-conflict situation to reshape ‘traditional’ or ‘conservative’ gender roles and empower women. The concern is not an academic one. In an informal assessment of a tailoring programme offered to young women from the camps, one NGO came to the conclusion that the girls that passed through the programme were doing worse than those that did not. Those that passed through the programme found little demand for their skills in their home camps. Meanwhile, those that did not pass through the programme found ways to return to formal education. Thus, this section offers an overview of the challenges for educational reconstruction in a number of single-country cases. Normally, it would be useful to


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group countries in respect of the historical stage of conflict and reconstruction (e.g. Angola, Burundi, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka are examples of countries emerging from conflict, whilst Cambodia, Guatemala, Lebanon and Nicaragua have longer histories of post-conflict reconstruction) and effecting comparisons within the group. However, due to limited space in this section, we have decided to offer simply selected examples of writings on vocational education and the challenges of employment and citizenship.

Notes 1. Well-being is defined here as opportunities for educational, social and economic participation. 2. One of the initial causes of the ethnic conflict between Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka was the frustration felt by Tamil students, who had been shut out of places in universities and other avenues for civic involvement. 3. Five youth transitions are identified in the literature: learning, going to work, staying healthy, forming families, and exercising citizenship (see World Bank, 2007). 4. Ukiwo (2007) shows how the lack of education among Northerners in Nigeria in the early years of independence debarred Northerners not only from high-level federal civil-service positions, but even from running their own state.

References Annan, J.; Blattman, C.; Horton, R. 2006. The state of youth and youth protection in Uganda. Kampala: UNICEF Uganda. Buckland, P. 2005 Reshaping the future: education and post-conflict reconstruction. Washington, DC: World Bank. Humphreys, M.; Weinstein, J.M. 2004. What the fighters say: a survey of ex-combatants in Sierra Leone, June-August 2003. New York, NY: Columbia University. (Center on Globilization and Sustainable Development, working paper, no. 20.) <www.stanford.edu/∼jweinst/docs/ manuscripts/humphreys combatantsurvey.pdf> Johnson, D.; Stewart, F. 2007. Education, ethnicity and conflict. International journal of education and development, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 247–51 Johnson, D.; Van Kalmthout, E. 2006. Education and conflict: research, policy and practice. Forced migration review, supplement, July. <www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/EducationSupplement/ full.pdf> Mancini, L. 2005. Horizontal inequalities and communal violence: evidence from Indonesian districts. Oxford, UK: Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity. (CRISE working paper, 22.) <www.crise.ox.ac.uk> Marshall, M.G. 2005. Major episodes of political violence, 1946–2004. Severn, MD: Centre for Systemic Peace. <www.systemicpeace.org/> Østby, G. 2003. Horizontal inequalities and civil war. Oslo: Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Stewart, F. 2000. Crisis prevention: tackling horizontal inequalities. Oxford development studies, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 245–62. Ukiwo, U. 2007. The ‘reform’ agenda: liberalization, technocracy and democratization in Nigeria, 1999–2007. Berkeley, CA: University of California. United Nations Development Programme. 2003. Millennium Development Goals: a compact amongst nations to end poverty. New York, NY: UNDP.

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World Bank. 2003. Breaking the conflict trap: civil war and development policy. Washington, DC: Oxford University Press/World Bank. World Bank. 2007. World development report: development and the next generation. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Chapter V.2

From Assessment to Planning: Hope for TVET in Uganda Bilal Barakat, Lyle Kane and Alex Inglis

1 Introduction One of the major obstacles facing the implementation of TVET programming in post-conflict situations is a lack of data on the needs and skills of the target population. In terms of a strict concentration on the ability of TVET programming to improve the skill-set and employability of participants, this lack of data poses the problem of leading to a mismatch between TVET and the contextual economic opportunities. But, in the post-conflict context, where the implementation of a holistic approach to TVET is necessary, with an integrated set of programmes designed to address the challenges specific to a war-affected population, a lack of data poses a much more serious set of problems. Inappropriate programming can even exacerbate the challenges facing war-affected populations rather than support their recovery. Culturally insensitive psychological therapy exercises, unsuitable housing schemes for displaced persons, ignorance of the physical frailties of injured persons—it is not hard to imagine the ways in which these mistakes could have a negative impact on the experience of programme participants. The lack of reliable data is a complex problem to overcome. Post-conflict contexts are often defined by a collapsed or weak government and social-service infrastructure. As a result, what data can be collected are often unreliable or potentially manipulated. In addition, in order to be truly effective and avoid a time lag between the end of the conflict and delivery of services, data should be collected during the conflict, posing risks for the safety of data collectors. Access to the potential target population in the midst of war is often tenuous at best. One consequence of this state of affairs is that programming is often based on immediate and observable needs, rules of thumb, and possibly erroneous assumptions about what sort of help ought to be provided. With only rough measures of well-being at our disposal, a second consequence is unavoidably crude targeting of services (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. iii).

One thing is clear: there is a marked lack of international standards in terms of data collection for war-affected populations. This has the potential to lead to programming that is poorly matched to the needs of the population. In the best-case scenario, R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 V.2, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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such mismatched programming has simply been a waste of time and money. In a worst-case scenario, it has created a new set of challenges for the target population to contend with. A current example of an attempt to address this problem is the UNICEF Uganda commissioned Survey for War-Affected Youth (SWAY). This project set out to assess the effects of the conflict in northern Uganda on the youth in the region. Utilizing quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews, SWAY seeks to answer the question ‘who is suffering, how much and in what ways?’ (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. iii). While these questions about suffering are relevant, they seem incomplete. As a recent World Bank report points out: ‘for education reform and transformation, the post-conflict reconstruction environment is the best of times and the worst of times, an opportunity and a constraint’ (Buckland, 2005, p. 25). There are undoubtedly a set of skills and abilities that come out of being actively involved in a conflict that can aid in post-conflict reconstruction. This chapter aims to examine the relationship between needs/skills assessment and a holistic approach to TVET programming, using northern Uganda as a casestudy. The first section provides a brief overview of the key features of the conflict. The second section describes recent and existing TVET initiatives. The third section discusses the structure of SWAY as an outstanding and timely example of needs assessment during conflict, making some critiques of its limitations. The findings are discussed and the recommendations reviewed. The fourth section looks at the upcoming TVET initiatives in Uganda and the way that SWAY can improve the effectiveness of these initiatives. The concluding remarks include general recommendations for assessment and planning practices that can improve TVET programming in post-conflict situations.

2 A Brief Overview of the Conflict in (Northern) Uganda In 1962, Uganda gained its independence from British rule. Since that time the country’s development has been marked by deep social and political volatility and civil war. The instability seemed to have come to and end in 1986 with the conclusive military victory of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) led by the current president Yoweri Museveni. However, rebels opposed to the NRM reorganized themselves in southern Sudan and later became known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) under the leadership of Joseph Kony. Disappointed by the inability to present a credible military threat to the NRM regime, and particularly with the lack of popular support among the communities of northern Uganda, the LRA turned against the civilian population, brutally terrorizing it with acts of murder, torture and mutilation (WCRWC, 2005) A particular feature of the conflict in northern Uganda is the wide-scale abduction and recruitment by the LRA of male and female youth into forced labour, sexual slavery and combat roles. Recent evidence suggests that the number of young people

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abducted during the war is 60,000 or even higher (Blattman, 2006). The capacity of the LRA was strengthened through support from the government of Sudan beginning in 1994 to engage in a proxy war against southern Sudanese rebels who were, in turn, being supported by the Ugandan government (WCRWC, 2001). Since 1996, much of the population of northern Uganda has been forced by the government to resettle in ‘protected villages’, which are essentially IDP (internally displaced persons) camps. These camps are not only crowded and unsanitary, but they often fail to offer protection. Their population continues to suffer from attacks, to the extent that large numbers of young people prefer to commute to larger towns at night to avoid forced recruitment (WCRWC, 2005). Moreover, curfews and a prohibition on travel far from the camps have meant that most have lost access to their land. Conflict over land tenure upon return of the IDPs to their communities is a real risk in post-conflict northern Uganda. Facilitated by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement for southern Sudan, negotiations between the Ugandan government and the LRA have recently moved forward culminating in a cease-fire agreement in August 2006 and the retreat of LRA fighters to assembly zones on the Sudanese side of the border (United Nations, OCHA, 2006). For the first time in decades, an end to the conflict seems feasible— though by no means certain.

3 TVET in (Northern) Uganda In contrast to many other conflict and post-conflict settings, Uganda maintains an established and relatively stable government. Its managerial capacity and political will appear favourable to effective educational reconstruction (WCRWC, 2001, p. 61), subject to the availability of sufficient funds. Several schemes for complementary basic education of target populations, such as the urban poor, nomads and conflictaffected children, already exist. There is also a strong movement towards decentralization, allowing for some flexibility in addressing the needs created by a conflict that varied in its local intensity. Government investment in education has been high. In the financial year 2001/2002, around 20% of the government budget was spent on education and training (Farstad, 2002). In contrast, public financing for TVET in Uganda is limited and the main responsibility is placed on the private sector for both delivery and financing. The private training providers deliver programming in a variety of areas and at different levels, and issue their own certificates. Private institutions are not obliged to register with the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES), but are encouraged to do so. In 2000 TVET was delivered by some twenty-nine government technical and agricultural training centres with a total intake of 3,340 (Farstad, 2002). There were 187 registered private TVET institutions and another 400 that have applied for registration. These private centres follow a national curriculum instituted by the government. Industrial training is delivered by four public vocational training institutes and some 400 private training providers. Both of these streams, in particular

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the former, have attracted criticism for being too academic. TVET also features prominently as Strategic Objective 2 in Uganda’s National Action Plan on Youth, which likewise emphasizes apprenticeship schemes over formal State provision of training (Uganda, MoGLSD, 2002) Vocational training is a fairly common experience among male youth in northern Uganda: ‘20 percent of youth over the age of 16 have had some sort of vocational training, primarily in trades like construction, carpentry and joinery, and driving. Such programmes were generally paid for by the youth themselves or their families’ (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. 32). This is despite the fact that, as in many places, there is a cultural bias, with a stronger orientation towards formal education than towards TVET. Many enrol in TVET because of their poor test results and failure to gain entry into an academic institution. The economic context for TVET provision in Uganda is one of a dominantly rural and agrarian economy, especially in the north. In the Apaca district in the north, home to over 600,000 people, the largest employer, an engineering firm, has a mere thirty employees. While, in principle, it is possible for a large number of micro-enterprises to offer a substantial number of employed positions when all taken together, the reality in northern Uganda remains that the economy depends on small-scale agriculture according to customary land tenure. This is borne out by urbanization rates, which peak in the Gulu district at around 25%, but are below 5% in several other northern districts. (The national average is 13%.) (See the Uganda districts information handbook (Rwabwogo, 2005) for all of the above.)

4 The Survey for War-Affected Youth—SWAY Until recently, very little reliable information was available on the effects of war in northern Uganda. While psycho-social studies of individual victims existed, there was little hard evidence about community effects or the prevalence of exposure to violence. SWAY has attempted to address this gap. As mentioned above, it applied a mixed methodology of quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews. A detailed survey of 750 male youth from a specific war-affected region was followed by thirty in-depth interviews of randomly selected individuals from the survey group. One of the primary arguments that SWAY makes in terms of methodology and participant selection is that the Western methods for categorizing youth are poorly matched to local realities. The Western definition of ‘child’ as anyone under the age of 18 simply does not hold true for much of the world. In many cultures in Uganda, the transition from youth to adult is defined by marriage or ownership of land. SWAY decided upon a more contextually relevant and broad definition of youth as anyone between the ages of 14 and 30. In addition, SWAY argues that categories, such as ‘the formerly abducted’ or the ‘orphaned’, are circumstantial: Targeting based on these simple categories would appear to miss more than half of the most vulnerable youth: the severely injured, the illiterate, the unemployed, those estranged from their families, or those with severe symptoms of emotional distress. In fact, the proportion of acutely vulnerable youth inside these circumstantial categories only slightly exceeds the


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proportion outside of them; hence the predictive power of this method is exceedingly poor (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. 80).

While the scope of the project is impressive, the gender dimension is problematic. Motivated by the desire to test and improve the methodology on the presumably easier to research group of male youth, the study of females has been deferred to a second, later, project phase. The problem of the exclusion of females from Phase I—whether the justification is sound or not—is exacerbated by the fact that it has not been sufficiently highlighted. The title of the preliminary report gives no indication of an exclusively male focus, thereby inviting the potentially misleading or inappropriate generalization of the findings—and programmes based on them— to both genders. But there is every reason to suspect that the conflict’s impact on its victims differs by gender. The prevalence of sexual and gender-based violence across modern conflicts has also played itself out in the Uganda. Amnesty International reports evidence of widespread sexual violence committed by both sides in the Ugandan conflict (Amnesty International, 2004). Obviously, the effects of this cannot be simply ignored in post-conflict recovery programming. One advantage that Uganda does have over much of the rest of Africa in terms of health issues related to sexual violence is that HIV awareness is relatively high and condom usage is common, although the conflict-affected north fares worse than the national average (Tumushabe, 2006). However, SWAY did produce some conclusions that run counter to popular perceptions and that are highly relevant to programming for skills development. The survey found that while 35% of males and between 15% and 20% of all females had been abducted for at least a day, all youth, whether abducted or not, have suffered and witnessed tremendous violence. The average survey participant had witnessed or partaken in nine of the thirty-one types of violent experiences that they were questioned about. Nevertheless, it also showed only modest levels of psycho-social trauma and low levels of aggression. Moreover, even traumatized individuals exhibited a high level of social functioning. Uganda is relatively unique in terms of conflict and post-conflict recovery in that social structures remained relatively intact throughout the war. As a result, many of the challenges associated with reintegration have been mitigated by the nature of the existing support structures in the larger community. The key elements to successful social reintegration were found to be family cohesion and peer support. The relative strength of these two support structures in the Ugandan case has led to the surprising lack of emotional distress in youth returning from conflict. The survey asserts that ‘family acceptance is remarkably high. Only 1% of youth report that their family was unhappy or unwelcoming upon their return. Over 94% of the youth report being accepted by their families without insult, blame or physical aggression’ (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. 66) Reception from the community was ‘typically strong and welcoming’. Insults and fear were reported, but are not seen as particularly detrimental to reintegration. In fact, nearly all forced recruits who escaped from the LRA returned to their home communities. This is in spite of the fact that many were forced to commit atrocities against their neighbours, friends

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or even families. Acceptance of ex-combatants as regular members of the community, however, is coupled with resentment of programmes targeted specifically at them, essentially being perceived as a reward for violent activity. These findings undermine the logic behind the huge investment in reintegration support that has become standard in post-conflict recovery programming. SWAY calls for a shift from broad-based psycho-social programming to targeted support for the minority of returnees actually suffering from severe emotional stress. In addition to the relatively stable social structures within the communities that the abductees were returning to, reintegration is helped by a very strong local tradition of spiritual cleansing of returnees as a sufficient condition for community acceptance. The cultural interpretation of stress and trauma often plays itself out on a religious plane and is addressed through the structure of religion (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. iv). Currently, few young people have safe access to land (Stites, Mazurana & Carlson, 2006) and therefore to traditional livelihoods. This might change as the ‘decongestion’ of IDP camps continues, especially if they are dismantled entirely in the near future. The lack of opportunity for agriculture has meant that most youth that are economically active perform casual labour such as collecting firewood, carrying loads, quarrying, hawking and vending, construction, riding a boda boda (bicycle taxi), or making bricks and charcoal. Formal employment is rare: ‘just fifteen percent of occupations represent more or less regular (and usually highskilled) employment—operating a repair shop or small business (such as a kiosk), a vocation (including carpentry, tailoring, and driving), or a profession (a teacher, public employee, or health worker)’ (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. 37). As a result, the median monthly income of youth in the conflict affected areas is less than US$5 per month. Nevertheless, ‘few youth leave the region to look for work—primarily, it seems, because of few contacts, fewer resources, no language skills, and an emotional tie to their homes’ (p. 35).

5 Implications for Holistic TVET Programming As mentioned, SWAY’s results suggest that many are abducted for relatively short periods of time and their education is only moderately affected. Those abducted lost an average of one year’s schooling. It therefore seems particularly appropriate to aim educational interventions at all youth, because the experience of ‘episodic’ education ‘due to financial pressures arising from poverty, insecurity and lack of family support’ does not differentiate former child soldiers from those never abducted. The major finding of the SWAY study is the need for ‘age-appropriate education and income generating activities’ (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. iii). The average youth surveyed only worked seven days each month earning US$3.85 (p. v). SWAY describes the economy as an ‘occupational ladder’ where you have increasing opportunities with increasing skills and training (p. v). Unfortunately, given these dire economic circumstances, the opportunity costs to enrolment in TVET and other educational programming often put them out of reach of many returnees.


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There are still a set of health-related issues that are interfering with returnees integrating into the labour force. Firstly, war related injuries are a formidable problem. Over 15% of the surveyed youth have been injured or are debilitated in some way that affects their ability to work. Some 2% are ‘extremely injured’ and in need of urgent treatment (p. vi). Secondly, poverty related nutrition problems are prevalent with 40% of the surveyed youth only eating one meal a day (p. vi). The devastating effects of HIV/AIDS, both direct and indirect in terms of creating children-headed households, add to the problem (Stites, Mazurana & Carlson, 2006). As the following quotations show, there is much room for improving the provision of TVET as part of the reconstruction process in northern Uganda: Current programming has focused primarily on humanitarian needs and psychosocial support (broadly-defined) but has tended to neglect interventions to support war injuries, education, and economic activities (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. 72). The lack of education and the shortage of skilled individuals in most of the study sites constrain livelihood strategies. Many of the schools in and around the camps are barely functioning as educational institutions (Stites, Mazurana & Carlson, 2006, p. 9). Technical/vocational training exists, but is far too limited in its scope. Apprenticeships and the provision of tools upon graduation would go far to assist graduating students in finding and being able to work (WCRWC, 2005, p. 10).

There is, in fact, some experience in Uganda with TVET as part of the DDR and reconstruction effort following the consolidation of NRM’s power in the early 1990s. But the relevance of this for the current situation should not be overstated. The aim then was the formal disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of parts of a regularized guerrilla army. The challenge in northern Uganda, by contrast, involves building sustainable livelihoods for whole communities. Even with regard to ex-combatants, there is little similarity. Abductions and the trickling back of those escaping have been a continuous process over the course of a decade. Only half of those returning ever passed through any kind of reception centre. Some studies of past ‘Reintegration through Training’ programmes can, and should, provide an important foundation to be built upon. The Gulu Vocational and Community Centre, for example, gathered experience during the 1990s with the integration of vocational training for youth with community outreach, adult literacy and peace education (Muhumuza, 1997). It is important to note that the expansion of existing training programmes will not necessarily replicate the economic benefits currently evident, because the present self-selection has a bias towards those who are more entrepreneurial to begin with. Indeed NGO-funded youth appear to benefit less from training than self-funded ones. Unfortunately, ‘we don’t know whether, when and why vocational programs assist youth’ (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. 34). Accordingly, the actual effect of training is one of the main areas where further research is needed. Without such research, training interventions might actually do harm as, indeed, such interventions have on previous occasions. Indeed, SWAY reports on a tailoring training programme whose participants fared worse than women left to their own devices (p. 34). Moreover, TVET interventions designed for reconstruction and reintegration need to respect what is an important best practice in non-conflict settings, namely that TVET should not be an academic dead-end. Otherwise what

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is intended as a remedial measure could in fact end up increasing the disadvantage of conflict-affected youth who might otherwise have found their way back into and succeeded in the formal education sector. SWAY’s findings suggests that ‘individuals themselves may be better judges of what skills and opportunities suit their own skill set, interests, and local demands’ (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. 74) and that it might be more effective to provide vouchers that could be used towards NGO or private training programmes (see WCRWC, 2005, for a list of these). This, however, leaves open the question of what support NGOs should have when setting up programmes. A liberalized but regulated approach such as the one described above resonates well with government policy. Recent initiatives include the plan to create the Uganda Vocational Education and Training Authority (UVETA). The proposed UVETA is expected to stay away from basic training delivery, but rather focus on promoting financing of and co-ordinating all formal and non-formal training activities (Haan, 2001). Part of the reform process is a Universal Post-Primary Education and Training (UPPET) policy. It includes the provision of equipment to business, technical, vocational education and training (BTVET) institutions, as well as introducing community polytechnics to all districts, including the conflict-affected north, where grants and bursaries are paid for students in secondary and technical schools (Okecho, 2006). This appears to go some way to meeting SWAY’s concern that ‘there is an urgent and immediate need to support broad-based secondary and tertiary schooling’ (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. 71) for the most needy. The training needs of youth who were actively involved in the conflict are not strikingly different from those of their peers. Their moderate loss of schooling does not present an insurmountable obstacle to entering regular BTVET, because BTVET programming offered is at the intermediate level and only requires primary education to enter. In the IDP camps in northern Uganda, schooling is effective in the basic sense of achieving relatively high primary enrolment and basic literacy. Enrolment is not far below the national average of 90% of the primary school agegroup enrolled and the literacy rate is around 70%. However, quality in the IDP camps is highly problematic. In Kitgum, 140 primary schools have been displaced into thirty-four learning centres associated with IDP camps. This has resulted in ludicrous congestion with—arithmetically—up to 300 children per teacher and up to 400 per classroom (WCRWC, 2005). Mainstreaming seems appropriate for all but the most heavily traumatized who spent many years in the LRA and lost most or all of their schooling opportunities, for whom, in any case, TVET is not the first concern. Notably, high trauma appears to be associated with community rejection more than with the severity of violence experienced or with lack of education or training opportunities. For these cases, educational and training components of rehabilitation interventions need to be part of a holistic approach. Their relatively small number makes it feasible in principle to offer intensive personal support to these hardship cases. A major source of concern for TVET and livelihood interventions, however, is those who have been disabled as a result of the conflict. Thirteen percent of youth in the SWAY sample were found to possess ‘an injury that impeded them from earning a living’ (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. 46).


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Given the traditionally strong social cohesion, community-based rather than individualistic projects appear most promising. An example of a community programme supported effectively by international non-governmental organizations is GUSCO, the Gulu Support the Children Organization (Omona & Matheson, 1998). GUSCO runs reception centres for traumatized children, where they receive vocational training, trauma counselling and family reintegration support. While children only stay in the centres for up to six weeks, reintegration follow-up is conducted regularly until a year after release. On the one hand, GUSCO’s approach demonstrates the effectiveness of integrating TVET into a participatory approach based on local traditions; on the other hand, it also confirms that providing even medium-term follow-up requires the dedication of significant resources and is unlikely to be feasible on a mass scale. The low rate of urbanization means that training in institutional settings runs the risk mentioned in the introduction: it will often run counter to reintegration into home communities for the simple reason that training institutions are geographically located elsewhere and require the trainees’ absence from the very communities where they seek integration. Given the rural economy of northern Uganda, TVET cannot be expected to result in wage employment. If the livelihood options for the majority consist at best of entrepreneurial self-employment (but more realistically of small-scale agriculture or micro-enterprise self-employment), education and training for livelihoods has to reflect this fact (Stavrou & Stewart, 2000; Stites, Mazurana & Carlson, 2006). In northern Uganda it is argued that ‘a return to the land is the only realistic economic option, not just for the long term, but now’ (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. 75). There are signs that this return is imminent. Despite the uncertainty over whether the conflict will truly end and warnings of the consequences of premature and forced return in particular, the IDP camps have since the end of 2006 been slated to be dismantled (Uganda-CAN, 2006a). While solving some problems, this promises to create new ones. The prolonged absence and the destruction of traditional boundary markers during the conflict mean that the traditional tenure will be difficult to reinstate. There is also fear of losing land in the face of large-scale commercialization of agriculture. Due to high population growth, there will also be many more people returning to the countryside than originally left it. Land insecurity, therefore, has serious implications both for local livelihoods and the sustainability of peace (Uganda-CAN, 2006b). The promotion of sustainable livelihoods must therefore ‘include innovative strategies for increasing access to land in addition to [...] attention on other income-generating activities’ (Annan, Blattman & Horton, 2006, p. 71).

6 Concluding Remarks The Survey for War-Affected Youth (SWAY) was not designed as a needs assessment for TVET. Yet it does carry important implications for TVET’s role in mitigating the effects of the conflict. This should not surprise us since skills development needs arise out of the reality of people’s lives.

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It is instructive to compare SWAY’s approach with other examples of the effects of the war in northern Uganda, particularly those conducted by the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children (WCRWC) in 2001 and a study by Tuft University’s Feinstein International Center in 2006 (Stites, Mazurana & Carlson, 2006). Both are decidedly neither longitudinal nor randomized, but follow a more qualitative approach. Like SWAY, WCRWC produced conclusions of significance to TVET programming, especially the more recent study with its focus on livelihoods. Together, they drive home the importance of multi-methodology, rigorous research to provide the basis for sound programme design. However, a number of critical questions remain. To begin with, how do environmental factors bear on the feasibility of a ‘larger-scale, randomly sampled, longitudinal survey’? Can we expect it to be possible to replicate SWAY’s success in tracing youth that had migrated in contexts where social networks have broken down to a much larger extent or where the conflict itself is more chaotic, involving a multitude of armed factions and shifting coalitions? Even if it is possible, it might well take a disproportionate effort. Time is another important factor. While a time span of less than a year between the start of the project and the presentation of its Phase I results is in itself impressive, the fact that at least two years will have passed until even both genders have been surveyed is an important constraint. While greater resources can no doubt go some way towards speeding up the physical data collection, this is not necessarily what takes the longest. It is a regrettable—but inescapable—fact that in other contexts where there is a welldefined ‘end’ to the conflict in the form of the signing of a peace treaty, or the collapse of a regime, funds may become available for TVET and other programming that have to be spent more quickly. This is, of course, another reason to conduct assessments while conflict is still on-going, but this in turn risks the situation changing drastically when hostilities cease, because returning refugees and/or demobilized soldiers change the local dynamic, and the labour market in particular. Either way, the profile of those whose livelihoods are to be supported represents only one kind of assessment that is necessary to determine the appropriate initiatives. Not only the demand for training, but also surveys of the availability of training and skills development, and of the demand for graduates and livelihood opportunities are necessary. Reliable quantitative and qualitative assessments are not only crucial to informed programming, but also to provide a baseline against which programme success can eventually be determined. Compared to general education, it would seem that effective planning of TVET programmes for reconstruction is, if anything, even more dependent on reliable data on all the dimensions of demand and supply mentioned above. Capital investments for many kinds of TVET are higher than for general education and, in many ways, TVET is inherently more difficult to build up incrementally. While the physical infrastructure for general education is relatively flexible and can be used for literacy classes and adult education outside school hours, specialized technical or agricultural training institutions lack this generic quality. This provides yet another reason for focusing on the participatory and communitybased promotion of generic skills for livelihoods as ‘life-skills’ in conflict and


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post-conflict contexts, over highly specialized and capital-intensive technical training, at least as an initial response. Such an approach also ties in with the inclusion of life-skills and the integration of health, civic, livelihood and academic content in general school curricula, blurring a potentially unhelpful distinction.

References Amnesty International. 2004. AI report 2004: Uganda. <web.amnesty.org/report2004/ugasummary-eng> Annan, J.; Blattman, C.; Horton, R. 2006. The state of youth and youth protection in northern Uganda: findings from the Survey for War Affected Youth. Kampala: UNICEF. Blattman, C. 2006. The consequences of child soldiering. Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University. <www.hicn.org/papers/wp22.pdf> Buckland, P. 2005. Reshaping the future: education and postconflict reconstruction. Washington, DC: World Bank. Farstad, H. 2002. Integrated entrepreneurship education in Botswana, Kenya and Uganda. Oslo: National Institute of Technology. Haan, H.C. 2001. Training for work in the informal sector: evidence from Eastern and Southern Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank and ILO. Muhumuza, R. 1997. Guns into ox-ploughs: a study on the situation of conflict-affected youth in Uganda and their reintegration into society through training, employment and life skills programmes. Geneva: ILO. Okecho, C.W. 2006. Education in the Northern Uganda. (Paper presented at the Education Sector Review, 25–27 October 2006, Kampala.) <www.education.go.ug/Northern.htm> Omona, G.; Matheson, K.E. 1998. Uganda: stolen children, stolen lives. Lancet, vol. 351, no. 9100, p. 442. Rwabwogo, M.O. 2005. Uganda districts information handbook: expanded edition 2005–2006. Kampala: Fountain Publishers. Stavrou, S.; Stewart, R. 2000. The reintegration of child soldiers and abducted children: a case study of Palaro and Pabbo Gulu District, northern Uganda. In: Bennett, E.; Gamba, V.; van der Merwe, D., eds. ACT against child soldiers in Africa. Pretoria: Institute of Security Studies. Stites, E.; Mazurana, D.; Carlson, K. 2006. Movement on the margins: livelihoods and security in Kitgum District, northern Uganda. Medford, MA: Feinstein International Center. Tumushabe, J. 2006. The politics of HIV/AIDS in Uganda. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. (Social Policy and Development Programme paper, no. 28.) Uganda Conflict Action Network—Uganda-CAN. 2006a. Minister of relief: all northern Uganda IDP camps to be dismantled by Dec. 31. <www.ugandacan.org/index.php?catid=7&blogid=1> Uganda Conflict Action Network—Uganda-CAN. 2006b. Land in Uganda. <www.ugandacan. org/land.php> Uganda. Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development—MoGLSD. 2002. National Action Plan on Youth. Kampala: MoGLSD. United Nations. Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs—OCHA. 2006. Uganda: most rebels have left northern Uganda for Sudan. IRIN news, 26 September 2006. <www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55722> Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children—WCRWC. 2001. Against all odds: surviving the war on adolescents. Promoting the protection and capacity of Ugandan and Sudanese adolescents in northern Uganda. New York, NY: WCRWC. <www.womenscommission.org/pdf/ug.pdf> Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children—WCRWC. 2005. Learning in a war zone: education in northern Uganda. New York, NY: WCRWC.


Chapter V.3

Linking TVET to Economic Opportunities in Post-Conflict Liberia Lyle Kane

1 Introduction Many would argue that the success of a technical and vocational educational and training (TVET) programme should be measured by how it improves the employability of its participants. Assuming that this is correct, it is a complex outcome to measure, as there are a number of factors, other than participation in vocational education programmes, that impact upon an individual’s ability to work (as is discussed throughout this section in our argument for a holistic approach to TVET.) Ultimately, however, the goal of TVET is to support participant inclusion into the labour force. Given this fact, the need to link TVET programming to economic opportunities within the local context cannot be over-emphasized. Post-conflict economies, almost without exception, are fragile and poorly functioning. The effects of extended conflict include the destruction of the physical infrastructure, struggling social services and stagnation across most economic sectors. The need for skilled labour in these circumstances is huge, in that the reconstruction process is labour-intensive and requires a skilled labour force. But, the demand for labour, in terms of paid employment opportunities, is usually small given the state of the economy. This chapter will be using the case of Liberia to explore the necessity to structure TVET programming around the labour needs of the target population, while working within the larger reconstruction strategy to negotiate the gap between the need and demand for labour.

2 Politics, Conflict and Education in Liberia On Christmas Day 1989, Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) entered Liberia, marking the beginning of the country’s civil war. In 1990, after a year of brutal and intense fighting, a splinter group of the NPFL captured, tortured and assassinated President Samuel Doe. The president’s death set up a scramble for power between several armed factions that would continue for the next fourteen years (Ellis, 2001).

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After a 1994 ceasefire failed to hold, a negotiated truce in 1997 was followed by elections. With a campaign slogan of ‘He killed my mother, he killed my father, but I will vote for him’, Charles Taylor was elected head of State. President Taylor was accused of widespread corruption, supporting the conflict in Sierra Leone and engaging in hostilities with Guinea. In 2002, the simmering tension between Taylor and his opposition parties within the country boiled over and the civil war resumed. Under increasing pressure from the most dominant opposition faction, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), Charles Taylor vacated the presidency and went into exile in Nigeria in August 2003. On 11 September 2003, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) was established. UNMIL and the Economic Community of West-African States (ECOWAS) supported an interim government until the country was prepared to hold democratic elections. Much of the international community saw the interim government as incompetent or corrupt. A report to the Secretary-General of the United Nations stated: ‘The financial administration of the National Transitional Government of Liberia continues to be weak with an archaic internal control system and a virtually non-existent external oversight system’ (UN News Centre, 2005). As a result, very little was accomplished over the next two years. In November 2005, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was elected president of Liberia, the first female head of State on the African continent. A former World Bank economist, President Johnson-Sirleaf is well-respected by the international community, and her policies to date have been widely regarded as transparent and sound (see, for example, World Bank, 2006a). While strong in terms of policy, the current government has faced a huge obstacle in terms of access to reliable funding. Despite continuing economic problems, Liberia has come a long way in the last year: in 2006, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established; Charles Taylor was imprisoned by the Special Court for Sierra Leone and is in The Hague awaiting his trial for war crimes scheduled to begin in 2008; and Monrovia has electricity for the first time in over a decade.

3 What Is the Legacy of the Liberian Civil War? By the time it was over, the Liberian Civil War had claimed the lives of over 250,000 people (USAID, 2006), mostly civilians, and had led to the complete breakdown of social, legal and security services. The complete breakdown of the education system has left a ‘lost generation’ of youth (World Bank, 2006c). The destruction of infrastructures and the psychological trauma associated with living in a country so steeped in violence for such an extended period of time has had an impact on every Liberian. With over 850,000 externally displaced refugees and much of the remaining population internally displaced, the Liberian conflict was the primary humanitarian crisis in West Africa for much of the 1990s (UNMIL, 2006a). Displaced communities were either relocated to refugee camps, if they were fortunate, or fled to impromptu squatter camps, often in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia. The pre-war

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population in the capital was somewhere in the region of 300,000–350,000; during the conflict the population tripled to approximately 1 million (UNMIL, 2006a). In the vain hope of escaping the war, those who fled to the city ended up caught in the crossfire, as many of the later battles of the war were fought on the streets of Monrovia. Those fortunate enough to be taken out of Liberia to refugee camps in Nigeria and Ghana, aside from being in a more secure environment, often had access to educational programmes and other support structures. Many of them returned after the war in a much better position than their counterparts who were left behind and, for the most part, did not have access to such support. Still, these populations were often traumatized from the experience of resettlement, and in need of support in terms of recovering their livelihoods after the conflict. They also faced the resentment and stigmatization of being seen as having ‘abandoned’ their communities. Those who were displaced within Liberia were often afforded little support. During the final stages of the war, Monrovia had essentially become a large refugee camp. Caught between the various factions, these at-risk populations lived on a battlefield for much of the conflict. Many people were forced to join the fighting to avoid becoming victims themselves: And, the war hit in the night. So, everybody went, and nobody see who is who. We just go out in the darkness. I had to find my way to go that side, and I went along with a group. I didn’t know where my mother was or my father. So, I just walk alone with a group and when I went, these guys I was walking with, so they took me along. I used to help them, do some things for them. They send me, I go there. And, when . . . the NPFL came, they say, ‘you know you have to be a man too. You can’t just be with us.’ I went and got . . . I was forced to take up gun. Because, I didn’t know nobody to where I went. I was like . . . something like I didn’t know what I was doing. But, I didn’t see nobody that I know. Nobody. No family around. So, I was forced to fight for survival. At that time, if the people come, if you are frightened, you are forced to go and live in the bush. Yeah, because they come in the town, four hundred men with truck and gun and bullet, and they take us. So, this is how I become soldier (W., former NPFL child soldier in interview with author, 12 April 2006).

The number of active combatants who fought during the war is estimated to be well over 100,000. The estimates of children who were actively involved in combat over the course of the war are as high as 50,000–70,000 (Singer, 2001). These young people are now facing a myriad of problems: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), debilitating injuries, drug addiction, alienation from the community, a lack of education and skills, and no stable community to return to. Women were particularly brutalized during the war. Sexual violence was so prevalent that 60 to 80% of the women who remained in the country were victims of rape or sexual assault (Singer, 2001). This has added to the existence of extremely unhealthy gender dynamics in post-conflict Liberia, including widespread prostitution. The HIV rate is somewhere between 8 and 26%, birth-rates are high at 6.8, infant mortality is almost 16% of live births, the literacy rate for women is at 39% (as opposed to 72% for men) and there is a 32% gap between primary school enrolment rates for boys and girls (UNMIL, 2006a).

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4 Post-Conflict Recovery With the end of the conflict and the establishment of UNMIL in 2003, Liberia has been the recipient of vast amounts of aid over recent years. Virtually every major development agency in the world has an office in the country providing emergency relief, refugee relocation, education, food and nutrition, disarmament, small-scale psychological counselling, reconstruction, and political and economic support. This influx of aid has had positive and negative effects on the situation in the country. While some of the programmes have been successful and have benefited the population, an emerging micro-economy, due to the presence of a large aid-worker population, has raised the cost of living for Liberians. Also, a ‘hand-out’ culture has been created, with an over-reliance on the temporary scaffolding of aid. In addition, aid packages often come with an agreement that a certain amount of materials and labour will be imported from the donating country. This practice further limits the already scarce employment opportunities for the local population. Liberia’s most recent disarmament, demobilization, reintegration and rehabilitation (DDRR) process began rapidly in December of 2003 and proceeded in three phases, the third and final of which continues in remote areas at the time of writing (UNMIL, 2006b). According to UNMIL, which led the DDRR process, 100,000 former combatants have been disarmed, including 12,000 women and 11,780 children (UNMIL, 2006a). Of the demobilized ex-combatants, 94,000 were given access to rehabilitation and reintegration programmes funded by the UNDP DDRR Trust Fund and by USAID, the European Commission and UNICEF, which often included skills and/or vocational training components. This DDRR process was preceded by earlier attempts in 1994 and 1997, which collapsed when the conflict resumed. Many of the ex-combatants who were demobilized in these earlier processes were re-recruited into fighting forces (United Nations Office of the Special Advisor on Africa, 2005). In terms of the continuing refugee problem, as of June 2006 there were still 163,880 Liberian refugees in camps in neighbouring countries. About 100,000 refugees were expected to return by the end of 2006. In addition, there are currently over 10,000 refugees from other countries currently living in camps in Liberia. Most of these refugees are from Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone, but others come from as far away as Sudan and Iraq (UNMIL, 2006a).

5 What Role Has TVET Played in the Recovery Process? Liberia has an incredibly young population with an average life span if 41.5 years and 43% of the population is under the age of 15 (World Bank, 2007). Of the 11,780 children demobilized through DDRR, 6,028 have benefited from educational programmes: 48% of these accessed formal education; 30% were involved in agricultural vocational training; 29% enrolled in other vocational training; 6% joined apprenticeship programmes; and 4% participated in public works (UNMIL, 2006a). That the majority of the ‘lost generation’ is choosing to access vocational-related


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training options rather than formal education demonstrates the need to develop sound and effective programming to meet this demand. Much of the TVET programming in Liberia has exclusively targeted ex-combatants, which has caused a certain amount of resentment among the civilian population. In May 2006, UNMIL reported that 65,893 ex-combatants had completed or were currently participating in training and education programmes; approximately 13,000 of these were women. Much of the vocational training provided by the DDRR has been sub-contracted to local and international non-governmental organizations, including Don Bosco, Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), Liberia Opportunities Industrialization Centres (LOIC) and United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). The training provided tends to focus on construction skills, including masonry, roof-tiling, general construction and plumbing, but also includes agriculture and business skills. TVET programming geared towards women included cooking, domestic skills and small business management— programming potentially reinforcing stereotypical gender roles. Much of the programming was implemented through an ‘Arms for Training’ campaign wherein a collection site was set up and vouchers for training programmes were exchanged for arms. Unfortunately, there seems to have been inadequate planning in most of the phases of this initiative. It was crazy, ten times as many people showed up at the collection site as were planned for, so they were sending people away. They were sending people with guns away! And then, they had not warned the training centres that people were coming, and had not set up all the funding for them. It was an absolute mess. Even the training programmes themselves were ridiculous. People simply can’t find work in the fields they were trained in (M., UNMIL employee, interview with author, 18 April 2006).

While the chaos related to the disarmament stage of the programme is disturbing, of particular concern here is the lack of positive outcomes to the TVET programmes. If participants are not able to employ their learned skills in the marketplace, earn a living and improve their livelihoods, then what is the point of the training? How do you bridge the gap between training and opportunity?

6 What Is Economic and Manpower Forecasting? There is a dialogical relationship between TVET and economic growth in that growth targets cannot be met without the necessary supply of skilled labour (Parnes, 1962), and the development of a labour force is pointless without existing or future employment opportunities. The question then becomes: how do you plan TVET programming around the expected labour needs within the given economic context? Mentioning the phrases ‘economic forecasting’ or ‘manpower forecasting’ naturally arouses feelings of dread in anyone familiar with the unfulfilled hopes and dreams affiliated with the forecasting projects of the 1960s. Despite this, both developments in the field and the curbed enthusiasm of the last several decades have created

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forecasting models that have the potential to play an integral role in TVET planning in post-conflict reconstruction. As a result of its early failures, economic forecasting has been relegated to the fringe of academia and practice for much of the last thirty years. A 1994 study showed that only 17% of academic economic programmes offered a course in economic forecasting (Hanke & Weigland, 1994), despite the claim three years earlier that ‘more and more companies are recognizing the importance of formal forecasting. At present, the demand for trained forecasters is far greater than the supply’ (Jain, 1991, p. 2). As in most economic fields, forecasting is separated into macro-economic forecasting and micro-economic forecasting. As would be expected, macro-economic forecasting is concerned with government and monetary policy, interest rates, and multipliers within the national context. Micro-economic forecasting focuses on competitive markets, profit maximization, and pricing and costs within a specific institution or sector (Loomis & Cox, 2000, p. 352). Much of the history of economic forecasting is led by structural models, based on the popular economic theory of the day. The problem with this is that when the structural theory becomes unpopular, so too does the corresponding model. Non-structural models put themselves forward as not being bound to any particular school of thought, but this is as much a weakness as it is a strength in that it fails to employ the positive aspects of grounded economic theory. Therefore, the norm has become a blending of structural and non-structural approaches to forecasting. The hallmark of macroeconomic forecasting over the next 20 years will be a marriage of the best of nonstructural and structural approaches, facilitated by advances in numerical and simulation techniques that will help macroeconomists to solve, estimate, simulate, and yes, forecast with rich models (Diebold, 1998, p. 189).

Looking past the theoretical issues, the practical obstacles to creating reliable forecasting models are intimidating, particularly within the confines of the unstable economies of the developing world, and even more so in post-conflict economies. Data collection is often weak in developing countries, and perhaps simply nonexistent in post-conflict contexts. It is necessary to factor in the potentialities for technological advances, political and policy changes, and price and market shifts (Ahamad & Scott, 1972); and it is often difficult to accurately estimate start dates of potential projects, and the specific manpower needs for planned projects (Kwak, Garrett & Barone, 1977). The solution to some of these obstacles has been to accept the fact that, at best, economic forecasting can act as a guide rather than an exact measure of the future of the economy. This can be seen in the popularity of stochastic forecasting models, which leaves room for a number of different potentialities. Economists have even suggested using an uncertainty interval of 50% rather than the standard 95% when applying forecasting models (Granger, 1996), on the understanding that forecasting cannot be an exact science. Data collection is another matter altogether. Making any kind of estimate about the future of an economy, and linking those estimates to a practical and contextually


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appropriate set of programmes, requires an enormous amount of data, both quantitative and qualitative. Unfortunately, particularly in post-conflict situations, this need is often not met due to a lack of availability, a lack of effort or to the practical and financial obstacles presented by gathering data. It must be noted that safety concerns for data collectors in times of war are significant. If data is collected once the conflict has come to an end then the implementation of much-needed programming is potentially delayed while the process of data collection, tabulation and analysis is carried out. For example, in 2005, 43,000 demobilized and disarmed ex-combatants were prevented from beginning the vocational education programming phases of the DDRR in Liberia due to poor planning and funding constraints. As a result, UNMIL had to make an international call for increased funding while these at-risk youth waited, creating a potentially volatile situation. The same issues could arise while assessments or data collection exercises are taking place. Data collection concerning the Liberian economy has been carried out, but in a relatively perfunctory manner. The World Bank and other agencies have collected data and made estimates on the ‘big picture’ of the Liberian economy: gross domestic product (GDP), international debt, per capita income, etc. But, in terms of assessing the potential of the Liberian marketplace and creating reliable forecasting models that can be used to determine prospective opportunities for Liberians, very little has been done.

7 What Is the State of Liberia’s Economy? According to the latest World Bank data (2007), agriculture makes up 66% of Liberia’s US$548.4 million national GDP, industry makes up 15.8%, and services make up the remaining 18.2%. The main products in the agricultural sector are coffee, cocoa, rice, cassava, palm oil, sugarcane, yams and okra. While rice is the main staple of the Liberian diet, it is still being imported in most cases. There are continuing efforts to establish rice farms within the country. Much of the industrial sector is based on the production of iron ore, rubber manufacturing and construction materials. Two of the major profitable exports, diamonds and timber, were sanctioned by the United Nations until they met international standards of transparency. The sanctions put on the diamond sector still remain in place, while reforms in the timber industry have allowed the lifting of sanctions in this sector. There is also a substantial shipping industry that takes advantage of Liberia’s sizeable port. Relaxed shipping regulations and low fees have made Liberia a popular destination for importers. Despite a fair amount of economic potential in a number of sectors, unemployment is pervasive at 85% (World Bank, 2006a). There are several factors that must be considered in any discussion of the economy in Liberia. Much of the physical infrastructure of the country was destroyed during the war, including manufacturing plants, agricultural sites, many of the rubber plantations and the road network. Secondly, the aid industry has deeply impacted the economy by driving up prices on housing and services. In a country where the per-capita income is less than US$2 a day (World Bank, 2006b), a one-bedroom

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apartment in Monrovia can rent for upwards of $1,500 a month. Thirdly, there is a sizeable immigrant community that has a strong influence across several sectors (including the lucrative rice trade), and at least some of these profits are being shipped abroad. Also, as nearly one-third of the national population has relocated into the capital and away from the agricultural lands, this will drastically affect the nature of the economy in the coming years. Lastly, there is an increasing population of Liberians who are returning home from Europe and the United States to set up businesses. Until very recently, Liberia was seen as a pariah in terms of international economic assistance. First there was conflict throughout much of the 1990s, then with a former warlord as president, and recently with an interim government that was widely seen as incompetent, Liberia remains in dire financial circumstances, with over US$2.7 billion in international debt. But, with the election of President Johnson-Sirleaf, and her experience working at the World Bank, the international financial institutions are becoming more supportive. During his visit to Liberia on 21 and 22 July, the President of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, pledged the Bank’s commitment to the economic development of Liberia and agreed to provide assistance for labour-intensive public works schemes aimed at building key infrastructure and generating employment (United Nations. Security Council, 2006).

8 How Has TVET Been Linked to the Economy? Planned economies tend to have a much higher success rate in terms of economic forecasting, and linking needed-manpower estimates to employment opportunities than market economies (Youdi & Hinchliffe, 1985). This is intuitive given that planned economies are able to predict labour demands in each sector to a greater degree, and given that the size and investment in these sectors are often predetermined and dictated by the State. Post-conflict scenarios offer an opportunity to take advantage of this same concept, given that the post-conflict economy is often initially driven by planned projects funded by international aid. In 2006, the Liberian Government and the World Bank agreed upon a US$68 million grant focusing on emergency rehabilitation and repair of critical infrastructure, utilities maintenance (roads, water and sewage), and construction of new community facilities (schools and health clinics.) The secondary goal of the grant is to create employment opportunities for Liberians (World Bank, 2006c). This is not the first attempt by the Liberian government and the aid community to develop employment-generating projects. According to UNMIL, approximately 60,000 of the 65,893 ex-combatants who were trained in their TVET initiatives are said to have participated in short-term employment schemes (World Bank, 2006c). Much of the TVET training linked to employment initiatives is geared towards construction, derived from a vision that the newly trained ex-combatants would be able to rebuild the physical infrastructure of the country destroyed during the war. However, this vision resulted in limited, very short-term opportunities upon completion of vocational training, and many of the participants struggled to use


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the skills they learned during TVET in the market-place. The problem many face is an overabundance of trained labour in a given field. This becomes particularly problematic when considering the vulnerable state of the trainees who cannot find work upon completion of their training: See, many houses don’t have toilet, don’t have sink. So, it’s not easy to find work in plumbing, you know? . . . Because most of Liberia doesn’t have plumbing (K., former LURD child soldier, trained as a plumber during DDRR, interview with author, 12 April 2006).

UNMIL initiated some small-scale projects to address unemployment through its ‘quick-impact scheme’, which commissioned minor building and infrastructure projects that temporarily employed 900 ex-combatants and community members (UNMIL, 2006a). USAID also implemented a public works project, primarily geared towards building roads, which temporarily employed 10,000 ex-combatants and other unemployed Liberians producing 500,000 days of paid work (USAID, 2006). Reception of this project was mixed, due to the low rate of pay offered and, once again, they offered only short-term employment. Recent initiatives by the new government appear to be attempting to bridge the gap between training and employment through several job-creation strategies. In 2006 two major programmes were introduced with the support to the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the government of the Netherlands: the Liberia Emergency Employment Programme (LEEP), designed to offer temporary employment in infrastructure development, and the Liberia Employment Action Programme (LEAP), aimed at capacity-building with the goal of long-term employment

9 Conclusions There is no doubt that Liberia has been, and continues to be, in a fragile situation in terms of development. The economy remains in shambles, there are hosts of lingering social problems, and there is a marked under-supply of skilled labour. Properly managed, TVET has the potential to increase the capacity of Liberia to address some of its economic and social woes. But, TVET programming needs to be designed for, and organized around, the contextual economic opportunities. Estimating these prospective opportunities is no small task. Problems of data collection, assessing existing skills, and predicting the future capabilities of various sectors in terms of infrastructural capacity are just a few of the difficulties facing post-conflict societies in general and Liberia in particular. Nonetheless, the application of economic and manpower forecasting models has the potential of creating a framework for TVET programming to be designed in such a way as to maximize its contextual effectiveness. There has been very little diversity in the TVET programmes associated with the Liberian DDRR, with the greatest focus on construction-related industries. This emphasis in construction skills, while well-intentioned, struggled to improve the livelihoods of its participants and often flooded particular labour sectors while others

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remained under represented. How many plumbers and masons can an economy absorb? This problem is amplified by the fact that the aid system, which is responsible for much of the large-scale post-conflict construction projects, often imports specialized labour, leaving the recently trained workers with even fewer opportunities in an economy plagued by very high rates of unemployment. The first step in linking training to economic opportunities is a close examination of current and future market opportunities. Linking TVET to planned projects is one way to achieve at least short-term employment for recent trainees, but the long-term success of the economy depends on a skilled labour force that can take advantage of the different sectors within a market economy. As mentioned above, Liberia has a number of attractive resources. It is rich in minerals and timber; there is a large shipping port; the climate is ideal for rubber, coffee, rice and other agricultural products; and the recent advances in information technology open up the potential for new service-oriented markets. Diversifying the implementation of TVET has the potential of producing a much more productive private sector. In addition to diversifying TVET training, there are a number of support structures that have the potential to promote participant inclusion in the economy. One way to support improved livelihoods is entrepreneurship training and micro-credit schemes. Another avenue that should be explored is partnerships between TVET programmes and the local and international private sector. The potential for client generation, and access to expertise for training purposes, is appealing. On the downside, partnerships are often difficult to establish and businesses may be resistant to investing in a potentially unstable political and economic climate. Post-conflict scenarios offer both limitations and opportunities in terms of economic growth. The challenges that war-affected populations face should not be under-estimated, but the potential to reshape the social and economic structures are exciting. When properly contextualized, TVET has the potential to aid in this process of post-conflict recovery by building the capacity of the population to improve their livelihoods and take control of their own national development.

References Ahamad, B.; Scott, K.F.N. 1972. A note on sensitivity in manpower forecasting. The journal of the Royal Statistical Society, vol. 135, no. 3, pp. 385–92. Diebold, F.X. 1998. The past, present and future of macroeconomic forecasting. The journal of economic perspectives, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 175–92. Ellis, S. 2001. Mask of anarchy: the destruction of Liberia and the religious dimension of an African civil war. New York, NY: NYU Press. Granger, C.W.J. 1996. Can we improve the perceived quality of economic forecasts? Journal of applied econometrics, vol. 11, no. 5, pp. 455–73. Hanke, J.; Weigland, P. 1994. What are business schools doing to educate forecasters? Journal of economic education, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 175–92. Jain, C.L. 1991. Ivy League business schools far behind the time. Journal of business forecasting, vol. 13, no. 4, p. 2. Kwak, N.K.; Garrett, W.; Barone, S. 1977. A stochastic model of demand forecasting for technical manpower planning. Management science, vol. 23, no. 10.


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Loomis, D.G.; Cox, J.E. 2000. A course in economic forecasting: rationale and content. The journal of economic education, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 349–57. Parnes, H.S. 1962. Forecasting educational needs for economic and social development. Paris: OECD. Singer, P.W. 2001. Children at war. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. United Nations Mission in Liberia—UNMIL. 2006a. Accomplishments and challenges. <www.unmil.org/documents/insideunmil/presskit0806.pdf> United Nations Mission in Liberia—UNMIL. 2006b. Disarmament, demobilization, reintegration and rehabilitation. United Nations News Centre. 2005. Annan calls for urgent aid to Liberia’s security agenda; sanctions are not lifted. <www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=16878&Cr=liberia&Cr1=> United Nations Office of the Special Advisor on Africa. 2005. Disarmament, demobilization, reintegration (DDR) and stability in Africa. Conference Report. Freetown, June 21–23, 2005. <www.un.org/africa/osaa/reports/DDR%20Sierra%20Leone%20March%202006.pdf> United Nations. Security Council. 2006. Twelfth Progress Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission in Liberia. (Document S/2006/743.) USAID. 2006. Sub-Saharan Africa: Liberia. <www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan africa/ countries/liberia> World Bank. 2006a. Liberia’s President affirms strong partnership with bank, urges women to strive for development. <web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK: 20867632∼menuPK:51062077∼pagePK:34370∼piPK:34424∼theSitePK:4607,00.html> World Bank. 2006b. Liberia: data and statistics. <web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/ COUNTRIES/AFRICAEXT/LIBERIAEXTN/0,,menuPK:356220∼pagePK:141132∼piPK: 141109∼theSitePK:356194,00.html> World Bank. 2006c. Address to the joint session of the Liberian legislature. Paul Wolfowitz, 21 July 2006. <web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTABOUTUS/ORGANIZATION/ EXTOFFICEPRESIDENT/0,,contentMDK:21001978∼menuPK:64343258∼pagePK: 51174171∼piPK:64258873∼theSitePK:1014541,00.html> World Bank. 2007. Liberia at a glance. <devdata.worldbank.org/AAG/lbr aag.pdf> Youdi, R.V.; Hinchliffe, K., eds. 1985. Forecasting skilled manpower needs: the experience of eleven countries. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP.


Chapter V.4

Deepening the Divide: The Differential Impact of Protracted Conflict on TVET Versus Academic Education in Palestine Bilal Barakat

1 Introduction The effect a conflict has on local TVET need not be the same as its effect on other kinds of education. While this is almost tautological, it is worthwhile examining just how pronounced the difference can be and, by implication, how potentially misleading it would be in conflict and post-conflict settings to generalize from the state of the education sector as a whole to the state of TVET. In recent years, education generally in and after conflict has been the focus of greater attention than ever before. Given that TVET is often partly incorporated into general education, this means that TVET after conflict is increasingly considered from an educational point-of-view, in addition to the labour-market perspective on economic reconstruction that has dominated in the past. This attention brings with it the promise of best practices and lessons learned for reconstruction in other educational sub-sectors, but TVET’s distinct character has important implications. In some ways, TVET might be expected to be particularly vulnerable to the effects of conflict. It requires more specialized teachers who are difficult to replace if they flee, are killed or injured, or recruited into the armed forces. The classrooms or workshops often involve expensive equipment that is likely to be looted or damaged. In protracted conflicts it might be nearly impossible to obtain and maintain up-to-date equipment in the first place. While there is little hard data on the matter, we might expect a typical TVET student to be more likely to drop-out or participate in hostilities, especially in places where TVET has acquired a reputation for being a second-class option for those who failed for whatever reason to succeed in more academic streams. It also suffers indirect effects. Economic collapse caused by violent or lingering conflict undermines TVET’s ostensible rationale, namely the premise that the vocation being trained for will actually offer a livelihood. These notions require careful empirical investigation in a variety of cases in order to yield recommendations for educational reconstruction that are specific to TVET. The aim of this chapter is to illustrate this differential impact of conflict on TVET compared to general education using the example of Palestine. This is an apt example because the difference between the development under conflict of TVET and other parts of the Palestinian education sector has been particularly pronounced. This example also highlights another important point. Among Palestinians, TVET R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 V.4, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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has been popularly perceived to have a different standing in relation to both national aspirations and personal emancipation than academic education. Under protracted, ‘low intensity’ conflict, these issues are of great importance. In fact, in such a situation the amplification of this perceived qualitative difference between TVET and academic education can be more critical than the difference in degree in physical vulnerability. The first section of this chapter provides a brief overview of the interaction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with Palestinian education as a whole. Far from merely being ‘interrupted’ by conflict, throughout the past century Palestinian education has been shaped structurally, ideologically and pedagogically by it. Against this backdrop, the second section highlights how the conflict’s impact on TVET contrasts with its effect on other kinds of education. While higher education, for instance, was boosted by its perceived and actual connection with the nationalist project, even in the absence of clear economic incentives, many forms of TVET have traditionally been neglected and have been particularly vulnerable faced with the effects of economic crises. The concluding remarks finally depart from the most important observations of the specific case of Palestine to propose questions of more general interest to the problem of TVET in conflict.

2 The Entanglement of Education and Conflict in Palestine The history of Palestinian education reflects the history of the conflict over Palestine itself (for an overview, see Pappe, 2006; Kimmerling & Migdal, 2003). Before the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, the Palestinians had never controlled their own education system. Within historic Palestine, this control rested first with the Ottomans, then the British and later Israel; Palestinian refugees beyond the borders are subject to the curricula of the respective host countries, even though in their case it is implemented by the United Nations. Under all these external powers, educational provision was closely linked with the struggle over control of the land. The Ottomans long neglected secondary education and insisted on the unpopular medium of Turkish for instruction (even for the teaching of Arabic!), only to promise reform of both issues during the First World War to shore up Arab support for their failing campaign. During the British Mandate that followed the Ottoman defeat, on the one hand, the increase in schooling helped spread Arab nationalism by bringing young educated men to the countryside as teachers; on the other hand, control over education served the British as both a carrot and a stick to extort local co-operation (Al-Haj, 1995). At the same time, the Arab population keenly felt competition with the education of the Jewish settlers, who were free to link the education of their children with their nationalist ambitions. The Arabs on the other hand felt that their own schools were prevented by the British from playing an equivalent role (Tibawi, 1956; Shepherd, 1999). In popular lore, the Arab defeat in 1948 was attributed in large part to the Zionists’ superior education and training (Abu-Lughod, 2000; Graham-Brown, 1984). To what extent

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the Palestinian refugees’ educational achievements in the following decades were spurred on by this conviction and the motivation to overcome this weakness, or were a result of the external circumstances, including a lack of alternative opportunities and favourable access to Arab universities, remains open to debate. Undisputed, however, is the fact that their educational achievements were remarkable. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from the start regarded education as a priority and the schools it operated in and near the refugee camps were instrumental in achieving near universal primary enrolment for both genders—at a time when the populations of host and other countries in the region were largely illiterate (Yusuf, 1979). Within a generation, participation in higher education reached levels that were among the highest in developing countries. As a result, educated Palestinians made up large parts of the teaching force and other professional sectors in the Arab Gulf region up until the 1960s (Mazawi, 1994; Badran, 1980). The reputation of Palestinians as the most educated Arabs was cemented; the explanation of their enthusiasm as the natural result of their experience of dispossession and the recognition of education as an asset that could not be taken away became part of Palestinian folklore. Below we will examine to what extent this was true of academic education alone. While for some the outcome of the 1948 War resulted in improved access to education and labour markets for the highly skilled, after the war of 1967, when Israel gained control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the consequences for education were uniformly harmful (Velloso, 2002). For over two decades, school development was neglected despite tremendous population growth. The curriculum was censored. For a long time, the education sector was controlled by military personnel in uniform and teacher appointments were under tight control of the security services and were abused for the recruitment of collaborators. In East Jerusalem, there was an attempt to incorporate schools into the Israeli ‘Arab Education’ sector to underline Israeli claims of sovereignty over the city (Masarweh & Salhout, 2002). This attempt failed due to popular non-co-operation; within a short time, most parents had moved their children out of the Israelicontrolled schools and into Islamic charity schools, forcing the Israeli authorities to reverse their policy and reintroduce the censored Jordanian curriculum. While school development was stifled, the decades following 1967 did see the rise of Palestinian universities. These were barely tolerated by the Israeli military authorities, partly because they had no administrative recourse to prevent their legal establishment as private institutions and partly because it was hoped that the universities would offer young Palestinians an alternative to membership in guerrilla forces or the PLO (Sullivan, 1994). Instead, the universities fermented and became symbols of Palestinian nationalism as the only ‘public’ institutions not under direct Israeli control (Kimmerling & Migdal, 2003; Sullivan, 1994). As a result, violent and bureaucratic harassment by the authorities increased, culminating in expulsions of students, lecturers and university officials, and complete forced closures for months on end (Baramki, 1987; Assaf, 1997). These closures reached their peak during the first popular uprising in the Occupied Territories—the Intifada—during the late 1980s and early 1990s (Usher, 1991;

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Barber, 1997). Education was effectively taken hostage as a punitive measure by the Israeli military authorities. At times, all educational institutions were closed, ostensibly for security reasons. The security rationale was, however, taken ad absurdum by extending closures to primary schools and kindergartens; even teaching activities in private homes were outlawed under the threat of a prison term. These constraints fermented the creative development of alternative and distance education materials and teaching methods by progressive Palestinian educationalists (Mahshi & Bush, 1989; Fasheh, 1990). Clandestine ‘neighbourhood schools’ allowed for experimentation with alternative teaching approaches that would have encountered resistance in the formal sector. Later, these experiences were to have an important influence on the development of the first Palestinian school curriculum. As a result of prolonged closures, the school system was close to collapse when the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) took control of the education sector after the Oslo Accords of 1993 (Assaf, 1997). For several reasons, the education sector continued to be one of the most important arenas for the struggle over political control. Reflecting the combination of an extremely youthful population with high enrolment, a majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were directly affected by the education sector as students, teachers and administrators or parents. The fact that universities represented one of the few areas of local independent capacity, they were reluctant to cede this independence to a Palestinian Authority governed principally by returning exiles (Hanafi & Tabar, 2005). And, finally, education was one of the sectors with the greatest international involvement and scrutiny, partly because it was considered ‘safe to invest in’ and because of the controversy generated by a disinformation campaign accusing Palestinian textbooks of incitement (Brown, 2001, 2002). Educational attainment remained relatively high and university enrolment continued to reach new records, despite the fact that it offered no substantial economic returns in the depressed economic environment of the Occupied Territories. The lack of employment opportunities also meant women’s participation in the labour force remained very low even by regional standards, which might partly explain the exceptional fact that women’s education continued to have only a moderate lowering effect on fertility (Goujon, 1997). Having maintained a leading role in terms of educational attainment in the Arab world throughout decades of conflict and occupation, since the beginning of the second Intifada in 2001, past gains are seriously at risk of being lost. A second generation is growing up with severely disrupted schooling and, when in school, is being taught by teachers who lost years of their own schooling during the first Intifada. Israeli military incursions into Palestinian population centres often result in physical damage to educational infrastructure, as well as the injury or death of students and teachers. Road blocks and other mobility restrictions (including the separation wall) represent a formidable obstacle to attendance (Moughrabi, 2004; Palestinian Authority. MoEHE, 2005; DSP, 2005). Since the international de facto embargo of the Palestinian government elected in early 2006, the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Gaza in particular, has suffered further dramatic


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deterioration, not least long teacher strikes over unpaid salaries. The implications of these developments cannot yet be fully ascertained. Looking back over the past century, it is clear that the education of Palestinians has not merely been constrained by the unresolved conflict over Palestine, but defined by it. It is equally clear that its future is equally tied up with the fate of a political settlement.

3 ‘Cinderella’ in Times of Conflict Clearly, Palestinian education as a whole has affected and has been fundamentally affected by the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, the impact on different branches of the education system has varied. Simplistically speaking, higher education received a quantitative boost, both in terms of students and in terms of local university development (although quality was naturally negatively affected); primary enrolment leapt ahead of the regional competition, both because of UNRWA’s provision to refugees and because of popular demand for education as an asset that could not be appropriated. The effect on TVET development has, however, been unambiguously detrimental. Already during the British Mandate, TVET for the Arab Palestinians was neglected, a neglect that was interpreted by some as deliberate. The enthusiasm for ‘local arts and crafts’ on the part of some British officials made them ill-disposed towards the teaching of modern industrial skills (Shepherd, 1999). The provision of specialized agricultural education in the Arab sector was all but non-existent and local initiatives, such as maintaining a school garden, were often the result of individual committed head-teachers. As the conflict with the Zionist project was very much seen as a conflict over land, this neglect was interpreted by the Arab leadership as a deliberate attempt to limit their competitiveness vis-à-vis the technologically advanced Zionist agricultural enterprises. After the 1948 War, UNRWA did from the start include TVET among the educational services it offered Palestinian refugees (Faherty, 1959), but it was never popular and to this day its TVET offerings remain inadequate in relation to the size and needs of the target population. In fact, critics in the past accused UNRWA of having biased its educational provision towards helping top achievers gain access to universities (Weighill, 1995). While the number of higher education students among Palestinian refugees was comparatively high, they were still a small minority overall and this ‘elitist’ approach left the large mass of refugees with an education but limited opportunities. This outcome is hardly surprising. The refugees’ demand for education was driven by the priorities of the bourgeoisie among them, who already had experience in the modern sector and who, keen to stay ahead, devoted ‘all their resources to making an economic recovery and to ensuring that their children obtained a university education’ (Badran, 1980, p. 52). Ironically, under the British Mandate, TVET in the form of agricultural education suffered because it was regarded as more relevant to effective Arab claims to the

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land than academic education which was easily ‘sanitized’ by the mandate authority (Tibawi, 1956). In stark contrast, in the post-1948 period the contribution of education to the nationalist project came to be seen instead in the sum of individual excellence, which was associated strictly with academic attainment. While many Palestinian students did tend to see their pursuit of education as part of the national project, it is debatable whether this was their main motivation. It could be argued that for the nationalists to politically endorse individual higher education as part of the ‘liberation through education’ slogan was to make a virtue of necessity and to lend patriotic respectability to educational choices motivated rather by individual considerations. By contrast, TVET was seen neither as a desirable option in terms of personal advancement nor as a valuable contribution to the national project. In fact, it even appeared to some as undermining collective aspirations. In a context where it is not highly regarded, TVET’s sole attraction is the prospect of improved employment prospects. In order to achieve these, it must correspond to the de facto economic context. But to adapt to a situation where economic development is deliberately stifled, as has been the case under Israeli occupation (Roy, 1995), can be understood as capitulating before the status quo: ‘to restrict the growth of higher education to suit the needs of an exploited and artificially depressed economy would be nothing less than social strangulation. The short-term effects might be defensible (i.e. to discourage emigration), but the long-range impact on society may be disastrous’ (Hallaj, 1980, p. 87) The class-based counter-argument was sure to follow: Understandable as such a viewpoint may be, we should not ignore the way it allows a hypothetical future disaster to eclipse current actual disaster, such as Israeli exploitation of low-skilled Palestinian workers [. . .] It is through such weighting of priorities that so much Palestinian money has been mobilized for student scholarships, research institutes and universities, and so little for training programs for the poor (Sayigh, 1985, p. 132).

The argument was never settled, and pride in the achievements in higher education continued to dominate the discourse on education and the national project. The question of to what extent this reflected a cultural bias is a difficult one. By any account, most other Arab countries share entrenched negative social attitudes to blue-collar labour (reflected by low demand for TVET (UIS, 2002)), and this raises the question of whether Palestinian TVET would have stagnated regardless of the conflict. The assumption of an intrinsic negative Arab attitude towards TVET is, however, undermined by the discussion regarding the Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel. Some have suggested the assumption of low demand for TVET in the Israeli-Arab education sector to be merely a convenient excuse for a lack of Israeli investment, and report a ‘positive shift in attitudes towards skilled labour and vocational-technological education’ (Mar’i, 1978, p. 165) and that ‘Arab parents and pupils alike have a positive attitude regarding vocational-technological education’ (Al-Haj, 1995, p. 92). In assessing this apparent contradiction between ‘cultural attitudes’ of the same people either side of an armistice line, it is important to take into account the fact


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that the Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel have had few alternatives. In the academic stream, the cards have traditionally been and still are heavily stacked against them in terms of funding and appropriate curricula, encouraging extremely high dropout and failure rates. For those that succeed, there are few employment options (Human Rights Watch, 2001). Likewise, their participation in higher education at Israeli universities remains marginal, even if it is increasing slowly. It should also be taken into account that TVET in Israel includes a number of high-tech branches far removed from the stigma of manual labour, even if in practice—if not in principle— they tend not to be available at Arab TVET institutions. In any case, because the middle classes were the first to flee, the Palestinian Arabs that stayed behind in 1948 and became Israeli citizens were on average less educated to begin with than the majority of the refugees. But it is not only the Palestinians’ own attitudes towards TVET and blue-collar jobs that enter the picture. The main drive in international support for Palestinian education during the Oslo era came at a time when TVET had recently fallen out of favour with the World Bank and other agencies following its lead. After decades of emphasizing TVET, based on projected manpower requirements for economic development, studies calling into question fundamental assumptions underlying TVET provision and, more decisively, suggesting it was not cost-effective and offered lower economic returns than an expansion of primary schooling, led to a radical change in lending policy (Middleton, Ziderman & van Adams, 1991). Only recently has this trend been reversed. Ostensibly, common criticisms of TVET apply even more forcefully in a refugee situation. It has been asserted that training for specific tasks is too specialized, and that general education provides a more flexible preparation for many jobs. Given the uncertainty in refugees’ lives, such flexibility is highly desirable. It is also often noted that TVET is more dependent on being regularly updated and made relevant to the shifting economic and technological context. Such updates are expensive in terms of the training of teachers and possibly equipment, making it even more difficult for TVET to remain relevant in the often austere conditions of refugee and conflict-affected education. However, there are also obstacles to the currency of curricula that affect academic subjects more seriously than TVET. Under military occupation after 1967, censorship of school textbooks meant that even though legally the Jordanian curriculum applied in the West Bank, its changes were not always applied if the new textbooks were banned. This resulted in the teaching and examination of hopelessly outdated material that was known to be false by teachers and students alike (Schiff, 1989). Since TVET curricula are typically considered to be less politically sensitive, this at least is one constraint more likely to affect academic subjects. In most respects however, it seems TVET remains at least as vulnerable as other branches of education, in particular regarding the effects of physical violence. During the second Intifada, the education sector had to engage in ingenious planning in order to respond to the challenge of ad-hoc road-blocks and other mobility restrictions imposed by the Israeli occupation forces. For example, in order to keep schools running teachers who could not reach their usual place of work

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were reassigned to a school they could access (World Bank, 2004; Lempinen & Repo, 2002). Again, structural differences between TVET and general education make this kind of attempt to mitigate the effects of conflict more difficult in the case of the former. Not only are there fewer sites that are also further apart, but there are many different providers who cannot easily exchange their staff. Similarly, the clandestine community schools set up during the first Intifada to circumvent school closures are a model that was already problematic with regard to general and academic education, but unfeasible with regard to TVET. The lack of past opportunity for TVET in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to develop into a viable educational option is reflected in the extremely low enrolment in the vocational secondary stream. The share of secondary students in one of the four vocational streams (industrial, commercial, agricultural, hotel—depending on classification, whether home economics or religious studies are also considered vocational streams) was less than 5% in the 2005/2006 school year overall, and even lower in the Gaza Strip, where there were only a few hundred vocational secondary students among the more than 50,000 secondary students in government schools (Palestinian Authority. MoEHE, 2005). There is also a marked gender differential, with many of the industrial options closed to females. While the overall secondary TVET enrolment represents a considerable increase over previous levels, it falls far short of the target share of 7.5% of all secondary students (Palestinian Authority. MoE, 2000), while the targets for increasing general secondary enrolment have been met even under the most adverse conditions. As we have seen, the historic development trajectories of TVET and academic education in Palestine have diverged substantially under the political and social pressures of the century-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict. However, it would be a mistake to attribute current gaps between the two purely to this differential. There are certain structural features of TVET provision in the West Bank and Gaza Strip retarding its development; the fact that overcoming them is made no easier by the conflict environment does not mean that they are a result of it. The problems needing to be overcome are well-known. The Ministry of Education and Higher Education’s Human Resource Development strategy for the TVET sector provides a succinct synthesis: Lack of participation in community development. Absence of entrepreneurship programs. Lack of business participation in the technical education process. Inadequate vocational guidance and counselling. Absence of information about graduate employability [. . .] Limited instructional skills & knowledge of trainers. Limited technical skills & knowledge of trainers. Inadequate curricula [. . .] Lack of public awareness regarding TVET strategy. Inadequate management information system. Unclear vision of TVET development. Limited management skills of TVET staff (Palestinian Authority. MoEHE, n.d.).

Observers of the current state of TVET in the West Bank and Gaza Strip agree that it is heavily fragmented and lacks relevance. In addition to technical and vocational post-secondary formal education at secondary schools and post-secondary community colleges, semi-formal training is available at the Ministry of Labour’s and UNRWA training centres. There are also non-formal providers whose exact


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number is unknown but goes into the hundreds (World Bank, 2006), most offering short courses and lacking economy of scale. Past lack of co-ordination means: One can become a carpenter in 9 months, 11 months or 24 months. A person may train for carpentry in vocational secondary schools, or in a training Centre, run by UNRWA, or the Ministry of Labor, or the Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs, or quite a number of private institutions, and each time using different curricula (Palestinian Authority. MoEHE, 1998). The relationship between TVET and the labour market has been described as ‘almost non-functional’. [Existing TVET is] neither efficient nor relevant to the needs of its target group or the needs of the market [. . . and] incapable of serving its stated purpose (Abu Nahleh, 1996, p. 144, quoted in Mazawi, 2000, p. 374). This lack of relevance for employability is invariably confirmed by outside observers. UNRWA likewise admits that because of funding constraints, its TVET centres ‘cannot respond to the changing needs of the labour market’ (UNRWA, 2005, p. 19).

Unsurprisingly then, demand is very weak. The vocational secondary option is unpopular (see above) and attracts only the academically least able. Reinforcing TVET’s stigma, the Ministry of Social Affairs, as yet another provider, offers training specifically for school drop-outs, ex-detainees and other ‘social cases’ requiring rehabilitation. Those that do enrol in the vocational secondary stream demonstrate little vocational intent: in a tracer study of industrial school graduates in 2001, nearly half the sample subsequently enrolled in degree and diploma-level higher education courses instead of training-related employment (World Bank, 2006, p. 71). The popularity of TVET courses varies greatly between different options. In contrast to most courses, nursing stands out as having more applicants than places (World Bank, 2006). Such differences call into question the usefulness of making general statements about the state of TVET as such. The usual caveats apply about overstating the distinction between TVET and academic education. In particular, what is a highly skilled profession in one era might become a low- or mediumqualification skill later, as the relevant technology moves from being high-tech to being routine. Operating computers is a current case in point. What is the appropriate categorization of, for example, tertiary agricultural education leading to a B.Sc. as offered by the College of Agriculture at Hebron University (i.e. the borderline between ISCED 4B versus 5B (UIS, 2002)) depends very much on the question to be answered. Further calling the distinction into question is the fact that much of what was said about TVET also applies to some extent to science education, with its similar need for equipment and specialized teachers. In fact, the occupation authorities confiscated most chemicals from schools’ science laboratories, severely limiting their usefulness (UNESCO, 1991). The detrimental effect of the conflict on Palestinian science education in particular is well known. The disproportion of humanities versus science students carries over from secondary to university level (World Bank, 2006) and this weakness in science and mathematics reinforces the low takeup of TVET at higher levels and constrains the supply of trainers. This phenomenon is further strengthened by the fact that science education at all levels is more expensive to the student than humanities or social science subjects.

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The oversupply of cheap academic alternatives, regardless of their value, reduces the relative attractiveness of TVET, as fees at technical and community colleges are similar to those at traditional universities and actually exceed those at the local Open University (World Bank, 2006). In a vicious circle, the low demand for TVET further drives up unit costs. It is to their credit that Palestinian educationalists are not content with maintaining the status quo but are trying to advance the development of the education sector, even during times of crisis. These efforts notwithstanding, Palestinian TVET is in a state of arrested development, with reform efforts having been articulated, but stalling in implementation. Due to the lack of Palestinian statehood, Palestinian participation in some intergovernmental initiatives for co-operation in the field of TVET is difficult. There is no Palestinian presence in the Arab States UNESCO-UNEVOC Network. The question of to what extent Palestinian TVET can, without active participation, benefit from the outcomes of initiatives, such as the 2002 ‘Regional Expert Meeting on TVET Project Development in the Arab States’ (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2003), remains problematic. This constraint does not however apply to other regional fora, such as the GTZ-facilitated Regional Arab-German Network on TVET (<www.arabtvet.com>) for the development of shared occupational classification schemes and an Arabic glossary of TVET curricular terms. Already during the late 1990s, a national TVET development plan and reform scheme was developed (Lempinen & Repo, 2002; World Bank, 2006). It reflected the uncertainty caused be the unresolved conflict in its call for flexibility regarding training for neighbouring labour markets that might or might not be or become accessible to Palestinian labour. Its key themes, however, were: (a) the unification and harmonization of standards and qualifications; (b) the modularization of curricula; (c) responsiveness to demand with a limited role for the ambition to create a small excess supply of skilled labour as a catalyst; and (d) a tighter integration with academic trajectories by providing bridging courses between academic secondary and further education and TVET, between TVET and higher education. Remarkably, Palestinian educationalists do not lay the blame for the lack of progress in implementing this national TVET strategy directly on the intensification of the conflict. In the 2003/2004 Action Plan (Palestinian Authority. MoEHE, 2003), failure to achieve real change is instead pinned on a lack of management capacity at the systems level, the absence of follow-up, and the neglect of transitional objectives that could serve to connect the ambitious strategic objectives with the levels of funding actually available. Compared to times past, TVET is enjoying increased attention. The will for reform appears real and co-operation between the concerned ministries has been lauded as exceptional (Lempinen & Repo, 2002). A recent novelty has been publicawareness campaigns, including newspaper supplements, radio and TV advertisements to promote TVET as a valid and rewarding educational choice (the advertisements may be viewed at <www.tvet-pal.org/awareness/awareness.html> [validated 4 August 2008]). To what extent such measures influence public perceptions and behaviour remains, of course, to be seen but, given that students’ knowledge about


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TVET opportunities used to come mainly from informal sources (Abu Nahleh, 1996, in Mazawi, 2000), represents an important step in the right direction of trying to break TVET’s stigma.

4 Concluding Remarks It is regrettable that TVET is all too often the ‘Cinderella’ of national systems of education. Even if it is thus neglected in practice, we should not neglect it in our analyses of education sectors in and after conflict. Attention to the specific circumstances of TVET is crucial because, as we have seen, its destiny in and after conflict can diverge significantly from broader trends in the education sector. Reasons for this divergence include both structural effects of the typically greater geographic dispersion of TVET institutions compared to other schools for instance, as well as attitudinal effects. Pre-existing biases are unlikely to be overcome when the stakes are raised in conflict. In the Palestinian case, the conflict and its political effects provided a boost to primary and higher education enrolment, while constraining their quality. By contrast, the development of TVET was stunted. While a regional comparison suggests that its neglect due to cultural biases would have been likely regardless of the conflict, the fact remains that it neither shared in the mystique of the liberation struggle created around education generally, nor has been able to follow the pace of developments in neighbouring countries where TVET has traditionally been similarly neglected, but is now in the process of being modernized in the face of rising graduate unemployment. Examining the differences in impact of conflict on TVET and academic education should not obscure but rather sensitize us to the fact that there are large differences within either. The interesting question is how these relate and which patterns, if any, are stable across different contexts of conflict. Does prolonged conflict as a rule tend to affect science education more than literacy, and is that one of the factors constraining technology-oriented TVET? To what extent are certain vocations upgraded in status for ideological reasons or because of their practical contribution to the national struggle, say farming or para-medical occupations? And are such attitudes reflected in the enrolment distribution for formal TVET streams? An interesting question is in what way the relative importance attributed to different forms of education by national movements depends on the existence of a territorial base. A political movement engaged in a violent struggle will endeavour to strengthen its assets that are relevant to the kind of conflict it is fighting. It will be most interested in those kinds of education that contribute to these assets. For a movement with local control, the full range of education and training that contribute to a functioning pseudo-State are desirable and can be actively encouraged. A de-territorialized movement finds itself in a different situation. The need to develop or maintain a national identity through cultural activism and the creation of nationalist literature, the existential need to build political and diplomatic capacity, etc., imply a different set of educational priorities geared more towards the elite end.

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Moreover, with less control over the educational trajectories of its client population, it is forced to ideologically accommodate, rationalize or even appropriate the latter’s educational choices. It is important to note that such questions are not merely theoretical. Not only can TVET differ from the academic streams of the education sector in terms of how it is affected by conflict, it also has a specific role to play in reconstruction. General schooling is an important factor in creating confidence in the capacity of emerging authorities to deliver large-scale public services, in keeping children and youth occupied, and in attempting to plant the seeds for long-term societal changes and development. The coverage of TVET is necessarily more limited and does not reach large parts of the population. On the other hand, it offers opportunities for more immediate integration with economic recovery, reconstruction and, most importantly, livelihoods. Improving TVET’s contribution to the transition to peace ought to be the raison d’être for our attempts to understand its role in conflict.

References Abu-Lughod, I. 2000. Palestinian higher education: national identity, liberation and globalization. Boundary—2, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 75–95. Abu Nahleh, L. 1996. Gender planning, vocational education, and technical training (VETT) in Palestine. London: World University Service (UK); Birzeit: Birzeit University, Women’s Studies Department. Al-Haj, M. 1995. Education, empowerment, and control: the case of the Arabs in Israel. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Assaf, S. 1997. Educational disruption and recovery in Palestine. In: Tawil, S., ed. Final report and case studies of the Workshop on Educational Destruction and Reconstruction in Disrupted Societies. Geneva, Switzerland: UNESCO-IBE. Badran, N.A. 1980. The means of survival: education and the Palestinian community, 1948–1967. Journal of Palestine studies, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 44–74. Baramki, G. 1987. Building Palestinian universities under occupation. Journal of Palestine studies, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 12–20. Barber, B.K. 1997. Palestinian children and adolescents during and after the Intifada. PalestineIsrael journal, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 23–33. Brown, N.J. 2001. Democracy, history, and the contest over the Palestinian curriculum. <www.geocities.com/nathanbrown1/> Brown, N.J. 2002. The international controversy regarding Palestinian textbooks. (Lecture delivered at the Georg-Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research.) <www.geocities.com/nathanbrown1/> Development Studies Programme—DSP. 2005. Palestine human development report, 2004. Ramallah: DSP; Birzeit: Birzeit University. Faherty, R.C. 1959. In human terms: the 1959 story of the UNRWA-UNESCO Arab refugee schools. Paris: UNESCO. Fasheh, M. 1990. Community education: to reclaim and transform what has been made invisible. Harvard educational review, vol. 60, no. 1, pp. 19–35. Goujon, A. 1997. Population and education prospects in the western Mediterranean region (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip). Laxenburg, Austria: IIASA. (Interim Report IR-97-046.) Graham-Brown, S. 1984. Education, repression and liberation, Palestinians. London: World University Service (UK).


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Hallaj, M. 1980. The mission of Palestinian higher education. Journal of Palestine studies, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 75–95. Hanafi, S.; Tabar, L. 2005. The emergence of a Palestinian globalized elite: donors, international organizations and local NGOs. Jerusalem: Institute of Jerusalem Studies. Human Rights Watch—HRW. 2001. Second class: discrimination against Palestinian Arab children in Israel’s schools. New York, NY: HRW. Kimmerling, B.; Migdal, J.S. 2003. The Palestinian people: a history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lempinen, J.; Repo, J. 2002. Palestine (West Bank and Gaza) country report: education and training sector. Helsinki: Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, Further Education Programme. Mahshi, K.; Bush, K. 1989. The Palestinian uprising and education for the future. Harvard educational review, vol. 59, no. 4, pp. 470–83. Mar’i, S.K. 1978. Arab education in Israel. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Masarweh, I.; Salhout, J. 2002. The suffering of children under occupation: documentary study. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights. Mazawi, A.E. 1994. Teachers’ role patterns and the mediation of sociopolitical change: the case of the Palestinian school-teacher. British journal of sociology of education, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 497–514. Mazawi, A.E. 2000. The reconstruction of Palestinian education: between history, policy politics and policy making. Journal of education policy, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 371–75. Middleton, J.; Ziderman, A.; van Adams, A. 1991. Vocational and technical education and training. Washington, DC: World Bank. (A World Bank policy paper.) Moughrabi, F. 2004. Palestinian universities under siege. International higher education, vol. 36, pp. 9–10. Palestinian Authority. Ministry of Education. 2000. Five-year education development plan. Ramallah: Ministry of Education. Palestinian Authority. Ministry of Education and Higher Education. No date. Human resource development for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in Palestine. Ramallah: Ministry of Education and Higher Education. <www.tvet-pal.org/human/mehe.html> Palestinian Authority. Ministry of Education and Higher Education. 1998. Vocational and technical education and training in Palestine: national strategy. Ramallah: Ministry of Education and Higher Education. <www.tvet-pal.org/about/ strategy.html> Palestinian Authority. Ministry of Education and Higher Education. 2003. TVET national strategy: proposed implementation plan. Ramallah: Ministry of Education and Higher Education. <www.tvet-pal.org/about/plan.htm> Palestinian Authority. Ministry of Education and Higher Education. 2005. Statistics about general education in Palestine 2005-2006. Ramallah: Ministry of Education and Higher Education. Pappe, I. 2006. A history of modern Palestine: one land, two peoples, 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Roy, S. 1995. The Gaza Strip: the political economy of de-development. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies. Sayigh, R. 1985. Palestinian education: escape route or strait-jacket? Journal of Palestine studies, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 127–34. Schiff, B.N. 1989. Between occupier and occupied: UNRWA in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Journal of Palestine studies, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 60–75. Shepherd, N. 1999. Ploughing sand: British rule in Palestine. London: John Murray. Sullivan, A. 1994. Palestinian universities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Muslim world, vol. 84, no. 1–2, pp. 168–88. Tibawi, A.L. 1956. Arab education in mandatory Palestine: a study of three decades of British administration. London: Luzac. UNESCO. 1991. Palestine: priority projects for educational development. Project report. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO Institute for Statistics. 2002. Arab States regional report. Montreal, Canada: UIS.

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UNESCO-UNEVOC. 2003. Regional Expert Meeting on TVET Project Development in the Arab States. Bonn, Germany: UNESCO-UNEVOC. <www.unevoc.unesco.org/arabstates> United Nations Relief and Works Agency. 2005. Medium-Term Plan 2005-2009: a better future for Palestine refugees. Gaza: UNRWA. Usher, G. 1991. Children of Palestine. Race & class, vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 1–18. Velloso, A. 2002. Palestinian education: a national curriculum against all odds. International journal of educational development, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 145–54. Weighill, L. 1995. The future of assistance to Palestinian refugees. Asian affairs, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 259–69. World Bank. 2004. Four years: Intifada, closures and Palestinian economic crisis: an assessment. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank. 2006. West Bank and Gaza Education Sector Analysis. Washington, DC: World Bank. Yusuf, M.D. 1979. The potential impact of Palestinian education on a Palestinian State. Journal of Palestine studies, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 70–93.

Chapter V.5

Co-ordinated Programming for Skills Development and Livelihoods in Post-Conflict Societies: What Promise Does TVET Hold for Southern Sudan? Zuki Karpinska

Inconsistent development over the years [. . . ] means that the new Government of Southern Sudan is confronted by a wide diversity of needs. Nowhere is this more evident than in the education sector, where estimates during the war found that just one child in five attended school and less than 1 per cent of girls completed their primary education (Southern Sudan. MoEST/UNICEF, 2006, p. 2). Technical education is needed to train Southern Sudanese so the country is rebuilt by its citizens (Southern Sudan. MoEST, 2007b, p. 47).

1 Introduction In conflict and post-conflict contexts, international aid agencies often assume responsibility for the delivery of services, such as education. Co-ordination in the field of development and relief aid may be defined as ‘the systematic utilization of policy instruments to deliver humanitarian assistance in a cohesive and effective manner’ (Minear et al., 1992, p. 3). In other words, both international stakeholders—United Nations agencies, bi- and multi-lateral donors, and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—and local stakeholders—government authorities and local NGOs—should strive for cohesion and effectiveness in their approaches to the provision of aid and development programming. However, in their research on United Nations (UN) agency co-ordination in humanitarian response, Reindorp and Wiles (2001) cite from past studies of complex emergencies the following themes that contribute to ineffective interventions: ‘turf battles, empire-building, overlapping and conflicting mandates, and ad hoc arrangements’ (p. 8). It is this state of affairs that has led Sommers (2004) to ask: ‘Why is the act of co-ordinating humanitarian and post-conflict reconstruction activities so difficult?’ (p. 17). Sommers goes on, suggesting that: In principle, it should be simple and straightforward: the work by different actors in sectors such as education should fit together and complement each other. It does not make sense R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 V.5, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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for them to overlap or leave gaps in service. Working as a team to address the collective needs of people recovering from tragedy and disaster seems the appropriate, logical and humanitarian thing to do (Sommers, 2004, p. 17).

Why, indeed, does co-ordination for cohesive and effective programming seem so elusive? This chapter examines the difficulties of providing cohesive and effective technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in challenging contexts by looking at government, external agency and NGO co-ordination structures in southern Sudan.1 TVET in southern Sudan, rather than being ‘concerned with the acquisition of knowledge and skills for the world of work’ (UNESCO-UNEVOC, n.d.), is currently mainly concerned with the acquisition of skills that could lead to livelihoods—the means of making a living. The term ‘world of work’ does not currently apply to the context of southern Sudan because too few opportunities for gainful employment exist to make it meaningful; the market for semi-skilled labour of the type that emerges from existing TVET programmes is still too underdeveloped to absorb the few graduates. Thus, for the purposes of this chapter, TVET is defined as any educational opportunity providing training in livelihood skills.2 The chapter begins with a brief overview of the Sudanese conflict, as well as the current political and economic context in the region. The subsequent sections offer a description of TVET programmes in southern Sudan to date; an analysis of current steps that the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) is pursuing to better organize these TVET offerings; and a discussion of the mechanisms used to co-ordinate TVET and other programming. The chapter ends with an expression of optimism that these steps will improve co-ordination among TVET-funding donors, TVET-providing agencies and governmental authorities.

2 Overview of the Conflict and Its Aftermath Sudan is the largest country in Africa and is home to the longest-running conflict on the continent. The north and south of the country have been at war since even before the country gained independence from the British in 1956, due in part to differences in religion, ethnicity and resource availability. After a decade of relative peace between 1972 and 1982, a second civil war broke out in 1983, arguably instigated by the imposition of Shari’a law by the Khartoum-based Government of Sudan (GoS). The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and its splinter groups emerged as the main ‘rebel’ force in opposition to the GoS. The area known as southern Sudan had historically been severely underdeveloped, but—since the fighting took place almost exclusively in the south—what little infrastructure was in place has been completely destroyed. Over the twenty-two years of civil war post-1983, southern Sudan was ravaged in terms of loss of human life, destruction of schools and roads, disruption of agricultural and business activities, as well as massive population displacement. An estimated 2 million people died during the war and approximately 4.5 million Southern Sudanese were displaced.3

V.5 What Promise Does TVET Hold for Southern Sudan?

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The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) (GoS & SPLM/A, 2005) ending the second war was signed on 9 January 2005 by only two of the parties to the conflict: the GoS and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). This is significant because most Sudanese, from both the north and the south, did not participate in the peace process. Even other key military groups, such as the South Sudan Defence Force (SSDF) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), were not represented during the two-year negotiations led by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which enjoyed strong support from the international community, including the so-called ‘troika’ of the United States, Norway and the United Kingdom (Young, 2005). Under the CPA, southern Sudan— comprising ten of Sudan’s southernmost states with two additional states and one area administered jointly with the Khartoum government—became an autonomous region. For all intents and purposes, however, southern Sudan still suffers from insecurity due to continuing occasional skirmishes between the GoS forces and southern armies. The CPA’s power-sharing protocol called for an autonomous Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) and a Government of National Unity (GoNU), the latter comprising representatives from both the north and the south. The appointed ministers and other executives of the GoSS are almost exclusively former military officials, many of whom lack the administration skills required to lead a civilian nation, resulting in a fledgling government of generally low capacity (International Crisis Group, 2006). Under the CPA, the South will hold a referendum in 2011 to vote on the status of the region, leaving it to the Southern Sudanese to decide whether to continue power-sharing or to secede entirely and establish their own nation-State. According to National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) focus group data (Cook, 2005) and other sources, the Southern Sudanese will almost certainly vote for the latter option, but the GoS will be reluctant to give up the oil wealth that the south represents. The CPA’s wealth-sharing protocol had specified that half of Sudanese oil wealth would be allocated to the south. These funds were to comprise—for now—the sole source of non-donor GoSS revenue, as a tax system is currently unthinkable. As of the time of writing, only a fraction of the expected funds have been released by the GoS (Reeves, 2005, emphasis added), which—together with the low capacity of the southern government—has delayed full GoSS assumption of responsibility for delivery of services, such as education.

3 The Economic Context and Livelihoods Muchomba and Sharp (2006) report: ‘Livelihoods in southern Sudan are inextricably linked to both a relatively rich and abundant resource base and the terrible consequences of more than two decades of civil conflict’ (p. 18). The majority of Southern Sudanese seek livelihoods in animal husbandry, agriculture, fishing on the Nile River and its tributaries, wild food collection and/or trade. Livestock may

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represent the single greatest material asset of the Southern Sudanese; many of the ethnic groups in southern Sudan are pastoralist, owning vast herds of cattle and goats. The cattle herds, in particular, may sometimes number in the thousands, and are an integral part of both the region’s livelihoods and its culture. Both pastoralist and non-pastoralist ethnic groups practice small-scale agriculture, for subsistence and/or as a means of currency. However, crops are affected by the region’s periodic droughts (including a recent drought that lasted for three years) and the resultant low yields are often insufficient for even subsistence. Trading and selling of goods from nearby Uganda, Kenya or Ethiopia and even from Khartoum—due in part to improved transportation and demining of key access roads—is increasing rapidly during the time of fragile peace. The rudimentary markets are expanding, with more goods—e.g. plastic sandals, clothing, cigarettes—appearing in an increasing number of locations. The barter system is still widespread, with southern Sudan’s three currencies—in addition to those of the neighbouring countries—less commonly used than exchange for cattle, beer or grain (Muchomba & Sharp, 2006). Very few paid job opportunities exist in southern Sudan, outside of the aid community. NGOs and international organizations employ hundreds of Southern Sudanese as programme managers, project staff, driver/mechanics, security guards, cooks, cleaners, etc. Due to continued inability by the government to pay salaries, teachers are usually unpaid volunteers; a small number of schools receive small incentives for teachers from NGOs like Norwegian Church Aid (NCA), but these are usually in the form of non-cash items, such as soap. Temporary work is sometimes available in select areas for semi-skilled labourers, such as masons or carpenters on construction projects. As a result, many Southern Sudanese are still dependent on humanitarian aid (Marriage, 2006) from organizations such as the World Food Programme. All of these livelihoods are affected by the reality of the southern Sudanese environment. Lack of roads and periodic flooding mean no access to markets for the vast majority of the population. There are disparities within the region of southern Sudan, however: the southern-most Equatoria states are much less affected by the rains than the rest of the region. The Equatorias have better roads, are closer to the relatively-developed markets of Uganda and Kenya and do not have the swamps of Jonglei or other states. Security is also often an issue that affects access to markets, but in isolated cases rather than as a region-wide phenomenon. Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) attacks, for instance, are limited to the southernmost states and can close down markets for weeks. It is important to note that the most significant factor in the economy of southern Sudan is its sheer physical size. The region is massive and distances between points can be unmanageable. Transportation costs are thus staggeringly high, impacting both southern Sudanese livelihoods and international agency programming. Finally, a significant challenge to the development of livelihoods in post-conflict southern Sudan is lack of education and training. Southern Sudan’s ‘lost generation’ —those denied access to schooling during the war years due to insecurity, displacement and/or lack of resources—comprises the majority of the population. The latest figures show that only one out of every five children attended school


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during the war, with just 2% finishing the primary school cycle (Southern Sudan. MoEST/UNICEF, 2006). Education and development funding have only been available in the region for the past several years; prior to this, the vast majority of donor funds were solely available for humanitarian relief (Sommers, 2005). Although a few organizations,4 including UNICEF, offered school ‘materials and a little training’ prior to 1993, not until then was the need for support for education recognized (Joyner, 1996). And, not until 2000 did long-term development programming in education begin (Sommers, 2005). Any and all educational opportunities in southern Sudan are thus still rare, although the demand for basic education and skills training is high and expected to rise (Southern Sudan. MoEST, 2007a).

4 Definitions of TVET and the New TVET Policy Framework Until 2007, MoEST offered little guidance for TVET programming. The SPLM Secretariat of Education’s Education policy of the new Sudan and implementation guidelines (2002), which is still in effect, only notes that vocational training should/will exist in southern Sudan. No further information is provided in the existing education policy as to what TVET will comprise, by whom it will be carried out, or how it will be financed. Only weeks before this writing, however, MoEST published a new policy handbook that includes definitions for TVET and a firm commitment to developing both a TVET policy framework and a system of certification (Southern Sudan. MoEST, 2007a). MoEST differentiates in the following manner between informal, non-formal, and formal vocational training (Southern Sudan. MoEST, 2007a; 2007b): 1. Informal vocational education programmes consist of basic occupational skills training, with a duration of one week to three months. There are no prequalifications to entry and courses are usually taught by ‘community members with some years of practical experience in the vocation. The courses do not follow a structured linear progression’ (p. 2). 2. Non-formal vocational education programmes consist of basic occupational skills training, with a duration of three to six months. There are no prequalifications to entry and courses are usually taught by skilled practitioners. 3. Formal vocational education programmes consist of training with ‘curricula developed into modules/guides which allow students to build sequentially on their skills’, with a duration of nine months to two years. These programmes have ‘a written curriculum which contains both theoretical and practical components. The theoretical courses are usually taught by university graduates and practical courses by practitioners with extensive experience’ (pp. 2–3). In practice, however, few formal vocational education programmes, such as the ones described above, yet exist. Even the longer training programmes rarely require any secondary education and college-graduate instructors are scarce.

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Until 2005,5 skills training in southern Sudan was only available through NGOs, which—if offered in physical premises—generally only established and operated one centre. This is particularly true of centres operated by Sudanese NGOs. The most common training programming—which would be categorized as informal vocational education by MoEST—involves livelihoods skills training at the community level. Vétérinaires sans frontières-Belgium (VSF), for example, trains pastoralist groups in techniques that improve animal husbandry practices. Other NGOs work with farming communities to increase crop yields. These types of training are shorter, on average, than the non-formal and more formal vocational education described below, with instruction taking place over a period of weeks or several days per month during an entire year, as opposed to training that requires daily attendance for months. Such livelihoods skills-training programmes build on local knowledge or introduce innovation in a skill that is already practised. Among the NGOs involved in non-formal skills training, as described above, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) operated six livelihood skills-training centres,6 later turned over to the relevant ministries, and currently operates six vocational training centres.7 Of the approximately two dozen skills training centres that currently exist in southern Sudan, CRS has thus established about half. Due to the high cost of inputs such as electricity—which, since electricity in southern Sudan is produced solely by generators, requires gasoline transported into the region at great cost—these skills-training centres usually focus on skills that do not require heavy investment, such as carpentry or agriculture, rather than computer training or car mechanics. At the moment, in the absence of a southern Sudanese vocational curriculum, NGOs typically establish their own training curriculum at each centre or adapt Kenyan or Ugandan curricula. In 2004, Save the Children Sweden had developed a Sudan-specific curriculum for vocational training in two subjects, with the consent of the then-SPLM Secretariat of Education (currently MoEST). These materials, however, have not been accepted by MoEST as part of the national curriculum for vocational training. Many of these training centres are nominally managed by boards (boards of governors, management boards, etc.) composed of community-elected representatives. Some NGOs suggest a minimum quota for female representation to dissuade communities from appointing all-male boards, as would otherwise be the case. The boards receive training in educational management and administration in order to build community capacity to make decisions on behalf of the centres, organize assistance in the construction efforts and liaise with the NGOs. However, the boards effectively have little or no power, except over the modest project funding that is channelled to them through the NGOs. The centres managed by boards are frequently expected to assume responsibility for the training when projects end on behalf of the relevant ministry. Since 2006, ministries, such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the Ministry of the Environment, Wildlife Conservation and Tourism and the Ministry of Animal Resources and Fisheries, have begun to offer skills training, after having assumed responsibility for several of the training centres formerly operated by NGOs. Due to the difficulties in accessing GoSS resources, as mentioned above, it is unlikely that many of these centres will continue to be


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operational without additional donor funding in the interim before the flow of GoSS resources becomes more consistent. Generally, there are no educational requirements for admittance to vocational training programmes, although there are exceptions. Life-skills training is rarely, if ever, incorporated into the curricula, but one-off trainings such as HIV/AIDS awareness may be given to students. Many centres do incorporate business management training or entrepreneurial training into the curriculum, in order to prepare graduates to earn a living from their newly-acquired skills. Apprenticeship programmes are very difficult to establish in southern Sudan because so few people earn a living using a vocational skill. Those who do are located in one of only a handful of ‘urban’ centres (which are essentially larger villages with some permanent structures). Due to the size of the region, linking graduates with apprenticeships is generally unfeasible. Assuming that the success of a programme is not measured by completion rates but rather by the number of graduates who use the skills learned in order to earn a living after the programme ends, it would seem that there are not many successful training programmes in southern Sudan. Training programmes that focus on traditional skills—e.g. agriculture or fishing—are more successful than those that focus on trades, such as carpentry or masonry. The truth is that there are few markets large enough in southern Sudan to absorb graduates with skills taught in the more-formal training centres. Logically, a community of 1,000 or even 10,000 people does not need 100 masons. Similarly, a centre that does not have free boarding facilities and daily food rations cannot admit students outside the local community. Available evidence suggests that, with time, the demand for skills will increase, and these training programmes will enjoy more success in terms of the number of graduates who use the skills acquired during trainings in their livelihoods. A key missing factor in the co-ordination of these TVET offerings in southern Sudan has been the ‘utilization of policy instruments’ (Minear et al., 1992, p. 3), for the simple reason that none had existed. At the same time as the abovementioned new policy handbook was published—i.e. only two months prior to this writing—MoEST developed a Draft Background/Policy Technical-Vocational Education Training Policy Framework with the aid of an external consultant. The draft framework provides a situational analysis of planned and existing TVET opportunities in southern Sudan, as well as offering policy briefs on the vision, structure, mandate and resource allocation of current and future TVET programmes. The document also addresses issues of inter-ministerial co-operation, certification and funding challenges. MoEST expects that the framework will ‘initiate a policy dialogue between and among education stakeholders at all levels’ (Southern Sudan. MoEST, 2007b, p. 1). Importantly, the draft policy framework proposes definitions of TVET that distinguish between vocational and technical education. According to MoEST, the ‘suggested’ definition for vocational education comprises ‘vocational programs [that] offer individuals, who typically have had little or no access to formal education programs, the opportunity to gain vital skills and be productive members of the community’ (Southern Sudan. MoEST, 2007b, p. 46). These are thus the vocational

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programmes discussed above: training opportunities that do not require prior education. The vision for vocational training in southern Sudan reads: ‘to produce a well integrated [sic] self-motivated, creative individual equipped with relevant knowledge, skills and attitude through appropriate technology and wise use of available resources while preserving the cultural legacy of the community’ (ibid.). The ‘suggested’ definition for technical education comprises formal training that ‘integrates academics with formal skills’ (ibid.). These training programmes fall under the MoEST Higher Education Directorate and thus would be akin to polytechniclevel education as practised in more developed countries, i.e. training opportunities that require a secondary-level education. The vision for technical educational is one that is ‘both practical and theoretical’, with ‘a strong academic track to provide a way for individuals with a secondary school degree to progress upward through the formal education ladder’ in order to ‘train Southern Sudanese so the country is rebuilt by its citizens’ (Southern Sudan. MoEST, 2007b, pp. 46–47). The Draft Background/Policy Technical-Vocational Education Training Policy Framework thus finally clarifies MoEST’s understanding of and vision for TVET.

5 Co-ordination Structures for Service Delivery in Southern Sudan NGOs and international agencies have been responsible for service provision in southern Sudan during the war years and beyond (e.g. drilling wells, operating health clinics). This is not to say that government authorities at all levels have been absent from service delivery planning, but—without financial resources of their own—the southern Sudanese authorities have not provided the services; the aid community has. Even today, however, the vast majority of southern Sudan remains underserved. The uneven and inadequate (Marriage, 2006) service delivery in southern Sudan is not only due to poor co-ordination. In order to operate in a given location, an organization requires a secure camp to house workers, store supplies and establish communications, which necessitates constructing and maintaining field offices in insecure and/or inaccessible locations at a great expense. Organizations thus have— quite rightly—been accused of ‘favouring’ particular locations due to the relative ease of travel to and/or relative security of a given site. It is also true that, once a field office is established, NGOs frequently continue to work in that location and do not move to another. Given the considerable transportation costs of operating in southern Sudan, these trends cannot be avoided, though greater co-ordination could help provide a more equitable distribution of resources (e.g. assignment of areas to specific NGOs by the GoSS based on comparative advantage of service delivery). Yet, the less accessible the location, the greater the costs of operation: building one TVET centre in Unity state may cost three times as much as building three in Western Equatoria state. Since the needs in southern Sudan are so great,


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building the three TVET centres would generally be considered more cost-effective than building the one. It would be imprudent to write a chapter on co-ordination in southern Sudan without mentioning Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), an unprecedented (Lautze et al., 2004) security and information-sharing consortium founded in 1989. Members of OLS were the many (although not all) international agencies and NGOs involved in the humanitarian efforts responding to civilian needs in southern Sudan. OLS co-ordinated with both the GoS and the SPLA/Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM)—the political wing of the SPLA—to gain access to the millions of Southern Sudanese whose livelihoods were in suspension because of the war. While member organizations of the OLS consortium claimed neutrality, it has since been argued that these and other international actors perpetuated the conflict, inadvertently or purposefully supplying the armies with food and non-food rations, along with the targeted civilian beneficiaries (see, for example, Sommers, 2005). The many critics of OLS (e.g. Marriage, 2006) assert that the co-ordination structure failed the Southern Sudanese. UNICEF, the lead UN agency for OLS, had also been the ‘lead agency’ for education8 until its handover to the then-SPLM Secretariat of Education in 2003. Arguably, no overview of the lack of success of co-ordination between international, national and local stakeholders in education could be more persuasive than that of Sommers (2005): Among the most staggering failures in the case of education for Southern Sudanese since 1983 has been the widespread and alarming deficiency in the co-ordination of education policies and practices. Across more than two decades of civil war, there has been poor co-ordination of education activities in just about every way imaginable. There has been virtually no co-ordination of education concerns for Southern Sudanese between [. . . ] refugee agencies and those working within southern Sudan, among those working within southern Sudan (for the most part and until recently), [and] within the same agencies working with the same Southern Sudanese population in northern and southern Sudan. [...] On issues as basic as teacher payments and the curriculum, co-ordination has, for nearly all of the past twenty-one years, ranged between flawed and nonexistent (pp. 255–56).

While apt, this assessment reflects a time when far fewer agencies worked in the education sector than exist today; and, the more agencies, the greater is the challenge of co-ordination for cohesive and effective programming. More development programming has become possible since the signing of the CPA and the number of NGOs in the region has multiplied. In southern Sudan, TVET falls under the purview of MoEST, which for the last few years has also been responsible for the co-ordination of TVET programming. The Education Rehabilitation and Development Forum (ERDF) is the co-ordination meeting for all local and international agencies implementing education, and thus TVET programming in southern Sudan. The ERDF is theoretically a quarterly meeting, but—in the twenty-six months that the author of this chapter worked in southern Sudan—the ERDF has only taken place five times. A joint MoEST-NGO co-ordination body for vocational education was established in 2005. Now called the GoSS-MoEST Vocational-Technical Thematic Group, the co-ordination body meets

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during the infrequent ERDF meetings. In southern Sudan, currently eleven NGOs, as well as twelve ministries,9 have reported implementing, or planning to implement, TVET programmes, and more NGOs than this actually operate skills-training programmes. Yet, as mentioned above, every actor involved in TVET appears to be working independently of the others. Importantly, not all of the actors involved in TVET attend ERDF meetings, much less the thematic group meetings. In such a context, TVET programmes differ in terms of duration, content, beneficiary number, quality, certification and approach. In addition, the ministries of southern Sudan have not co-ordinated well among themselves. Numerous GoSS ministries currently implement vocational programmes, which have not been vetted by MoEST, nor have these programmes ‘been integrated into the overarching’ education system (Southern Sudan. MoEST, 2007b, p. 54). The ministries also plan to organize additional trainings that are yet to be approved by MoEST, and it is unclear whether there is consensus on the part of the other ministries that their trainings should be subject to MoEST scrutiny. MoEST asserts that it should be responsible for certifying/recognizing vocational curricula of all the ministries, as well as responsible for leading the process of developing a curriculum framework linking all formal and non-formal programmes (Southern Sudan. MoEST, 2007b). A large part of the proposed co-ordination role of MoEST would comprise developing and standardizing a system of certification that is currently lacking in southern Sudan. Presumably, the promise of ensuring recognition for TVET graduates in all sectors could overcome the reluctance, if any, of other ministries to relinquish a degree of control over their training to a parallel ministry.

6 Concluding Remarks The Draft TVET Policy Framework may well solve the problem of poor coordination in TVET among MoEST, other ministries and NGOs. Its very existence has finally provided a structure to a disjointed TVET system. In addition to its clarification of the vision for and understanding of TVET, the document offers a detailed, though somewhat optimistic, account of existing TVET programming in southern Sudan. This stock-taking is an important first step in improving co-ordination among the NGO and ministry service providers. The MoEST Draft TVET Policy Framework, however, makes no mention of whether the stock-taking has been thorough in terms of assessing which of the many interventions described therein are actually operational, much less whether statistics, such as the number of beneficiaries, have been collected. While it is potentially a great opportunity for the southern Sudanese who have not had access to skills training that the number of ministries and NGOs suggested by the document are now involved/plan to be involved with TVET, the author of this chapter remains sceptical that many of these trainings are a matter of fact. Especially at the level of the ministries, the planned trainings may result in programmes that are very limited in terms of numbers of beneficiaries or these trainings may be akin to wish-lists, i.e. training that the ministries would undertake


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if the technical capacity and funding to implement such projects were available. In order to make these trainings a reality, the most immediate input required will be additional allocated funding for both training and capacity-building by the implementing ministries. Southern Sudan is certainly not the only region to suffer from co-ordination difficulties (see Reindorp & Wiles, 2001; INEE, 2004; Sommers, 2004), but the lack of a TVET policy or framework surely contributed to the disjointed manner in which TVET has been offered. Yet, it is simplistic to assume that, once the TVET Policy Framework is finalized and disseminated, co-ordination among government ministries and the aid community will suddenly improve. The document will in all likelihood serve as procedural guidelines for the southern Sudanese ministries, leading to cohesion within the GoSS—which is an improvement in and of itself—but may not improve GoSS co-ordination with external agencies. Smillie & Minear (2003), in a study of donor behaviour in emergency and reconstruction contexts, found that: The overall effectiveness of humanitarian assistance is compromised by donor earmarking, by short funding cycles, by unrequited pledges and late funding, by tying contributions to a donor’s own nationals, NGOs, and contractors, and by donors’ political interests (p. 5).

Sommers (2004) seconds this notion; he posits that, in not co-ordinating among themselves, donors may achieve ‘chaotic’ and ‘contradictory’ programming. The personal experience of working in southern Sudan by the author of this chapter, terminating seven months before this writing, is that conflicting donor practices were the factor most responsible for lack of overall co-ordination in TVET programming. She agrees with Sommers (2004) in that donors, more than any other stakeholder, have the greatest power to ensure co-ordination. In the current funding context in southern Sudan, each NGO receives funding from a different source— donors with their own priorities, own reporting requirements, own bureaucratic socalled red-tape and own funding calendars. The 2005 establishment of the South Sudan Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF), a co-operative funding mechanism for reconstruction and development funding administered by the World Bank, was to mitigate these issues, giving more power to the ministries to prioritize their funding needs and choose the implementing agencies for the projects identified to meet those needs. The MDTF was designed to recognize the ‘ownership and leadership’ of the GoSS of the reconstruction and development process, ‘with full transparency’, ensuring ‘effective donor co-ordination within the context of broader aid management structures in order to reduce transaction/duplication costs; provide consistent policy advice; [and] provide common fora for dialogue’ (IBRD, 2005, p. 7. Emphasis in the original). However, such an arrangement may only work—even in theory—if all donors transmit available resources through the fund; USAID, the single largest bi-lateral donor to education in southern Sudan, does not. Greater co-ordination on the part of donors, among themselves and especially with the GoSS, could lead to interconnected projects aligned with the priorities of the recipient stakeholders, such as those outlined in the Draft TVET Policy Framework.

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The importance of the framework cannot be overemphasized. The very definition of co-ordination used in this paper requires actors to systematically utilize policy instruments such as this in a coherent and effective manner (Minear et al., 1992). One of the quotations that opened this chapter comes from the framework itself: ‘Technical education is needed to train Southern Sudanese so the country is rebuilt by its citizens’ (Southern Sudan. MoEST, 2007b, p. 47). In the framework, MoEST has delineated its vision for southern Sudan, outlined the gaps in TVET offerings and identified the many unmet needs. If donors are willing to fund the interventions necessary and if they and the implementing agencies work together under the aegis of a revitalized ERDF, the co-ordination hitherto lacking in southern Sudan’s education sector may transform the course of the reconstruction process. TVET may yet provide southern Sudan with the technical workforce needed to rebuild, and the framework could be the first step in ensuring that TVET programming will educate such a workforce.

Notes 1. For the purposes of this chapter, ‘southern’, when referring to the area of Sudan, will be written in lowercase, while Southern Sudanese, when referring to the people, will be capitalized. For a full discussion, see Sommers, 2005. 2. As will be discussed later, this definition does not necessarily coincide with the current understanding of TVET of the Government of Southern Sudan’s (GoSS) Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST). 3. These figures are those cited in NSCSE (2004). However, these and other data available for southern Sudan are highly contested and generally considered unreliable. 4. The notable exceptions to ‘hit-and-run’ educational programming (Sommers, 2005) in the period prior to 2000 have been Christian organizations, such as the Diocese of Torit. 5. The author of this chapter was an educational practitioner in southern Sudan for over two years. Much of the information that follows on TVET and international aid is based on her experience. 6. These centres were financed through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded South Sudan Agriculture Revitalization Programme (SSARP). 7. These centres were financed through the European Community (EC)-funded Vocational and Adult Literacy Training Project (VOCAL). The author of this chapter helped design the VOCAL Project. 8. While the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has a presence in southern Sudan, its co-ordination activities are largely limited to the UN agencies in this context and do not extend to co-ordinating sector programmes, such as education or health. 9. These ministries are: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry; Ministry of Animal Resources and Fisheries; Ministry of Co-operatives and Rural Development; Ministry of Education, Science and Technology; Ministry of Environment, Wildlife Conservation and Tourism; Ministry of Gender, Social Welfare and Religious Affairs; Ministry of Health; Ministry of Industry and Mining; Ministry of Labour, Public Service and Human Resource Development; Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation; Ministry of Youth, Culture and Sports; and the Southern Sudan Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Commission. The NGOs are: Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team (AMURT); Catholic Relief Services (CRS); Dioceses of Rumbek (DOR); Diar Relief and Development Association (DRDA); Education Base; International Aid Sweden (IAS); Norwegian People Aid (NPA); Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC); Ockenden Plan International; Save the Children Sweden; and Women for Women International (Southern Sudan. MoEST, 2007a).


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References Cook, T.D. 2005. A foundation for peace: citizen thoughts on the southern Sudan Constitution— findings from focus groups with men and women across southern Sudan. Washington, DC: National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. <www.access democracy.org/library/1918 su southernsudan 060905.pdf> Government of Sudan; Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army. 2005. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Government of the Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Nairobi: Government of Sudan. Interagency Network for Education in Emergencies Interagency Network for Education in Emergencies. 2004. Minimum standards for education in emergencies, chronic crises and early reconstruction. New York, NY: INEE. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. 2005. Memorandum of the President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to the Executive Directors on a proposal for the World Bank to administer two multidonor trust funds for Sudan, 17 March 2005. <www.unsudanig.org/docs/Sudan MDTFs.pdf> International Crisis Group. 2006. Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement: the long road ahead. Brussels: Crisis Group. (Crisis Group Africa report, no. 106.) <www.crisisgroup.org/ library/documents/africa/horn of africa/106 sudan comprehensive peace agreement long road ahead.pdf> Joyner, A. 1996. Supporting education in emergencies: a case study from southern Sudan. Development in practice, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 70–76. Lautze, S. et al. 2004. Assistance, protection, and governance networks in complex emergencies. The Lancet, vol. 364, pp. 2134–41. Marriage, Z. 2006. The comfort of denial: external assistance in southern Sudan. Development and change, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 479–500. Minear, L. et al. 1992. United Nations coordination of the international humanitarian response to the Gulf Crisis 1990–1992. Providence, RI: Brown University, The Thomas A. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies. (Occasional paper, no. 13.) Muchomba, E.; Sharp, B. 2006. Southern Sudan livelihoods profiles: a guide for humanitarian and development planning. Nairobi: Southern Sudan Centre for Census, Statistics and Evaluation (SSCCSE)/Save the Children UK. New Sudan Centre for Statistics and Evaluation. 2004. Towards a baseline: best estimates of social indicators for southern Sudan. Rumbek, Sudan: UNICEF. (NSCSE series paper, no. 1/2004.) <www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/2004/splm-sud-31may.pdf> Reeves, E. 2005. The slow collapse of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement for South Sudan. <www.sudanreeves.org/ Article70.html> Reindorp, N.; Wiles, P. 2001. Humanitarian co-ordination: lessons from recent field experience. London: Overseas Development Institute. (A study commissioned by OCHA.) Smillie, I.; Minear, L. 2003. The quality of money: donor behavior in humanitarian financing. Somerville, MA: Tufts University, Humanitarianism and War Project, Feinstein Famine Center. Sommers, M. 2004. Co-ordinating education during emergencies and reconstruction: challenges and responsibilities. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. Sommers, M. 2005. Islands of education: schooling, civil war, and the southern Sudanese (1993– 2004). Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. Southern Sudan. Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. 2007a. Ministry of Education, Science and Technology policy handbook (Final draft). Juba, Sudan: MoEST. Southern Sudan. Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. 2007b. Draft background/policy technical-vocational education training policy framework. Juba, Sudan: MoEST. Southern Sudan. Ministry of Education, Science and Technology; UNICEF. 2006. Rapid assessment of learning spaces: Southern Sudan. Juba, Sudan: MoEST. <www.ungei.org/resources/files/RALS book ALL PAGES.pdf>

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Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. Secretariat of Education. 2002. Education policy of the New Sudan and implementation guidelines. Rumbek, Sudan: SPLM. UNESCO-UNEVOC. No date. What is TVET? Bonn, Germany: UNESCO-UNEVOC. <www.unevoc.unesco.org/> Young, J. 2005. Sudan: a flawed peace process leading to a flawed peace. Review of African political economy, vol. 103, pp. 99–113.

Chapter V.6

Vocational Training in Post-War Sierra Leone and Liberia Andrew Benson Greene Jr.

1 Introduction In this ever-changing fast-paced world, technology is becoming more and more important. Each of us will be using some sort of technology everyday of our lives, which means that the field of vocational training has never been as important as it is today. Current research into how and why we learn as individuals, how groups and organizations learn and the complex ways knowledge is created, shared, communicated and culturally mediated in contemporary society addresses fundamental issues of interest to educators and policy-makers. We need to enhance the breadth and depth of research on education in the context of the new economy. It is vital that we achieve a deeper understanding of new technology as both an opportunity and a challenge for learning and for the delivery of education. Today, more than ever, we expect educational institutions to fulfil major economic and social goals in educating citizens, to respond to the needs of a knowledge-intensive, technologybased labour market, and to prepare individuals for learning and acquiring new skills throughout their lifetimes. We need research to understand how our schools, educators and education systems should respond to these needs, how to assess our existing learning systems and how they might evolve. Let us therefore examine the extent to which vocational training has evolved and its present situation in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone suffered nearly ten years of war, which displaced a large proportion of the population and destroyed most of the country’s infrastructure. Terrible atrocities were committed against the civilian population by the rebel army. Many children suffered acts of frightening brutality, such as limb amputations. Disabled young people face particular hardships as their chances of employment are severely reduced, particularly those who have had upper limbs amputated. For many, the only option is to beg for food and money.1

R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 V.6, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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2 Making Amends The circumstances under which the education system in Sierra Leone has evolved in recent years were the result of skirmishes during a decade-long war. There is now an ever-growing response to skills training in both technology-enhancing learning and non-technological usage through formal and non-formal education. The proliferation of skills and vocational training thriving today are the result of the nationwide realization that, in order for there to be a sustained manpower base, the country must invest in a knowledge-based economy. Partly too, and perhaps the most persistent idea, is the belief that, to make amends for the lost years, the plethora of young people affected by war direly needs these skills. A bold attempt is being made by these young people to catch up with their counterparts in other countries and in the rest of the world, particularly with those skills that will enable them to survive in today’s competitive world driven by globalization. The rebel war in Sierra Leone displaced blacksmiths and farmers resulting in the loss of vital assets, such as their tools. With the signing of the peace accord, these blacksmiths and farmers will return to their homes with no tools to resume their livelihoods. Even though donor assistance is likely to make up for the loss of farm tools, this gesture may not be enough to satisfy all the affected population. Even so, these tools will need frequent repairs. To resettle such a deprived population, blacksmithing skills are going to be essential. It is estimated that there are 3,000 displaced blacksmiths in the affected areas— the southern and eastern provinces and Tonkolili district in the north. To resettle these blacksmiths, there is a need for basic working tools, such as hammers, locallymade anvils and bellows. It is also proposed to provide them with assistance in setting up their workshops and a seven-day refresher training course. For more than a decade the Sierra Leone Work Oxen Programme (SLWOP) of the Ministry of Agriculture has been involved in training blacksmiths for the country. The majority of the trainees were sent by the interested organizations, such as development projects and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The programme has the capacity to train twenty blacksmiths per session, including accommodation and food, at the Rolako Centre (Bombali District, Northern Province). Using local materials and know how, the programme has forged bellows and anvils that are gaining favour among many village blacksmiths. Blacksmiths will be selected from chiefdoms and trained to become trainers of other blacksmiths in their local area. The trained blacksmiths will be provided with the necessary equipment and assisted to develop tool production centres in the chiefdom. Resource people for this training will be drawn from the private sector, as well as from SLWOP. Training materials, such as tools and steel, will be purchased. The training will involve shaping, tempering techniques, cold and forge work, basic workshop management techniques, introduction to improved tools, group formation, sources of scrap and marketing skills and awareness about emergency repairs for tools. The blacksmiths will be made aware of the rationale and strategy behind setting up chiefdom blacksmith tool-production centres as the centres for training and production of basic tools for the resettling population.

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About 400 blacksmiths will be trained and equipped (they, in turn, will be able to train an estimated 2,600 blacksmiths that are required to satisfy the needs of resettlement), 400 tool production and training centres will be established, and four million units of assorted tools adapted to the very specific needs of the farmers in the targeted areas will be produced (each production centre will produce on average 10,000 units per year).2

3 The Nehemiah Project Margaret A. Novicki is the United Nations Information Centre Director for Ghana and Sierra Leone. In an article entitled ‘Sierra Leone camps try to rehabilitate child victims and soldiers’, she writes:3 Currently the Nehemiah Project accommodates 140 children, but there are thousands of children throughout the country who need rehabilitation. We expect to replicate the Nehemiah Project throughout Sierra Leone, as finance and resources are released and, as the locally recruited staff gain skills and knowledge in this field, that they will train others to staff the additional units.

Novicki describes the circumstances under which amputees live and attempt to acquire skills. Maimouna lives with her aunt at the Murraytown Amputee Camp, a squalid shantytown on the outskirts of Freetown, home to over 1,000 amputees, war-wounded and other victims of Sierra Leone’s civil war. The camp is managed by Médécins sans Frontiers with the help of Cause Canada and Handicap International. It provides social work services, vocational training, physical therapy, psycho-social counselling and prosthetic aids. Daniel, aged 15, now lives at St. Michael’s Lodge, an interim child-care centre 14 miles from Freetown. A former RUF fighter, he and the other 150 children at St. Michael’s are learning vocational skills and receiving psycho-social counselling. Most of the children seem quite small for their ages: years of malnourishment have stunted their growth. When asked what he plans for his future, Daniel says he simply wants to go to school. Even these war-hardened youth are still children at heart. It is estimated that the project for one training session of 20 blacksmiths will cost US$ 3,000, and hopefully, 20 sessions will be organised during the year.

The Nehemiah Project seeks to integrate general education and vocational training within a structure designed to encourage responsible, socially adjusted behaviour, whilst addressing the underlying problems of grief, fear, guilt and depression. Children impacted by war will be eligible for admission to the vocational training programme in carpentry, tailoring, weaving, soap-making and welding. These children will be referred to CAUSE Canada, a Christian-motivated international relief and development organization, by several agencies including Children Affected by War (CAW), the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health (MOH) and UNICEF. Training will consist of a six-week internship at vocational training facilities in Waterloo, Bo and Makeni. This project endeavours to promote an atmosphere in Sierra Leone conducive to sustainable peace. Children impacted by war need to receive psycho-social

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counselling so that they can adapt to peacetime society. Vocational training will help to ensure that they become contributing members of their communities. Amputees require counselling in order to come to terms peacefully with their disabilities. Occupational therapy will help foster in these victims a new hope for the future. This type of rehabilitation will help them to once again become contributing community members, and this will hopefully lay a foundation helping them to forgive their former adversaries.

4 The Scars of War Sierra Leone’s civil war, and the events following the coup d’état of 25 May 1997, brought unprecedented social and economic disaster to the country. The United Nations Development Programme estimates that 3.2 million people were directly affected by the war and the aftermath of the May coup. UNDP further states that about 700,000 people sought refuge in Guinea and Liberia. An estimated 12,000 people, the majority of them children, lost their lives to this conflict. UNICEF believes that, as a result of the war, more than 1,000 people had limbs forcibly amputated. About 80% of these have lost either one or both hands. It is also estimated that approximately 2,500 people have endured either severe machete lacerations or permanently debilitating gunshot wounds. Additionally, about 5,000 children between the ages of 7 and 14 years were enlisted into military groups to serve either as combatants, child labourers or sex slaves. The children impacted by war include those recently orphaned, former childsoldiers, and children who have been either physically or psychologically handicapped by this conflict. This project offers psychological counselling and vocational training for children impacted by war. These children will participate in the manufacturing of appropriate physiotherapy aids and farm tools. They will also take part in activities specifically designed to assist recent amputees. Handicap International and Médécins Sans Frontiers (MSF) plan to provide prostheses to war amputees. Both of these organizations, as well as government health authorities, have asked CAUSE Canada (CC) to provide occupational therapy and counselling services to complement their work. CC has been asked to provide Canadian occupational therapists and counsellors with expertise in post-traumatic stress disorder. These professionals will be engaged on a short-term basis to upgrade the training of national health practitioners and to assist in the rehabilitation of both war amputees and children affected by war. Throughout the project, the issue of the repatriation of children impacted by war and the reintegration of amputees will be addressed both in the vocational programmes and in the communities where repatriation will take place. While the acquisition of marketable skills will be the key to the repatriation process for children impacted by war, these students will also be instructed on how to meet and overcome common social obstacles they will face upon their return. Amputees will receive similar instruction appropriate to their unique situation.


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Communities will also be prepared to receive these victims of war. Through workshops and other types of consultations held with community leaders in the target regions of Greater Freetown/Waterloo, Bo and Makeni, villagers will be both practically and psychologically prepared to accept amputees and children impacted by war into their ranks. In order to assist with the reintegration programme, children will be provided with farm tools which can be presented as gifts to the community upon their return. The skills they have developed will assist in the economic recovery of their communities and will help smooth the reintegration process as they become contributing members of their villages. Amputees will benefit from the programme by receiving tools orthopedically designed for their own use as productive members of their community In Sierra Leone, the United Methodist Church has taken action to improve vocational training for students through Operation Classroom (OC). In the southern head district of Bo in Sierra Leone, the Bo Centenary School has been fortunate in that it is one of the few schools to have remained open and functioning during most of the war. The annual conference and OC have agreed to put together a major vocational training programme at Bo. The school’s student enrolment varies from 350 to 450 students in grades 7 to 12.

5 Bridging the Digital Divide Bridging the digital divide has been a major pre-occupation of the international education and resource network, iEARN Sierra Leone. It aims at promoting e-learning as a first step in speeding up the deployment of a high-quality infrastructure to step up training and overall digital literacy at a reasonable cost. For this purpose, the opening up of a community access centre is planned where young people who have been child-soldiers will be introduced to the necessary technology. It can be predicted that the youth community access centre will long remain the principle information window to the outside world for war-affected youths and underprivileged children. The participation of more young people in cyberspace and the development of access to the new technologies are desirable, as is access to the Internet, off-line resources, on-line networks and chat capabilities. The acquisition of such skills will be assets in the battle to overcome the digital gap between developed and developing countries—as is the case in Sierra Leone. The transfer of competence from the facilitator to the war-affected youths will allow these children to go on-line with the whole world so as to train them for job prospects in computer-related fields, thereby enhancing sustainable development and social justice for the community and the country. Friends of Africa are researching a project to set up a special computer-training laboratory for disabled young people. The courses will initially teach the students the basic programmes before moving on to packages for desk-top publishing, computer-aided design, book-keeping and other vocational subjects. The second

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phase will help these people into jobs using the skills and special equipment available through the centre. The centre itself will also employ several disabled young people on its own income-generating activities. Information technology offers disabled people in Sierra Leone a new opportunity to lead productive and fulfilled lives. Initial basic computer training for fifty students will cost US$8,000 per year.4 The expansion of a centre for the youths to obtain access to Internet on a regular basis is a vision that offers the possibility of turning the great challenge of closing the digital gap into reality and permitting every participating youth to be reintegrated not only into a society free from war, but a society full of knowledge. This will be the foundation that leads to the recruitment of additional young people in Sierra Leone to learn the relevant tele-communications and ICTs skills. It will further foster the promotion of peace education amongst secondary and post-secondary schools and inspire the inclusion of peace education in the school curriculum. This in itself enhances learning and will be a catalyst for social change. Whilst each generation is granted access to the new tools needed for human achievement and progress in their own times, the present young generation is living in the new wave of tele-communication technology that links communities together to make a difference. The child-soldiers, war-affected children and disadvantaged youths/students will also reveal to the world the awful situations they faced as childsoldiers or victims of war to colleagues across the vast cultural divide. In the telling of their stories, their peers will learn what happened to them; the child-soldiers and victims will in turn achieve catharsis through the telling of their stories. It is to be hoped that they will derive positive and encouraging feedback from their colleagues and feel that once again they are not alone. Through multi-media art forms, drawings, paintings, cartoons, creative writing, music and fine arts posted by regular mail or sent through the web as attachments, children will see for themselves the strength of their talents. The projected outcome will be estimated by the extension of the work to be used as a model in four additional countries—Colombia, Palestine, Rwanda and Uganda—having been piloted in a realistic setting. This technology will demonstrate how children of war write for an authentic audience to better communicate with peers about real issues that touched their very lives, families and communities. To sustain the Internet centre, grants or funds will be utilized to acquire the necessary tools needed for the achievement of the long-range goal of providing the relevant tele-communication kits to equip young people with the necessary skills. The funds will be used to sustain the centre even long after the one-year duration of the implementation time-line has passed. Finally, even though there are enormous challenges facing young people and all those who access the limited technology available today in Sierra Leone, there are also great hopes embedded in the use of technology in vocational training in the near future for the progress of a country whose economy was destroyed as a result of a decade-long war.


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6 Liberia Furthermore, in the sub-region, the neighbouring country of Liberia has also been confronted by years of violence and war. Here too, vocational skills training has been a major pre-occupation for improving the lives of its inhabitants. The John Tamba Tailoring Shop in Kakata in Margibi County (Liberia) is a cinderblock building just big enough to accommodate six sewing machines and the people who operate them. At one of the machines, Musu Yoryor is putting the finishing touches to a pair of drawstring trousers she learned how to make at the Don Bosco Centre for war-affected children. ‘I am practising here until I get my own sewing machine,’ she said, showing the trousers. ‘I feel good about it.’ Yoryor, 19, later completed the vocational training course at Don Bosco and graduated in an official ceremony. She and her 100 classmates are now budding entrepreneurs in the trades of agriculture, masonry, rattan furniture-making, pastry-making and tailoring. Don Bosco is an NGO affiliated with the Catholic Church. The Kakata centre was established in 1997 as a hostel for boys and girls who were separated from their families during the recent civil war in Liberia. Then, as now, the goal is for these children to be reintegrated into their communities. ‘These children carry the stigma of being someone different and we are trying to remove that stigma,’ said Alfred Tamba, Don Bosco’s project co-ordinator in Kakata. Liberia’s civil conflict (1989–1997) took a particularly brutal toll on children. Thousands were abandoned or otherwise separated from their families. Of the nearly 5,000 documented cases to date, more than 3,000 have yet to be reunited with their families. Many of these children live on their own in the streets, as in Kakata. Throughout Liberia, UNICEF supports twenty-two centres offering vocational and literacy training and counselling services for war-affected children. Most of the boys participating in the project fought as soldiers in the war and were demobilized with UNICEF assistance. Many of the girls were abducted and raped and are now mothers, some as young as 13 years old. Since 1997, when the project began, about 6,000 children have participated. The ten-month course at the Kakata centre covers basic vocational skills and small-business management. Another centre in Zwedru (Grand Gedeh County), also operated by Don Bosco, offers courses specifically for teenage mothers, including soap-making, pastry-making and tailoring. It houses a small day-care facility. Graduates receive tools of the trade—Yoryor will have her sewing machine when funding is secured—and a small cash grant. Under the supervision of a smallbusiness adviser, many of them form miniature co-operatives as a way to minimize start-up costs and maximize capacity. The business success of these young people hinges on an improvement in economic conditions, a fact that Alfred Tamba fully acknowledges. Liberia’s economy is in a shambles, poverty is pervasive and unemployment is the norm for most adults. Even in the most economically active region of the country, Montserrado County,

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residents live on less than US$2 per household per day. ‘We hope these young people will produce. We hope their products will be purchased,’ said Tamba. ‘It all depends on the economic purchasing power of the people who live here.’ Another focus of efforts to help war-affected young people in the sub-region gain vocational training skills can be noted in the work of the United Methodist Church in Liberia, The United Methodist Church located in the town of Ganta—GUMS—has an enrolment of over 750 students. The North Carolina conference recently built a new classroom block building for children from kindergarten to grade 9. Ganta has been selected to become one of the Operation Classroom (OC) schools to include a major vocational training programme. We believe that the best depositories of investment are the young people of our nations. Throughout history and across the world, youthful idealism has reawakened societies and urged them forward to new realizations and new awareness. We believe that these young people are the future leaders of tomorrow and, although they have faced unprecedented violence, skills for vocational training will be a first step towards transforming them into active and responsible citizens. Working with new technologies will enable them to acquire useful skills in critical thinking, crosscultural awareness and valuable experience. Collaborative educational projects will be favourable for all the youths concerned and will prepare them to face the challenges of globalization.

Notes 1. Sierra Leone News, 2002, vol. 38: <www.sierra-leone.org/slnews.html> 2. Friends of Africa: <www.friendsofafrica.net/main.html> 3. Margaret A. Novicki, Saving a war’s traumatized children: Sierra Leone camps try to rehabilitate child victims and soldiers. Africa recovery, vol. 14, no. 2, July 2000, p. 10. <www.un.org/ ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/subjindx/142child.htm> 4. <www.childsoldier.net>

Chapter V.7

TVET and Community Re-Integration: Exploring the Connections in Sierra Leone’s DDR Process Julia Paulson

1 Introduction Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programmes are fast becoming a norm in post-conflict contexts (United Nations, 2000). These programmes are designed to collect weapons from and to demobilize fighting factions and, subsequently, to assist ex-combatants in reintegrating into civilian life. Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) programmes, in the form of skills training and/or apprenticeship schemes, are often included as a central activity in the reintegration phase of DDR in order to equip ex-combatants with skills to help them generate new livelihoods essential for their transition into civilian communities. Humphreys and Weinstein (2005) state that: Reintegration packages and training programs enable leaders to deliver concrete benefits to combatants at the conclusion of the fighting, some of which can be designed to address underlying grievances that gave rise to the conflict [. . .] To the extent that DDR programs reintegrate combatants into non-military life and help them to find gainful employment, we can think of programs as a key element of successful peace-building (p. 6).

This chapter uses the DDR process of Sierra Leone—a nation where grievances about educational exclusion and lack of opportunity have been identified among causes of conflict (see, for instance, Keen, 2005; Richards, 1996)—to explore the reintegration component of DDR, with a particular focus on TVET programmes. It asks if and how TVET programmes contribute to the reintegration of ex-combatants into communities and whether they could be better designed to do so.

2 DDR, Reintegration and TVET For individuals who have been armed for a long time, their gun has become a means of livelihood (Pouligny, 2004, p. 4).

Ultimately, the DDR process is expected to be instrumental in transforming conflict livelihoods into post-conflict ones. Through disarmament and demobilization, the process is meant to remove weapons—and war itself—as a means of livelihood R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 V.7, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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and, through the reintegration process, to replace these livelihoods with ones that contribute to stability, peace and growth. It is the reintegration phase of DDR programmes that link them directly to the peace-building process. The extent to which these programmes succeed in integrating combatants into lives (and livelihoods) not embedded in conflict (and in the war economy) is indicative of DDR programmes’ success in building peace. Given the scope of this task, it is unsurprising that analysts understand the reintegration phase as ‘the toughest part of a DDR effort’ (Humphreys & Weinstein, 2005, p. 39) and the ‘most challenging component of the DDR program’ (Refugees International, 2002). Given the centrality of recreating livelihoods to the hugely challenging task of reintegration, TVET programming is clearly a very important component of ‘doing’ this part of DDR. ‘The approach,’ argue Richards et al. (2003), ‘should be to reduce the incentives to selling labour as a fighter by increasing incentives to “legitimate” labour’ (p. 6). The facilitation of this move from fighter to civilian is often attempted through the inclusion, in DDR programming, of training courses, apprenticeships and the provision of access to the formal education system. The UN defines the reintegration phase of DDR as: the process which allows ex-combatants and their families to adapt, economically and socially to productive civilian life. It generally entails the provision of a package of cash or in-kind compensation, training and job- and income-generating projects (United Nations, 2000).

For Pouligny (2004), reintegration programmes as a part of DDR ‘support the immediate and medium-term social and economic inclusion of former combatants into their communities of origin or into new communities’ (p. 7). Since TVET programming—often accompanied by counselling, reinsertion packages (short-term allowances to support ex-combatants) and community activities designed to foster reconciliation—is usually one of the central activities of a DDR process, it is important to ask how successful it has been at contributing to the reintegration of ex-combatants. This question can be broken down further to look at practical as well as theoretical questions surrounding TVET as a part of DDR. Theoretically, it is important to explore how meaningful the connection between learning skills and reintegrating into communities following periods of war really is? Does TVET training contribute to ‘social and economic inclusion’ of ex-combatants in the communities that they return to? Could it be that skills for employability are one among many barriers to reintegration facing ex-combatants and those affected by war? And could TVET programming designed with a more holistic focus address these further barriers? Practically, it is important to understand what type of skills training is provided as a part of DDR initiatives and to attempt to evaluate the success of this training in actually generating livelihoods for ex-combatants, particularly given the condition of the economies and labour markets into which ex-combatants are expected to (re)integrate. High unemployment and economic stagnation often characterize the post-conflict environment and certainly do in the case of Sierra Leone. What do ‘social and economic’ reintegration look like in such circumstances? Richards

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et al. (2003) found that in Sierra Leone ‘disarmament and demobilization have succeeded, but reintegration is far from complete’ (p. 4). What was and is the role of TVET in the (incomplete) reintegration process in Sierra Leone?

3 Youth, Education and Conflict in Sierra Leone For Richards (1996), Sierra Leone’s conflict must be understood as a crisis in modernity, central to which were the unfulfilled aspirations of youth. ‘In a country built up for two hundred years or more around systems of schooling where Western models have been held out as the ideal,’ writes Richards, ‘educational issues are one of the key aspects of the present [sic] crisis’ (p. 36). In the years prior to Sierra Leone’s decade-long conflict, which killed between 50,000 and 75,000 people, displaced nearly half the country and saw the rape and enforced sexual slavery of tens of thousands of women and girls (Dougherty, 2004; Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, 2004), the education system in the country suffered serious decline or, in many regions, outright collapse. The ‘forgotten aspirants’ (Wright, 1997) of this crumbling and exclusionary education system, found— instead of the promises of Western modernity inherent in the education system—a stifling patrimonialism (Richards, 1996) that offered few or no opportunities for Sierra Leonean youth. This sense of disenfranchisement amongst young people has been central to many analyses of the conflict (see, for instance, Keen, 2005; Wright, 1997; Richards, 1996), since joining in the fighting offered youth opportunities where otherwise there were none (for a detailed discussion of education, conflict and youth in Sierra Leone, see Paulson, 2006).

4 The DDR Process in Sierra Leone Sierra Leone’s DDR process, largely considered by the international community to be a successful model that has contributed to Sierra Leone’s peace process, has been used to inform similar processes in Liberia, Burundi and Haiti (Humphreys & Weinstein, 2005). The perceived success of Sierra Leone’s DDR and its replication as a model of international success offer another reason to explore the process in depth and to question its various dimensions. In addition to using some data from a Government of Sierra Leone sponsored ‘Tracer Study’ (Stavrou et al., 2003) of 250 ex-combatants, this chapter draws heavily on two studies that have done just this, with a focus on the reintegration phase of the DDR process. One, a largely quantitative study of 1,043 ex-combatants who went through the DDR process and of 200 non-combatants who did not, was undertaken in the summer of 2003 by Humphreys and Weinstein, (2004, 2005). The second, mentioned above, is a qualitative, interview-based investigation that also included those who did and did not participate in the DDR process, conducted by Richards et al. (2003). Both studies were conducted while DDR activities were on-going or shortly after they had been

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completed, meaning that the longer-term effects of DDR along with longer-term perceptions of reintegration could not be gathered in the studies. This fact is particularly relevant when considering how ‘successful’ reintegration could be evaluated—a very difficult question, made more difficult when the evaluation is being undertaken in the short term. Sierra Leone’s DDR process will be briefly detailed before turning to the findings of these studies—which converge and diverge in interesting ways that are, arguably, informative about their methodological choices. The DDR process in Sierra Leone, as in many other nations, began and was halted several times by renewed conflict before entering into a period stable enough for co-ordinated demobilization and disarmament to occur. In 1998 the first DDR camp was opened, but the process was suspended with the 1999 attacks on Freetown by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). DDR camps re-opened following the signing of the Lomé Peace Accord in July 1999, but were again disrupted by fighting in May 2000 and by the national elections of 2002 (Ginifer, 2003; Refugees International, 2002). At its completion in July 2003 (Humphreys & Weinstein, 2004), Sierra Leone’s National Committee on Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (NCDDR) had disarmed and registered between 67,260 (Richards et al., 2003) and 76,000 (Humphreys & Weinstein, 2004) ex-combatants (the World Bank (2005) puts the figure at 69,000). The NCDDR established sixteen demobilization centres that covered all of Sierra Leone’s twelve districts, and seven interim care centres were also established (World Bank, 2005). The NCDDR was funded primarily through the World Bank’s Multi-Donor Trust Fund (Refugees International, 2002) with contributions from the Africa Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF, the World Population Foundation, the United Nations Human Security Fund, the European Development Fund and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (World Bank, 2005). The United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) was responsible for co-ordinating the demobilization and demilitarization component of the NCDDR, while the reintegration component was contracted out to various international and local NGOs (Refugees International, 2002). Funders of the DDR process in Sierra Leone have been criticized for focusing heavily on the two ‘Ds’, and leaving a meagre budget for the ‘reintegration’ phase—a fact that will be crucial in our consideration of the TVET provisions within Sierra Leone’s DDR process. Meek and Malan (2004) include, among their recent list of lessons learnt in DDR processes, the need to prioritize and link reintegration more fully to disarmament and demobilization, demonstrating that this has been a problem unique to Sierra Leone. In order to enter a DDR camp, ex-combatants had either to present a weapon or enter with their commander as a part of a unit to be demobilized. These requirements can exclude many combatants, along with individuals who were involved with the fighting forces in roles other than as weapon-carrying combatants (Humphreys & Weinstein, 2004; Richards et al., 2003; Refugees International, 2002). Child-soldiers, who often did not possess their own weapons, children who worked as cooks and porters, and women who were held as ‘bush wives’ (women in forced sexual relationships with fighters) were consequently often left out of the DDR process because they could not present a weapon in order to gain access to


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its programming. Richards et al. (2003) argue that bush wives, whose reintegration following the conflict has been particularly difficult given the stigma attached to their roles in the war and to the children that many had as a result, are the group in the greatest need of reintegration assistance—and are among the groups who have benefited least from the formal DDR. Another problem associated with the need to turn in a weapon or to demobilize with a commander was the power that this requirement gave to commanders. Richards et al. (2003) heard many reports of commanders and high-powered individuals removing weapons from their rank-and-file fighters and giving them to family members or influential community members close to the commander—thus entitling false ex-combatants to DDR benefits and excluding actual ex-combatants from the process. This problem was not identified in Humphreys and Weinstein’s (2004) more quantitative study and as Richards et al. (2003) note, their study cannot quantify the phenomenon. The NCDDR estimates that the number of false ex-combatants registered in the DDR process was low. However, Richards et al. (2003) report that several of their respondents estimated that approximately 50–60% of guncarrying ex-combatants were excluded from the DDR process in favour of false ex-combatants. ‘For every false ex-combatant there must be a real ex-combatant without benefits’ (p. 4), a situation that is potentially volatile, especially if numbers of ex-combatants excluded from the NCDDR are as high as Richards’ respondents report. The reintegration of this potentially large group of ex-combatants is thus proceeding without the official support and associated training of the DDR process. Once registered with the NCDDR, ex-combatants received basic necessities and orientation activities, including trauma healing, psycho-social counselling, information and sensitization seminars and short civic education programming (Ginifer, 2003). They were also often involved in destroying their own weapons to add a symbolic dimension to the demobilization. At the end of their time in DDR camps, ex-combatants were transported to the relocation area of their choice, and were highly encouraged to re-settle in their home communities. ‘Reinsertion packages’ (or allowances) were provided—often with ‘significant and unpredictable’ delays (Humphreys & Weinstein, 2004)—to support ex-combatants through the first three months in their chosen settlement locations. Humphreys and Weinstein (2004) found that the ex-combatants they surveyed either spent the bulk of their reinsertion packages on living expenses or gave it to family and dependents. Very little of the reinsertion package was kept as savings nor was it seen as a resource for initial livelihood-generating investments.

5 Skills Training and the DDR Process in Sierra Leone The former Secretary-General, in his 2000 speech on United Nations Peacekeeping and DDR, made the following recommendations for the educational and skills training component of DDR reintegration programmes: Provision should be made for education and, as appropriate, for relevant vocational training and opportunities for employment or self-employment, including for children with

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disabilities. Traditional apprenticeship models, where the trainee is taken in as part of the master craftsman’s family, may prove useful. Upon completion of vocational skills training, trainees should be provided with the relevant tools and, where possible, with start-up loans to promote self-reliance. Reintegration programmes must replace the economic incentives of war for child warriors; at the same time, training or educational programmes should be geared to the existing economy and avoid creating false expectations about the possibilities for economic reinsertion (United Nations, 2000).

Compliance with these—albeit vague—recommendations can be seen within Sierra Leone’s DDR process, though provisions for children (and others) with disabilities were minimal (Katie Dimmer, personal communication) and micro-credit loans were not provided following training. According to Humphreys and Weinstein (2004), three-quarters of the ex-combatants who entered the DDR process participated in some form of training programme; however, the World Bank (2005) states that 85% (48,246 ex-combatants) of those registered in the DDR process participated in training. NCDDR’s approach to skills training was to target the informal sector through the establishment of apprenticeships, to offer selected in-centre formal skills training courses, and to provide formal educational opportunities, particularly for children (Ginifer, 2003). UNICEF co-ordinated the provision of educational programmes for nearly 7,000 children who had been through the DDR process (Alexander, 2006). Children participated primarily in the Community Education Investment Programme (CEIP), which waived school fees for former child soldiers and provided them with a uniform and school material—notebooks, pencils and paper were also provided to all children at the CEIP schools to minimize the perceived advantage given to former child-soldiers (Alexander, 2006)—or in the Complimentary Rapid Education Primary School (CREPS) programme, which condensed six years of primary schooling into three and was directed towards older children (Alexander, 2006). The support for formal educational opportunities provided through the NCDDR was understood as one of its greatest successes and accomplishments (Ginifer, 2003). However, Humphreys and Weinstein (2004) quote the following excerpt from an interview with a participant in the DDR: I’m not happy with DDR because they lied to us. Promised to have us enrolled in schools, I have not seen any such. We need education and jobs. DDR has not registered a good number of us. They promised us educational materials but none have been delivered (p. 33).

In addition to programmes that provided ex-combatants with access into formal education, ex-combatants could access TVET programming, generally lasting for three months to a year and offering courses or apprenticeships in trades such as car repair, carpentry, computers, masonry, bicycle repair, building, plumbing, metalwork, road maintenance, tailoring, agriculture and, primarily for women, soap-making and tie-dying (see Yarrow in this section for a nuanced discussion of TVET programming, gender and the post-conflict context). Whether ex-combatants had a high degree of choice regarding entry into formal education programmes, apprenticeships or skills training is not well documented. However, this appears to be a critical question for ex-combatants’ potential reintegration, for their satisfaction with their experience of DDR, and for the livelihoods they may build in the future. Of the 250 ex-combatants surveyed in the tracer study (Stavrou et al., 2003), 76% entered


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vocational or skills-training courses, 12% undertook apprenticeships, 5% participated in public works schemes, 4% entered formal schooling and 3% engaged in agricultural training. Those who did enter TVET programmes received training of varying quality, as it was contracted out to local and international NGOs whose capacities, capabilities and commitment varied greatly. Richards et al. (2003) report finding a computer training centre open and receiving NCDDR funding to provide skills training that did not have a single computer. They also report ‘common consent’ among respondents that skills training was ‘too perfunctory and of too low a quality to offer much immediate chance of real employment’ (p. 13). The Commissioner of the NCDDR responded to criticism about the TVET component of DDR by positing it as a ‘useful first step’ (as quoted in Richards et al., 2003) and hoping that ex-combatants would pursue further training. Given the very limited resources of most ex-combatants, one must ask whether further training was among their options upon completing the reintegration phase of the NCDDR. Those entering apprenticeships and skills training received small stipends to cover their basic living expenses for the duration of their training periods; mentors participating in apprenticeships received tools and other benefits in return for their participation (Refugees International, 2002). The stipend received by trainees is, according to Refugees International (2002), ‘one of the very reasons why these programs are essential—they offer a small window that allows former combatants time to be supported while they readjust to civilian life.’ Ex-combatants were also to receive, as per the UN’s recommendation, a toolkit relevant to their developed skills upon the completion of their training programmes. However, many excombatants reported that their toolkits were delivered late or not at all (Humphreys & Weinstein, 2004; Richards et al., 2003). Other ex-combatants sold their toolkits after failing to find employment in their new fields, according to Richards et al. (2003): We found some masons, carpenters and tailors reported to be providing a useful service in more remote rural communities where skills shortages are severe. In other cases, however, ex-combatants sold tools packages and moved to the diamond fields, unconvinced they could make a living in their new craft (p. 5).

This situation begs Ginifer’s (2003) question of whether the skills included within Sierra Leone’s DDR process were in fact appropriate for generating employment, building livelihoods and contributing to reintegration in post-war Sierra Leone. A serious lack of data on the needs of the labour market in Sierra Leone (Ginifer, 2003) is but one challenging feature of what is a very constrained economy, with limited growth and unemployment rates as high as 80% (Refugees International, 2002), dominated largely by patrimonialism and, especially at high levels, corruption (Graybill, 2007). If reintegration is understood, in part, as (re)insertion into the labour market—which it appears to have been within Sierra Leone’s DDR process— then one of the largest challenges of reintegration is certainly the very real lack of jobs for ex-combatants, even those trained with what are perceived as marketable skills through TVET programmes.

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When Humphreys and Weinstein (2004) surveyed ex-combatants about their reintegration processes, most of their respondents had either just completed their skills training (40%) or were still participating in courses. These respondents, overall, were satisfied with their training, with 75% reporting that they felt prepared for work; a vast majority felt that the skills with which they had been trained were needed in the regions where they would resettle or had resettled. Some 87% of ex-combatants surveyed felt they were better off socially because of the training that they had received. This is an important finding with regards to our question about the links between TVET training and reintegration as it supports the idea that skills training can have meaningful benefits for ex-combatant’s social reintegration. This social aspect of TVET training is reassuring given the dismal prognosis by Refugees International (2002) that only approximately 10% of ex-combatants trained by the NCDDR would find employment upon the completion of their training. It is important to consider the optimism of the ex-combatants surveyed by Humphreys and Weinstein in 2003 about their prospects following skills training in this light, and to take very seriously, as a challenge for reintegration as well as for stability and peace in Sierra Leone, the disillusionment they are likely to now be experiencing. The NCDDR, rather belatedly, recognized the obstacles to employment for graduates of TVET programmes and ‘grappled with alternatives’ (Ginifer, 2003) that could provide or build livelihoods for ex-combatants. Thus, it encouraged ex-combatants to form co-operatives or seek avenues for self-employment or income generation (Ginifer, 2003). The NCDDR also provided some counselling on job-seeking and accessing employment opportunities, but both Humphreys and Weinstein (2004) and Richards et al. (2003) found that ex-combatants perceived this portion of the programmes to be unsatisfactory and under-prioritized. The most common response (54%) among ex-combatants surveyed by Humphreys and Weinstein (2004), when asked how they would improve the DDR process, was to provide more support for finding jobs once the training periods were completed. The NCDDR did attempt to liaise with UNAMSIL to create ‘stop-gap’ opportunities for ex-combatants that saw them employed for short-term public work projects, such as road construction (Ginifer, 2003). However, as other contributions to this section highlight (see, for instance, Kane and Karpinska in this section), tying TVET programming to realistic livelihood and employment opportunities available to participants upon completion is an essential priority in post-conflict TVET programmes and one that should have been in the forefront of the NCDDR’s programme planning, rather than addressed as the ramifications of its neglect became apparent. The complexities, as well as the need, to tie TVET programmes realistically to market needs and realities are also demonstrated within Sierra Leone’s DDR process. Many recognize (Humphreys & Weinstein, 2004; Richards et al., 2003; Ginifer, 2003) that agriculture is the sector in Sierra Leone most likely to be able to reabsorb large numbers of ex-combatants, because: (a) many of them would have left the agricultural sector to join in fighting; (b) agriculture was severely disrupted by conflict; and (c) agriculture was one of the principal livelihood options in Sierra Leone prior to the conflict. However, the agricultural training options provided by the NCDDR were the least attractive to ex-combatants, who mostly


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preferred options that led to formal education or to computer training, followed by vehicle driving and maintenance, carpentry and tailoring (Richards et al., 2003). Ginifer (2003) explains that ‘many ex-combatants had high expectations of acquiring skills and a job, and were disinclined to take up agriculture, the sector most likely to provide opportunities in Sierra Leone.’ Such trends point to the continued perceived benefits of formal education—as well as skills training—in Sierra Leone and, unfortunately, to the continuation of these expectations being unfulfilled— a situation that, in the past, has contributed to conflict. In fact, Humphreys and Weinstein (2004) found that those who had more than a primary school education were slightly less likely to find employment than those who had not completed primary schooling, a finding that is indicative of the continued disenfranchisement of youth in Sierra Leone. Educational reconstruction is given considerable priority in post-conflict Sierra Leone. However, policy and programmes initiatives should capture the real disillusionment that has been associated with educational aspirations in Sierra Leone and develop strategies to ensure that education—both academic and TVET —lead to opportunities.

6 Reintegration, Communities and Livelihoods The NCDDR is talking about how well it has addressed material need. The ex-combatants are talking about whether or not they have acquired their rights (Richards et al., 2003, p. 9). The all-encompassing issue of reintegration has much to do with collective self-images and the way local communities are involved in a process of social reconstruction of the memories of violence (Pouligny, 2004, p. 7). Evidence from Sierra Leone does not support the hypothesis that participation in a DDR program increases the level of reintegration success at the individual level (Humphreys & Weinstein, 2004, p. 39).

The reintegration of ex-combatants following a period of extended conflict is clearly a complicated process. It is also one for which programming is often devised in a rather ad-hoc way, given the urgency of getting DDR processes running quickly so as to consolidate the entry into a ‘post-conflict’ situation. While the task of those raising questions in retrospect is certainly easier than that of those involved in planning programming in the moment, it is nonetheless important to reflect critically on reintegration processes and to take into account the multitude of issues—several of which are raised in the above quotations—that responsive programming must try to capture. Thus, this section seeks to explore the processes and reported outcomes of reintegration programming in Sierra Leone—with a particular focus on TVET and on the role of building livelihoods for reintegration—while also reflecting on broader social processes—some of which find roots in or around the DDR process— that affect reintegration or its lack thereof. Some 90% of the respondents to Humphreys and Weinstein’s (2004) study reported having experienced no problems in gaining the acceptance of the communities where they re-settled. This is a striking figure, and contrasts sharply to Ginifer’s (2003) appraisal of ex-combatants’ community reintegration process as

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‘difficult’ and characterized by ‘latent hostility to ex-combatants among civilians in Sierra Leone’. Ginifer (2003) reports community members engaging in the reintegration process grudgingly, making comments such as ‘we are forgiving them [ex-combatants] because the government says so’. As mentioned above, the benefits provided to ex-combatants by the DDR process could, and did, breed community resentment, as demonstrated by the following comment: ‘those who have ruined us are being given the chance to become better persons financially, academically and skills-wise’ (as quoted in Ginifer, 2003). It is incredibly difficult to assess the degree of community animosity towards ex-combatants, and it certainly varies across communities and alters depending on the faction and personal role of individual ex-combatants. Both the Humphreys and Weinstein (2004) and the Richards et al. (2003) studies found that ex-Community Defence Force (CDF) fighters had an easier time reintegrating than did members of any other faction. This is probably due to the fact that CDF factions were formed largely by members of the same community united to defend that community against attack and were perceived as heroes in the minds of their communities. Both studies also found that fighters who returned to their home communities reintegrated more successfully than did those who did not return home. This finding must be taken cautiously, as it is likely that those who choose not to return to their home communities were associated with severe violations of human rights that their home communities would be aware of (or have experienced firsthand). Arguably, these combatants were therefore unlikely to return home and may well be among those most likely to experience the greatest challenges in terms of reintegration, regardless of where they settled. In addition to community animosity, Richards’ study points to other, potentially volatile, resentments hindering reintegration. Those ex-combatants excluded from the NCDDR process experience a ‘strong sense of disillusionment’ (Richards et al., 2003, p. 5) and are subject to the same stigmatization for their role in the conflict as those who did participate in the NCDDR, without the resulting benefits and assistance that comes from participation in DDR. In addition, Richards et al. (2003) argue that ‘the reintegration of ex-combatants after the war in Sierra Leone is hindered not so much by negative civilian attitudes, but by a strong sense of grievance among young people who believe that they have not been fairly treated in the DDRP (disarmament, demobilization and reintegration process)’ (p. 5). This includes those who were and were not participants in the NCDDR. Richards et al. (2003) highlight the vulnerability of ex-combatants, and especially of those associated with the fighting forces who were not able to access the DDR process (in particular women). They argue that forced rural marriages that virtually indenture women who were associated with fighting factions are common and that those ex-combatants who return to or take up work in the diamond fields often experience very exploitative labour conditions. Interestingly, Humphreys and Weinstein’s (2004) study found that non-participants in the DDR process reintegrated as successfully as did participants. This finding must be questioned given the depth of the qualitative evidence to the contrary presented by the study of Richards et al. (2003).


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The point that the DDR process itself creates divisions (both between ex-combatants themselves and between ex-combatants and civilians) that hamper the reintegration process (Richards et al., 2003) is an important one. The NCDDR adopted several strategies to address the injustice perceived by community members who watched ex-combatants receive assistance and benefits (Ginifer, 2003) and very few to address the grievances of ex-combatants and those associated with the fighting forces excluded from the NCDDR (Richards et al., 2003). The NCDDR attempted to minimize community animosity by stressing that the skills training and economic reinsertion benefits that ex-combatant received were not meant as compensation for their war activities and by attempting to show that the skills that ex-combatants were gaining would be beneficial for communities as a whole (Ginifer, 2003). Sensitization activities and radio campaigns were carried out to disseminate these messages. The NCDDR also organized some events using traditional reconciliatory practices to encourage the reintegration of ex-combatants and provided ex-combatants with ‘pre-discharge counselling’ that emphasized reintegration into the community and urged ex-combatants to develop a ‘special re-entry plan’ (Ginifer, 2003). Ex-combatants were encouraged to participate in tasks that would benefit the communities, such as construction and rehabilitation projects. The NCDDR sought to engage local, community-based social reintegration organizations, providing funding for adult education programmes, civic and peace education and music and sports groups—hoping to rebuild the ‘social capital’ of ex-combatants (Ginifer, 2003). The sensitization activities of the NCDDR, along with its community meetings and use of traditional reconciliatory rituals to foster reintegration, overlap in many ways with activities carried out by Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), another post-conflict mechanism aimed at contributing in some way to reintegration by creating a forum for acknowledging the human rights abuses that occurred during the conflict and by making recommendations (enabled in the TRC’s founding legislation as mandatory) for post-conflict reforms to prevent conflict from reoccurring. Among the TRC’s recommendation was a recommendation to implement a package of reparations for victims of human rights violations (Graybill, 2007). Included in these recommendations were educational and skills training programmes, the existence of which—were they to be implemented by the government, that has to date been negligent of its responsibility to take up TRC recommendations (Graybill, 2007)—could address the inequities between survivors and ex-combatants created by the NCDDR process. Closer ties between the NCDDR and other post-conflict mechanisms, such as the TRC, could potentially have led to more holistic programming, capable of addressing the reintegration needs of more diverse communities from a variety of angles. Fithen and Richards (2005) argue for a more complex understanding of reintegration, pointing out that, in the post-conflict context, reintegrating does not simply mean readapting or ‘fitting into’ a community as a civilian, but rather being able to participate in reshaping the future and in creating new opportunities—a central task for communities in Sierra Leone given the current economic circumstances. The conflict, they argue, opened spaces for individualism and individual

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rights (see Archibald & Richards, 2002) in what was a largely patrimonial society. Skills training, along with formal education, could contribute to consolidating this potentially positive impact of Sierra Leone’s conflict were they to subsequently open real opportunities for youth. Fithen and Richards (2005) describe a group of ex-combatants who formed a bicycle taxi collective in Boas as an example of ex-combatants reintegrating positively (and profitably) into a community: ‘reintegration’ is not just a matter of ‘fitting in’ but of spotting and developing new opportunities for self-employment in a changing society. [. . .] Finding such opportunities strengthens social acceptability [. . .] as well as providing livelihood opportunities. Social acceptability, in turn, strengthens chances of winning political battles. [. . .] These ex-combatants are not just ‘fitting into’ such a society—they are helping to forge it (pp. 134–35).

Seen in this way, TVET programming is an integral part of a reintegration that creates and facilitates new opportunities and livelihoods for ex-combatants and for communities by enabling the possibility of building realities that differ considerably from pre-conflict ones. Seen more narrowly, however, TVET programming as a part of DDR has the real potential to raise expectations, create divisions and—in failing to lead to employment or livelihoods—create potentially dangerous disillusionment among youth. The challenge, therefore, of envisioning and programming for holistic, integrated TVET programming is a central one for DDR processes.

References Alexander, A. 2006. Community based reintegration: programme evaluation. Freetown: UNICEF. [Unpublished evaluation of UNICEF’s Community-Based Reintegration (CBR) Programme.] Archibald, S.; Richards, P. 2002. Converts to human rights? Popular debate about war and justice in rural central Sierra Leone. Africa, vol. 72, no. 3, pp. 339–67. Dougherty, B.K. 2004. Searching for answers: Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. African studies quarterly, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 39–56. Fithen, C.; Richards, P. 2005. Making war, crafting peace: militia solidarities and demobilisation in Sierra Leone. In: Richards, P., ed. No war, no peace: an anthropology of contemporary armed conflict. Oxford, UK: James Currey. Ginifer, J. 2003. Reintegration of ex-combatants. In: Meek, S. et al., eds. Sierra Leone: building the road to recovery, pp. 39–52. Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies Africa. (ISS monograph no. 80.) Graybill, L. 2007. Debt relief: a panacea for Sierra Leone. In: Center for Strategic and International Studies, ed. Africa policy forum. Washington, DC: CSIS. Humphreys, M.; Weinstein, J.M. 2004. What the fighters say: a survey of ex-combatants in Sierra Leone. June–August 2003: Interim report: July 2004. New York, NY: Columbia University. <www.stanford.edu/∼jweinst/docs/manuscripts/humphreys combatantsurvey.pdf> Humphreys, M.; Weinstein J.M. 2005. Disentangling the determinants of successful disarmament, demobilization and reintegration. [Unpublished manuscript.] <www.stanford.edu/ ∼jweinst/docs/manuscripts/DDR%20IGCC.pdf> Keen, D. 2005. Conflict and collusion in Sierra Leone. Oxford, UK: James Currey. Meek, S.; Malan, M., eds. 2004. Identifying lessons from DDR experiences in Africa. Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies. (ISS monograph, no. 106.) Paulson, J. 2006. The educational recommendations of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: potential and practice in Sierra Leone. Research in comparative and international education, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 335–50.


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Pouligny, B. 2004. The politics and anti-politics of contemporary ‘Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration’ Programs. Paris: Centre d’études et de recherches internationales. <www.ceri-sciencespo.com/cherlist/pouligny/rapportpouligny.pdf> Refugees International. 2002. RI Focus: disarmament, demobilization and reintegration in Sierra Leone. Washington, DC: Refugees International. <www.refugeesinternational.org/ content/article/detail/884/?PHPSESSID=5cfliegen3C> Richards, P. 1996. Fighting for the rainforest: war, youth and resources in Sierra Leone. Oxford, UK: James Currey. Richards, P., et al. 2003. Where have all the young people gone? Transitioning ex-combatants towards community reconstruction after the war in Sierra Leone. London: School of Oriental and African Studies. [Consultancy paper, unpublished.] Stavrou, A. et al. 2003. Tracer study and follow-up assessment of the reintegration component of Sierra Leone’s Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration Program. Cork, Ireland: University of Ireland, Centre for Sustainable Livelihoods. United Nations. 2000. The Role of United Nations Peacekeeping in disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration: report of the Secretary-General. New York, NY: UN. (Report no. S/2000/101.) <www.smallarmssurvey.org/files/portal/issueareas/measures/ Measur pdf/i measur pdf/UN doc/s council/S 2000 101.pdf> Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children. 2004. Global survey of education in emergencies. New York, NY: WCRWC. World Bank. 2005. Sierra Leone: community reintegration and rehabilitation. Findings: Africa Region, May, no. 112. <www.worldbank.org/afr/findings/infobeng/infob112.pdf> Wright, C. 1997. Reflections on Sierra Leone: a case study. In: Tawil, S., ed. Final report and case studies on educational disruption and reconstruction in disrupted societies. Geneva, Switzerland: UNESCO-IBE.


Chapter V.8

TVET, Women and Conflict: Palestinians in the Lebanese Civil War Rachel Yarrow

1 Introduction That the very different, yet very real, male and female experiences of conflict have frequently been misunderstood is increasingly agreed upon (see UNIFEM, 2004, for example). In particular, attention is being drawn to changes that conflict brings about in women’s need to earn a livelihood, changes in the types of livelihood that are acceptable for women, and changes in wider ideas about gender roles and stereotypes (Date-Bah, 2003). This chapter focuses first on the changes that the conflicts in Lebanon of the 1970s and 1980s brought about in ideas about Palestinian women’s economic activity; secondly, the effect that conflict had on the provision of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) for Palestinians in Lebanon; and lastly, the extent to which the new TVET provision took account of, and capitalized upon, the changes that had taken place. These changes will be analysed through Buckland’s idea of the post-conflict situation as the ‘best of times, worst of times’, ‘both an opportunity and a constraint’ (2005, p. 25). In particular, this chapter will focus on case studies of two NGOs that were involved in TVET provision for Palestinian women during the Lebanese Civil War, and the extent to which they effectively capitalized on the ‘opportunities’ offered by the post-conflict situation. In reality, the notions of conflict and post-conflict situations are to a large extent co-extensive in the context of Palestinians in Lebanon. At the meta-level, as refugees of a yet-unresolved conflict, their situation is still not truly post-conflict, especially as the threat of impending Lebanese and Palestinian civil war seems very real in the present day. However, armed hostilities are not a daily reality for Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon and, even during the Lebanese Civil War, there were long periods when large numbers of Palestinians were not directly involved in fighting. This chapter focuses primarily on TVET in the period 1976–1988, years which arguably all fall within the boundaries of the Lebanese Civil War and could be regarded as ‘conflict’ rather than ‘post-conflict’ times. However, from anecdotal evidence, those who experienced this period at first hand tend not to refer to it as such, but to focus on discrete episodes of conflict which particularly affected them, and which fell several years apart. The periods between these episodes do then become post-conflict. TVET programming that arose as a response to these episodes is, then, interpreted primarily as occurring in a post-conflict situation. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 V.8, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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TVET is a notoriously difficult concept to define. UNESCO-UNEVOC defines it as being ‘concerned with the acquisition of knowledge and skills for the world of work’ (UNESCO-UNEVOC, n.d.). TVET definitions usually do not cover such areas as legal, medical or teacher training, however, even though they are concerned with such. For the purposes of this chapter, TVET is defined pragmatically as that which happens in vocational training centres (VTCs), and what is therefore usually recognized as vocational training by most Palestinians. This excludes training for professions, such as law and engineering, but does include many ‘semi-professional’ courses (such as architectural drawing, computing, or business and office management), as well as the more practical and traditional courses (such as welding, sewing and hairdressing). Teacher training for Palestinians does take place in the VTC run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), but will not be included in the considerations of this chapter.

2 A History of Conflict Following the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and the ensuing war, around 500,000 to 700,000 Arab Palestinians left their homes in what had become Israel, or Arab Palestinian land seized by Israel (Fisk, 1990, p. 17).1 Approximately 100,000 of these sought refuge in Lebanon (Ugland, 2003, p. 15). In 1949, UNRWA was established by the United Nations General Assembly in order to provide ‘direct relief and works programmes’ for the refugees (UNRWA, n.d.). The refugees in Lebanon initially gathered in the South, around the cities of Tyre and Sidon, but were later dispersed to the Beka’a valley and Tripoli, and organized into camps on land leased by UNRWA. Current estimates of the number of Palestinians in Lebanon range from 200,000 to 600,000 (see Ugland, 2003, p. 18 for a discussion of this). It is probably reasonable to assume that the Palestinians make up slightly under 10% of the population of Lebanon today (see Haddad, 2003, p. 4, for example). The violence and conflict that has had the most direct effects on the Palestinians still alive in Lebanon today is undoubtedly that which took place during the Lebanese Civil War. After the Cairo Agreement of 1969, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was permitted to have a legitimate armed presence in Lebanon and was effectively given autonomy over the Palestinian camps. What resulted is often referred to as the Palestinian ‘State within a State’, presided over by Chairman Yasser Arafat (Schultz & Hammer, 2003, p. 55), and viewed with much misgiving by the ruling Maronite Christians. The start of the Lebanese Civil War is often cited as the clash between a Palestinian organization and the Phalange, a Maronite militia, in 1975 (ibid.), although the PLO have strenuously denied that they were trying to destabilize the situation. The Palestinian camps had soon become targets, however, and in 1976 the Phalange embarked on a seven-month siege of the camp of Tal al-Zataar, during which 3,000 Palestinians were killed (Schultz & Hammer, 2003, p. 56).

V.8 TVET, Women and Conflict: Palestinians in the Lebanese Civil War

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Following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, further damage was inflicted on the Palestinian refugees, most notoriously in the massacres in the Beirut camps of Sabra and Shatila, in which up to 2,000 Palestinian men, women and children died at the hands of the Phalange (Fisk, 1990, pp. 359–400). At this time, too, the PLO was driven out of Lebanon, and the relative autonomy that had been enjoyed by the Palestinians in the camps was over. Moreover, following the expulsion of the PLO, the Shi’ite Amal movement, with Syrian backing, became obsessed with driving out any remaining PLO loyalists suspected of remaining in the camps (Haddad, 2003, p. 34). The resulting ‘War of the Camps’ consisted of a series of sieges of the Palestinian camps in Beirut and Southern Lebanon, concentrated over the period 1985–87, and resulted in the deaths of many hundreds of Palestinians, the (re-)displacement of thousands more and the near-destruction of many camps.

3 Palestinian Women in the Economic Sphere Historically, the place of Palestinian women has been regarded as in the home, the ethos of sitt fil-bait (the lady in home) (Sayigh, 1993, p. 183). To be a working woman in the 1950s and 1960s was regarded as shameful in the context of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon; in particular, work outside the camp was to be avoided and work inside the home much preferred to that outside (Sayigh, 1994, pp. 45–47). A general fearfulness for women’s safety and honour when travelling outside the home, and particularly the camp, is still pervasive in Palestinian society, particularly for unmarried girls. Early marriage has traditionally been seen as the primary guarantee of economic security for women, and the expectation of marriage (for men and women) has been near universal (Ugland, 2003, p. 32). Involvement in domestic labour, seasonal agriculture and even factories was not unknown among poor families, though cottage industries centred on the home, such as sewing and embroidery, were more usual and acceptable for women (Peteet, 1991, p. 21, 33).

3.1 The Experience of Conflict: Changing Women’s Roles Changes in the economic and social place of women in Palestinian society were already beginning in the period leading up to the Lebanese Civil War. Of particular importance was the arrival of the PLO in Lebanon, after they were ejected from Jordan in 1970, together with the signing of the Cairo Agreement in 1969. Although Palestinian women in Lebanon never became actively involved as military fighters in the resistance movement, as they had done in Jordan (Sayigh, 1993, p. 177), the institution-building that accompanied the rise of the PLO in Lebanon provided ample opportunities for women to work towards the national struggle, taking up work in, for example, kindergartens, clinics, vocational training centres and sewing workshops (Sayigh, 1993, p. 183). The PLO also brought a heightened sense of the Palestinian cause as a unified struggle, and as the clouds of civil war began to

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gather in Lebanon, great value was placed on anything that men or women could do to support the national cause. Sayigh reports an interview in which she was told: ‘After the battle of Tell al-Zataar [1976], no mother would prevent her daughter from going out. On the contrary, she would tell her to go out and work to help her people’ (1993, p. 183). The PLO left Lebanon in 1983, following the Israeli invasion, and with them a whole range of employment opportunities disappeared, for men and women alike. By this time, however, the civil war had brought about new factors that were changing women’s position in the economic and social spheres. The increasing involvement of men in military and conflict-related activities was surely amongst the most significant factors pushing women into work. On the one hand, the number of casualties resulting from active male involvement in battles such as Tell al-Zataar and, later on, in the Camp Wars of 1985–87, led to an increase in female-headed households. Female-headed households in these circumstances are more likely to live in extreme poverty due to the loss of the husband’s financial support (Date-Bah, 2003, p. 117). In such circumstances, the social stigma attached to certain types of work for women is likely to have been subjugated to the physical survival needs of the family, particularly important given that remarriage amongst Palestinian women who have been widowed is not common (Sayigh, 1993, p. 189). On the other hand, the absence of male family members, due to, for example, out-migration, death, displacement or imprisonment, particularly of a patriarchal husband or father, may have engendered a lifting of family control over women’s activities, including those boundaries that keep women in the home and out of the world of work. Furthermore, although women were not involved in active military service en masse, there are many examples of women undertaking roles in relation to conflict that marked a departure from their normal sphere of activities. Peteet even cites examples of women university students who, although not encouraged by the PLO, underwent military training during the 1981 general mobilization campaign and who fought in Tal al-Zataar as an expression of their commitment to the national cause (1991, p. 149). More common during Tal al-Zataar and the camp wars was involvement in support activities, for example, smuggling ammunition into camps or working as scouts (Sayigh, 1993, p. 189). However, not all the effects of conflict resulted in women’s entry into the world of work. At the political level, the PLO’s focus on the ‘national struggle’ had left little room for arguments about women’s issues. Although some ‘leftist factions’ of the PLO acknowledged ‘the woman question’, the mainstream Fateh party ‘articulated [no] ideology concerning women’ (Gluck, 1995, p. 7); the issue was ‘left pending’ until after national liberation (Sayigh, 1993, p. 177). On a more practical level, conflict would have also increased the perceived risk to women when travelling outside the home. The displacement caused by the Lebanese Civil War would also have increased the domestic load, which would have impacted much more heavily on women than men, emphasizing their role and work inside the house (Sayigh, 1993, p. 189). Furthermore, post-crisis societies are often marked by periods of conservatism (see Phillips, 1995, p. 248, for example). Analyses of gender roles after the First and


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Second World Wars, for example, point to a re-affirmation of the traditional gender division in employment (Higonnet & Higonnet, 1987). Certainly, while many changes brought about by conflict were encouraging female participation in the workplace, there were strong conservative forces at work.

4 Conflict and TVET Provision It is difficult to regard TVET as having a purely neutral role with regard to gender, and TVET programmes are accused of perpetuating gender stereotypes in many situations. The World Bank policy paper of 1991 admits that ‘broader societal perceptions about the appropriate role of women’ often condition the types of training they are offered and notes that, in Israel, of all TVET students, 83% of men train in blue-collar professions, and 89% of women train in white-collar professions (Neuman & Ziderman in World Bank, 1991, p. 64). There is an inherent tension in the dual roles of adapting one’s self to what the market needs and wants, and of trying to encourage women and men to take up new types of economic activity, to which the market may well not be receptive. When it comes to post-conflict situations, this trend is, if anything, exacerbated; Date-Bah argues that many institutions in the post-conflict setting can be seen to ‘reintroduce the pre-war gender biased positions’ (2003, p. 111) and specifically that: ‘experiences show that many [vocational training and skills development programmes] tend to be gender stereotyped focusing on knitting or sewing’ (Date-Bah, 2003, p. 142). However, while many are prepared to criticize the gender divisions that emerge in much TVET programming (both within and without the post-conflict context), nearly all stress TVET’s potential for breaking down constrictive gender stereotypes in the sphere of economic activity, particularly for women. The 1991 World Bank policy paper mentions TVET as having an important place amongst a range of strategies designed to help women overcome barriers to entry into the workplace (World Bank, 1991, p. 7). Furthermore, Date-Bah sees in the post-conflict situation a ‘window of opportunity’ for overcoming ‘the gender stereotypes and traditional gender division of labour; if TVET can capitalize on this window of opportunity, then it has the potential to open new doors for women’ (Date-Bah, 2003, p. 111).

4.1 TVET for Palestinians Prior to the Civil War Due to financial constraints, an UNRWA vocational training centre (VTC) was not opened in Lebanon until 1963. The VTC at Siblin constituted virtually the only form of formal TVET provision available for Palestinians in Lebanon for the following two decades. As Graham-Brown pointed out, the numerous private vocational schools around Beirut were all fee-paying, rendering them inaccessible to most Palestinians (1984, p. 120). The alternative to formal vocational education was to

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undertake apprenticeships, but, according to one interviewee, these were not wellregarded and not undertaken by women. The VTC in Siblin offered mainly two-year courses and was heavily over-subscribed. As a result of this, however, the VTC could afford to be selective about admissions, thus gaining an excellent reputation for the standard and employment prospects of its graduates (UNRWA, 1986, p. 140). The period of PLO autonomy in Lebanon had several impacts on vocational education, as many political factions opened their own facilities for vocational training. In 1981, Weighill reports that as many as nine political organizations were running workshops in one or more of the camps (1996, p. 30). Anecdotal evidence suggests women were participating in some form of training during this period in fields such as nursing, administration and secretarial work. This period also impacted on the work of the Siblin VTC. It became a ‘fertile recruiting ground’ for various armed militia, as military training and a year of service in the PLO became required of all students and graduates, although the curriculum remained unchanged (Weighill, 1996, p. 31). This system of TVET provision could hardly have been designed to be less accessible to women. The Siblin VTC, in common with other UNRWA VTCs in the Middle East, initially oriented its curriculum towards the rapid economic development taking place in the oil-producing countries (UNRWA, 1986, p. 135). This meant that, aside from its teacher-training programmes, the focus was on manual trades such as welding, construction and electricity, which were culturally (if not actually) prohibited for women. Furthermore, as most of the employment opportunities for holders of such qualifications were in the Gulf States, it was even less likely that women would be tempted to undertake such training. The location of the Siblin VTC also lowered female participation in its courses. Whilst it is somewhat centrally located, in the mountains between Beirut and Sidon, travelling times to the centre from camps in the North, the South and the Beka’a valley were up to two hours by bus, which would far exceed what many parents would consider acceptable for their daughters. Dormitory accommodation, available for young men at the centre, was not made available to women—for cultural reasons. This meant that young women had to find lodgings with local families close to the centre. Fears about young women travelling outside the home would surely only have been exacerbated by the deteriorating security situation of the late 1970s and early 1980s. As a result of this, by 1982–1983, out of the 712 places available at Siblin for non-teacher-training vocational education, just 93 (or 13%) of them were taken up by females (Graham-Brown, 1984, p. 121). Access to TVET for Palestinian women in the pre-civil war period can, therefore, be said to have been limited by geographical location, types of courses offered and the places of employment that such qualifications would lead to.

4.2 The Effect of Conflict on TVET Provision for Women As will be seen in the following section, the Lebanese Civil War had the effect of both closing down opportunities for vocational training and also, paradoxically,


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opening up new opportunities, many of which are still in operation over twenty years later. This section will focus on the provision offered by UNRWA, together with two case studies of NGOs that started functioning during this period: the first, an NGO dedicated to the development and empowerment of women, and the second, an NGO dedicated to providing TVET for Palestinians. UNRWA’s VTC at Siblin remained open until the Israeli invasion in 1982, and then struggled to stay open for about another year. Most of its equipment was looted by the Israelis; the buildings were later occupied by a militia group, leading to further damage due to heavy shelling. Graham-Brown reported that, in 1983, staff felt a ‘growing sense of isolation from the new industrial and technical developments in Lebanon and elsewhere’, particularly as they became unable to offer any sort of on-the-job training (1984, p. 121). The centre ceased to function at this time and remained closed until the end of the 1980s. Any vocational training offered by political organizations, however haphazard, also disappeared as the PLO was forced out of Lebanon by the Israeli invasion. However, a new breed of overtly non-political, Palestinian-led non-governmental organizations (NGOs) started to emerge at this time, and vocational training was very much of a priority for them. 4.2.1 Case Study A: An NGO Focusing on Women’s Empowerment NGO A was started in 1977 by a group of Lebanese, Palestinian and Italian women, as a direct response to the Tal Al-Zataar massacre. As mainly women and children survived the massacre, and many were left without either husbands or homes, NGO A began with the intention of ‘assist[ing] the survivors, socially, psychosocially, and at the economic level’. The women survivors had mostly weak literacy, but were skilled at making traditional Palestinian embroidery. The NGO capitalized on this skill by bringing women together to produce embroidery that could be sold to provide them with immediate income, whilst creating a group dynamic through which they could be provided with psycho-social support. NGO A had a very strong belief that they did not wish to be carrying out ‘charity work’, but rather sustainable development: ‘We should provide tools for them so they can contribute to the development of their society’. In the wake of the massacre, they felt it was important not to make people feel or act like victims. With this in mind, moving into vocational training provision was the logical next step after facilitating income generation, and they ‘decided that some women needed to develop their skills, so they weren’t only dependent on the embroidery’. They began offering courses in sewing and typing. Their rationale for offering sewing was that, as women were often not allowed to access work outside the home, sewing would enable women to find a secure income whilst remaining inside the home. The typing course, on the other hand, enabled women to find jobs with the PLO: ‘most of the women who graduated from typing already had jobs waiting for them at the PLO offices, all the political and non-political institutions that the PLO opened’. Offering these two courses was a step towards ‘empower[ing] women with skills, and tools that are necessary for them to contribute to the well-being and the development

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of the whole community’, and were seen as part of a move from the traditional (embroidery) to the non-traditional (office work). NGO A has flourished since its establishment and, in 2000, was offering a range of courses from the very traditional (sewing and hairdressing) to the non-traditional, which were increasingly favoured from the early 1990s (office management, accounting, typing, interior decoration, carpentry, electricity and photography). NGO A has always focused on offering social support along with vocational training. Many trainees are admitted on the basis of their reduced circumstances, and may be assisted with the payment of course fees. Classes on subjects such as human rights, leadership and domestic violence are attached to all the vocational training programmes and form a core part of their vision.

4.2.2 Case Study B: An NGO Dedicated to Providing Vocational Education for Palestinians NGO B was established by two engineers who were working for UNRWA at the time of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, along with staff from UNESCO. They began to realize that TVET provision for Palestinians in the South was inadequate, particularly following the closure of the VTC at Siblin due to damage and looting. Even before the closure, however, the founder of NGO B pointed out that for all the tens of thousands of Palestinians from camps and gatherings in the Tyre area, only about four places would be available in a course such as electricity at Siblin. After the opening of a VTC in the Tyre area, sixteen extra places would be available, thus increasing provision four-fold. The founder felt that it was important for students who wanted to undertake vocational education, and also those who wanted to go to university but did not have the means, to have an opportunity to obtain a good qualification ‘based on proper methods, and proper ways, and a good syllabus, and good training’, in contrast to the informal and generally poorly respected apprenticeship training of the past. In 1983, therefore, NGO B opened a VTC in some former PLO offices in al-Bass camp. Of great significance was how, when the Siblin VTC was closed, UNRWA agreed to collaborate with NGO B, providing official certification (which they continue to do to this day), curriculum advice and supervision from their own (temporarily unemployed) staff at Siblin. The first courses offered were architectural drawing, and business and office practice, and in the initial year around twenty-two students graduated from each programme. The courses were chosen both on the basis of what students wanted (particularly business and office practice) and on the basis of market needs and possibilities for employment. Draughtsmen were required in engineering companies in Lebanon and across the Middle East, and business and office practice offered similarly transferable skills. The fact that both of these courses were open (culturally) to men and women increased their attractiveness to the founders of the centre, and they found that male and female enrolments were more or less equal. Each year, two or three courses were added and new centres were opened in Ein Helweh and Nahr el-Bared camps. Later, courses included tailoring, sewing


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and design, refrigeration and air conditioning, television and radio maintenance, secretarial and computer studies, and nursing. From the start, females and males could theoretically be admitted to all courses offered by NGO B. In practice, female enrolment in traditionally male fields (added later) such as industrial electricity, or refrigeration and air conditioning, has been non-existent, although the founder of NGO B remembered that ‘about ten years ago, a girl came to the electricity course. She stayed until the middle, and then, I don’t know, maybe she got engaged or travelled, but I was very pleased with her, because it was a new step, a new thing happening in the community’ (personal communication). The founder of NGO B admitted that he would not actively seek out girls and women to join the more traditionally male courses, but thought he would encourage a girl if she came and enquired about it, and would even provide extra facilities if necessary.

5 ‘Best of Times, Worst of Times’? Buckland’s phrase (coined in Buckland, 2005, p. 25 and borrowed from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities) touches on the idea that, whilst conflict may have a devastating effect on education, the post-conflict situation may also provide opportunity for change and to capitalize on shifts in previously fixed gender stereotypes affected by the conflict. Certainly, this paradigm can be applied to the situation of vocational training as the Lebanese Civil War unfolded. Although in some ways, vocational training was left in a dire situation by the Israeli invasion, in other ways, the space that opened up presented NGOs with the possibility of experimenting with a different model of TVET provision as the ‘inertia and resistance’ that usually characterize attempts to reform TVET and remake structural inequalities are overcome (Date-Bah, 2003, p. 212). Whether the structural inequalities relating to gender really were remade in the new system of TVET provision that emerged is, at first glance, somewhat questionable. NGO A, for example, for all its rhetoric of empowerment and development, focused on equipping women with the skills of sewing and typing; certainly, such skills may have led to employment, and typing was not as ‘traditional’ a form of employment for Palestinian women as embroidery, but women working in these areas could hardly be regarded as breaking gender stereotypes. Similarly, for NGO B, although the courses were theoretically offered to men and women, in reality, in the absence of explicit encouragement and guidance for women thinking about enrolling in traditionally male courses, enrolment patterns remained conventional. While NGO B, therefore, and to a lesser extent NGO A, were offering training that did not reinforce previously held gender stereotypes, neither did they take major steps towards breaking them down. The criticism levelled at training and employment programmes in post-conflict Lebanon seems applicable here: ‘the focus of the programme was on meeting immediate/practical needs without consideration of strategic interests or long-term empowerment of women’ (Date-Bah, 2003, p. 130).

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This seems particularly pertinent in the face of evidence, cited by the World Bank, that women can be encouraged into non-traditional courses even in a country as conservative as Morocco. In 1979, note was taken that, although women were theoretically entitled to enrol in ‘industrial training programmes’, very few had applied and none had been accepted. Advertisements specifically targeted at women were placed in the media, female instructors were recruited and career counselling services put in place, with the result that enrolment figures rose sharply and have been sustained (World Bank, 1991, p. 218). The cautious approach of the case study NGOs may therefore be thought of as a little disappointing. However, there are other important ways in which the situation of women’s access was very much altered by the newly emerging TVET system. Perhaps most importantly, the NGOs capitalized on the opportunity for change that was presented by the UNRWA Siblin VTC losing its stranglehold on the system. As described above, the Siblin VTC was geographically very difficult to reach; provision in the new, smaller NGOs took place within the camps. As the founder of NGO B explained to me: You know our customs here. A lot of families, maybe twenty years ago, don’t let their daughters travel away, or take vocational training, or go outside the camps. But inside the camp, it is as though they are still under the supervision of their families (personal communication).

Similarly, in NGO A, the training took place in all-female groups, so there was no risk of exposure to single young men. A particularly important innovation was that of NGO B, when it secured collaboration with and certification of UNRWA on their new courses. This gave their new style of provision a crucial legitimacy which it could carry forward into the post-conflict era, even when Siblin re-opened in 1988. Another remarkable innovation of both NGOs, particularly NGO B, was the focus on delivering ‘modern’ courses, rather than ‘traditional’ courses that brought with them a burden of gender stereotyping. By delivering courses, such as business and office practice and typing, men and women were able to access equal training and employment prospects without struggling against the weight of cultural expectations as they would have in careers such as hairdressing or welding. This was particularly important given the dire economic and employment situation of the time. The barriers to entry for a man or woman with an ‘unconventional’ qualification would have been even higher than normal, as employers became less inclined to take risks. Looking forward to the ‘modern’ job market was an inspired way of avoiding the trap of perpetuating and reinforcing gender stereotyping in the workplace. This also had the effect of lessening the notion that vocational training was somehow ‘backward’ or academically inferior to other forms of study, which increased its attractiveness to parents, sons and daughters alike. This is not to say, however, that these NGOs have not experimented with breaking down gender stereotypes in TVET, and the comparative flexibility of the new system was another great strength in this respect. With centres in many camps, and with courses lasting less than a year, both NGO A and B have been able to start new programmes for a trial period, in just one camp, before committing to


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full enrolment. This meant, eventually, that it was possible to experiment with, for example, carpentry courses for women. This course was discontinued, but one can regard the fact that it was at least tried for several years, and that many women passed through it, as something of an achievement in itself. Women are far more likely to enrol in an ‘experimental’ subject if it is not required that they also travel for several hours every day outside the camp, and commit to a course of two years, as the opportunity costs are lower. Perhaps most important, however, was that the number of training places rose, and not only in male-dominated areas, meaning that a larger number of women were able to take advantage of training. As a result of training, women are more likely to be able to contribute to household earnings and work outside their immediate home. This may have various empowering effects, such as improved self-confidence, influence in the home, and the possibility of meeting and interacting with a wider range of people, whilst not actively breaking down employment-related gender stereotypes. In this respect, the NGOs were also able to benefit from the increased demand for vocational training in the conflict and post-conflict situations. The founder of NGO B remarked that: The Israeli invasion didn’t prevent women from leaving their houses and coming to the centre to take vocational training. I think in some points it encouraged them, especially as a lot of men were in prisons. I think families changed their thoughts about continuing teaching their daughters and even they have no problem if they go to work after graduation (personal communication).

Perhaps even more important now is the continuing sense that, in an uncertain world, marriage no longer guarantees long-term economic security for a woman. One young woman explained to me: If you have children and your husband dies, you should have a job to work in. Here, you are independent, you must work to earn, the government will not help to support you. You must depend on yourself. Even if you have children, you should work. So I think I should get vocational training, in order that, if anything happens in my life, I have a certain job to work in (personal communication).

6 Conclusions Buckland’s ‘best of times, worst of times’ analogy works well in this context. The (post-)conflict situation for vocational training was extremely difficult, and there had been many ways in which the situation concerning stereotyped ideas about women in the economic sphere had been worsened by the conflict, as well as some interesting ways in which it had been broken down. Some of the features of the new TVET providers were perhaps disappointingly conservative, and did not do enough to move away from the status quo ante. However, to focus on these would be to ignore the ways in which the emerging NGO provision was innovative, both in terms of structure, courses on offer and willingness to take advantage of changes in expectations about women and work brought about by conflict.

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There were many real constraints on women which affected their participation in training and in the workforce. Certain conservative ideas about the woman’s role in the economic sphere were inscribed rather than loosened by the experience of conflict, which in effect pulled women out of certain types of employment, whilst the economic collapse and resulting lack of employment opportunities for both sexes simultaneously pushed them out of the workforce. Given that the onus on TVET must always be to improve the prospects of earning a livelihood, there are very real arguments in favour of TVET focusing on any skills that might provide or increase income, even if they are traditional skills such as sewing or embroidery. After all, it must be recognized that nothing is less empowering for women than extreme poverty. However, accepting that the post-conflict situation might not be the optimum moment to introduce radical reforms to TVET provision—for example, welding courses for women—does not mean that NGOs and other TVET providers cannot take advantage of the opportunity to innovate and capitalize on societal changes. Some problems with the antecedent TVET provision tackled with particular effect in this context were, as described above, the place and mode of delivery, the reputation of TVET and types of courses offered, all of which had a real and lasting effect on the possibility of Palestinian women to undertake training.

Note 1. This figure is contested; Sayigh, for example, estimates that 590,000 Arab Palestinians were displaced to the West Bank and Jordan, whilst a further 300,000 moved beyond the borders of Palestine altogether (1979, p. 99).

References Buckland, P. 2005. Reshaping the future: education and post-conflict reconstruction. Washington, DC: World Bank. Date-Bah, E., ed. 2003. Jobs after war: a critical challenge in the peace and reconstruction puzzle. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Fisk, R. 1990. Pity the nation: Lebanon at war. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Gluck, S.B. 1995. Palestinian women: gender politics and nationalism. Journal of Palestine studies, vol. 24, no. 3. Graham-Brown, S. 1984. Education, repression and liberation: Palestinians. London: World University Service. Haddad, S. 2003. The Palestinian impasse in Lebanon: the politics of refugee integration. Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press. Higonnet, M.R.; Higonnet, P. 1987. The double helix. In: Higonnet, M.R. et al., eds. Behind the lines: gender and the two world wars, pp. 31–47. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Peteet, J.M. 1991. Gender in crisis: women and the Palestinian resistance movement. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Phillips, D., ed. 1995. Education in Germany: tradition and reform in historical context. London: Routledge. Sayigh, R. 1979. Palestinians: from peasants to revolutionaries. London: Zed Books.


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Sayigh, R. 1993. Palestinian women and politics in Lebanon. In: Tucker, J., ed. Arab women: old boundaries, new frontiers, pp. 175–95. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Sayigh, R. 1994. Too many enemies: the Palestinian experience in Lebanon. London: Zed Books. Schultz, H.; Hammer, J. 2003. The Palestinian diaspora: formation of identities and politics of homeland. London: Routledge. Ugland, O.F., ed. 2003. Difficult past, uncertain future: living conditions among Palestinian refugees in camps and gatherings in Lebanon. Tøyen, Norway: FAFO. UNESCO-UNEVOC. No date. What is TVET? <www.unesco.unevoc.org> United Nations Development Fund for Women—UNIFEM. 2004. Getting it right, doing it right: gender and disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration. New York, NY: UNIFEM. United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East. 1986. UNRWA: a brief history, 1950-1982. Vienna: UNRWA. United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East. No date. Establishment of UNRWA. <www.un.org/unrwa/overview/index.html> Weighill, M.-L. 1996. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon: the politics of assistance. (Paper presented at the Palestinians in Lebanon Conference, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford, United Kingdom, 27–30 September 1996.) World Bank. 1991. Vocational education and training: a World Bank policy paper Washington, DC: World Bank.








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VOLUME 3


Part IV

The Management of TVET Systems


Section 6 Policy and Management of TVET Systems

Rupert Maclean UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Bonn, Germany Chris Chinien Workforce Development Consulting, Montreal, Canada


Chapter VI.1

Overview: Navigating the Policy Landscape: Education, Training and Work Dennis R. Herschbach

1 Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to present a brief overview of the process of policy formulation applied to technical and vocational education and training (TVET). It draws from policy research in the social sciences, international development and workforce preparation. In any policy field, there are as many different policy options as there are ways of structuring education and training programmes. There is no grand theory or cleanly cut methodology about the formulation of policy that is widely agreed upon and that can be used for all purposes. Very different policy recommendations result from the way that the policy formulation process itself is defined. It is anything but a formal, cut-and-dried, step-by-step process. Navigating the education, training and work policy landscape is complex with unexpected twists and turns, but it is essential that sound judgements are made. Many countries are struggling to renew their education and training systems as they face issues of poverty, stagnant economic growth, social dislocation, disintegrating political consensus, population expansion and limited resources. The cost of making poor education and training decisions is too high to ignore the reasoned study of policy options.

2 Contrasting Policy Perspectives Formulating education and training policy is more of a craft than a science. Policy formulation relies on the experience of the analyst to fashion reasonably consistent and realistic alternatives based on a deep understanding of the education and training context. Sound policy is crafted on a foundation of plausible, common-sense judgements, and focuses on what ends are worth pursuing, why and how. Sound policy helps to generate an understanding of education and training problems, the range of possible alternatives and the attendant values, interests, consequences, costs, uncertainties and outcomes of whatever actions that are taken (Bobrow & Dryzek, 1987; Heck, 2004; Malen & Knapp, 1997; Schneider & Ingram, 1997). The policy analyst, nevertheless, relies on a number of analytical tools to inform judgements. For the purposes of discussion in this chapter, we combine a variety R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VI.1, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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of technical approaches into two fundamental categories: the rational and the more intuitive incremental, interactive perspective.

2.1 The Rationalist Policy Perspective The rational perspective is favoured by policy-makers, economists, analysts and planners because it appears to lead to ‘optimal’ decisions derived from databased comparisons of one policy option over another (Bobrow & Dryzek, 1987; Malen & Knapp, 1997; Mingat, Tan & Sosak, 2003). The rationalist perspective is widely used in the field of TVET because it addresses the objective of economic efficiency—it makes the best use of material and human resources in achieving similar programme output. It is assumed that, within limits, a less costly TVET modality can be substituted for other more costly ones. Budget pressures make containing and reducing cost appealing to decision-makers. The policy focus tends to fall along three main lines: (a) the structure, management and organization of TVET institutions; (b) teacher/student ratios, instructional inputs and outputs, resource use and teacher training, as well as other factors that relate to instructional and programme efficiency; and (c) the relative efficiency (figured in terms of relative cost) of one TVET alternative over another in meeting labour-market skill requirements. Decision-making is structured around a set of agreed-upon policy ends, such as increasing the number of labour force entrants in a specific occupational category, implementing the lowest cost training alternative, improving achievement levels, or addressing global market competition. Standards and outcome measures are formulated in a linear, ends-means decision-making framework with a number of sequential stages. Common practice is to rely heavily on data derived from cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness calculations to guide decision-making (Woodhall, 2004). The policy option with the highest comparative monitory return is assumed to be the best. Typical stages in the rationalist policy process are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Assess, clarify and diagnose the problem; Identify, organize and analyse relevant data; Formulate and examine alternative policy options; Formulate evaluative criteria and assess options; Make tentative choices and implement; Evaluate; Adjust, modify and make recommendations.

The rationalist perspective assumes a stable policy environment, clearly agreed upon goals, continuing support from the various stakeholder groups, and sufficient resources and local capacity to implement policy (Bobrow & Dryzek, 1987). These conditions often are not met, but policy recommendations, nevertheless, are forthcoming. The rational perspective is used most widely by donor agencies and national governments to guide decision-making for more structured, organized TVET

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interventions, such as formal education and training institutions. It is less useful in uncertain, unpredictable and resource-poor education and training environments, such as are found in low-income markets in the informal economic sector. The rationalist perspective tends to suffer from the practical limitation of being captive to its methodology and data collection, which is usually a one-time event. Rarely, if ever, are data collected over an extended period and used to guide the reformulation of policy during the long maturation time that primary TVET policy interventions take. Furthermore, by elevating economic criteria to such a central place in decision-making, there is a built-in bias that largely excludes, downplays or only partly considers other factors that cannot be easily reduced to monitory terms, but yet are critical to decision-making. In particular, there may be a tendency not to consider fully the political, economic, social and institutional variables within the policy environment that are external to the immediate policy picture, but yet are crucial to long-term successful implementation (Herschbach, 1994; 2000; Lauglo & Maclean, 2005; Wilson, 1996). Moreover, the assumption that policy formulation is a ‘rational’, data-driven process causes the analyst to treat normative value questions as discrete, static bits of information and to ignore the on-going, hard-to-measure dynamic, and sometimes contentious human interaction, within policy environments. The core values, belief systems, interests and motivations of policy participants have to be constantly examined over time and clarified enough so that reasonably clear policy alternatives can be formulated and reformulated (Malen & Knapp, 1997). TVET policy succeeds or fails because of human agency.

2.2 Incremental, Interactive Perspectives A second category of analytical tools can be grouped under incremental, interactive policy perspectives. It is thought that judgements about policy issues depend in large part on the value positions held by stakeholders and the contextual conditions that support a given decision. Incremental, interactive policy perspectives take into consideration the complex and dynamic character of policy environments, recognize the importance of stakeholders and their core values and beliefs, and carefully gauge the country capacity to implement and sustain TVET programming (Heck, 2004; Sabatier, 1999; Schneider & Ingram, 1997). What is termed ‘incremental’ or ‘piecemeal social engineering’ is a policy perspective that addresses the normative and human dimensions of policy formulation. Lindblom (1959, 1979; Lindblom & Woodhouse, 1993), for example, argues that sound policy outcomes are best reached through a process of ‘partisan mutual adjustment’ incorporating the interests and beliefs of the people in the policy environment. Policy decisions are not made from scratch; they are grounded in an existing institutional framework with all of the attending power relationships, self-interests and barriers to change that have developed over time. For this reason, according to Lindblom, policy initiatives are thwarted unless they are an outcome

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of ‘the interplay of self-interests’ and the decision-makers are part of the action, with acceptable policy emerging from a succession of small, agreed-upon changes over time. Lindblom’s work helped to set the stage for the elaboration of alternatives to ‘rational’ planning that recognize the complex, ever-changing character of policy environments in which precedent conditions and human actors play a decisive role. Policy formulation is conceived as a process of brokering competing interests and values, while all the time casting a discriminating eye on potential resource levels, institutional capacity and political, economic and social determinants that influence policy implementation. Long-term goals are eschewed for short-term objectives focused on immediate problems. The primary policy emphasis is on small increments of change that have a reasonable chance of being supported and achieved. Initial TVET investments are modest and expand only when successful implementation is demonstrated (Bobrow & Dryzek, 1987; Colebatch, 1998; Heck, 2004; Rondinelli, Middleton & Verspoor, 1990). Based on ideas similar to those of Lindblom, what is termed the ‘advocacy coalition framework’ (ACF) is another policy formulation approach that contrasts sharply with rational perspectives and recognizes the importance of local policy actors. Grounded in the work of Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1999), the basic idea is that for a given issue effective policy formulation evolves out of coalition-building within and across participating groups. Individuals within different significant groups are open to shared policy positions surrounding core values, common interests, similar perceptions of policy issues and mutual goals. Policy coalitions are formed among individuals with shared positions in order to generate the consensus required to effect change. Advocacy coalitions not only work as a sounding board for determining what is possible, but also function to build support and change the behaviour of individuals within the different organizations (Heck, 2004; Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999). Technical information concerning the character of the problem, dimensions of the proposed TVET programming, relative cost and benefits, and probable impact of alternatives, and so on, are critically important not only to coalition members but also to those in positions of power needing persuasion. The analyst compiles solid, persuasive information to build an objective case for change. A policy-learning process is emphasized through which, over time, understanding and support are generated. According to incremental, interactive advocates, the process of policy change is thought to take time, often a decade or more for primary change. The policy environment is viewed as comprised of ‘stable factors’ (constitutional mandates, religious beliefs, natural resources) not likely to be subject to change, as well as ‘changeable factors,’ both affecting the probability of achieving results. Initial policy initiatives are structured around changeable factors (budget levels, administrative rules, teacher supply and government policy) that are more likely amenable to alteration. Change in stable factors is only approached when sufficient broadly-based coalition support is generated. While the rational policy approach assumes that predetermined, optimal policy choices can be clearly defined and implemented, incremental and interactive per-


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spectives stand in stark contrast. Policy formulation is considered a recursive, rather than a step-by-step linear process. Initial decisions are revisited, with latter decisions reopened in the process of formulating new decisions. The belief is that a full, prior understanding of the consequences of a given policy option cannot be achieved, and that it is only through repeated and systematic trial and test over time that applicable policy choices can be determined. Policy formulation proceeds incrementally as a number of options are experimented with until certain policy interventions demonstrate their usefulness. Policy application is the important focus since any policy option is considered only as good as its demonstrated usefulness in a specific education and training context (Bobrow & Dryzek, 1987; Colebatch, 1998). Incremental, interactive policy perspectives are not widely used by international development agencies, donor groups and national policy and planning units because they do not lend themselves to the formulation of global, strategic policy plans. Goals are modest, intermediate and changeable. The primary focus is on the local implementing environment: the human and material resources, the political dynamics, and the belief systems, self-interest and core values that stakeholders bring to the policy formulation and implementation process. For this reason, they are most widely used by those directly involved in policy implementation.

3 The Policy Environment In this section we shift our discussion to what can be termed the ‘policy environment’, also known as the ‘implementing context’. Policy formulation does not start out as a blank slate. Effective TVET policy is highly context-specific and crafted in response to existing institutional histories; it is built upon political, economic and social conditions, and existing institutional capacities; and it is conditioned by the perceptions, interests and beliefs of stakeholders (Bobrow & Dryzek, 1987; Schneider & Ingram, 1997). Implementing capacity is a key policy variable. As incremental, interactive perspectives stress, ultimately policy initiatives are influenced by and influence the ‘local’ implementing context. There are many intertwining contextual elements, and policy decisions have to be teased out of a complex matrix of societal, human and institutional conditions within a given policy context. The ambiguities, the opportunities and constraints, the levels of resources and institutional capacity, and the dynamic and distinctive aspects of the implementing environment make it essential to craft policy designs that are specific to the particular country context. Moreover, considerable leeway needs to be provided for altering policy plans once it is determined that the specific contextual circumstances will not support sustained implementation (Herschbach, 2000). Let us briefly turn our attention to what is termed the ‘remote’ and the ‘proximate’ policy environments.

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3.1 The Remote Policy Environment There are various contextual elements that make up what can be termed the ‘remote policy environment’. These are conditions largely external to the immediate policy focus, but nevertheless, they have an effect—even if distant and not always direct— on the ability to frame and carry out TVET policy initiatives (Bobrow & Dryzek, 1987; Heck, 2004; Rondinelli, Middleton & Verspoor, 1990; Sabatier & JenkinsSmith, 1999; Warwick, 1980; Williams & Cummings, 2005). These include, among others, the following points: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Formative historical experiences; The political climate; Macro-economic conditions; Legal and bureaucratic structures; Social norms, values and beliefs; Class, clan, tribal and ethnic composition; Internal political and social conflict; Climate and geography; Demographic shifts; Institutional structures.

In addition, there may be recurring and substantial political, economic and social problems, such as civic violence, ethnic and religious conflict, corruption, shrinking public budgets, inflation, recession, terrorism, war, poverty and pollution among others, which may cause considerable uncertainty and contribute to an unstable policy environment. The impact of remote conditions on policy implementation is considerable, often indirect and sometimes hard to determine. Strong political support, for example, may be combined with weak organizational capacity and, over time, what were adequate financial resources may be severely reduced, while political support may disappear completely (Herschbach, 2000). Remote policy conditions tend not be fully considered when applying a rational analytical perspective. Conditions may be highly complex and changing so that their significance is not fully captured through data collection. Policy intent, however, is blunted by the failure to understand and fully consider conditioning elements in the remote policy environment. A supportive political environment is a crucial variable (Rondinelli, Middleton & Verspoor, 1990; Williams & Cummings, 2005). There is a strong commitment to building a healthy economic climate and furthering goals of development, equity and opportunity through a strengthened basic education and skills formation system (Ashton & Green, 1996). Political environments tend to be fragmented, so it is often difficult to determine the source and magnitude of support. Political support needs to be generated early in the policy formulation process, however. Macro-level economic conditions are among the most important external contextual factors that frame TVET policy. The effectiveness of institutional forms of TVET is linked to economic growth and an increasing demand for labour in the


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formal sector (Johanson & Adams, 2004; Levin & Lockheed, 1993; Middleton & Ziderman, 1997). Unless demand is rising, individuals completing programmes encounter limited employment possibilities, employers are reluctant to support training, and fewer programme resources are available. Collaborative forms of training with employers are also difficult to establish and maintain under conditions of economic uncertainty. The macro-economic context influences TVET policy in three major ways. First, economic conditions largely determine the potential amount and stability of future financial support and hence the kinds of policy options that reasonably can be considered. Without a threshold level of national income, it is difficult to support TVET interventions over the long-term (Middleton & Demsky, 1988). Second, economic conditions create the market demand for education and training. Placement opportunities are opened. Third, economic conditions greatly influence public support for TVET. In conditions of economic stress, there often tends to be little support for TVET initiatives that can be perceived as consuming large amounts of resources and enhancing the employment prospects of some individuals to the exclusion of others. The extension of education and training opportunity to the more disadvantaged segments of the population in particular usually depends upon good economic conditions (Birdsall & Sabot, 1996). Even though what may be considered as a ‘rational’ policy formulation process is followed, along each step of the way value judgements are made concerning what is to be taught, to whom, why, which interests should dominate decision-making, who is going to benefit most and who is going to carry the cost (Bobrow & Dryzek, 1987; Malen & Knapp, 1997; Schneider & Ingram, 1997). No policy is ‘value free’. Incremental and interactive policy perspectives attempt to more fully consider the values, preferences, motivations, interests and sometime unclear or conflicting perceptions of the people within the policy environment.

3.2 The Proximate Policy Environment What is termed the ‘proximate policy environment’ may be more familiar to TVET policy-makers because it is comprised of the issues, conditions, institutions and stakeholders within the immediate policy arena. Warwick (1980) suggests that it is useful to think in terms of: (a) the power setting; (b) the issue context; and (c) the operating environment. The power setting is made up of individuals, groups and organizations that can potentially aid, hold in abeyance, distort or kill policy initiatives. These range from ministries of education, finance or labour to teacher organizations, employer groups, worker organizations, private schools, parents, students and political organizations—to mention some of the more important private, civic, social and government actors. It is critically important for the policy analyst to be at least aware of patterns of political influence and power and how they cut across ethnic, class, social and economic boundaries (Cohen, Grindle & Walker, 1985; Heck, 2004; Korten, 1980). The building of advocacy coalition frameworks is an attempt to address the power setting.

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Education and training institutions are surrounded with issues relating to opportunity, equity, ethnicity, gender, social sorting, empowerment, resource use, cost, class, culture, and effectiveness and efficiency, among others, that comprise the issue context. Singly and combined, the various issues contribute to shaping the form of policy initiatives. The political and social construction of issues influences how policy recommendations are framed, interpreted and received by interest groups and power brokers. Policy initiatives are likely to become distorted, narrowed or rejected if they do not speak directly to the expectations, interests and problems framed within the issue context (Schneider & Ingram, 1997). The operational environment includes familiar units, such as schools, training institutions, extension programmes and various support agencies and administrative organizations. Included also is physical infrastructure in the form of roads and transportation, water, electricity, Internet access and construction, purchase, repair and replacement capacity. Administrative, management, staff and instructional capacity also are important variables. Institutional and infrastructure capacity influence policy design in direct and obvious ways. The ability to frame and implement policy depends not only on material, organizational and human resources, but also on the more subtle human, political and social dynamics within the operational environment that evoke acceptance or resistance. A perceived threat to the status quo, privilege loss or gain, shifts in status, competition for resources, the degree of uncertainty generated and others are examples of indirect, perhaps unanticipated and often difficult-to-measure policy effects that cause individuals and groups to think and act both positively and negatively about policy objectives and implementation (Bobrow & Dryzek, 1987; Heck, 2004; Sabatier, 1999). Often overlooked, however, in policy deliberation is the value orientation held by the various direct and indirect actors. Financial resources are one of the most crucial determinants of policy space. Without sufficient resources, policy options are severely reduced. International donor agencies tend to support expenditures for capital improvement, technical assistance and the purchase of commodities. Rarely, if ever, is money allocated for recurrent support of any kind, yet this is the decisive factor for achieving sustainable programme implementation (Herschbach, 1993; Herschbach & Gasskov, 2000; Ziderman, 2003). It is left to the host country to carry the burden of recurrent support. What usually happens is that, during the life of donor support, scarce revenue is reallocated from other national sources to cover recurrent project costs. Once donor support ceases, national revenue is reallocated among the new project and the other sources, creating under-funded programme activities all-around. Without new sources of recurrent support, capital expansion can have detrimental consequences because new resource requirements are created without additional sources of revenue. A low level of funding is spread even thinner. Without an adequate foundation level of resources, workforce preparation programmes cannot operate with sufficient quality to justify even limited investments. Poor quality programmes are a poor investment. Throughout both developed and newly developing countries alike, however, social demand is driving programme expansion and generating great financial stress. In order to establish and maintain


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quality, it is prudent policy to keep programme expansion within the boundaries of available recurrent financial support. An increasing demand for educational opportunity, however, will continue to mount public pressure for more educational services of all kinds, regardless of how well they can be financially supported. The policy time-frame is important. A great deal of policy change is what Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1999) refer to as ‘secondary’, a fine-tuning of the basic elements of an education and training system without significantly influencing its fundamental core aspects. There is little alteration in the underlying belief structure supporting implementation and operation, in organizational structures or in the character of programming. Secondary policy changes are relatively straightforward and while they may encroach on vested interests, they can usually be addressed over a relatively short time. Incremental and interactive policy perspectives tend to focus primarily on secondary change. Major or primary policy change, in contrast, causes people to think differently about what they are doing, to change their beliefs and to change their ways of working. Organizational structure and power relationships change. However, to incorporate primary policy change requires considerable time: decades, not years (Sabatier, 1999). In the case of TVET, the tendency is to think in time-frames that are far too short to implement primary change. This is especially true in the case of donor agencies. Project completion dates of four, six or eight years are established with relatively large amounts of money infused at the beginning of the project cycle—when it cannot be effectively used. Successful primary policy initiatives tend to follow a pattern of incremental development with an extended diffusion time. Investments initially are small; considerable experimentation takes place; adequate organizational, management and staff capability are built; expansion occurs after significant experience and success (Herschbach, Hayes & Evans, 1992; Middleton & Demsky, 1988; Sabatier & JenkinsSmith, 1999; Weimer & Vining, 1989). Time is needed for institutional and management capabilities to mature, and for policy initiatives to become operationally embedded within contexts that may not be highly supportive. Development cycles of a decade or more are reasonable, and cycles of twenty to thirty years may be required. Promoting lasting TVET change is difficult. We have very briefly focused on the policy environment, or context, and examined some of the attending conditions that influence policy direction and the capacity to sustain programming. The most successful policy initiatives are formulated by focusing on the most accomplished TVET initiatives within the system, with policy activity incrementally extended outward as more is learned about elements critical to success. Long-term goals are held in abeyance for the achievement of more short-term, incremental objectives that realistically can be achieved. The analyst wants to know why a particularly TVET initiative is successful; what are the important programming elements; what are the important constraints and factors operating in both the remote and proximate environments; what is needed to expand policy initiatives; and what are the competing value-driven, interest-based relationships among the diverse actors that can make or

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unmake policy decisions (Korten, 1980). Sometimes, past events can be traced over time with policy implications projected into the future.

4 The Policy Landscape Nations vary greatly in the extent and diversity of their economies, in the character of their political, social and institutional systems, as well as in their capacity to support education and training interventions. The primary question policy-makers within a country face is how best to use education and training resources to shape the labour force along lines consonant with economic and social development policy. Some countries have considerable policy latitude and can build and sustain extensive education and training systems; others have to husband limited resources and have few policy options. The skills-formation system functions as a means through which to enrich the quality and capacity of labour, to ameliorate social problems, and to open opportunity and promote greater equity. A variety of TVET policy options serving specific purposes are available to decision-makers (Atchoarena & Delluc, 2002; Herschbach & Campbell, 2000; Gill, Fluitman & Dar, 2000; Lauglo & Maclean, 2005). In this section, we briefly turn our attention to examining how education and training systems contribute in diverse ways to labour-force development and help improve lives by extending opportunity and enhancing social and economic growth.

4.1 Higher Income, High-Skill Economies Individual countries take very different economic and social development paths. There are, nevertheless, common characteristics underlying the development and use of the skills formation systems that are evident in higher income, high-skill economies and that inform policy. An obvious policy variable is the fact that high- and middle-income countries have considerably greater potential than do lowincome countries for implementing and sustaining TVET programmes of all types. Conditions make it possible for high- and middle-income countries to craft a fuller range of TVET policy options to support expanding economic growth (Ashton & Green, 1996; Billett, 2004; Herschbach, 2000; Middleton & Demsky, 1988). Training systems address different skill levels. TVET systems in low-income countries tend to get trapped in craft-based and low-wage skills preparation with skill demand largely shaped by local markets. Political and institutional histories, resource constraints, market characteristics and low literacy and high poverty rates make it difficult to bring about the transition to higher-value training options that support increased economic growth levels. In many cases, good academic preparation is good technical and vocational education (Ashton & Green, 1996; Prais, 1987; Pring, 2004). A solid foundation of


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basic skills is required for the subsequent development of fundamental competence in language, math, science, information technology, electronics and other abstract technical subjects that, in turn, provide the structure for building more specialized, advanced learning, either on or off the job. Skills formation, in whatever form that it takes, builds a solid foundation of basic skills. The role of the State is important. There is a strong commitment among the political elite to build and expand upon a quality skills-development system; and there is the political will to reorient government taxing and spending priorities. The State plays a major role in building broadly-based political support because of the conflicts that inevitably surround education and training. Policies for highskill formation require the building of strong supporting coalitions. Employers are among the most important groups because there must be a corresponding commitment to build a high-skills production system (Ashton & Green, 1996; Billett, 2004). Investments in building quality primary education are particularly important. Elementary education is primarily a responsibility of the State and this is where sufficient public funding has to be directed. Quantity—that is, simply expanding enrolments—however, is not enough without quality (Birdsall, Burns & Sabot, 1996). There is considerable international evidence to suggest that a ‘reservoir’ of individuals with sound basic literacy and numerical skills is required for initiating and sustaining economic growth (Ashton & Green, 1996; Birdsall & Sabot, 1996; Kaneko, 1984; Stern, 1995; Westphal, Rhee & Pursell, 1981). The extension of opportunity to the less privileged is particularly important and a primary condition for creating a high-income economy (Ashton & Green, 1996; Birdsall & Sabot, 1996). The under-educated are a drag on the economy. Both income levels and economic growth increase in relation to the extension of education and training (Lau et al., 1996). As the stock of educated individuals increases, there is a ‘threshold’ level above which greater overall economic returns are realized ‘because the productivity of one educated worker is greater when working with other educated workers’ (Birdsall, Burns & Sabot, 1996, p. 33). Moreover, employers have greater incentives to opt for high-wage and high-skill forms of production when there is an adequate supply of educated individuals to choose from: ‘The legacy of a poorly educated workforce is a limitation on the trainability of workers,’ Ashton and Green (1996, p. 111) observe.

5 The Employer Link The skills formation system relies on the support of employers, but this may vary considerably within and between countries. Employers support training if it is relevant to their immediate requirements. They are less interested in long-term results. Incentives from the State in the form of tax breaks, subsidies and regulations may be required in order to get employers to take a long-term view of training. Stability in the macro-economic and financial environment also helps to encour-

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age reinvestments in technology and people. The transition to a high-skilled work force requires clusters of innovative, high-skill work organizations with the confidence to formulate appropriate product market strategies (Ashton & Green, 1996; Freeman, 1987; Gleeson & Keep, 2004). Rational policy tools are useful to help formulate recommendations if they are sharp enough to penetrate the complexities of employer-based training environments. Cost data resonate with employers. Employers rely on the education and training system for three kinds of individuals: (a) those who are adaptable and able to absorb training within the firm; (b) those who bring the required skills with them; or (c) those who bring new skills into the firm. In the case of the first category, public-supported TVET programmes need to place enough emphasis on building a strong basic academic and broadly-based technical skill foundation to ensure that individuals can start down the road of more specific skill development within the firm (Ashton & Green, 1996; Herschbach, 1997; Herschbach & Kamibeppu, 2000; Prais, 1987). In the case of the second category, strong links with employing establishments are essential in order to determine the right ‘skill mix’, while at the same time considerable programme flexibility is required to accommodate shifting skill requirements. It may be difficult to maintain economies of scale and combat training obsolescence with only public institutional forms of training. Costs tend to be high and there is little programming flexibility. The greatest need is for individuals in the third category, however, even though their numbers may be relatively small. Employers in developing countries in general rely heavily on outside sources for skills acquisition and technological upgrading. This includes individuals who have received training abroad and from foreign parent companies; equipment vendors; in addition to graduates of local institutes and universities. In the case of virtually all employers, training and the search for new employees forms a continuous process because of turnover rates, altered technology, or the need to realize greater cost savings and improve productivity (Ashton & Green, 1996; Dahlman, Ross-Larson & Westphal, 1985; Herschbach, 1997). It is understandable that employers place high value on basic education skills: they are used by individuals in all three of the above categories. Probably the greatest contribution to human resource development that can be made by formal TVET institutions is the assurance of a sound grounding in academic skills and special technical uses of academic skills. These are more appropriately learned in formal TVET settings. Cognitive skills are especially important in the use of information and computer-processing technology. As previously mentioned, at all skill levels, there is a demand for individuals competent in organization, control, maintenance, programming and technical service skills (Herschbach, 1997; Watanabe, 1996). Large firms encounter fewer training-related problems. As suggested earlier, large firms may want recruits from TVET institutions to have more generic technical training and basic education skills, with the firm taking responsibility for specific skill training once the individual is employed. This is particularly true of firms with internal labour markets through which the individual gains promotion based on experience and training within the firm (Ashton & Green, 1996; Dore & Sako, 1998; Herschbach & Kamibeppu, 2000; Prais, 1987; Stern, 1995).


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Small and medium-sized firms encounter the most difficult training-related problems. There are few resources to plough back into training and benefits are uncertain or are only visible in the long-term. If employees become too proficient, they may desert the firm to seek higher paying jobs elsewhere, or even open competitive enterprises. There is considerable ‘poaching’ among firms. Many employers are reluctant to train simply because they will face the choice of paying higher wages or losing employees. The cost of training is also high because small firms cannot benefit from economies of scale. Small firms tend also to be outside the mainstream of technological innovation and change, and this may be one way formal TVET programmes can be the most helpful. Infusions of technology can be diffused throughout the labour force. Medium-sized and small firms rely on formal TVET programmes for employees with specific skills. They want individuals who can immediately go to work with little or no in-firm training. To be responsive, however, certain conditions must be met. First, costs have to be low. Second, training often has to be tailored-made, case-by-case because it has to be directly applicable to specific firms. Considerable flexibility in terms of the delivery of services is required. Third, training has to be accessible and perhaps on-site. Fourth, the burden rests with the formal institution to initiate contacts and reach out and offer services to employers and employees who may have little knowledge of what assistance they need or can obtain. And fifth, often an integrated package of services is required with training conceived as part of a range of services offered to address other problems, such as product design, marketing and product quality. Training cannot be used effectively without these other services (Herschbach, 1997; Marsden, 1984; Singh, 2005) There is considerable interest among international donor organizations in policy initiatives that shift TVET activities, and thus cost, to trainees and private sector employers (Gill, Fluitman & Dar, 2000; Johanson & Adams, 2004; Middleton, Ziderman & Adams, 1993; Ziderman, 2003). Such initiatives have to be approached with caution. Private firms are engaged in business to make a profit and not for social ameliorative purposes. There may be little interest or few incentives to train for others, especially in highly competitive local and global markets (Billett, 2004). Even the most successful training partnership, the German dual apprenticeship system, took decades to develop and only worked after the government forced participants to collaborate (Johnson, 1991). This system, like others, is built on a combination of school-based and in-firm training. The system is expensive to maintain and, although costs are spread among government, trainees and participating employers, in many countries they may be too high to sustain. In low-income countries with the least capacity to support public TVET initiatives, rarely is there a sufficient number and range of firms that can provide the quantity and level of quality skills preparation to have an appreciable impact on labour-force development. Firms that use low-wage, outmoded forms of production are not good sites for training and labour-force upgrading. Both public and private TVET capacity is weak. Finally, collaborative policy environments are extremely

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complex to work within and require extensive effort (Coursey, 2000; Finlay, Niven & Young, 1998).

6 Addressing Low-Income, Informal Work The single most important world-wide education and training policy challenge is to help extend employment opportunities to the large numbers of individuals on the social, political and economic fringes. Good answers are lacking. Many individuals in developed and developing countries alike are employed at jobs below their aspirations or qualifications, cannot find meaningful work, or earn so little that it is difficult to support basic requirements. Informal sector employment within different countries ranges from a relatively small number of part-time and casual workers on the fringes of formal economic activity to massive numbers of individuals constituting up to 80% or 90% of the workforce. Some individuals are able to realise relatively secure and decent livelihoods from their work activity and some informal workers acquire job skills that enable them to make the transition into better-paid wage-employment. The large mass of informal workers, however, lacks skills, opportunity, social mobility, political leverage, legal protection and even the most meagre resources. Workforce skill building, combined with initiatives to build support networks, eliminate socio-political barriers, create legal protection, generate resources and enhance opportunity, has the potential to alleviate poverty. In most countries, the focus of education and training policy is on preparation for employment in the formal economy. This is where work preparation policy initiatives are considered to yield the greatest return on public and private investments. There is, however, an increasing awareness within the international education and training community of the importance of the informal economy (Fluitman, 1989; Garrick, 1998; Singh, 2005). In many countries, the informal sector carries the burden of absorbing large numbers of labour-force entrants. In some countries not only are the numbers staggering (in the hundreds of thousands), but it is difficult to integrate economies into the global workplace without attention given to enhancing the work competencies of that segment of the population living and working on the edge of poverty. TVET interventions cannot be judged by the same cost-benefit standards typically applied in rational policy studies. Good data are difficult to compile, but also standards of economic efficiency give way to objectives of promoting opportunity and equity. A motivating force in much of the drive to provide services is the belief that TVET policy can be used as an instrument for the creation of a better society through alleviating poverty, empowering individuals, promoting social justice and extending human potential. The overriding purpose of TVET is to serve the interests of the least-advantaged members of society through programming that helps individuals to secure decent work and live decent lives (Birdsall & Sabot, 1996; Bosch, 1998; Silvey & Elmhirst, 2003; Singh, 2005). It may be difficult to build public policy support, however, for informal sector education and training initiatives. If they are effective, they threaten the economic and social positions of others. The political dimensions within the power setting


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are challenging. Often there is considerable social tension generated over the use of limited public resources (Birdsall & Sabot, 1996; Gill & Heyneman, 2000). Upper income, elite households tend to dominate the use of public education and training funds, with a disproportionately high amount directed to higher education. There may be little political will to redirect public funding to programmes for the more disadvantaged segments of the population. This is especially true in countries characterized by a weak tradition of social justice, deeply ingrained class or cast lines, substantial control by a political elite, or a high level of poverty with great disparity in the distribution of wealth and power (Ashton & Green, 1996; Birdsall & Sabot, 1996; Garrick, 1998; Korten, 1980). The building of advocacy coalition frameworks is a policy tool that merits consideration. TVET policy formulation starts with an assessment of the potential of the learner and the work environment (Overwien, 2005). This is the starting point because, without a clear understanding of the constraints individuals are faced with, functional programming cannot be developed. The high level of individual programme tailoring that is required means that it is difficult to form large groups with needs similar enough to require the same specific services. Economies of scale are difficult to achieve with ‘conventional’ institutional forms of TVET. Participant groups typically are small, lack free time for extensive training, lack money and lack basic literacy and numerical skills. In most cases, it is necessary to provide financial support to compensate for foregone wages. Training needs to be provided at convenient times, near work, over short periods of time and focused on skills directly used. Education and training initiatives require a considerable amount of commitment and work to build local capacity and are often best carried out by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), private voluntary organizations (PVOs) and community groups. The administration and funding of programming through governmental agencies involves organizational structures that are often incompatible with the informal work environment: (a) qualification and reporting demands cannot be met; (b) advice and services are difficult to obtain; (c) there is fear or lack of trust in the government; (d) local centres of power are ignored; and (e) potential counterparts are excluded from decision-making—among a number of conditions that impede the functional usefulness of the government. Even when assistance is channelled through NGOs and PVOs, the brokering organization still has primary responsibility to the funding source. Procedures may over-ride purpose (Korten, 1980; Singh, 2005). Informal workers tend to be members of extensive informal kin and peer networks formed within cities and often extending beyond into rural regions. A useful policy strategy is to build local political, social and technical capacity by working through such networks. There is a considerable difference between providing assistance, however, and building capacity. In the former, pressures generated through government or donor funding for immediate, measurable results, the number of project cycles completed by a predetermined time and detailed programme specifications stifle capacity-building in what are ill-defined, complex, changing policy environments rife with conflict. Capacity-building requires a high level of flexibility, experimentation and risk-taking; a willingness to face uncertainty and learning from errors; and building a climate of mutual acceptance, understanding and co-operation

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(Bosch, 1998; Korten, 1980; Singh, 2005). Incremental and interactive consensual policy models are the most effective.

7 Low-Growth Economies In low-growth economies there generally is a lack of the financial, material, institutional and human resources to develop strong TVET capacity. Administrative and management support for education and training programmes are generally weak. The lack of money and professional preparation opportunity make it difficult to recruit, train and retrain enough proficient programme administrators. Investments in strengthening management capacity generally produce good results because, without this building of capacity, effective policy cannot be formulated and implemented (Herschbach, 1997). At the institutional level, programme implementation is also weak. It is difficult to recruit and retain qualified instructors because of low salaries; instructional resources are in short supply; curriculum development activities are restricted; and certification and evaluation systems are lacking. There is not the capacity to experiment with and adapt programmes. The unit cost of instruction tends to be higher than in more affluent countries because of inefficiencies and low use levels. Finally, enterprise capacity is under-developed and employment demand is usually weak. Opportunities for collaboration with industry and business are limited, and virtually no possibility exists for financial support from employers. For these all of these reasons, TVET policy options are limited (Atchoarena & Delluc, 2002; Herschbach, 1997, 2000; Johanson & Adams, 2004; Middleton & Demsky, 1988). It is not unusual in countries with low-growth economies also to have high labour-force growth rates that outstrip the capacity to absorb new entrants, resulting in very high unemployment and under-employment rates and low wages (Gill, Fluitman & Dar, 2000). High birth rates are often associated with high poverty levels and this portends protracted social and political problems. The percentage of the age cohort under 25 in some countries may range as high as 50% or more of the total population. A severe job creation crisis exists now that may continue indefinitely. As is the case in most countries, in low-growth economies there is a mix of education and training providers, and programmes range greatly in quality and effectiveness. Strengthening elementary education is a priority. As suggested earlier, establishing and maintaining high quality basic education through adequate investment is a necessary condition for embarking on an economic development path towards higher growth (Ashton & Green, 1996; Birdsall & Sabot, 1996; Westphal, Rhee & Pursell, 1981). Investment in basic skills development enhances development in general. If resources are restricted and a choice is necessary between providing quality public primary education or expanding technical and vocational education, then the investment clearly should be made in primary education. Many low economic growth countries face eroding programme quality and limited financial resources (Gill, Fluitman & Dar, 2000; Johanson & Adams, 2004). All forms and levels of TVET are difficult to establish and sustain without outside help. Donor assistance, however, often tends to be too expansive and directed to


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capital investments that cannot be sustained without a commitment for long-term recurrent funding by the country in question over an extended period of years. Government budgets are not only inadequate but unstable, with little or no expectation of a reliable source of sufficient funding from year to year. Low-income countries have a great need for quality TVET programmes but, under such conditions, need considerably exceeds capacity for sustained implementation. The establishment of an overly expanded TVET system that cannot be adequately supported should be avoided (Chapman & Windham, 1985; Herschbach, 2000; Middleton & Demsky, 1988). The best policy option may be to consolidate the formal TVET system by closing poorly functioning programmes and redirecting resources to maintaining a limited number of quality programmes with high potential to contribute to economic expansion. Programme growth only follows the demonstrated capacity to support greater quality programming. Comprehensive support to a smaller, stronger, high-quality TVET system may be the preferred policy option (Herschbach, 1997; Herschbach, Hayes & Evans, 1993). The concentration of limited resources to achieve greater quality has higher labour-market productivity returns than can be realised through expansion in the quantity of schooling alone (Behrman, Birdsall & Kaplan, 1996). However, this sets up a policy conflict between the objective of greater equity through expanded opportunity (quantity) and the outcome of greater efficiency (quality), although expanded low-quality programming in the long-run may result in little equity. In some countries, the performance and coverage of the education system is so restricted (in quality and quantity) that large segments of the population do not acquire even the most basic, rudimentary skills needed for job preparation and wage employment, not to mention more specialized preparation, if even only on a limited scale. Widespread poverty and the unequal distribution of wealth inhibit the ability to shape a high-skills workforce and constrain educational expansion and social development. Without the political commitment to address the problems of the less fortunate, it is difficult to establish the growth patterns necessary for social and economic improvement (Ashton & Green, 1996; Birdsall & Sabot, 1996).

8 Overview of the Contributions VI.2 Research for TVET Policy Development, by Jon Lauglo Lauglo points to questions that research could address in order to provide guidance on the formulation of national development policy for TVET. The questions are derived from what he sees as frequently ‘talked about’ issues in international policy debate on TVET. Research is used in a wide sense—not merely ‘academic’ research—and covers a wide range of issues. Especially in the early stages of policy formulation, research on such matters can provide relevant knowledge when major reorganization of TVET is considered by a country.

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VI.3 The Reform of Governance of Public TVET Institutions: Comparative Experiences, by Keith Holmes Holmes presents the main findings of an international review of the reform of public formal TVET at national and institutional levels. In the context of globalization and the quest for economic competitiveness, many countries have ambitious plans for the renewal and reform of public TVET institutions. Yet, policy-makers and managers of public TVET institutions are operating in increasingly complex environments. Holmes surveys examples of policies that aim to create a supportive environment for decentralization and increased institutional autonomy.

VI.4 National Versus Regional Policy Dimensions of TVET, by Peter Noonan This chapter examines national and regional dimensions of policy for TVET, with a primary focus on formally defined regions represented by sub-national governmental structures and their relationship with national government. A secondary focus of Noonan’s chapter is concerned with the concept of learning regions and the role of TVET in building human and social capital, including the relationship between formal TVET systems and other forms of knowledge and skill acquisition, such as community and work-based learning. A case study of Australia, which has developed a national TVET system within a federal system of government, is used to identify how national and regional responsibilities and perspectives can be coordinated and balanced.

VI.5 Planning for Education and Work: Alternatives and Issues, by Dennis R. Herschbach In his article, Herschbach analyses different TVET planning alternatives and highlights the fundamental assumptions, limitations and issues underlying their application. He also examines measures planners are taking to address the conceptual, methodological and technical constraints that they face in the economic, social and political space affecting them. He also explores alternative planning approaches that offer promising options to TVET decision-makers. These alternatives attempt to go beyond some of the common assumptions that have traditionally driven much of TVET planning and project a more application-guided, inclusive approach to planning.


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VI.6 South African Technikons and Policy Contestation over Academic Drift, by Andre Kraak The issue of academic drift, with reference to South Africa’s technikon (polytechnic) sector, is the focus of Kraak’s chapter. He provides a detailed account of how post-apartheid policy development has dealt with the issue of academic drift. A key issue in this regard has been the intense stakeholder contestation over policy, particularly from the technikon leadership. However, the outcomes of policy implementation a decade later have been contradictory. Although the technikon sector fought hard to retain the binary divide between technikons and universities and their distinctive career-oriented educational provision, once faced by the threat of merger and transformation, technikons ultimately chose to become universities of technology rather than remain as technikons.

VI.7 New Policy Actions and Government Roles: China’s Reconstruction of TVET Systems since the 1980s, by Deyu Sun, Jingwen Lu and Jun Li To give an insight into China’s ultra-large TVET system, the authors present an overview of the development of China’s TVET system since the 1980s. It then focuses on the roles the Chinese Government played in the reform and development of the TVET system, and highlights the future policy actions the Chinese Government is taking for TVET reconstruction. The chapter ends up with discussions on some TVET problems unique in the Chinese context, as well as policy implications for TVET policy actions.

VI.8 Some Generic Issues in TVET Management, by George Preddey Preddey, in the first of his two chapters, identifies and analyses nine generic issues that are significant for the management of TVET. Six of these issues are presented as contrasting dichotomies – for example, the implications of centralization versus devolution for the management of TVET systems.

VI.9 An Overview of Contemporary TVET Management Practice, by George Preddey Expanding on these generic issues, Preddey sets out an overview of contemporary TVET management practice with particular reference to eleven specific TVET management functions.

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Rondinelli, D.A.; Middleton, J.; Verspoor, A.M. 1990. Planning education reforms in developing countries: the contingency approach. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sabatier, P.A. 1999. Theories of policy process. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Sabatier, P.A; Jenkins-Smith, H.C. 1999. The advocacy coalition framework: an assessment. In: Sabatier, P.A., ed. Theories of policy process, pp. 97–116. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Schneider, A.L.; Ingram, H. 1997. Policy design for democracy. Lawrence, KA: University Press of Kansas. Silvey, R.; Elmhirst, R. 2003. Engineering social capital: women workers and rural-urban networks in Indonesia’s crisis. World development, vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 865–79. Singh, M. 2005. Meeting basic learning needs in the informal sector. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Stern, S. 1995. Education and work in Japan: implications for policy. Education policy, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 201–17. Watanabe, S. 1996. Labour-saving versus work-amplifying effects of micro-electronics. International labour review, vol. 125, no. 3, pp. 242–59. Warwick, D. 1980. Integrating planning and implementation: a transactional approach. In: Davis, R.G., ed. Planning education for development. Vol. 1: Issues and problems in the planning of education in developing countries, pp. 379–411. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weimer, D.L.; Vining, A.R. 1989. Policy analysis concepts and practice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Westphal, L.E.; Rhee, Y.W.; Pursell, G. 1981. Korean industrial competence: where it came from. Washington, DC: World Bank. (World Bank staff working paper, no. 469.) Williams, J.D.; Cummings, W.K. 2005. Policy-making for education reform in developing countries. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Education. Wilson, D.N. 1996. Reform of vocational and technical education in Latin America. Washington, DC: Inter-American Dialogue/PREAL. (Occasional paper, no. 2.) Woodhall, M. 2004. Cost-benefit analysis in educational planning. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. Ziderman, A. 2003. Financing vocational training in sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Chapter VI.2

Research for TVET Policy Development1 Jon Lauglo

1 Research on TVET Policy-Making What questions could be addressed by research (in the wide sense) in order to assist the development of national policies on technical and vocational education and training (TVET)? The specifics will depend a great deal on the national context. However, I shall attempt to outline research questions that may have some general relevance for what I see as current trends and issues in international policy discussion on TVET. Policy studies are a wide field that also is much concerned with the sources of policy and the process of policy formulation. It asks in particular: ‘Who exerts influence?’ and ‘Who benefits?’ The field also includes empirical studies on the role that research could play and actually does play in decisions on complex social issues.2 I shall here address a narrower set of questions with regard to TVET: What knowledge might be useful for decisions when policy-makers weigh options and choose among them? I do not start from a social-engineering perspective that would reduce complex policy choices to matters of technocratic expertise guided by ‘science’. Research has a more limited part to play and cannot replace the need for ‘judgement’ in the face of much uncertainty. Nor can it replace constraints on what options are politically acceptable. Nor can it tell us what values are most important as lodestars for policy. But research can play a role in reducing the range of uncertainty and in building stronger support for some options while weakening the arguments for others. Once decisions are taken and policy is being implemented, research can also play a role in adjusting the course by evaluating implementation and assessing the impact. I shall inevitably point to ‘questions for research’ for which answers are often wanting. As with much else in social science, the answers which exist in some studies are not definitive, but evolving, and there are areas of research in which controversies are common, with research used in support of arguments on ‘both sides’. A prime example is policies that give more play to the market mechanism in education. But in any country where policy-makers are considering the need for radical restructuring of TVET, there is a clear need for policy-making to be informed

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by research on these matters, and such research should also show cognizance of the controversies which exist. It is recognized that, if an updated ‘state-of-the-art’ assessment is requested for policy formulation on TVET, it may be beyond the capacity of the researchers in any one country quickly to address the wide range of issues presented below. But the agenda of issues and questions is not beyond the capacity of what international agencies can address, especially with select regard to countries that are trying out new institutional models. These agencies should do more to review research on what are items of interest for the global agenda, to commission studies in countries trying out innovations in TVET and support international networks of research. In addition to the questions that will be raised below, which mostly concern addressing relationships between TVET, resource requirements and results, policy development in any country will need basic descriptive statistics about the location and capacity of different types of TVET provision. These are usually available for public provisions of training (but often not for private provisions and industry-based training).

2 Terms I use research in a broad sense to include enquiry that is empirical and systematic. Empirical research means to me a deliberately staged confrontation with sources of information. Systematic research refers to procedures that seek information in a planned way and which use techniques to guard against error. Enquiry simply means that one seeks to find out what is unknown. Research needs a rationale to give it a clear focus and to provide reasons why this focus is important. If research is to be policy relevant, its focus and rationale must address matters which are relevant for policy decisions. TVET refers to deliberate interventions to bring about learning which would make people more productive (or simply adequately productive) in designated areas of economic activity (e.g. economic sectors, occupations, specific work tasks). This is the distinctive purpose of TVET. However, TVET will also have other purposes which are not unique and also apply to other forms of education, e.g. knowledge, skills, insights and mindsets which are deemed to be generally valuable for the learners, not only in designated areas of economic activity. Such ‘other’ aims will be especially pertinent for longer and full-time courses for youth—in contrast to short and episodic training events (e.g. for persons already at work in the occupations concerned). TVET also needs to be conducted according to general social norms about how learners and people in general are to be treated by institutions, e.g. they shall be treated with respect. Thus ‘work productivity’ is not the only aim and concern of TVET, but it is its distinctive objective which sets it apart from other forms of education and training.3

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There are also learning outcomes that may not be stressed in TVET any more than in programmes of general education but which, nonetheless, are of great economic importance (e.g. a literate and numerate workforce, readiness to take responsibility and initiative, and to learn new tasks). Thus, there is no need to assume that TVET is the only form of education which matters for performance in the workplace. In fact, in a rapidly changing society and economy, general education will, of course, be very important across economic sectors and for other important purposes than economic production; and there may be mindsets and norms of great importance for productivity, which are usually acquired in other socialization arenas than schools and training centres (e.g. entrepreneurship, drive, reliability, honesty, endurance, etc.). Policy refers to a set of relatively stable goals and choices of strategy to reach these goals over a considerable period of time. For national policies for TVET, the key goal will be improved productivity of the workforce. Holistic TVET policies will necessarily be concerned with a wide range of target groups: not only youth still in school (who typically lack much work experience outside their homes), but also people who are already employed and who need training on the job (or for other jobs), and those who are trying to become self-employed. In addition, certain groups are typically identified for special policy attention on equity grounds, e.g. the unemployed, the poorest, the disabled, as well as women and girls, and under-served ethnic groups. In particular, ‘regional equity’ is generally a driving force in politics. In addition, equity concerns focused on especially vulnerable groups often have a geographical focus, e.g. localities suffering a sharp drop in employment due to the restructuring of industry. However, equity-driven aspects of TVET policies also need to be directed at labour-market demand, for unless TVET leads to improved earnings for the learners there is no equity gain either. The wide range of target groups for TVET in any society means that national policies cannot be confined to TVET for youth who are still in school. Policy has stages: diagnosis of problems and needs for intervention at an early stage of policy preparation; formulation of policy; and follow-up in order to carry out the necessary adjustments once policy is in place. The type of questions suggested below are thought to be appropriate at the early stage in preparing and formulating TVET policy, and when radical overhaul of policy is being considered. It is recognized that, even if radical restructuring of TVET is planned, only some of these questions may relate to alternatives that are considered in any one country. In some countries there has been experimentation with trying out models in some regions or localities that radically depart from the mainstream system. In such cases, policy formulation for the entire country can obviously benefit from evaluations of such experimentation. But, generally, there will be a need to look at international experience. Some of the questions suggested have been addressed in comparative analysis carried out under the aegis of international agencies involved with TVET (e.g. the ILO and some international development banks). But for many issues, there is still much basic evaluative research to be done before there is much ‘experience’ to tap into.4

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3 Labour-Market Monitoring and Forecasting A key element in TVET development is to receive feedback from the labour market in order to respond to market demand for skilled work. This is especially important for publicly provided pre-employment training; it is probably less crucial for private provisions that are obliged to respond to demand directly in order to attract trainees;5 and still less crucial for on-the-job training which already takes place in close conjunction with employment.

3.1 What Will Be the Future Requirements? Especially in market economies where labour is not assigned to public employment, and where firms need to adjust their own demand for labour in order to break even financially in changing market circumstances, conventional forecasting of labour-market demand is notoriously inaccurate (certainly long term, but even in the medium term). Countries have for some time been abandoning ‘old style’ manpower planning and are instead concentrating on mechanisms that give signals about current trends. However, under conditions of rapid globalization and technological change, ‘recent trends’ will not suffice as signals for designing TVET for the future. Especially in countries that are not on the receiving end of the international diffusion of technology and globalized trade, policy-making for TVET needs to be informed about how technology, which currently is ‘mainstream’ in a given economic sector in the country, may be transformed by innovation already being diffused from technological nodes in other countries. Research has a role to play in attempting to forecast implications for TVET—and for general education—based on changes in technology and in international patterns of trade that are in ‘the pipeline’. Since such forecasting will be fraught with uncertainty, it is better thought of as involving scenarios rather than clear predictions.

3.2 Labour-Market Observatories Some countries have experimented with ‘labour-market observatories’ (there are several African examples). Common features of the intended function of such observatories are that: (a) they are supposed to collate statistics on changes in the labour market; (b) they conduct their own special surveys to supplement such statistics with the aim of providing on-going feedback to TVET at national, regional and local levels so that TVET can be adjusted as to quantity and content; and (c) they produce an ‘output’ that takes account of change in the labour market. What are the lessons learned, internationally, from such attempts? Do they succeed in producing sufficiently updated and sufficiently local information about labour-market absorption of trainees from different training backgrounds? Do they provide information about trends in vacancies in different specialities? Can they, from the surveys they


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carry out, also be made to provide feedback as to the actual uses of skills learned? Does the information reach decision-makers on curriculum and expansion of training specialties? Is the information of any use to them? Do they actually use the information to adjust the supply of trainees?

3.3 Panels of Employers Some countries (e.g. Denmark) have abandoned reliance on statistics and surveys as a main source of guidance about labour-market demand, and set up local panels of employers from the concerned industry sectors to give guidance. What are the lessons learned from experience with the use of local or regional panels?

4 Indicators of Performance Performance indicators of the kind set out below are important in several regards: (a) taking stock of one’s existing TVET provisions that new policy will seek to improve upon; (b) assessment of strengths and weaknesses of institutional models that exist in other countries and which may be of interest in a new policy in one’s own country; and (c) monitoring the performance of models brought in by new TVET policy.

4.1 ‘External’ and ‘Internal’ Effectiveness What indicators are there of the external effectiveness of TVET? For example, does it improve the chances of finding work? Does it lead to ‘relevant work’? Does it lead to added income for trainees? Apart from collating existing information from within the country in order to assess such questions, research can address international experience with attempts to institutionalize indicators that address such questions. Are there gains from seeking to institutionalize tracer studies (as in Mauritius)? Is the information actually used? A similar set of questions can be asked about internal effectiveness. Statistics on pass-rates or marks achieved in exams are typically available. But these do not really say much about what is learned—which may be termed the internal effectiveness of TVET. Since the 1960s a network of collaborating countries has emerged (e.g. IEA, PISA) to test children and youth in certain general education skill areas. Though international standards of TVET do exist (e.g. ISCO—there are even international TVET Olympics!), so far there is no similar network of collaborating countries with regard to TVET. Meanwhile, there are grounds in any country for research to address the question: What is actually learned in TVET? With the increased use of criterionreferenced assessment (to ‘pass’ it takes demonstrated mastery of specified tasks), it should be possible to check actual mastery of tasks.

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4.2 Equity Equity is especially problematic for TVET. How equitable is recruitment to TVET from under-served groups? Do new policies achieve an improvement in this regard? (For example, do they reach the poor, underserved minorities, women and girls?) The geographical inequality of economic dynamism presents special problems for TVET in locations that are remote from the nodes of that dynamism. The more TVET policy stresses the need to reach out and involve ‘local industry’, the more TVET provisions become embedded in geographical economic inequality. Private provisions will typically add to that inequality, for they will be strongly concentrated in locations with high local demand for skilled labour. So, there is a case for the government to act in offsetting the imbalances that are created by the earmarking of special resources for TVET catering to ‘underserved’ locations and groups. However, such provision will often lack good and direct local connections with industry. Do their trainees suffer problems finding jobs? Are there examples of initiatives taken to ease such problems? What do such initiatives achieve?

4.3 Cost Part of policy preparation is cost analysis. Annual costs of established TVET institutions are usually available, but surprisingly cost analysis of different training specialties within the same institution are often lacking and, even more surprisingly, cost estimates often do not seek to produce combined costs of recurrent expenses and annual capital expenses. How can we improve the accuracy of cost information? How can we ensure that cost information is used?

4.4 Efficiency A series of ‘internal efficiency’ questions relates to the flow of students or trainees involved in courses. Concerning TVET, this would especially apply to longer courses that are ‘pre-employment’ rather than to short ‘training events’ and training within industry itself. Questions include: What are course completion rates, and drop-out rates in different types of courses? Other indicators (regrettably rarely available) are capacity utilization of facilities and of available human resources. Cost/benefit analysis is sometimes attempted for TVET (usually internal rate-ofreturn estimates) in order to estimate what may be termed external efficiency. It is a method that has been both widely espoused and—especially as a means of estimating cost/benefit to society rather than merely to private persons—widely criticized. Research has a role in both critically assessing its potential and limitations, and in applying such analysis.


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5 ‘New Models’ for TVET Systems In any country open to radical reform of TVET, policy can be usefully informed by comparative research on experience with new models that have been tried out in other countries. Some such new models include national training authorities, national training funds and national qualifications frameworks. For all these models, which have been in vogue internationally in recent years, there is a need to systematize existing findings and generate new ones on such questions as: How do such policies work in practice? What works well? What are the shortcomings? What corrective action has been tried? Across all these questions are further dimensions of implementation, cost, outcomes and impact.

5.1 National Training Authorities Some countries have established national training authorities apart from regular government ministries. Typically, they have control of resources that different providers (including government ministries) can apply to for funding, at the same time as they are supposed to exercise strategic planning and quality assurance purposes of TVET. They also typically have governing boards with strong representation directly from industry. What is the international experience with such structures (in countries like Chile, South Africa, Tanzania and the United Kingdom)? What are lessons learned from training authorities?

5.2 Training Funds A number of countries have set up training funds with diverse sources of financing. Typically, there are contributions directly from industry (from earmarked payroll levies), from the government and in poorer countries also from external financing agencies. These funds are typically controlled by national training boards in which there is strong industrial representation. Often they are managed in close conjunction with national training authorities. Often industry itself can apply to such funds for finance for some of its internal training activity. What has the international experience been with training funds?

5.3 National Qualifications Frameworks A number of countries have developed national qualifications frameworks, which typically seek to define the concrete skill requirements (standards) for specified occupations, to certify the level of skills taught in TVET courses in relation to such requirements, to define paths of progression in such courses so that all forms of TVET fit into a single unified framework, and to administer ways of certifying skill

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levels of individual persons when skills are informally acquired. Examples include Australia, Scotland, South Africa and many others. What are the lessons learned from national qualifications frameworks?

6 Decentralization There has been an international trend to promote decentralization of decisionmaking in education. It is, of course, not ideologically ‘neutral’. Different variants connect differently to influential ideas about how power and authority should be distributed in a ‘good’ society. There are also rationales connected with concerns about efficiency—that decentralization is a means of making better use of scarce resources, of motivating people and of generally enabling institutions to better achieve their objectives (see, for example, Watson, 1996; Chapman et al., 1996). There is the ‘efficiency’ argument that, giving more power to each institution and involving local industry more in its governance, is a means of making TVET more locally responsive to industry and thus ensuring an improved match between what is taught and what is demanded by the labour market. There is also the argument that public institutions can diversify their sources of financing and raise more funds by being given permission to raise local finance directly (e.g. ‘selling’ short courses to local industry) and to decide how such extra income should be used. Such an emphasis on ‘more local decisions’ and more local involvement of external ‘stakeholders’ in decisions at the local level typically go with recommendations for change in the way that TVET is financed. One approach is to develop indicators of institutional performance and to tie public finance to such indicators to a greater extent than in the past. Another approach is to give more influence to market forces over public institutions (for example, leaving institutions to recruit trainees in competition with others, without regard to fixed catchment areas). In countries with TVET tightly regulated by public bureaucracies and which are considering moves towards some form of decentralization, the following questions can be usefully addressed by research: What are some of the institutional models of more decentralized operations that exist today? What are the lessons learned from these operations?

7 Alternative Models of Financing There is currently discussion about the need for more diversified sources of financing in order to cope with high unit costs and limitations on public finance. In public institutions, this typically would mean moving from full (or nearly full) reliance on ministerial budgets to: (a) charging fees (or higher fees) to the trainees; (b) ‘selling short courses’ to industry; (c) selling products produced within TVET institutions (e.g. ‘training with production’); and (d) setting up alternative channels of external funding by earmarked fiscal measures on the sector concerned (e.g. payroll tax).


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What is the experience from the use of such alternative or supplementary sources of financing?

8 Encouraging Private Provisions In the international policy debate on TVET, there are always arguments that national governments should take increased ‘interest’ in the role played by private providers of TVET. The extent of private provision varies greatly from one country to another, but in some countries private institutions are a major supplier of TVET, especially in business/commerce related skills and in information and communications technologies (ICTs). An issue for policy is how the government should relate to the private sector. The alternatives typically range from: (a) ‘regulate in order to ensure minimum standards’; to (b) encourage them as a supplement to public provisions; to (c) viewing public provisions as a supplement to private provisions and plan public provisions accordingly to fit around private provisions; to (d) set up accreditation, quality assurance and funding provisions that put private provisions on a ‘level playing field’ in competition with those that are publicly owned. Frequently, statistical information about privately provided TVET is weak. Even if the minimalist option of (a) above is chosen as government policy, there is usually a need to design mechanisms for improved information on private provisions. Are there any lessons learned from other countries on how best to achieve such improvement? With more ‘favourable’ policy options, especially if the government considers using public funds in support of private provisions, the need for information will be further increased. The private/public policy issue is ideologically fraught and therefore typically subject to much controversy. What are the controversies? Are there lessons to be learned from countries that have introduced various financing schemes? For example, what is the experience with ‘vouchers’ that a target group of trainees can ‘cash in’ at any accredited TVET provider (private or public)? How do they handle quality assurance and monitoring of private providers? What are the equity consequences of support to private provisions? Are private institutions any more efficient than public ones?

9 Schemes to Make Industry Carry Out More Training A variety of interventions have been tried to make industry carry out more training than it does when left to its own devices (legislation ‘requiring’ them to train— Republic of Korea; tax credits for training—Chile; funding by competitive application from national training funds or from industry specific funds). What are the lessons learned from different interventions? One common experience is that it tends to be large firms that make most use of available incentives, and that more is used on training staff at high levels than the schemes intended. Some countries have introduced changes to induce more small firms to make use of such incentives, and some

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(at least one—Chile) have adjusted funding to stimulate more training of production workers with less focus on management training. What is the experience with such schemes?

10 Modularization of the Curriculum In some countries, there has been a switch in TVET curriculum design away from ‘long courses’ with assessment of learners at the end, to programmes consisting of sequences of short courses (modules) with assessment at the end of each module (typically ‘criterion based’) and with more flexibility for trainees to follow sequences tailored to their particular requirements (and pace of progress). This approach is also advocated as a means allowing trainees to more easily ‘interrupt’ and later ‘return to’ training. What has been the experience of such modular models? Some of the issues are: Is there improved learning? Is ‘flexibility’ made use of? Does it lead to excessive fragmentation? Or ‘assessment overload’?

11 Human Resource Development Qualified TVET human resources are in chronic short supply in many countries. At the most basic level, there is the problem of how best to institutionalize initial instructor training and how best to recruit instructor-trainees to conduct such training. Small countries frequently have problems designing provisions for instructor training in the many vocational specialities in such a way as to avoid under-utilization of training capacity. Large and small systems have problems ensuring that the pedagogy part of such training will be sufficiently relevant for the practicalities of skills teaching in the concerned vocational specialty. There is also the problem of ensuring recruitment of prospective instructors who have sufficient work experience from relevant industries and, if such applicants are available, how to screen out those who are the rejects from industry. If industry is booming, there is the problem of retaining good TVET staff who may be tempted by frequently higher pay in the occupations they are preparing others for. Throughout the world there is a shortage of in-service staff development opportunity for instructors so as to keep abreast of technological changes. How do ‘other’ countries cope with human resource problems for TVET? Are there schemes which seem to improve the training part of these problems? What are workable and affordable incentive schemes to prevent loss of the best staff to industry?

12 Coping with Management Complexity A number of the changes mentioned earlier (e.g. decentralization of decisions on what to teach and use of resources, competing with other training providers, di-


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versifying sources of finance, involving local industry in boards of management) would add complexity to the management task of TVET at local institutional level. Does management of TVET institutions rise to the task of coping with the increased complexity of their management task? How do they cope with ‘complexity overload’?

13 Dual Systems of Basic TVET There is internationally much admiration for systems of basic TVET that are ‘dual’ in the sense of being partly based in training institutions external to industry (often public institutions, but they could also be private) and partly in industry itself. Some systems are dual only in an ‘embryonic sense’ in that the industry-based part is but a minor part typically aiming at ‘work experience’ in the occupation concerned without much specification of a schedule of skills to be learned (e.g. an ‘attachment’). Fully-fledged dual systems (e.g. Germany, Switzerland, Austria) typically make industry the main arena for training, with external institutional education and training as a concurrent supplement—or in some countries (Denmark, Norway) a foundation period before the apprenticeship in industry commences. Research has a clear role to play in contributing to that assessment. What has worked well and what has not worked so well? Research can also summarize the international experience with attempts to develop and expand dual systems under different socio-economic circumstances.

14 Low Dosage TVET in Mainstream Secondary Schools In the mainstream of secondary education, some countries have introduced vocational or practical subjects as a minor portion of the total curriculum load undertaken by students. Sometimes such curricula are justified by the hope that such ‘lowdosage TVET’ will ease the transition of youth into those occupations or sectors for which practical subjects are ‘relevant’ and contribute to productivity there. Is that a realistic goal for such mildly ‘vocationalized’ secondary education? What are the cost implications?6

15 TVET for Illiterate and Semi-Literate Learners Many countries have sections of the adult population who are illiterate or whose literacy (and numeracy) skills are too rudimentary for any fluent reading or written expression. Programmes responding to demand for TVET from such groups will usually be self-targeted upon people living in great poverty. In most countries, such people are disproportionately women. Often they are minorities who are generally under-served with education and other social services. Therefore, TVET pro-

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grammes of this kind will usually have to serve strong equity goals as well. There is a case for combining such TVET with the teaching of basic literacy and numeracy skills. Similarly, in adult literacy programmes, there is invariably a demand for skills that are directly useful for ‘income generation’. With a focus on Sub-Saharan African experience, attempts have begun to summarize the international record of the cost, implementation and impact of such combined ‘TVET and literacy’ programmes (Oxenham et al., 2002). Two recent books in the UNESCO-UNEVOC series of publications on TVET (Haan, 2006; Singh, 2005) address the related issue of TVET in the informal economy. More evaluative work is needed to provide more strongly founded ‘lessons’ on what can be drawn from current documentation—both within countries and internationally.

16 Keeping Abreast of Technology In many countries, there is a strong concern to ensure that TVET keeps abreast of technological change in industry. One would expect there to be much learning within industry itself, both informal learning and organized interventions around the introduction of new technology. One would also expect that training is often part of the package provided by the supplier when new technology is purchased by a firm. One would also expect firms to ‘buy in’ such TVET from private trainers or consulting firms. The question is whether the government, or sectoral industry associations, can usefully intervene more in order to support these processes. Research can have a role to play in assessing the experience of countries that are known for conducting a great deal of training within industry (e.g. quality circles and certification of skill levels in Japanese industry). For institutionalized training providers outside of firms, the problems of keeping abreast of technology are especially severe. One would think that a good foundation in science and mathematics is helpful for learning new technology. How adequate is the present educational foundation which youth bring when they enter TVET, and does TVET pay enough attention to such knowledge and skills? The more capital intensive training is, the more expensive it is to ‘retool’ in order to keep abreast. Placements in ‘cutting edge’ industry (not only for trainees but also for their teachers) are a long recommended recipe. But locally available industry is not always ‘cutting edge’. There is a role for research to take stock of experience with new approaches within a large country like China, and also to look abroad at what others have achieved. For example, how far can ICTs be a useful means of communication about new technology for TVET? What incentives can public TVET be given for keeping up with technology?

17 Following Up Policy The range of questions for research will naturally be much narrower when the focus is on follow-up to new TVET policy. Looking to ‘alternative models’ in order to


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widen the range of options for decision-makers will be much less important. But evaluations of different organizational models can still be on the agenda when the decision has been to pursue more than one strategy concurrently, or simply to pilot a new form of TVET alongside the continued existence of previously dominant forms. Wise policies allow for a period when it is expected that new models will need to be adjusted (institutionally complex new forms of TVET are very rarely abandoned). Evaluations (in this chapter a part of ‘research’) are important for giving feedback that helps inform such decisions to ‘adjust’ implementation. There will also be a clear need to monitor resource requirements, since in any complex reforms of TVET structures these are among the ‘loosest’ parts of the information base (usually the cost is underestimated but since implementation tends to be slower than expected, the ‘higher’ total costs may well be spread over a longer period than initially assumed, if the intended full-scale of implementation is achieved in the end). A badly neglected question for evaluative research on TVET policies involving complex reforms is impact. For example, does a ‘new style’ TVET in fact improve the extent to which the skills acquired are put productively to use in ‘relevant’ work? How are equity concerns accommodated? One does not need to be a cynic to note that there is often some risk in putting that question to empirical tests. Governments in any event seem uninterested in commissioning research on that question.

18 A Stronger Research Base is Needed Research on TVET is quite limited in most countries. Few countries have specialist professional networks and few have journals, ICT-based meeting places or other means of supporting the development of professional ‘nodes’ on TVET. Such research as exists is typically concerned with pedagogy and curricula, because it tends to be an outgrowth of TVET teacher education. To the extent that there is research and review work carried out on the kind of policy issues touched upon here, it tends to be commissioned by international agencies (ILO, UNESCO-UNEVOC, international development banks, a few bilateral development agencies). What is characteristic of that work is that it is performed under great time pressure. If national case studies feed into it, they have to rely on existing documentation, which is typically meagre. Thus, it is review work rather than research on primary data. Primary data collection is confined to visits to a few institutions and interviews carried out with persons in positions of responsibility. A major present deficiency is the sparseness of research carried out with sufficient resources and time in order to collect good primary data.

Notes 1. This paper is a revised version of a manuscript first prepared by invitation from the Government of the People’s Republic of China through Tianjin University, and with sponsorship by the

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German agency InWent (the Magdeburg Office). It was presented at an international conference at Tianjin, China, held on 9–10 December 2005, which was organized in partnership between Tianjin University, InWent, and UNESCO-UNEVOC. There is literature on this point. I would recommend Lindblom (2000) as an introduction to that literature. I see ‘education’ as all forms of deliberate interventions designed to bring about learning; and ‘training’ as interventions specifically aimed to achieve mastery of performance in specified roles or tasks. There is, however, also in the Western tradition of educational philosophy an original concept of ‘education’ that refers to enabling persons to ‘realize their potential’ across a wide range of valued ‘human development’ issues (e.g. ideas of a ‘well-rounded education’). It is beyond the scope of this paper to attempt a review of research that exists on all these issues. A recent attempt with regard to Sub-Saharan Africa covered a number of these questions but found a lamentably weak knowledge base on such key issues as cost analysis, external effectiveness of TVET, and comparison of performance of private and public providers (Johanson & Adams, 2004). Background studies for that report can be found on: <web.worldbank.org/WBS ITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTSOCIALPROTECTION/EXTLM/0,contentMDK:20223878∼ pagePK:148956∼piPK:216618∼theSitePK:390615,00.html> For private provision, this too can be problematic. Those who are willing to pay the fees that private providers pay are not always very realistic about the labour-market opportunities that training will actually lead to. A recent book by Lauglo and Maclean (2005) addresses this long-standing controversy in development planning.

References Chapman, J. et al., eds. 1996. The reconstruction of education: quality, equality and control in education. London: Cassell. Haan, H.C. 2006. Training for work in the informal micro-enterprise sector: fresh evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. (UNESCO-UNEVOC series on TVET, vol. 3.) Johanson, R.K.; Adams, A.V. 2004. Skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. Lauglo, J.; Maclean, R., eds. 2005. Vocationalisation of secondary education revisited. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. (UNESCO-UNEVOC series on TVET, vol. 1.) Lindblom, C.E. 2000. Inquiry and change: the troubled attempt to understand and change society. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Oxenham, J. et al. 2002. Skills and literacy training for better livelihoods. Washington, DC: World Bank. (Africa human development working paper series.) Singh, M., ed. 2005. Meeting basic learning needs in the informal sector: integrating education and training for decent work, empowerment and citizenship. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. (UNESCO-UNEVOC series on TVET, vol. 2.). Watson, K., ed. 1996. Power and responsibility. Vol. 3: Educational dilemmas: debate and diversity. London: Cassell.

Chapter VI.3

The Reform and Governance of Public TVET Institutions: Comparative Experiences1 Keith Holmes

1 Introduction Wide-ranging reforms of the public sector, including education, are currently underway in many States. In education, the primary goals of reform are generally to increase the efficiency, effectiveness, relevance and responsiveness of systems and institutions. Governments are pursuing various strategies in pursuit of these goals and in many countries trends towards decentralization, school-based management and greater institutional autonomy can be observed. With rapid technological advances, especially in information and communication, many countries are seeking to access the supposed benefits of the ‘knowledge economy’. Consequently, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) has an increasingly important role to play. Countries know that to be economically competitive and to retain and attract investment, they must acquire and develop appropriate knowledge, skills and values. Furthermore, they are aware that policies for skills development must meet the needs and expectations of learners, local employers and wider society. This means reforming TVET, re-orientating institutions towards their clients and promoting lifelong learning. Many governments have identified the need to increase efficiency in a sub-sector where unit costs are by nature relatively high. Close attention to the delivery of public training and transformations at the institutional level are justified because of the need for governments to better manage public funds and because of the strategic potential of these institutions. In this policy context, three broad questions emerge: 1. How can governments create a supportive environment for the reform of public TVET institutions? 2. To what extent are public TVET institutions diversifying their activities, successfully merging and forming clusters? 3. What are the implications of these transformations for the governance of public TVET institutions and the policy process? Trends towards decentralization generate multiple issues for governments and institutions alike. Some of these are similar to the issues arising from the decentralization R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VI.3, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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of general education systems. Others, such as the relationships between institutions, local employers, educational institutions and the wider community are more specific to TVET. There are three important differences between the challenges facing general education and TVET. Firstly, it is worth noting that conceptually, administratively and politically, TVET is more complex than general education. TVET systems and institutions are often expected to pursue competing educational purposes and serve competing interests. As well as training for work, they are also expected to equip learners with basic literacy and numeracy skills, support personal and social development and offer routes into higher education. In many countries TVET overlaps rather awkwardly with the school systems and higher education systems. Articulation with other parts of the education system and the labour market is often hampered by the fact that ministries of education often share responsibility for TVET policy with ministries of labour and/or employment. Secondly, partly arising from the complexities described above, TVET systems and institutions have, arguably, been in crisis for many years. For political and administrative reasons, TVET policy and public institutions have experienced relative neglect. In low-income countries, TVET has been relatively neglected by funding agencies that have preferred to focus on general education. Many public TVET institutions do not yet have the leadership, management and planning capacities needed to govern themselves effectively. In addition, public TVET institutions are increasingly in competition for students and resources with private providers. Thirdly, as countries seek to adjust to changes in the global economy, and to improve their economic competitiveness, there has been a rapid growth of international interest in the potential of TVET to help countries realise their development goals. Many countries are working towards a more integrated approach to education, training and employment. TVET institutions are located at the dynamic interface of labour-market restructuring and educational reform and in many places their roles, missions and activities are undergoing profound transformations. Whilst all countries are striving for economic competitiveness, there are, nevertheless, significant differences in the issues they encounter in relation to TVET reform. Employers in advanced industrialized societies are generally demanding skills for the rapidly changing ‘high-skills’ workplace, whereas many low-income countries remain largely dependent upon agriculture and the export of raw materials. There are also profound contextual social and cultural differences between countries. Indeed, the concept of skills formation depends significantly upon the social and cultural context in question (Tikly et al., 2003, p. 5). Whilst agricultural skills are essential, most countries are experiencing an increase in service sector employment and a growing demand for information and knowledge skills in urban areas. High-income and low-income countries have therefore seen a measure of convergence in TVET policy in recent years. Although the scope of this chapter is limited to public formal TVET, it is recognized that apprenticeships and employer training may be more appropriate for many low-income countries than public formal TVET.

VI.3 The Reform and Governance of Public TVET Institutions

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2 Governmental Reforms Governmental reforms include, for example, national policies, legislation, regulations and mechanisms designed to support decentralization and institutional autonomy and the rationalization of resources. These also include central initiatives to steer institutional-level reforms through changing patterns of governance.

2.1 Macro-Policy Visions for the Institutional Environment Macro-policy ‘visions’ for the institutional environment significantly affect how local TVET institutions operate and the way in which they are managed. Many governments advocate partnerships between stakeholders as a preferred modality for policy-making. This is expressed through extensive public consultations and, in some cases, the creation of national training authorities. In Australia, for example, TVET reform is taking place within the macro-policy objective of workforce improvement and developing a culture of lifelong learning. The consultative process of producing national policy statements led to widespread consensus about the objectives for technical and further education (TAFE). The Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) Ministerial Council developed the following mission statement: To ensure that the skills of the Australian labour force are sufficient to support internationally competitive commerce and industry and to provide individuals with opportunities to optimise their potential (ANTA, 1998, p. 1).

Policy-makers, civil servants, managers, lecturers, students, employers and other stakeholders invariably hold different views about the direction and purposes of TVET reform, which makes it, unavoidably, a political process. These stakeholders may make different assessments of the extent to which governments are creating a supportive environment for TVET reform. There are even situations where governments pursue seemingly opposite reform strategies. For some governments, a supportive environment might mean more State regulation and monitoring. Other governments have greater faith in market mechanisms. This point is illustrated by England’s Common Inspection Framework for inspecting post-16 education and training institutions, which could be regarded as either a form of support for raising standards and reform, or as a restraining factor on local responsiveness and innovation in the sector. Inspectors themselves are often faced with the difficult task of both criticizing and supporting institutions. Performance monitoring and evaluation may foster innovation in some institutional settings and stifle it in others. After the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act, TVET institutional development was to a considerable extent left to market forces.2 However, the mid1990s saw a shift from the highly competitive institutional environment created by the Conservative Thatcher governments to the seemingly more collaborative,

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consultative approach of Blair’s Labour government. The discussion document Success for all is critical of a: culture of decision-making within many colleges and other providers, which has—understandably—been reactive to funding opportunities rather than based on a clear analysis of the organization’s distinctive mission and strengths (United Kingdom. DfES, 2002, p. 5).

Over time, a more centrally co-ordinated approach to TVET policy has developed. The 2006 White Paper, Further education: raising skills, improving life changes describes a strong central vision that ‘puts learners and employers in the driving seat in determining what is funded and how services are delivered’ (United Kingdom. DfES, 2006, p. 7). England’s Learning and Skills Council states that it is: committed to the transformation of our relationship with colleges and training providers from one based on contracting, monitoring and reconciliation, to one based on principles of planning, dialogue, partnership and trust (Learning and Skills Council, 2005, p. 1).

More dialogue, especially with employers, is intended to ensure greater local relevance and responsiveness to changing skill requirements. Similarly, Australia, the Netherlands and South Africa, among other countries, are developing strong central visions for locally responsive institutions. A key policy objective in many countries is that of lowering barriers between education and work. In the Netherlands, central umbrella bodies for employers and unions were given a greater role in policy development at sector level and, at the same time, local level actors such as colleges and enterprises were given greater room for manoeuvre (OECD, 1994, p. 43). Governments have various options regarding the roles and mandates of TVET institutions, their purposes and their design. Some countries, such as South Africa and Australia, appear to favour diverse institutions over specialized institutions. Research by the Australian National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) suggests that ‘learners have a very diverse set of needs. Diversity, choice and VET tailored to meeting vastly different individual needs will be the key to engaging and re-engaging people in continuous skilling and lifelong learning’ (Robinson, 2000, p. 39). Other countries, including England and France, are developing specialized institutions tailored to the needs of particular skill sectors and localities. The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) prefers institutions in England to focus on their core functions and particular strengths.3 A clear mission for FE [further education], focused on the employability and progression of learners, is central to delivering the skills and qualifications which individuals, employers and the economy need. The delivery of this new mission will involve the creation of a new specialist system. We will expect every FE provider to develop one or more areas of specialist excellence, which will become central to the mission and ethos of the institution and will drive improvement throughout it (United Kingdom. DfES, 2006, p. 20).

In France, specialist institutions, lycée de métiers, are becoming national centres of excellence, offering all existing qualifications related to a sector, such as tourism. Whereas in France vocational education is located in the school system, it is worth noting that in Germany there has been a strong tradition of


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workplace-led training and vocationalism, and vocational academies exist alongside polytechnics and universities within the tertiary education system (Deissinger, 2000, p. 608). These governmental visions for TVET systems and TVET institutions are generally pursued through a combination of the following strategies: legislation; rationalization and restructuring; and policy mechanisms for steering and governance.

2.2 Legislation In education, perhaps more than in some areas of policy, legislation has a major role to play. To some extent at least, legislators can force the pace and nature of reform. Legislation often makes provision for central or regional quality assurance systems and inspectorates to monitor progress and to hold institutions accountable for their spending and activities. However, in the rapidly changing and complex field of TVET, legislators must also attempt to keep pace with changing practices at national and local level. As countries such as Australia attempt to develop a responsive, more industry-led training sector, this becomes an increasingly challenging task, especially where significant variations exist within countries. Thailand is currently seeking to create a supportive legal environment for the reform of TVET. In 2003 the Office for the Vocational Education Commission was established and a Vocational Education Act is being drafted which proposes to decentralize some authority to institutional level. The emerging legal framework would give employers of TVET graduates more opportunity to participate in policylevel decision-making and in the actual delivery of TVET.

2.3 Rationalization and Restructuring Given constraints on public spending worldwide and given that the public TVET sector has long suffered from a lack of investment, many governments are keen to rationalize existing resources and access additional ones. 2.3.1 Mergers Over the last twenty years, mergers have been promoted as a way to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of TVET institutions. A strong rationale for mergers is that individual institutions may not have the capacity to cope with the new responsibilities resulting from decentralization and increased institutional autonomy. The Netherlands, for example, pursued a policy of promoting mergers in its higher vocational education (HBO) sector in the 1980s. Its aim was to strengthen vocational education and increase its status so that it could assume an equal place alongside university education. The intention was to create a limited number of

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large, multi-purpose institutions with substantial autonomy for their own financial affairs and in their external relations with other institutions, organizations and the government (Goedegebuure, 1992, p. 145). Government incentives for mergers include both formal and informal mechanisms. In the case of the Netherlands, with a few exceptions, an institution had to have a minimum of 600 students to receive central funding (Goedegebuure, 1992, p. 146). Although the government’s overall vision for TVET reform was clear, no specific institutions were designated to be merged and the co-ordination of mergers was left to the HBO Council. Delegating responsibility away from the Ministry of Education and Science meant that the merging process was more open and transparent and that the outcomes were more likely to be owned by the sector itself. The ministry was nevertheless able to keep in touch with the process through a policy unit and reports from the inspectorate for higher vocational education. Since the end of apartheid in South Africa, 152 disparate TVET institutions previously serving different racial groups have been transformed into an integrated college sector with fifty multi-site, multi-purpose further education and training (FET) colleges. This reform process envisages a number of positive changes along the multiple dimensions (see Table 1). 2.3.2 Clusters Clustering is another way for institutions to share resources, knowledge and expertise. Community colleges in the United States have had relative freedom to form themselves into geographical clusters. Typically, local and regional networks of institutions are associated with certain industries. Formal links developed between institutions are intended to create enhanced critical mass, synergy and complimentarity. To take another example, in Thailand there are 412 colleges under the central Office of the Vocational Education Commission and more than 400 private vocational schools comprising technical colleges, agricultural colleges and commercial colleges.4 Instead of operating alone, they are forming clusters or networks in several provinces. This enables them to work more closely with local industries and local people, which can help to improve the responsiveness of the curriculum to changes in local labour markets. Colleges are also collaborating in resource mapping, developing areas of excellence, quality-control systems and standardization (Choomnoon, personal communication). 2.3.3 Networks Regional networks of institutions have also developed in recent years beyond national boundaries. For example, the Association of Caribbean Tertiary Institutions (ACTI) brings together seventy institutions spanning the Caribbean region. Formed in 1990, ACTI provides a forum for interaction between institutions. ACTI aims ‘to improve the quality, quantity and organisation of tertiary education in the region


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Table 1 FET transformations in South Africa From. . .

To

Small institutions Limited opportunities to attract external funding Inequities between State and State-aided colleges Duplication—of programmes and facilities Isolation from both wider contexts and local communities Racial and gender imbalances Limited managerial capacity Limited staff development and career opportunities Very limited programme offerings

Larger, more viable institutions Increased bargaining power and opportunities for capital investment Eliminate effects of previous discrimination

Small-scale innovation Low efficiency rates Limited facilities Internal focus Smaller pool of contacts and labour-market intelligence Low quality and throughput Poor learner support

Streamlining, better utilization of resources Alignment with rural and urban development imperatives Enhanced equity policies Better utilization of scarce management skills Increased opportunities for staff development and career paths Opportunities to present diverse and relevant programmes Increased staff and opportunities to become responsive Enhanced efficiency through sharing of expertise and resources Joint utilization of workshops, hostels, resources centres Collaboration and the development of a responsive ‘competitive’ sector Combined networks, linkages and labour-market knowledge Enhancement through quality assurance and capacity building Potential to support learners

Source: South Africa. Department of Education, 2002, p. 4.

through co-operation and collaboration between member institutions’ (ACTI, 2007). ACTI’s activities include both academic and administrative concerns, such as enhanced access, mobility, quality assurance, effective utilization of scarce resources, articulation among institutions and the co-operative development and delivery of tertiary-level programmes.

2.4 Policy Mechanisms for Steering and Governance 2.4.1 Quality Improvement, Monitoring and Evaluation Whilst ideally governments would hope to support quality improvement in all TVET institutions, in practice they have tended to focus their attention on supporting failing institutions and rewarding successful ones. A consequence of this is that average, adequately performing institutions can end up feeling unsupported. A key challenge for central governments is to identify and address weaknesses in their

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TVET networks, whilst also developing policy mechanisms that support innovation, flexibility and responsiveness. 2.4.2 Incentives Incentives, such as tax rebates, play their part in the reform process, as do financial incentives and the competitive tendering of contracts (to public and private providers) in the TVET sector. Well-designed funding mechanisms achieve a balance between the needs of students and employers and the wider community. In addition to rewards for meeting targets, the award of Learning and Skills Beacon Status in England is intended to recognize high-quality teaching and training, and effective, well-managed institutions. The label of ‘beacon status’ is awarded to institutions with specialist expertise and good practice that can attract the attention of other institutions and to which they may aspire and learn from. England has created additional incentives for TVET institutions to become more responsive to the needs of local employers by encouraging and rewarding the development of vocational specialization. Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs) are designated areas of specialist vocational provision characterized by close links between colleges and other providers, business partners, other employment interests and communities. To achieve CoVE status, providers must demonstrate, through audited and development plans, how they are addressing the priority skills needs of local areas, regions and England as a whole (United Kingdom. DfES, 2002). Recognizing that there are gaps in public training provision, the United Kingdom Government’s strategy is to involve, through market mechanisms, providers from the voluntary and community sector, including small, specialist organizations and the training arms of large companies, in training activities (United Kingdom. DfES, 2006, p. 9). However, in turn, the involvement of new providers, over which there is less direct supervision, has implications for central government including, for example, registration and certification. 2.4.3 Competition Policy For several decades many countries had a national network of publicly-funded TVET institutions that provided a virtual monopoly on formal training. The increased use of private training providers has proved controversial because of what is seen as their competitive threat to public institutions. However, the deliberate introduction of some competition for funds may help public institutions to focus more attention on the needs of their clients. In Australia’s case, significant reform in technical and further education was leveraged by opening up relatively small amounts of funding to the competitive process (Robinson, 2000, p. 34). 2.4.4 Strategic Alliances and Partnerships According to Veenker (2000, p. 3), the future of TVET is likely to involve heavily networked institutions and ‘the ongoing creation of new alliances with entities com-


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mitted to lifelong education’. Redefining the legal framework for TVET has often been a necessary but not sufficient condition for setting up partnerships and for making them work. In the Netherlands, the ROCs (regionale opleidingen centra— regional training centres) are expected to work with a complex set of partners (including national industry training bodies, municipal government and national government), providing vocational education, training, basic education, retraining and job-seeking support (Drodge, 2002, p. 6). Governments have also created partnerships between the private sector and TVET through a mandatory levy on employers. In some countries, a payroll tax provided the necessary stimulus for shared management between the State and its social partners. In Jamaica, the national training agency, HEART Trust/NTA, is primarily financed through a 3% payroll levy on qualified private sector firms. This ensures some degree of company involvement and interest in the on-going development and implementation of TVET policies. This overview of governmental reforms has described a range of policy mechanisms used to support and regulate the development of TVET institutions. In some countries, increased autonomy means that TVET institutions have developed with minimal co-ordination or State involvement. In others, although management and budgetary functions may be carried out locally, there is sometimes a more rigorous regime of inspections for monitoring and evaluation than existed when the overall network of institutions was under direct central government control.

3 Institutional Transformations Having reviewed governmental reforms, this section explores transformations within TVET institutions and between institutions, employers and the wider community. Of particular interest are changes in the roles, missions and activities of institutions, which, in turn, require changes in governance arrangements, local organization and management.

3.1 Changing Institutional Missions and Activities As described above, some countries have a clearly defined and sometimes statutory vision for public TVET institutions. In other countries, institutions have more scope to develop their own missions and priorities. As one component of the American TVET system, community colleges serve multiple stakeholders and are well-orientated towards community needs. Many community colleges in the United States are closely orientated towards entrepreneurial, multi-purpose institutions, with multiple roles and diverse activities. Bailey and Averianova (1998, p. 7) identify several roles being taken by community colleges. There is the traditional, collegiate or academic function, the vocational

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function of skills development and the remedial function of instruction in basic skills. In addition, some community colleges are offering customized training and adopting broad community service and socio-economic development roles. The development of multiple missions and diverse activities by TVET institutions has created some degree of controversy at the local level about the merits of institutional diversification or specialization. Some commentators take the view that comprehensive TVET institutions are trying to be ‘all things to all people’ and that for the sake of efficiency and effectiveness they should re-focus on their core functions. Others agree that TVET institutions are well-placed to offer a range of services and that diversification of their missions and activities demonstrates their responsiveness and relevance to the needs of their local communities (Bailey & Averianova, 1998, p. 2). A combination of factors has led community colleges in the United States to diversify their activities beyond their original mandate for teaching and learning. Community colleges often regard diversification as a means to generate revenue and to improve their relationships with local employers and the wider community. Rather than being a drain on resources, the new roles can help to enhance and update their core activities through expanded networks and information flows (Dougherty & Bakia, 2000, p. 3). In the long run, according to Bailey and Averianova (1998, p. 23), such additional missions and activities will be carried out successfully by community colleges ‘not necessarily because they can generate surpluses, but because they are functionally associated with the core activities of the college, and can therefore be carried out by the colleges more efficiently than by other organizations’. 3.1.1 Contract Training Entrepreneurial TVET institutions are increasingly awarded training contracts by public and private sector employers. Although managed by the institutions, these courses may be conducted on the employer’s premises, using employees as instructors, or within the college environment—the courses are closely tailored to the employer’s needs. Although these training courses are often firm or sector specific, they may also contribute to the wider local economy by developing transferable skills. 3.1.2 Small-Business Development Small-business development activities include providing advice and training for small enterprises in, for example, management, personnel, marketing and finance, and helping businesses to meet government regulations. Many community colleges in the United States also offer a business incubation service, including low-cost accommodation and support and advice for newly-established enterprises. 3.1.3 Local Economic Development Planning An effective TVET system adopting an integrated approach to workforce development is that of Oklahoma VoTech in the United States. Its success, controversially,


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springs from offering publicly subsidized training to multinational corporations. The Oklahoma system appears to enjoy well-functioning relationships with local industries, stemming from a willingness by the public authorities—and taxpayers—to orientate training towards the needs of employers (de Moura Castro, 1995, p. 203). Some TVET institutions are establishing research and development functions to monitor economic trends, new work practices and regulations. This information is invaluable for assessing training needs and is also re-positioning colleges as policymaking bodies capable of influencing their locality’s response to changes in the labour market. According to Dougherty and Bakia (2000, p. 2), some community colleges have even convened meetings of local political and economic leaders and played an active lobbying role, using their relationships with local government and business to influence development policies. Another innovation of wider interest is to be found in rural community colleges in the United States of America, through the Rural Community College Initiative (RCCI). Many of these institutions are situated in economically disadvantaged rural areas. Due to historical and economic factors, these communities often experience varying degrees of cultural and social conflict. In this context, according to Rubin (2001, p. 12), community colleges are among the few institutions that offer ‘common ground’ and are respected by the public, private and non-profit sectors: community colleges can be a safe, neutral meeting place for forging collaborative approaches to community development. [. . .] Community colleges have a broad mission, and they have the stature, stability and flexibility to provide leadership for regional development. In many rural communities, they are the only institutions with a broad community-service mission and a stable stream of public funding (Rubin, 2001, p. 13).

3.2 The Governance of Public TVET Institutions The governance of public TVET institutions includes a combination of central and institutional systems and policy mechanisms including legislation, accountability structures, monitoring and evaluation instruments, and planning functions. Greater autonomy creates distinctive pressures on institutions, which may require significant adaptation. For example, the governance structures within institutions, which historically supported the implementation of central policies, need reforming if institutions are to take a more proactive role in consulting stakeholders, and in developing locally relevant provision. A strengthened capacity for research and evaluation, reporting, external relations and strategic planning is also required. Local planning must correspond appropriately to national and international labour-market trends, so TVET institutions increasingly need to be able to generate, analyse, interpret and share knowledge about local, national and global economic transformations. Macro-level reforms have thus often created the impetus for organizational restructuring.

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3.2.1 Institutional Leadership The role of heads of TVET institutions has become increasingly complex as missions have expanded and responsibilities increased. Decentralization raises questions about precisely which decisions can and should be taken at the institutional level. Heads of institutions have often found themselves in an increasingly marketdriven environment. These managers are gradually more responsible for the development of educational services and developing partnerships and other links with local communities. As in other sectors, conventional notions of ‘professionalism’ in TVET have been challenged by deregulation and market-oriented reforms. Managerialist behaviours, such as flexibility, reliability and competence, are often rewarded more than the long-established ideals of public service through education. Contradictions can be observed as heads of institutions are equally expected to respond to market opportunities and the social policy principles of access, equity and inclusion. They are often simultaneously experiencing greater autonomy in the management of TVET institutions than before, whilst also being held more accountable by central and provincial authorities. The institutional transformations described above are closely inter-related and have wider implications. New missions and activities impact upon relationships between institutions, employers and communities, and these new relationships have implications for the financing and governance of institutions, and their organization and management. While some of the issues at the institutional-level are similar to the issues located at the national level, taking an institutional-level perspective can provide helpful insights for central policy makers. As in other areas of public sector reform, apparently contradictory and unintended trends can sometimes be observed. Local-level transformations have implications for how institutions are rewarded and the incentives that can be offered to increase effectiveness and efficiency, responsiveness and relevance. Indeed, these concepts in themselves are in a constant state of flux.

4 Macro/Micro Analysis The above accounts of governmental-level and institutional-level reform reveal diverse policies and practices. Multiple social, economic, political and cultural factors influence these policies and behaviours. Together these accounts suggest that the TVET landscape is becoming more and more complex, and that conventional concepts, definitions and categories are increasingly problematic. Changes in the roles, missions and activities of institutions have important implications for the concepts for efficiency, effectiveness, relevance and responsiveness. Even the assumption that it is possible to identify decisions located at the centre and decisions located at the institutional level is challenged. What actually happens in reality reflects com-


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plex interactions between central and institutional players and other stakeholders. Furthermore, in many cases, provincial or regional structures play an influential mediating role. As well as policy incentives and steering mechanisms for institutions, governments can stimulate demand for self-improvement and lifelong learning through direct incentives to individual learners and guidance counselling programmes. Despite the inherent contradictions, a common thread may be identified from this comparative review of country experiences and institutional transformations. By and large, the reform of public TVET is shifting the focus and orientation of TVET from the interests of the providers towards serving the needs of students, enterprises and local communities.

5 Conclusions As this chapter has shown, the reform and governance of public TVET institutions is a multi-faceted and sometimes perplexing domain. In the present context, understanding how TVET institutions are changing becomes even more important for central policy-makers. Yet, in a more decentralized environment this also becomes more difficult. For institutions, interpreting changes in the external environment, including the policy landscape and labour-market trends, becomes essential for their success. The expectations of what TVET reforms can contribute to social and economic development are often high. Yet, there is a paucity of theoretical or empirical knowledge in this under-researched and rapidly evolving field. As shown above, what happens ‘on the ground’ is the outcome of complex interactions between central and local levels. It is often as much a matter of circumstances and events as by design. One response is to devote more resources, at international, regional, national and local levels, to strengthening analytical research, monitoring and evaluation capacity in this relatively neglected field. More attention should also be given to the processes through which actual transformations take place. Ambitious ‘visions’ for TVET often prove more difficult to implement than expected, not least because of the many competing interests in the sub-sector. Collaboration, in various forms, has been a recurring theme of this chapter. Where partnership is based on mutual trust, it can be regarded as an invaluable form of social dialogue, a value system and a kind of governance (see Atchoarena, 1998). Fortunately, given the complexities of working in this arena, policy-makers and heads of institutions do not have to act alone. There are many stakeholders who recognize the potential of public TVET institutions to contribute to the development of individuals, enterprises, local communities and society at large. Labour markets are undergoing significant transformations and the role of the State in relation to public services is itself in transition. Given the location of TVET at the complex interface between education and labour-market reforms, new part-

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nerships between education and employers are often a matter of necessity. What at first may appear a voyage into uncharted waters may prove to be of much wider significance for the future development of education and other public services. As this review has shown, patterns of governance are emerging that recognize the limits of, and seek to move beyond, a choice between either market or State approaches to public policy.

Notes 1. This chapter is based on a background review conducted as part of a research programme on ‘The Reform and Governance of Public TVET Institutions’, of UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP). The author would like to acknowledge David Atchoarena, IIEP Senior Programme Specialist, for his perceptive guidance and comments on earlier drafts. 2. The Government of the United Kingdom has devolved much of the responsibility for education and training policy and the power to make legislation to its administrations in its four countries, namely England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. However, some areas in education and training are reserved matters for the UK Government which varies with each country; the reader should check first with the relevant websites. 3. The DfES has now been superseded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS). 4. For more information about vocational education in Thailand, see: <www.vec.go.th>

References Australian National Training Authority. 1998. A bridge to the future: Australia’s national strategy for vocational education and training. Brisbane, Australia: ANTA. Assocation of Caribbean Tertiary Institutions. 2007. What is ACTI? <www.acticarib.org.> Atchoarena, D. 1998. Le partenariat dans l’enseignement technique et la formation professionnelle: le concept et son application. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. Bailey, T.R.; Averianova, I. 1998. Multiple missions of community colleges: conflicting or complementary. New York, NY: Teachers College Community College Research Centre. Deissinger, T. 2000. The German ‘philosophy’ of linking academic and work-based learning in higher education: the case of the ‘vocational academies’. Journal of vocational education and training, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 605–26. de Moura Castro, C. 1995. Oklahoma training: they seem to be doing it right. In: de Moura Castro, C.; Schaack, K.; Tippelt, R., eds. Vocational training at the turn of the century, pp. 203–37. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang. Dougherty, K.; Bakia, M. 2000. The new economic development role of the community college. CCRC brief, no. 6, January. Drodge, S. 2002. Managing under pressure: the management of vocational education in the British, Dutch and French systems. Research in post-compulsory education, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 27–43. Goedegebuure, L.C.J. 1992. Mergers in higher education: a comparative perspective. Utrecht, Netherlands: Center for Higher Education Policy Studies. Learning and Skills Council. 2005. Planning for success: framework for planning and quality. Coventry, United Kingdom: Learning and Skills Council. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 1994. Vocational training in the Netherlands: reform and innovation. Paris: OECD.


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Robinson, C. 2000. Developments in Australia’s vocational education and training system. Adelaide, Australia: National Centre for Vocational Education Research. (Paper presented to the Central Institute of Vocational and Technical Education, Beijing, China, August 2000.) Rubin, S. 2001. Rural colleges as catalysts for community change. Rural America, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 12–19. South Africa. Department of Education. 2002. Merging manual: the workbook. Pretoria: Department of Education. Tikly, L. et al. 2003. Globalisation and skills for development in Rwanda and Tanzania. London: DfID. United Kingdom. Department for Education and Skills. 2002. Success for all: reforming further education and training. London: DfES. (Discussion document, June 2002.) United Kingdom. Department for Education and Skills. 2006. White Paper. Further education: raising skills, improving life chances. London: DfES. Veenker, P. 2000. Future directions for TAFE in Australia. (Speech at the Australian TAFE Marketing Association (ATMA) Conference, November 2000, Adelaide, Australia.)


Chapter VI.4

National Versus Regional Policy Dimensions of TVET Peter Noonan

1 Introduction In recent years, there has been increasing interest on the importance of regions as a focus for planning and delivery of technical and vocational education and training (TVET), and in the processes and formation of national policy to encompass regional needs. More broadly, there has also been growing interest in regions as the focus for learning and skills development and innovation. Regions can be defined in different ways. Regions may be defined by formal boundaries and their populations represented by governmental structures. These are usually defined as federal states,1 provinces or local government areas. Regions may also be geographic areas within states, provinces or local government areas with special ethnic, cultural, economic or geographic characteristics. Regions may transcend borders within countries and between countries, particularly where national borders cut across traditional cultural and ethnic groupings. Regions may also be defined as major geographic zones or sub-zones on a continental scale, such as Asia, Latin America and the South Pacific. This chapter examines national and regional dimensions of policy for TVET, with a primary focus on formally defined regions represented by sub-national governmental structures and their relationship with national government. Major areas of policy are identified and the respective roles of national and regional government analysed, focusing in particular on mechanisms and processes to co-ordinate policy, planning, delivery, certification and quality assurance effectively. A secondary focus of the chapter is concerned with the concept of learning regions and the role of TVET in building human and social capital, including the relationship between formal TVET systems and other forms of knowledge and skill acquisition, such as community and work-based learning. A case study of Australia, which has developed a national TVET system within a federal system of government, is used to identify how national and regional responsibilities and perspectives can be co-ordinated and balanced.

R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VI.4, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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2 The Knowledge Economy: National and Regional Dimensions Skills and knowledge are now recognized as primary drivers of economic growth at both national and regional levels. Equitable access by citizens to skills and knowledge is essential for an effective labour-market and social participation, as well as building social capital. In most countries, economic development is the primary responsibility of national governments. As skills and knowledge have become central to economic development, education and training policy generally, and TVET policy specifically, have become important elements in national economic development. Some countries, for example, have elevated TVET policies to the national level and have established national mechanisms for policy development, planning, accreditation and quality assurance. However, as the OECD in its publication Cities and regions in the new learning economy observed, there are wide variations between countries in what is and what can be done at the national and sub-national level. The OECD contrasts education policy in areas such as national curriculum and national assessment in the United Kingdom since 1988 with more decentralized approaches in Germany and the United States (OECD, 2001). The OECD highlights the growing interest in regions as sources of innovation and skills development, citing commentators who argue that regions (or sub-national levels of government) are highly effective in generating the conditions for innovation (and, by extension, skills development). TVET policy planning and delivery may also be influenced by the growing interest in regions and local communities as the focus for cross-government agency service delivery, creating the opportunity for local and regional communities to use government funding flexibly to meet local needs, for example, through the integration of TVET and employment services. These approaches are based on principles of devolved and collaborative decision-making so that service delivery meets local and regional needs.

3 National and Regional Government Roles in TVET The concurrent focus on both national and regional dimensions of TVET policy creates inevitable tensions, particularly where more than one level of government is involved. Government roles in TVET encompass:2

r r r r r r r

Legal and legislative responsibilities; Policy formation and implementation; Funding; Planning; Delivery; Certification; and Regulation, including accreditation and quality assurance.

VI.4 National Versus Regional Policy Dimensions of TVET

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3.1 The Legislative Responsibilities of National and Regional Government The formal powers and responsibilities of national and sub-national government have a dominant influence over the respective roles of national and regional government with respect to TVET. These powers and responsibilities extend beyond formal, legislative responsibility for TVET. For example, in New Zealand with a unitary system of government, TVET is a national government responsibility. In Australia, education is formally a responsibility of the individual states; however, the limited revenue-raising powers of the states and the recognition of the importance of education as a national policy issue have seen a significant escalation in the role of the Commonwealth (national/federal) government since the 1960s, with a concurrent rise in policy influence even though the Commonwealth has no formal powers with respect to education. In Canada and the United States, also federal systems, national government financial and policy intervention has been far more limited, and more directly related to the role of the federal government in relation to labour-market and employment policies and programmes. Similar variations are also evident in Europe between, for example, France and Germany. In some countries, local government may also be an important player. In many countries, Germany for instance, access to and regulation of TVET may also be influenced by employment or labour laws through occupational and apprenticeship regulation, although the control of TVET is effectively exercised at the regional level. National governments may also enter into international agreements in areas such as trade, mutual recognition of standards and qualifications, migration or international co-operation, which may be binding on regions and strongly influence regional policies and practices. Co-operation and agreement around TVET through the European Union, including initiatives such as the European Qualifications Meta Framework, is the strongest example of commitments by national governments affecting regional policies and practices.

3.2 Policy Formation and Implementation The first and most important consideration is the responsibility for setting national and regional TVET policy. In countries with unitary systems of government, or where TVET is clearly assigned as a function of national government, this issue is reasonably clear. However, in federal systems, particularly where TVET is formally the responsibility of state or provincial government, the issue becomes more complex. Do national and state governments seek to develop agreed national policies through inter-governmental decision-making processes or do national governments develop their own policies and then implement them, either through bilateral funding agreements with state agencies or by funding through their own agencies?

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It is to be hoped that, where more than one level of government has responsibility for TVET, mechanisms will be established to reach agreement between governments on overarching strategy or policy so that there is consistency and certainty in policy settings. However, given the likely political differences between governments and the tensions inherent in federal systems between national and sub-national government and between states or provinces, such agreement can be difficult to achieve and even more difficult to implement.

3.3 Funding Closely related to responsibility for policy setting are the responsibility for funding and the processes for allocating funding to TVET providers. Again, in countries with unitary systems of government, responsibility for government funding is clear compared to that in federal systems. Issues related to cost adjustment between different levels of government (where one level of government withdraws funding as the other level of government intervenes) and the potential for duplication and wastage are key issues that must be resolved in federal systems. Shifts to more market-based mechanisms for the distribution of public funding and to ‘user pays’ principles have also been introduced in a number of countries to create competition for public funding and to make TVET providers more responsive to the needs of individuals and enterprises. While, in theory, competitive processes should make TVET providers more responsive to regional needs, in practice regional intermediary bodies are likely to be by-passed in the transaction between TVET providers and their clients unless regional bodies themselves are involved in the competitive allocation of funds.

3.4 Planning For the purposes of this chapter, planning for TVET refers to planning for delivery of TVET programmes and for the development of TVET institutions. Planning may occur at several levels:

r r

r r

At the national level where the national government has some responsibility for TVET; At the regional level where: — Sub-national government has all or some responsibility for TVET; — Where regional intermediary bodies are established by national or regional government to provide advice on regional needs and priorities or where these bodies have a funding role to inform their own planning; At the TVET institutional level, depending on the extent to which the institution has the power to plan for its own delivery; and Through industrial bodies with advisory roles to national and regional government.


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It is in the planning and priority-setting process that the greatest tension between national and regional government agencies and between government agencies and TVET providers exists in the complex process of balancing national, regional and local priorities and perspectives. Planning for TVET is usually based on assessments of current and projected labour-market need, together with demographic trends, including issues such as population and workforce aging, and areas of population growth and decline across regions. However, experience over many years has demonstrated the difficulty of accurate and effective labour-market forecasting, particularly given the time lag between the development and delivery of new TVET programmes and changes in the labour market. An added complexity are the wide variations that may exist in industry and labour-market conditions between regions, and even within regions, and differences that may emerge through different data sets and interpretation of data. An additional dynamic is the increasing recognition of the differences between regions in the composition of industry, employment patterns and socio-economic disadvantage, together with the establishment of specific programmes and funds aimed at redressing disadvantage, helping to support patterns of regional economic development or to promote the development of learning regions and learning communities.

3.5 Provision An increasingly diverse range of providers is involved in the delivery of TVET in most countries. TVET providers may include schools, technical colleges, tertiary establishments, adult education institutes, community organizations and enterprises. National, regional or local government may have responsibility for the governance of public TVET providers. Governance models for public TVET providers vary widely within and between countries from highly centralized to highly devolved approaches. Governance models also vary according to types of TVET institutions; for example, primary and secondary schools may operate on a more centralized or systemic basis than post-school institutions. In many countries, there has been a trend towards devolution of decision-making to either regionally-based intermediary bodies that co-ordinate delivery across a range of providers or to the providers themselves. This trend has been driven by a desire to ensure that TVET providers are responsive to local and regional needs by ensuring that decisions are taken as close as possible to the point of delivery, and that major stakeholders, at the local and regional level, are involved in decisionmaking processes. Accountability to government is maintained through transparent performance and funding agreements and the establishment of clear policies and guidelines within which TVET providers must operate. In some countries, there has also been a trend towards competitive funding of public, private and community-based providers to promote efficiency and responsiveness or to ensure delivery in areas of specialized need. Funding may be on the basis of tendered requirements including, in some instances, identified regional or local needs.

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3.6 Certification As the importance of knowledge and skills grows for both individuals and the economy, and the labour market more generally, the effect of certification of skill outcomes becomes increasingly important. A number of countries, particularly those influenced by developments in the United Kingdom, have adopted a framework of national skill or competency standards aligned with the national qualifications as the basis of TVET certification. Apart from the United Kingdom, these countries include Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. They have national qualifications frameworks encompassing TVET, schools and, in most instances, higher education. The rationale for national standards and qualifications frameworks is that, regardless of the level of responsibility for the governance and funding of TVET, students and employers can be confident that outcomes are based on achievement against consistent standards, assessment and certification practices, even in highly devolved systems. Other countries use systems where certification is by the TVET provider itself and/or where certification has to satisfy the requirements of industry or professional associations. In these frameworks, the standing of the qualification reflects the standing of the organization issuing the qualification. Whatever models are used, the major imperative is to ensure that qualifications are recognized nationally, and not only within particular regions, and that TVET qualifications are able to articulate to and from qualifications issued in other education sectors and across industries. This is particularly important in the context of the mobility of labour; it is likely that people will have to change jobs more frequently than in the past. As such, regardless of the responsibilities for other aspects of the governance of TVET between national and sub-national levels of government, certification is the one area where national governments appear to have the most important role to play in either supporting or facilitating effective certification of TVET.

3.7 Accreditation and Quality Assurance Closely associated with certification are arrangements for accreditation and quality assurance, particularly where a diverse range of providers are providing nationallyrecognized TVET qualifications in the frameworks outlined above. A distinction must also be made between accreditation—which is usually the process a TVET provider must comply with to be recognized as a formal provider— and quality assurance which may encompass, but extends beyond, accreditation to include continuous improvement and which may involve third-party validation by organizations such as ISO. Again, the case for national governments to exercise an administrative or facilitative role in ensuring the consistency and quality of accreditation of TVET


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providers is very strong. Inconsistent and unreliable accreditation processes undermine employer and community confidence in TVET certification and, where TVET providers operate across regional boundaries, multiple and conflicting accreditation requirements are costly both to the providers and to the government.

4 TVET and Regional Policy: Other Dimensions As outlined in the introduction to this chapter, there are other dimensions relevant to the role of regions in TVET policy. These dimensions include:

r r r r

Policy focus on regions as centres for learning and innovation and on regional policy in building human and social capital (see OECD, 2001); Related to this, a focus on regions in terms of disparities in employment, income levels, educational attainment and other social indicators and how this relates to skills and workforce development; Regional planning by TVET providers and government agencies in terms of the catchment area for TVET providers and in terms of co-ordination or funding and delivery across different providers; and Regions as a focus for co-ordination of government service provision across different agencies.

These regional dimensions stretch the boundaries of traditional TVET governance and provision in several ways:

r

r r r r

They focus on whole populations and industries within a region in terms of their skills and workforce development needs, not just on the immediate needs of firms in terms of their requirements for training of new entrants and the existing workforce. They focus in particular on those not in the workforce or with marginal attachments to the workforce, on gaps and weaknesses in delivery and service provision, as well as on skills shortages.3 They require a more holistic approach, focusing on the interaction between organizations (including enterprises and social institutions) and the way in which skills and knowledge may be built through these interactions, including formal and informal networks. They create the potential to draw on the full range of learning resources in a region or a community including, but extending beyond, formal education and training providers. They highlight the need for effective regional planning to complement national and state or provincial planning; in particular recognizing that system-wide needs and priorities may not translate to specific regions and localities. They highlight the need for effective co-ordination between government agencies at the local and regional level, create space for the involvement of local government and non-governmental agencies in service delivery and highlight the need for flexibility in funding guidelines and programme design so that programmes can be tailored for individual needs.

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These new and innovative regional policy approaches create challenges for traditional approaches to TVET policy, planning and funding, be it at the national or sub-national government level. The extent to which these approaches have or are being adopted varies significantly between and within countries.

5 Australia: A Case Study Australia represents an interesting case study in the evolution and management of national and regional (state) government involvement in TVET. Australia has a federal system of government in which constitutional responsibility for education and training is vested in the individual states. However, since the 1960s, the Commonwealth (national/federal) government has played an increasingly important role in education and training in all sectors, assuming full financial funding for higher education in 1973 and playing an increasingly important financial and policy role in relation to the provision of schools and TVET.

5.1 Background Over the past two decades, through a range of Commonwealth interventions and initiatives, but with the support of the states, Australia has adopted an increasingly national approach to TVET.4 The Commonwealth initiated an inquiry into technical and further education (TAFE) in 1974 and, based on the inquiry’s findings of substantial deficiencies in the funding of TAFE, the Commonwealth began a programme of recurrent funding grants to the states, a significant programme of capital works to address serious deficiencies in buildings and equipment and to build new TAFE institutions. From the mid-1980s, the Commonwealth initiated and drove a progressive series of reforms affecting TVET in Australia, including:

r r r r r r r

The development of a traineeship system to provide structured entry-level training in occupations not covered by the traditional apprenticeship system; The merger of the labour and education portfolios to reduce barriers between portfolios and to ensure a consistent approach to TVET across government agencies; An emphasis on the role of industry in providing leadership in TVET; The development of national industry competency standards, jointly recognized by the Commonwealth and state governments, to underpin recognition and certification of skills; Linking these standards to skill-based occupational career structures through the then industrial award system; The establishment of a training market in which public and private providers registered under accreditation standards would be able to compete for public and private funding; and Mutual recognition of TVET qualifications and providers between states.


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These initiatives were driven by the Commonwealth government’s overall programme of economic and labour-market reform to transform Australia from a country largely dependent on the non-value-added export of raw materials and with high levels of protection for domestic industry, to an economy which was globally competitive and able to add greater value to its exports through higher levels of workforce skills. The states, sharing similar concerns about the need to transform Australia’s economic base and to increase its level of workforce skills, were in the main active supporters of, and participants in, this reform process. These reforms brought with them a series of changes to the governance of TVET in Australia to underpin the growing range of initiatives that were being implemented between the Commonwealth and state governments. A Ministerial Council on Vocational Education and Training was established, combining the responsibilities of the Ministers for Labour and TVET. This council determined all national TVET policy issues requiring agreement between the Commonwealth and state governments. However, an underlying issue, that of funding for TVET, and the respective roles of the Commonwealth and states, remained unresolved. Demand for TVET was growing as a consequence of the economic and labour-market restructuring process and, while the Commonwealth recognized the need to increase national investment in TVET, it was concerned that additional investment by the Commonwealth would either not be matched by the states, or that some states might even reduce their investment as Commonwealth investment increased. In 1991, the Commonwealth offered to assume full financial responsibility for TAFE, with the states retaining responsibility for the operational management of the TAFE systems. The Commonwealth offered to substantially increase its funding contribution to TAFE, but with the states receiving reduced general recurrent grants from the Commonwealth to reflect the change in responsibilities. However, only one state—Victoria—was formally prepared to accept this offer. The other states proposed an agreement whereby they would maintain their outputs in exchange for increased Commonwealth funding. The Commonwealth was also concerned to establish more effective national arrangements to oversee the development of the emerging national training system, in particular, by giving industry a stronger leadership role in the reform process.

5.2 The Australian National Training Authority Accepting that its proposal to assume full responsibility for TAFE funding would not be agreed, the Commonwealth instead accepted the states’ proposal for a shared funding agreement for TVET, but proposed the establishment of a National Training Authority as a statutory agency with an independent industry-based board reporting to the Ministerial Council to drive and co-ordinate development of the national training system.

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The Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) was established in 1992 by Commonwealth legislation under a Heads of Government Agreement. ANTA assumed the TVET funding and programme responsibilities of the Commonwealth government department. It developed national strategies for TVET, negotiated bilateral funding agreements for the distribution of Commonwealth funding to the states and administered a range of national programmes. ANTA also assumed responsibility for the functions of a national training board in developing national competency standards. As an independent industry-based board, ANTA also initiated and drove a range of far-reaching reforms, including competitive funding and the development of Australia’s National Training Framework. Although these reforms were agreed by the Ministerial Council, the pace and range of reforms did not always meet with the approval of the states, which, it is fair to say, saw ANTA primarily as an instrument of the Commonwealth, rather than as a truly federalist body. As a consequence, some agreed reforms and policies were only partially and inconsistently implemented at the state level. Each renewal of the ANTA agreement also produced protracted disagreements and negotiation around the respective funding contributions of the Commonwealth and state governments. Nonetheless, TVET in Australia was transformed in little more than a decade as a result of the initial process of reform and the subsequent wave of reforms driven by ANTA, which gave full effect to the principles and objectives of what became known as the National Training Reform Agenda.

5.3 New National Training System In 2005, the Commonwealth Government, as part of an overall review of the roles of independent statutory bodies, decided to reintegrate the functions of ANTA within the federal Department of Education Science and Training.5 However, the key elements of the national system which had evolved prior to and in the ANTA agreement have been maintained, but through government-togovernment agreements rather than through co-ordination by an independent body (see Australia. DEST, 2005). The new national system is based on multilateral agreements between the Commonwealth and the states, and bilateral agreements between the Commonwealth and each state as follows:

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A National Governance and Accountability Framework, which establishes the decision-making processes and bodies responsible for training, as well as planning and performance monitoring arrangements to guide the operation and growth of the training system; and A National Skills Framework, which sets out the system’s requirements for quality and national consistency in terms of qualifications and the delivery of training.


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The system is based on a multilateral agreement which recognizes that co-operation and collaboration between the Commonwealth and state governments are essential to maintain an effective national training system. The multilateral agreement establishes:


A shared commitment to support national goals and objectives for vocational education and training; Guiding principles for the national training system; The responsibilities of each party to the agreement; National priorities that are to be achieved in the medium term; National policies to support the effective operation of the training system; National planning arrangements to support improved training outcomes; National targets that reflect Australian and state government policy objectives; National outcomes-focused performance measures that are focused on reducing skill shortages and improving outcomes for key clients; National initiatives to advance the training system; Mechanisms for the release of funds (i.e. by the Commonwealth) to the states; and Agreed sanctions for non-achievement of performance measures or other requirements in the training funding agreement.

The bilateral agreements provide an avenue for addressing local diversity within the framework of national consistency. They provide flexibility to implement national priorities and establish performance levels that are relevant to each jurisdiction. The bilateral agreements involve:

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State planning requirements and funding priorities; Performance reporting; and State-specific initiatives, particularly those supported by Commonwealth Government funding.

The Australian states retain the legislative responsibility for TVET, including regulation of the apprenticeship system, TVET providers, certification and ownership and management of the public TAFE providers. However, the states have adopted ‘model clauses’ for the regulation of TVET providers and the operation of their certification systems to ensure national consistency. The Commonwealth has also enacted legislation to give effect to its role in the national system, and as the basis of Commonwealth funding to the states and for its own programmes.

5.4 Policy Formation and Implementation A Ministerial Council of Vocational and Technical Education will continue to set national strategy and policy for the national system. The Commonwealth chairs the Ministerial Council and has two votes, while the states have one vote each. The council is supported by an independent secretariat. The Ministerial Council is advised by two committees: a National Industry Skills Committee and a Senior Officials Committee.

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5.5 Funding The Commonwealth and the states will continue to fund TVET on a joint basis. The Commonwealth now provides approximately one-third of funding allocated by the states to TVET; however, that proportion rises to almost 50% of funding if expenditure on its own TVET programmes (which has been rising) is taken into account. Commonwealth funds flow through bilateral agreements with the states to TVET providers. State authorities then allocate funds to providers in their states; principally to public TAFE providers through performance and funding agreements, but also to a diverse range of private and other non-government providers on a competitive basis through commercial contracts. TVET providers also access significant funding from non-governmental sources through fee-for-service programmes for individuals and through commercial contracts with enterprises.

5.6 Planning The Ministerial Council for Vocational and Technical Education will continue to agree on a National Strategy for Technical and Vocational Education using the same strategy for 2004–2010 that had been adopted by ANTA for that period. The strategy sets long-term strategic goals, priority areas for action and performance measures. Each state develops it own TVET plan, which corresponds to the national strategy and priorities, state priorities and, broadly, areas of planned delivery. This plan underpins the bilateral agreement with the Commonwealth and must be approved by the Commonwealth Minister prior to the release of Commonwealth funding to the state. Each state undertakes a more detailed planning process to assess industry and labour-market needs, skills shortages and social and equity needs as the basis of its funding allocations to TVET providers. This recognizes that the states are better placed to judge the specific needs of local and regional communities, although the Commonwealth strongly emphasizes the role of market mechanisms rather than central planning. TVET providers, particularly the large public TAFE institutions, also undertake a detailed planning process to develop a planned profile for delivery through negotiation with state training authorities. Again, the trend has been to devolve the planning process to the local level, but to providers themselves rather than through intermediary bodies.

5.7 Delivery and Certification Over 4,000 registered training organizations (TVET providers) deliver nationally recognized courses, principally through government-funded programmes but also, and increasingly, on a fee-for-service basis. TVET providers assess and certify their


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own students and issue nationally recognized qualifications carrying a ‘nationally recognized training’ logo. TVET qualifications are derived from the Australian Qualifications Framework and cover certificates I to IV and diplomas and advanced diplomas. Some TVET providers also offer associate degrees and regular degrees, and many higher-level TVET qualifications carry credit or articulate to higher education qualifications.

5.8 Regulation, Including Accreditation and Quality Assurance As outlined above, regulation of TVET providers remains a state responsibility, but is undertaken on a nationally consistent basis through the Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF). Under this framework, TVET providers are registered (accredited) in one state, but are able to operate in all states based on the AQTF standards. Providers are given a ‘scope of registration’, which means that they are able to offer national TVET qualifications within their scope of that registration. These national qualifications have largely supplanted the old system of courses which were accredited at the state level, although state-accredited courses still exist or may be developed, but are not equivalent to national qualifications. TVET providers are also audited on a regular basis, both in their state of initial registration and on their inter-state operations. State registration bodies also operate under nationally agreed standards. To oversee the operation of this framework, a National Quality Council has been established, initially within the ANTA structure, but now as a committee of the Ministerial Council. This National Quality Council is comprised of government, industry and provider representatives.

5.9 Accountability Under the agreements for the national training system, states will report annually on outcomes through an annual national report, which will also provide an aggregate national picture of outcomes for the TVET system. TVET data are now collected and reported on a consistent basis using national statistical standards through the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER), which also publishes data on enrolments, hours of delivery, student outcomes and TVET financing. NCVER also maintains a specific database on apprenticeship and traineeship statistics. Both the Commonwealth and state ministers and departments are also accountable to their respective governments and parliaments.

5.10 Achievements Compared to any other country operating under a federal system of government, Australia has done more to co-ordinate and harmonize the roles of national and

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sub-national levels of government in relation to TVET. Despite the many twists and turns in the development of the national training system in Australia, slowness in the implementation of some key aspects of the system and tensions between national and state bodies, its key features have been consolidated both in terms of the framework for skills and qualifications and the governance and co-ordination arrangements between the Commonwealth and the states. Some key outcomes include significant growth in TVET enrolments and outputs, with substantial growth reported between 1995 and 2003 (but with a decline between 2003 and 2004) as shown in Table 1.6 Another measure of output is the annual hours delivered by TVET providers which also show a significant increase between 1995 and 2003, with a slight decline evident in 2004 (Table 2). Growth in apprenticeships and traineeships and the provision of formal TVET in general secondary schools account for some of this growth. There is now a diverse and competitive training market in Australia with training providers able to operate and compete across state borders, although concerns about the quality of some providers continue to be expressed. Expenditure on TVET in Australia increased significantly in the initial years of the ANTA agreement, but has only increased slightly since then in nominal terms and has decreased in real terms. This reflects on-going debates between the Commonwealth and the states about the respective contributions to TVET funding. Much of the growth in TVET in Australia in recent years is due to substantial increases in efficiency. In terms of national and regional dimensions of TVET policy in Australia, the issue of funding is its greatest challenge and the greatest source of tension. It is also the only issue that cannot be resolved by ministers responsible for TVET and their agencies and reflects wider debates about fiscal roles and the contributions of the Commonwealth and state governments. The positive outcomes outlined above in terms of growth in participation and outputs may or may not have been achieved without the full range of complex governance arrangements which have been put in place to manage the roles of, and relationships between, the national and state governments. Table 1 TVET students 1995 to 2004, Australia

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Male (’000)

Female (’000)

Total (’000)

657.9 689.8 729.5 761.6 819.2 865.2 857.3 868.4 875.9 828.9

585.9 623.8 671.5 713.5 787.1 836.2 814.6 809.5 834.4 760.7

1,268.9 1,341.2 1,449.1 1,509.8 1,614.6 1,707.9 1,679.1 1,682.9 1,717.8 1,595.2

Source: NCVER, 2005.


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Table 2 Annual hours by sex, 1995 to 2004, Australia Year

Male (’000)

Female (’000)

Total (’000)

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

136,115.8 141,599.2 147,287.8 147,700.9 155,500.5 161,791.4 176,902.1 177,950.5 178,849.1 173,268.3

117,467.3 123,590.5 132,671.9 133,753.0 142,486.9 148,756.6 162,916.8 166,725.7 172,229.0 168,659.6

254,431.6 268,036.4 283,754.7 283,447.6 298,919.8 311,340.8 340,406.3 345,065.9 351,714.7 342,396.7

Source: NCVER, 2005.

From the point of view of employers, students and TVET providers, the most important outcome has been the development of a national system of standards, qualifications and accreditation of providers to ensure portability of certification across state borders and an increasingly consistent process of provider registration to underpin employer, student and community confidence in outcomes.

5.11 Other Regional Dimensions The ANTA National Strategy for 2004–2010 contained a far more explicit recognition of the role of TVET for communities and regions through one of four key priorities: Communities and regions will be strengthened economically and socially through learning and employment. [. . .] Integrated learning and employment solutions will support regional economic, social, cultural and environmental development and sustainability. Vocational education and training will stimulate interest in learning. It will strengthen the capacity of TAFE and other providers and brokers to partner with local government and nongovernment agencies, businesses and industry clusters. It will encourage local planning and innovation and help communities deal with change and take advantage of opportunities for growth (ANTA, 2003).

A range of small initiatives have been undertaken both nationally and in individual states to support this objective. However, at present, it is fair to say that these initiatives are not significant or mainstream. TAFE institutions, particularly in rural and outer metropolitan areas, have always played important regional and community development roles, but they argue that these roles are not sufficiently recognized in their performance and funding agreements with the government. Some support is provided for community-based providers particularly offering programmes to adults returning to study, but this support is mostly evident in Victoria and, to a lesser extent, in New South Wales. A promising national initiative has been undertaken through a national project around the concept of ‘skills eco-systems’, which are defined as:

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concentrations of workforce skills and knowledge in an industry or a region. They are shaped by:

r r r r r r

the business environment/competitive pressures, inter-firm relationships, access to finance and product markets; the technology in use; the role of government and industry regulators; modes of engaging labour and the operation of labour markets; production processes and the way work is organized; the quality of education and training and its ability to meet industry’s and workers’ developmental needs (Australia. DEST, 2005).

Under this initiative, eight demonstration projects linking TVET providers to enterprises and community organizations to identify and address skills needs have been funded together with research and evaluation into outcomes, dissemination of outcomes and the establishment of an on-line network and forum. However, it is far from clear whether these innovative approaches to skills and workforce development, which are also emerging in other countries, will be become an accepted and growing feature of the TVET system in Australia. It has been argued that the complex nature of the intergovernmental arrangements now affecting the TVET system in Australia, and in particular accountability and reporting arrangements (using conventional measures such as enrolments and student contact hours), inhibit rather than support these innovative practices and the broader social and regional development role of TVET. Noonan posed the matter as follows: The key question is whether or not Australia is poised to make the transition from a largely standards- and qualification-based system, to a broader construct of workforce preparation, which subsumes, but goes much further than, current approaches to knowledge and skills and the means by which they are acquired? [. . .] The need to make that transition is implied in some of the state and national policy and strategy rhetoric and in research findings, but has not been explicitly acknowledged to date (Noonan, 2003).

Many other countries operating under both unitary and devolved TVET systems are facing the same question. The challenge for Australia is now to make sure that the benefits of building an integrated, national TVET system supports, rather than limits, real innovation at the regional level.

Notes 1. In this chapter the word ‘state’ refers to a sub-national area within a federal nation. 2. Governance for this purpose has a broad meaning covering all aspects of the management, funding, delivery and regulation of TVET. 3. The article by Huggins & Harries (2004) uses the concept of a skills economy and outlines a case study of a programme in Wales aimed at shifting the costs of skills development from employees and employers to assist in overcoming market failure. 4. Vocational education and training (VET) has, until recently, been the term used to describe TVET in Australia, but the Commonwealth Government has now adopted the term technical and vocational education and training (TVET).


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5. For an analysis of this decision see Noonan, 2004. 6. Growth since 1992 has been even stronger than is shown here, but cannot be accurately reported due to changes and improvements in statistical collection.

References Australia. Department of Education, Science and Training. 2005. Framework for the New National Training System. Canberra: DEST. Australian National Training Authority. 2003 Australia’s National Strategy for Vocational Education and Training, 2004–2010. This information can now be found on the website of DEST: Huggins, S.; Harries, S. 2004. The skills economy and workforce development: a regional approach to policy intervention. European journal of education, vol. 39, no. 1. National Centre for Vocational Education Research. 2005. Australian vocational education and training statistics: students and courses 2004. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER. <www.ncver.edu. au/statistic/publications/1602.html> Noonan, P. 2003. Rethinking VET: some major policy implications. Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, Centre for Economics of Education and Training. <www.education.monash.edu. au/centres/ceet/docs/conferencepapers/2003confpapernoonan.pdf> Noonan, P. 2004. The post-election policy context for VET. Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, Centre for Economics of Education and Training. <www.education.monash.edu.au/ centres/ceet/docs/conferencepapers/2004confpapernoonan.pdf> Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2001. Cities regions and the new learning economy. Paris: OECD.


Chapter VI.5

Planning for Education and Work: Alternatives and Issues Dennis R. Herschbach

1 Introduction Planning is vitally important in the world of education and training. There are immense and ever-increasing pressures to provide more and better services. Policymakers in many countries are attempting to fundamentally restructure the ways that youth and adults prepare for employment in order to make more effective use of limited resources, expand opportunity, help alleviate poverty and address the skill demands generated by an ever-pervasive global economy. Policy-makers look to planning as a means of bringing programme development and resource allocation and use into line with labour-market and social development objectives. However, there is considerably more awareness today than in the past of the complexities of planning for technical and vocational education and training (TVET). The outcomes of many national planning efforts undertaken in the past can best be described as highly mixed. Overall, there has been a general failure to take fully into account the critical importance of implementation. Many planning efforts have gone astray because decision-making was too remote from the practical issues of programme implementation. Today planning is approached with a greater awareness of the methodological limitations and complexity of the issues confronted. Planning activities continue to be central to TVET. Despite inherent constraints and limitations, policy-makers within TVET have long-relied on various planning models to supply useful information for making decisions about the implementation of programmes. Typically, TVET planners are involved with formulating policy, exploring the application of various education and training options, determining the level and use of financial and human resources, addressing the concerns of different constituency groups, developing and implementing programme plans and identifying and assessing education and training outcomes. The purpose of this chapter is to examine basic TVET planning alternatives and highlight the fundamental assumptions, limitations and issues underlying their application. We will also examine measures planners are taking to address the conceptual, methodological and technical constraints that they face in the economic, social and political space within which they work. We will also explore alternative planning approaches that offer promising options to TVET decision-makers. These alternatives attempt to go beyond some of the common assumptions that have traditionally driven much of TVET planning and project a more application-guided, inclusive approach to planning. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VI.5, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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2 Levels of Planning Planning is applied at three basic levels (Herschbach & Davis, 2000). Macroplanning is conducted at the national level usually through ministries of planning or labour and is used to establish nationwide priorities for the use of education and training resources. In the decades following the Second World War, macro-level planning also came into prominence among international development agencies, such as the World Bank, the Organization of American States (OAS), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNESCO, among others. Development economists were enamoured with the prospect of linking ‘objective’ data with education and training investment decisions. Macro-planning continues to be widely applied today, but with greater realization of its inherent limitations (Bertrand, 2004; Woodhall, 2004). Macro-level planning is used to make decisions, for example, about the relative investment in elementary in relation to investments in secondary, vocational or tertiary education; or planners examine the comparative advantages of investment in one type of TVET over another. Planning projections tend to be long term and economic criteria figure large in decision-making. Manpower forecasting, cost/benefit and cost-effectiveness studies are the methodologies most commonly applied. Social demand data also are commonly used for macro-level planning, especially in countries with less centralized economies. In this case, planning decisions are primarily political rather than economic in order to support the demands of specific groups or to address national priorities. Increasingly, combinations of data are used by planners, and there is less overall reliance on a single data source or planning methodology in the search for better results. After over five decades and more of international experience with national-level macro-planning, however, considerable scepticism continues to prevail over the usefulness and reliability of planning projections (Bertrand, 2004; Farrell, 1997; Woodhall, 2004). The acceleration of economic globalization accompanied by technological change, moreover, makes it increasingly difficult to engage in meaningful macro-level planning regardless of the methodology employed. Established national plans projected into the future become increasingly irrelevant. Today, there is considerably more focus on micro-level planning applied at the local or regional level, incorporating the use of qualitative methodologies and participatory approaches to planning. In contrast to macro-level planning, there is a shift in emphasis from examining the optimal potential use of educational resources across the total national educational and training sector to making regional or local implementation decisions. One focus is on the relative value of one kind of TVET investment over another given local capacity to implement programmes. Planners want to gauge the probability of successfully implementing programmes given available local resources, specific labour-market needs, potential student groups to be served, the capacity of facilities, local employer relations and placement opportunities, among a number of factors conditioning the capacity to develop and maintain

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local TVET programmes. There is less emphasis on the regulation and control of TVET and more on exploring the multiple ways to potentially enhance workforce preparation. Micro-level planning makes use of cost-effectiveness and cost/benefit studies to assess the relative value of one decision over another. Micro-level planning also makes use of elements of consensual and strategic planning to assess environmental factors, involve stakeholders, clarify objectives, analyse critical problems and identify possible courses of action. Interactive and contingency planning models tend to be used. A limiting factor concerning macro-level planning is the inability to effectively transfer policy decisions into action at the implementation level, even if longterm projections are valid. Macro-level planning tends to overlook critically important organizational characteristics and local conditions that impact decisively on implementation. It does little good, for example, to know that a particular TVET programme intervention theoretically yields greater rates of return based on limited sampling if it is difficult to implement the programme given local conditions. TVET is conducted within a larger organizational structure that establishes the context for implementation, including, for example, policy and planning units, support agencies and line agencies, as well as individual institutions delivering services. Often employer or community groups play a decisive programmedevelopment role. Micro-level planning focuses on bringing together organizational components and developing communication networks and problem-solving structures. Programme and curricular planning is yet a third level and occurs primarily at the local or institutional level. The focus is on operational and programming elements, such as management structures, staffing patterns, student selection, course construction, instructional methods, class size and resource allocation, among others. Planners want to optimize the internal efficiency of TVET programming by determining what combination of operational and programming elements will produce the best results for a given resource. A great deal of interactive planning is used to continually assess programme implementation. To be sure, local educators may work from a planning document prepared at a higher organizational level, but this level of planning requires analysis and action at the local level in order to avoid static and faulty implementation.

3 Rational Planning Perspectives Planning helps to develop an education and training map, a picture of where we are now and plausible programming avenues to follow. It indicates how to get to where we want to go, as well as the roadblocks to be overcome and the means that we need. There are multiple planning models to consider, each better for one purpose more than another, and each with its strengths and limitations. The literature in the field generally supports three broad categories of planning models: rational; interactive or consensual; and the political (Adams, 1991, 1994; Farrell, 1997).

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What are termed ‘rational’ or ‘technicist’ planning models, including manpower planning and variations of cost/benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis, are the most widely used at the macro- and to a lesser extent the micro-level. Rational models are characterized by strong agreement on a set of externally defined policy objectives, or goals that are taken as givens and constitute the starting point of the planning process that itself is assumed to be linear. It is also assumed that the planning environment is stable and that sound educational and training projections can be made into the future—both highly questionable assumptions. Various methods are used to collect and analyse labour-force data, which are used to formulate decisions about the kind, scope and character of projected education and training. Since the models themselves are thought to be scientifically and objectively defined, they are considered to be universally applied with little modification, regardless of the economic, social or political context of the individual country or locality. Data collection and analysis tend to be limited to quantifiable indicators. Little attention tends to be given to cultural and human factors in planning calculations and, when such factors are considered, they tend to be factored in as relatively stable, invariant variables with a set, assigned value. Decision-making tends to be centralized, top-down and expert driven (Adams, 1994; Bertrand, 2004; Farrell, 1997; Herschbach & Davis, 2000; Woodhall, 2004). Rational planning models are still widely used today, particularly among economists attracted by the prospect of making decisions for optimizing resourceuse based on ‘hard’ data, but overall within the planning community there tends to be less acceptance at face value of the results. There is greater emphasis on the use of a combination of information from different sources, including the application of interactive and political planning models. Some, as Bertrand (2004) and Godfrey (1997) observe, question whether more traditional concepts of rational planning have any valid current use.

3.1 Manpower Planning Among rational planning models, manpower planning or assessment in various forms is widely used by TVET planners and policy-makers. Its primary use in the past was by planning agencies at the national or regional level to establish both short- and long-term macro-level education and training priorities. Education and training targets, along with resource allocations, are accordingly assigned to the various service providers with responsibility for labour-force development. As was previously mentioned, today as an approach to macro-level forecasting manpower planning on a national scale has fallen somewhat out of favour because results are often highly inaccurate. Long-term forecasts tend to be off the mark, and there is greater awareness of labour-market issues that go significantly beyond forecasts and that require additional planning insights: coping with rapidly changing labour requirements; issues of unemployment; lack of opportunity; poverty; and the efficient operation of institutions, for example. Applications of manpower


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planning, nevertheless, continue to be used to examine areas of critical need, and for micro-level planning at the institutional or industry level as a training management and guidance tool. Manpower planning also continues to be widely used in developing countries because of the pressure to make optimal use of very scarce human and financial resources, even when forecasts are inaccurate. The emphasis today, however, is on making available timely and relevant information that can be used for immediate programming decisions; there is considerably less emphasis on long-term forecasting (Bertrand, 2004). 3.1.1 Supply and Demand Match Planning procedures are straightforward (Bertrand, 2004). Manpower assessment is based on the idea of matching the supply of educated and trained individuals with current and projected labour-market demand. A good match results in the efficient use of resources and contributes to maintaining the economy. Workers are classified in different economic sectors and occupations according to the type of work that they perform. Estimates of education and training requirements are linked with the classification. Through survey methods, labour requirements are identified and projected into the future based on assumed economic growth trends. Birth rates, immigration and migration rates, and death and replacement rates provide an indication of the future supply of workers. The supply of potential workforce entrants when compared with projections of future labour requirements gives an indication of education and training requirements. These requirements can be broken down by region, sector, occupation, job or any other meaningful unit of analysis. The projected requirements are compared with current and projected supply, giving an indication of future deficits or surpluses in the supply, and thus the magnitude and kind of TVET required. TVET training targets are accordingly set. 3.1.2 Issues and Constraints The planner is confronted with a number of issues in the collection and use of manpower data. Among the most intractable are the quality and appropriateness of data. In many countries, reasonably complete data that are reliable over time are difficult—if not impossible—to obtain. Projected economic growth patterns and labour-force forecasts are often little more than informed guesswork. Moreover, labour-market forecasts, regardless of their immediate validity, tend not to be reliable over time, even when there are relatively sound initial data. As forecasts are projected into the future, projections become less reliable. Training demand is a product of economic activity that is continually subject to change. Technological innovation, government policy positions, the availability of investment capital, recession or economic expansion, and international competition are among other changing factors that impact on both immediate and long-term education and training requirements. The potent influence of globalization is challenging all planning models based on data confined to national boundaries.

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In dynamic, rapidly-changing economies in particular, projections tend to be too static to capture labour-force demand spurred on by change. Projections at one point in time tend not to stand up as time goes on and often are too erratic for decisionmaking (Dougherty, 1989; Herschbach & Davis, 2000). Even if reliable data are available, it is often difficult to tie findings directly to programme design. One reason is that most data collected through government agencies are simply aggregated at too high a level for programme development uses. A second reason is that even if data were sufficiently disaggregated, rarely is there sufficient information about either the quality of the labour force or of the education and training supply to make good decisions. It is not enough to know quantitative requirements without also being able to assess the quality of both the system that prepares workers and the relative competencies of the existing workforce. Without this knowledge, the potential to structure TVET programmes so as to contribute to improvement of labour-force performance is limited (Godfrey, 1997). Similarly, gross data masks important ways that individual employers mould their workforce. There are over-simplified assumptions about education and training and the dynamics of job structuring (Bertrand, 2004). Data collection and analysis is based on the assumption that there is a highly segmented or multiple-tiered labour market with strictly defined, stable work categories. The categories that define how data are collected, however, may not represent the ways that tasks are actually functionally configured in the workplace by individual employers. The products and production practices of individual firms define work skills in ways that spill across formal categories used to collect data. In actual practice, there may be considerable substitution and on-going change in the workforce. Unless there is sensitivity to this fact, the tendency is to view programme and course design in very narrow terms. There also are many intervening factors beyond the scope of the planner that complicate the use of labour-market data, even if they are reliable, sufficiently detailed and stable over time. Risk aversion, government tax incentives, protectionist import policies, minimum wage legislation, wage differentials, guaranteed employment schemes, occupational mobility, the off-shoring of job functions—these and others are examples of intervening factors that influence the market place, often in unanticipated ways. Not only do these factors condition training demand at a given time, but they also make it difficult to obtain, interpret and use reliable labour-market information that is reasonably valid over time (Godfrey, 1997). There remain significant gaps in our knowledge of how to link outside intervening factors with planning models. Manpower planning tends not to be sensitive enough to capture the full impact of such factors in ways that inform decision-making. The relationship of such intervening factors one to another and to other planning variables changes over time.

3.2 Toward Better Manpower Planning Given these limitations, manpower planning needs to be approached with caution. Many of the applications today try to account for the limitations (Bertrand, 2004).


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One option is to limit planning to a few, crucial occupational sectors and to collect more data in greater scope and depth. This will yield more information about structuring specific TVET programmes. Another option is to limit forecasting to short-term, micro-level planning in key industries, specific localities or regions. Councils of local employers and service providers work together to adjust TVET to what are perceived to be immediate, real-employment needs in a given catchment area (Farrell, 1997). Focused, disaggregated data over short-term projections applied to a limited number of occupational categories are reasonably reliable. Perhaps the most promising approach today is to shift emphasis from forecasting potential labour demand and setting targets, to improving and speeding up access to data so that service providers and employers alike have information readily available for making decisions. The emphasis has shifted from centralized training decisions, to facilitating the supply and use of data in the local training market. Market signals in the form of job vacancies and surpluses are used to determine market changes in anticipation of adjustments in the supply of labour (Herschbach & Davis, 2000). Godfrey (1997) argues that: ‘Detailed forecasts are not needed. What is needed is reliable and timely information about the state of the various labour markets for qualified people and a structure of incentives that will reward both those who acquire and those who impart skills’ (p. 208). Mechanisms for tracking programme results are helpful. Data about the qualitative improvement of the labour market are fed back into the planning process. Certification systems linked with planning, for example, are used to gauge competence but also to incorporate changing skill requirements through re-certification. Effective certification programmes link closely with the work environment and are a primary check on education and training relevance and quality. The link of certification with planning provides a powerful tool for decision-makers (Herschbach & Campbell, 2000). Yet another response to incomplete or limited data is to shift micro-level planning from highly specialized training to more generic technical categories that help build the foundation for future, specialized training near or at the time of employment. The major focus of pre-employment preparation is on the acquisition of requisite academic and technical skills that enable individuals to pursue further preparation. Short-term, specialized work preparation is carried out in conjunction with employing establishments, often at the work site.

3.3 Cost/Benefit Analysis Largely promoted by economists in international development organizations, cost/ benefit analysis is a way to link decisions about TVET supply with economic criteria (Share, 1999; Woodhall, 2004). Choices about potential TVET interventions are based on the assumed monetary return of a particular TVET programme over its projected life-span. TVET is treated as an investment, and programmes yielding

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an apparent higher return in relation to cost are considered the best investments to make. Both private or social benefits and costs can be calculated. Social benefits include increased productivity, better health, greater tax revenue, increased opportunity for marginalized populations, among others. Private rates-of-return give an indication of the incentive for individuals to invest in TVET, and include such benefits as higher wages, promotion opportunities, employment stability and occupational mobility. Typically, benefits and costs are figured by comparing the projected lifetime earnings that individuals can expect from different types and levels of TVET investments with the associated private and social costs. Factors that are typically used include direct and indirect instructional costs, teachers’ salaries, tuition fees, material, equipment and facilities maintenance and upkeep. Both benefits and costs are converted into monetary terms discounted to present value. Interest and inflation rates also are calculated (Woodhall, 2004). Cost/benefit, also commonly referred to as rate-of-return, analysis tends to be primarily conducted at the national planning level because of the considerable resources and time required. The results are used for making national or regional resource allocation decisions. Comparisons, for example, may be made between primary, secondary, vocational and tertiary education nationwide. Or comparisons may be made between different kinds of TVET offerings, but this is less common. The attempt is to determine the effectiveness of past resource use measured by wage differentials, with those education and training interventions yielding placements at higher wages considered as more favourable investments. 3.3.1 Questionable Assumptions There are several basic assumptions fundamental to cost/benefit analysis that are highly questionable (Bennell, 1998; Herschbach & Davis, 2000). First, although segmented labour-market theory is largely rejected, the extent of assumed potential substitution in the workforce is often carried to extremes. One kind or level of education is assumed to be capable of preparing individuals for multiple work roles, with the question of specific skill acquisition largely ignored. Even though studies often show high rates of return for elementary education, for example, the act of simply attending elementary education does not always result in the acquisition of relevant job skills. Investments must be made in other types of workforce preparation, even if the rates of return are not so high. Electronic technicians, fitter-machinists, doctors, accountants, warehouse workmen and engineers, among many others, require specific skill training, but to know that one kind of education yields relatively high investments gives few clues to planners about the amount of investment, if any, that should be made in other kinds of education and training interventions with lower returns. Second, wage rates are not always the best indicator of social or economic need and thus education and training investment. Social status, prejudice and tradition, government wage and employment policies, strong employer or worker groups, significant shifts in labour-market dynamics—these and other factors contribute to


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policy distortions based on an analysis of wage rates alone. Market imperfections make rate-of-return studies often a poor measure of productivity and the basis of decision-making. Then again, such studies also assume that present rates of return will continue into the future, but this is unlikely to happen because the ‘normal’ changing balance between supply and demand modifies returns. Another major problem with rate-of-return studies is that the methodology and data are often so flawed that the results lack validity. Widely varying time frames are often used for sampling. It also is hard to obtain complete data free of sampling bias. Indirect social variables are often overlooked (Bennell, 1996, 1998). 3.3.2 Results and Uses of Studies Early rate-of-return studies consistently show that elementary education yields the highest return on educational investments, followed by secondary education, followed in turn by vocational and higher education. Recent studies, however, question these findings and show higher gains for both secondary and higher education. Studies of higher education point to the fact that the impact of indirect social benefits is largely ignored in much of the earlier work (Task Force on Higher Education and Society, 2000). This is a problem that appears to characterize much of the rate-of-return work in general. In the case of TVET, early studies (Psacharopoulos & Loxley, 1985; Psacharopoulos & Woodhall, 1985) generally cast doubt on its relative value when compared with investments in secondary-level general education. Technical training is more costly to implement, but studies generally do not examine all of the benefits, such as wage differentials over a long period of time. And importantly, crucial social and political factors that distort results are often overlooked. Consideration is not given to the benefit of social and occupational mobility, for example, or to the fact that wages are depressed in some occupational categories by politically enforced social norms, labour policy and practice. In more recent studies over the past two decades comparing returns of TVET with ‘general’ academic programmes and schools, the findings are mixed. A number of studies show that TVET yields equal or greater returns than higher education (Bishop & Mane, 2004; Gray & Neng-Tang, 1992). In the most comprehensive study of TVET, Metcalf (1985) found that TVET investments consistently yield between 10% to 20% return, equalling or surpassing investments in capital equipment and plant and in other forms of education and training. In a comparative study of TVET in OECD countries, Cohn and Addison (1998) found that returns on TVET appeared highest in the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, with the lowest returns in the Nordic countries due primarily to flatter lifetime earning profiles. In a recent work, Bishop and Mane (2005) found that in the United States throughout the 1990s there were very high rates of return on advanced secondary-level TVET courses. There were negative effects or no significant benefits for academic, personal interests and introductory vocational courses. However, as suggested earlier, many of the studies comparing different types of schooling do not sufficiently take into account ability levels, family background and social status—factors among others that significantly impact on earnings.

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TVET tends to yield higher social than private returns (Ashton & Sung, 2000). Rates of return are generally higher in developing than developed countries because of the overall scarcity of human capital. Both the private and social rates of return for women appear higher than for men when indirect benefits and externalities are fully taken into account (Woodhall, 2004). One of the most useful functions of rate-of-return analysis is to point planners to crucial questions that should be examined. It makes planners, for example, think about the relative value of one kind of TVET investment over another, the relative cost of different staff training alternatives, the benefits of the use of one instructional modality over another or of ways to reduce training costs and increases benefits. Rate-of-return analysis is also useful for examining fee levels, the relative value of public and private TVET investments, the effects on employment opportunity, potential wastage and inefficiencies, and alternative financing practices. Perhaps most important, rate-of-return analysis helps to bolster claims for an appropriate share of education budgets with ‘hard’ analytical data (Herschbach & Davis, 2000; Woodhall, 2004). Rate-of-return analysis, however, provides data that have to be used with caution and restraint. As suggested, cost/benefit analysis tells little about the optimal level of investment; it does not provide numerical targets for planners. Planners also are not given enough information to determine whether low returns are because a particular TVET programme is inappropriate to labour-market requirements (external efficiency), or because of poor programme quality (internal efficiency). Then too, estimates along with the data that they are based on can change rapidly, and labourmarket distortions and externalities are difficult to deal with. Judgements should be taken as approximations that can best be used along with other forms of information. Perhaps the best that can be expected is that indicators are provided that are useful to consider (Woodhall, 2004).

3.4 Cost-Effectiveness Studies Because potential earnings are not always the only, or best, indicator for making policy decisions, cost-effectiveness studies are used to broaden the scope of analysis. Included are potential, indirect ‘non-economic’ benefits, such as programme completion and placement rates, achievement levels, employment stability, improvement in the quality of life, job satisfaction and occupational and social mobility, among other factors. These are referred to by economists as ‘spill-over’ benefits or ‘externalities’. It is usually easier to identify relevant externalities than to determine how best to measure the benefits, however. The assignment of a monetary value, if any, is largely informed guesswork. Non-monetary factors, such as comparisons in differences in achievement, completion rates or labour-force participation rates, are often used. Sometimes, the theoretical cost of alternative means of achieving the results is calculated. Considerable work remains to be done to identify relevant variables and to determine how best to measure the associated direct and indirect, individual and social


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benefits. Nevertheless, there is growing agreement among planners that cost/benefit studies consistently underestimate the value of educational investments, and that cost-effectiveness studies provide a more comprehensive analysis. This is especially true in the case of TVET because, overall, the population served includes a greater proportion in some countries of dispossessed and marginalized citizens who can especially benefit by the opportunities presented. The lifetime value of the spill-over benefits may be considerable. Both private and social returns may be considerable. There is increased renewed interest in cost-effectiveness studies and in issues of how best to measure the associated externalities (Woodhall, 2004). In cases where significant non-economic benefits come into play, cost-effectiveness analysis is the preferred option. Cost-effectiveness studies are useful at the local or system level to make comparisons between different teaching methods, varying lengths of class periods, or different combinations of instructional inputs, such as textbooks, direct teacher instruction, workbooks and educational technology—human and material inputs that impact on the quality and effectiveness of instruction. There is growing support among planners that the best way to use the results of cost/benefit and cost-effectiveness studies may be in conjunction with manpower planning and other data (Woodhall, 2004). Short-term forecasts indicate ways that the labour force can be modified to address alternative patterns of labour supply; an analysis of returns in turn yields information on the wage differentials and cost implications and benefits of new labour-force supply patterns. Combined, the planner has available information about the potential real cost of labour-market supply and demand decisions.

4 Interactive Planning Models The limitations of top-down, rational planning models have caused planners to turn to more qualitative, participatory approaches that take into consideration human, institutional and contextual factors impinging on programme implementation. Planning activity is primarily focused at the micro, programme and curricular levels. What are called interactive or consensual planning models start with the assumption that labour-market environments are inherently unstable, that generalizations are difficult to make, and that meaningful action, and thus planning, is derived from understanding. There is no one set planning model to follow. Plans evolve through social interaction, experience, consensus and agreement. Labour-market and placement data may be used, but they are used primarily for the purpose of generating understanding rather than specifying training targets. The relevance of planning rests on agreed choices made by the individuals directly involved and affected by the decisions (Herschbach & Davis, 2000). Interactive planning places emphasis on stakeholder involvement in shared decision-making through all phases of planning. There is considerable concern for unintended effects of decisions, and this can be checked, in part, by broad participation in planning decisions. While goals serve as the starting point of planning to

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suggest direction, they are modified through an on-going, formative process of dialogue to build understanding and explore alternatives (Adams, 1994; Farrell, 1997; Herschbach & Davis, 2000; Warwick, 1980).

4.1 Planning Elements Plans are considered tentative and are expected to evolve as implementation proceeds. Planning is conceived as an adaptive process sensitive to diverse interests, shifting power relationships and compromise and trade-offs. Successful programme implementation is gauged by the extent to which change is introduced and accommodated, stakeholder representation is achieved, and programming is sustained over time. Interactive planning incorporates a process for formulating the plan as well as strategies for implementation. While there are multiple variations of interactive planning, typical elements include the following (Finlay, 1998; Rondinelli, Middleton & Verspoor, 1990):

r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r

Identify the relevant stakeholders; identify the planning problem and explore all aspects through the eyes of the different stakeholders. Develop recognition of the need to address the planning problem. Based on dialogue, reformulate and re-conceptualize the planning problem in terms that reflect consensus and incorporate the viewpoints of all stakeholders. Analyse the background and critical antecedent conditions of the problem. Clarify the historical sources of conflict and problems that are barriers to change and that are integral to finding solutions. Through dialogue, uncover the inter-subjective meaning, values and motives that are held by participants. Identify and clarify inconsistencies, contradictions and value conflicts; clarify ambiguities. Formulate a plan that addresses the planning problem while at the same time accommodates the views and agendas of stakeholders; reach consensus on the plan. Analyse the potential for implementation. Assess the potential to sustain programming in relation to financial, institutional and human resources. Develop strategies for implementation. Develop strategies for formative, on-going evaluation, modification and plan reformulation. Develop strategies for feedback to stakeholders and modification of original goals. Maintain close working relationships with stakeholder groups. Continually monitor the implementation context to make sure that programming does not overwhelm the resources base.

Since the focus of planning tends to be at the micro and programme and curricular levels, considerable effort is directed to identifying and addressing conditions that influence implementation. Within a given planning context there is an interrelated


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set of factors largely outside the technical dimensions of TVET programming that impact directly or indirectly on implementation, such as political influence, cultural and social norms, infrastructure support and government policy positions—to name a few. The presence of these factors, often in subtle form, contributes to determining whether or not a particular TVET intervention can be implemented and successfully sustained (Atchoarena & Delluc, 2002; Warwick, 1980). There are also more directly related technical constraints, such as available financing, organizational capability, and technical and human resources, for example, that must be carefully balanced with anticipated programme design. Plans may make provision for strengthening management capacity, training staff, building support units, overcoming political resistance, constructing new facilities or forming community support groups, among other interventions necessary to bolster successful implementation. There is a marked broadening of the planning focus from primarily determining the kinds and amount of TVET to provide to making programmes work given the characteristics and constraints of the local implementing environment.

4.2 Applications Variations of consensual planning, even if in abbreviated form, are used widely in TVET. The most common example is the use of technical advisory committees to plan and monitor local programmes. In some cases, local ‘craft’ committees composed of potential employers, instructors and other concerned individuals are set up for different technical areas. In other cases, more general advisory committees are formed. The German ‘dual training system’, for example, makes use of four stakeholder groups: federal government, state government, employers and trade organizations. Policies, requirements and regulations for the state are established through consensus, and TVET is linked closely with the labour market through employer-based training. But the formalism of the system tends to stifle change (Brand, 1998). The Nordic countries, in particular, place reliance on consensual policy formation and planning (Lasonen & Rauhala, 2000). Elsewhere, in a number of countries there is a movement from centralized planning and programming to decentralized, consensual planning and programme implementation (Finlay, Niven & Young, 1998; Herschbach & Campbell, 2000). This enables local communities to more readily adapt to the transformation of occupations in the context of globalization and technological change. Interactive, consensual planning is widely used by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This has resulted in a broad concept of work preparation that includes concern for addressing non-technical, but nevertheless important, considerations that help to empower individuals and increase their probability of successfully navigating the labour market. In the case of marginalized and disadvantaged segments of the population in particular, TVET is most effective when it is combined with other interventions, such as income maintenance, child-care, literacy training, health

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services and micro-loans that enable individuals to participate fully in TVET and to make full use of their education and training. Bosch (1998), for example, reports on the Education and Work programme in Chile that concurrently provides vocational training while promoting personal development for 15- to 30-year-old, poverty-level individuals. The technical training component of the programme is implemented along with consideration through interactive planning issues of support networks, food and shelter, physical abuse and awareness-raising, among others.

4.3 Influence and Constraints Consensual planning has been helpful in broadening the base of planning and in generating greater appreciation of the complexities of the human, institutional and cultural context within which TVET programmes are planned and implemented. One of the most important influences of interactive planning has been to sensitize rational planners to the importance of communication, participation and the use of non-quantifiable data outside the realm of conventional labour-market information. Consensual planning has helped to temper what are otherwise abstract decisions based on limited data with a greater appreciation of the broader range of planning concerns. The concept of what constitutes preparation for work also has been extended to encompass concern for personal development, support networks, long-term interventions and services and initiatives designed to break down barriers to full workforce participation. There is greater awareness of the need to extend planning participation to groups typically left out of the process because of class, ethnicity, gender or other barriers that relegate them to the social and economic fringes. In this regard, consensual planning shares territory with political planning. Consensual planning also goes beyond the technical concerns of programme planning and implementation to probe the ethical and value questions that surround the choices and opportunities work preparation presents. It makes planners and educators think about the personal and social consequences of TVET. It introduces more than just economic concerns into the planning equation. Consensual planning, however, invites conflict. Different stakeholders bring their own agenda to the planning table. Planning may be messy, inclusive and riddled with ambiguity. The competing claims of participants may prevent the consensus necessary to move forward. A major challenge is to accommodate the inherent value conflicts and competing agendas. It also is difficult to achieve truly representative membership in the planning process. Political positioning tends to be achieved most effectively by those who already have power. Long-term, more inclusive goals may be subverted in the interest of more immediate short-term benefits of interest groups with the most influence. Representatives of the status quo will work to maintain their position. ‘Changes brought about as a result of stakeholder involvement, though a participative democratic process, are likely to be gradualist and evolutionary rather than revolutionary,’


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Finlay (1998, p. 9) observes. But an evolutionary process based on consensus in the long-run holds open the door to more deeply-rooted and permanent change.

5 The Political Model A third category of planning is the political, also known as transactional or incremental, planning (Adams, 1991, 1994; Warwick, 1980). Political planning draws from both rational and consensual planning traditions. The political model starts with the assumption that planning cannot be separated easily from the influence of politics and power. Planning decisions result from negotiation among what may be highly competitive groups. Decisions are arrived at through bargaining, negotiation and compromise. The quantifiable data of rational planning lend legitimacy to planning decisions, but at the same time conflicting interests, political leverage and the exercise of power figure large in the final planning outcomes, which themselves may change in response to shifting power relationships. As Adams (1994) observes: ‘Even if alternative educational futures are quantifiable and optimum educational investments are specifiable, such quantification takes on meaning only within the context of political competition, conflict and the exercise of power’ (p. 1809). The planner works in an environment that is recognized as dynamic, uncertain and subject to influences that may not always be initially recognized or constant. Decision-making proceeds incrementally as planners learn from experience and gain support. The planner is alert to the historical, political and organizational context. Coalition building and informal goal setting may be initially more important than the specific content of the plan. The degree that ‘rational’ decisions are made is conditioned by political involvement. Implementing and sustaining change relies on mobilizing and maintaining political support.

5.1 The Dynamics of Political Planning When planning is primarily perceived as a set of technical exercises designed to allocate resources, it may fall seriously short because of the failure to recognize and accommodate existing political dynamics. Classrooms and schools are political and cultural constructs, and unless power and political influence are taken into account, it is often not possible to effectively transmit the intention of plans into practical programming. Technically sound and coherent plans, in fact, may be more difficult to implement than less well-designed interventions that have considerably more stakeholder support. While rational planning is framed by issues of efficiency and effectiveness, political planning is highly responsive to the social and political context within which decision-making is carried out. Planners are receptive to the influence of power and politics that can take a number of obvious, as well as indirect, forms. These include, for example:

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the control of educational policy and resources by certain ethnic, clan, religious or political groups; a policy environment hostile to TVET; social rules operating in society that exclude certain individuals and groups from participation; discriminatory practices that discourage gender, religious or ethnic groups from participating in education and training programmes; bureaucratic rivalries that impede implementation of a programme that covers major jurisdictions; gatekeepers that block informal clearance from interest groups; the subversion of programme objectives to the narrow interest of individuals and groups for their own gain.

The political planning model basically rejects the neo-classical economic assumption that societal imbalances work themselves out over time through consensual negotiation. Rather, planning is viewed as entwined in networks of power that overtly or covertly work to maintain power, influence and advantage. Change is resisted unless it is perceived as beneficial to and under the control of those holding power. Efforts to redirect labour-force development, to ameliorate the condition of the poor, or to expand opportunity by addressing the interests of socio-economic classes and ethnic and gender groups, for example, may be countered through the explicit and implicit levers of power built into social structures that reproduce inequalities. These structures, with all of their embedded power relationships, are maintained by those already in power (Birdsall, Burns & Sabot, 1996; Cornwall, 2003; Easton & Klees, 1992; Farrell, 1997). In countries characterized by high levels of political, religious or ethnic strife, it may be extremely difficult to implement any kind of TVET intervention unless there is a good way to negotiate conflict. Plans that are not perceived as palatable or credible may result in conflict or resentment among the very populations intended to implement the plan, as well as those intended to be beneficiaries. This is particularly true in the case of development projects that aim to promote change, but at the same time rely on individuals within the existing power structure to implement interventions that can potentially challenge their own positions of power. Power dynamics can be thought of as existing within the TVET system and also without, and planners must take into consideration both (Rondinelli, Middleton & Verspoor, 1990; Verspoor, 1992).

5.2 Addressing Political Planning Social demand planning attempts to take into account the interests of individuals and social groups. It is the most basic, widespread and benign form of political planning. Simply put, decisions to allocate resources are based on the demand of various constituency groups for education and training services. Decisions are political, since the allocation of resources has to be made between competing demands. Shifts in


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the political climate, the relative success of constituency groups to mobilize support or the influence of external events result in corresponding changes in the way that education and training resources are used. In many countries, a considerable amount of planning is based on social demand, even though it is not recognized or acknowledged. Social demand is usually expressed through a political process involving different constituency groups at local, regional or national levels. The demand for services is conveyed to decision-makers. Social or political objectives, such as enhancing international economic competition, increasing enrolment levels in information technology or addressing national literacy requirements are formulated to serve as a rationale for decision-making. Since there are limits on resources, trade-offs are determined and education and training targets set. The capability to provide education and training services is assessed. Labour-market information is used by planners in order to help moderate extreme political pressure and to strike a balance between social demand and the functional requirements of the economy. Planners are attentive to the potential of abrupt, destabilizing changes that can throw the existing education and training system into disarray. Incremental rather than abrupt change is advocated as prudent TVET policy (Finlay, Niven & Young, 1998). Strategic planning was formulated as a method to help institutions react to internal and external pressures. It overlaps considerably with consensual planning and is more structured than planning based on social demand. Strategic planning involves assessing the present implementing environment and plotting appropriate courses of action. While there are different models of strategic planning, common elements include the following (Carlson & Awkerman, 1991):

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Environmental scanning is used to obtain information about the internal organization of the institution and external influences. Planners identify the organization’s internal structure, staffing patterns, common values and interests, competitive groups, levels of support for change and barriers; planners identify external interest groups, supporters and competitors. Social, political and economic trends are monitored and the impact on planning assessed. Stakeholder analysis focuses on the individuals, groups and organizations that create demands and pressure on the institution. Planners assess the interests, influence, agendas and values of stakeholders; planners determine the level of support among stakeholders, develop strategies to elicit support, and determine programme elements required to accommodate the interests of stakeholders. Planners reformulate and clarify the planning mission. The mission statement incorporates values, beliefs and goals that reflect the interests and views of stakeholders. The mission statement focuses on planning. Planners identify and analyse critical issues relating to the mission, performance of the institution, cost and financing, management structure, staffing, students and relationships with stakeholders, among others. Planners determine how important each issue is and how it best can be addressed, while paying attention to stakeholder values and characteristics of the internal and external environments.

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Planners identify specific strategies for resolving issues. This begins with practical ways of addressing the issue, including the formulation of policies, objectives and actions. Resources are allocated and careful attention is given to the ‘fit’ between the strategies and the organizational environment. Strategic implementation involves working with institution personnel to address resource allocation, organizational capacity and strategy evaluation. Detailed budgets are formulated and organizational changes are put into place to better match people and structure with tasks. Built-in feedback mechanisms with review processes are developed to provide information on implementation.

Political planning in its various forms is highly sensitive to the implementing environment. This includes the proximate environment, comprised of individuals, groups, organizations, issues and conditions that occupy the immediate space close to the planning activity. This also includes the more remote planning environment comprised of the set of actors and circumstances that make up the larger policy and political arena and that condition the support and acceptance of the plan. Considerable bargaining is involved in response to diversity, different interests, conflict and shifting power relations. Political planning has the potential to support significant change. Claims of being more inclusive and participatory, however, have to be tempered with the realisation that efforts must be made to accommodate the voices of the marginalized (Birdsall, Burns & Sabot, 1996; Cornwall. 2003; Silvey & Elmhirst, 2003).

6 Looking Ahead TVET planners face the daunting task of making critical decisions with considerable intellectual disorder surrounding the concepts and methodologies that they rely on to guide judgements. There is no single good way to go about planning at any education and training level. But to ignore the importance of planning is to err. Planning is more, not less, important today, given the broad range of issues confronting workforce preparation in developed and newly developing countries alike. Reasonably good results can be realized when planners fully recognize that decision-making should not be pushed beyond the limits and constraints of the methodologies used; when multiple perspectives are employed to generate insights; when the participant base is broadened enough to elicit counter views; and when a strong dose of ‘common sense’ is applied to offset what may otherwise be shown in time to be narrowly defined and dogmatic decisions. Planning also is best conceived as an on-going process open to dialogue, review and change. Past experience shows that macro-level planning based on the use of rational models yields mixed results. The use of manpower planning models, in particular, is associated with questionable validity. Rapid technological change linked with a pervasive globalized market place is making national education and training projections increasingly irrelevant. Macro-level planning needs to be tempered with considerable caution.


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There is considerably more emphasis today on the timely provision of disaggregated data useful at the regional or local level for redirecting programming. The locus of decision-making is in regional or local co-ordinated groups of social partners, including employers. Combinations of programming are used to promote employment flexibility as youth and young adults navigate a sometimes uncertain and changing labour market. Avenues to enable students to pursue additional education and training are kept open. Macro-level planning is conceived primarily as contributing to the moulding of the labour force in certain directions rather than making specific skill-training allocations. There is greater appreciation today of the importance of interactive and consensual planning models. In the name of greater equity, participation is extended to individuals and groups formerly not represented. In this way, greater support is generated, programming is enriched and constructive relationships developed. Overall, greater participation has the potential to contribute to sustained institutional development. There is also greater awareness today of the political dimensions of planning. Planning is conceived as more than a set of technocratic exercises that mask relationships of power and privilege contributing to the reproduction of structural inequities. Political planning is concerned with power relationships within the implementing environment. Consensus and network building, empowering individuals and brokering change are perceived as important parts of planning. Both consensual and political planning models have helped to sensitize TVET educators to the fact that planning decisions are not neutral. Major value questions surround the provision of TVET services. The present focus on micro-level and programme and curricular planning indicates a trend that will no doubt continue well into the future. Failures within TVET have been primarily failures of implementation. There appears to be a growing consensus within the field that interactive and political planning models provide insights that help to recast planning in ways that will enhance the future implementation of TVET.

References Adams, D. 1991. Planning models and paradigms. In: Carlson, R.V.; Awkerman, G., eds. Educational planning, pp. 1–20. New York, NY: Longman. Adams, D. 1994. Educational planning: differing models. In: Husen, T.; Postlethwaite, T.N., eds. International encyclopedia of education, 2nd ed., pp. 1804–10. Oxford, UK: Pergamon. Ashton, D.; Sung, J. 2000. Maximizing human potential and the process of economic growth in Singapore. In: Herschbach, D.R.; Campbell, C.P., eds. 2000. Workforce preparation: an international perspective. Ann Arbor, MI: Prakken Publishers. Atchoarena, D.; Delluc, A. 2002. Revisiting technical and vocational education in Sub-Saharan Africa. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. Bennell, P. 1996. Rates of return to education: does the conventional pattern prevail in Sub-Saharan Africa. World development, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 183–99. Bennell, P. 1998. Rates of return to education in Asia: a review of the evidence. Education economics, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 107–20. Bertrand, O. 2004. Planning human resources: methods, experiences and practices. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP.

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Birdsall, N.; Burns, B.; Sabot, R.H. 1996. Education in Brazil: playing a bad hand badly. In: Birdsall, N.; Sabot, R.H., eds. Opportunity foregone education in Brazil, pp. 7–47. Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins Press. Bishop, J.H.; Mane, F. 2004. The impacts of career-technical education on high school completion and labour market success eight years after high school. Economics of education, vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 381–402. Bishop, J.H.; Mane, F. 2005. Economic returns to vocational courses in U.S. high schools. In: Lauglo, J.; Maclean, R., eds. Vocationalization of secondary education revisited, pp. 329–62. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Bosch, A.E. 1998. Popular education, work training, and the path to women’s empowerment in Chile. Comparative education review, vol. 42, no. 2, pp. 163–82. Brand, W. 1998. Change and consensus in vocational education and training: the case of the German ‘dual system’. In: Finlay, I.; Niven, S.; Young, S. 1998. Changing vocational education and training, pp. 103–22. London: Routledge. Carlson, R.V.; Awkerman, G., eds. 1991. Educational planning. New York, NY: Longman. Cohn, E.; Addison, J. 1998. The economic returns to lifelong learning in OECD countries. Education economics, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 253–307. Cornwall, A. 2003. Whose voices? Whose choices? Reflections on gender and participatory development. World development, vol. 31, no. 8, pp. 1325–42. Dougherty, C. 1989. The cost-effectiveness of national training delivery modes: issues and experiences. Washington, DC: World Bank. (Population and Human Resources Department working paper series.) Easton, P.; Klees, S. 1992. Conceptualizing the role of education in the economy. In: Arnove, R., ed. Emergent issues in education: comparative perspectives, pp. 123–42. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Farrell, J.P. 1997. A retrospective on educational planning in comparative education. Comparative education review, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 277–313. Finlay, I. 1998. Stakeholders, consensus, participation and democracy. In: Finlay, I.; Niven, S.; Young, S., eds. Changing vocational education and training, pp. 3–19. London: Routledge. Finlay, I.; Niven, S.; Young, S., eds. 1998. Changing vocational education and training. London: Routledge. Godfrey, M. 1997. Planning for vocational education, training and employment: a minimalist approach. International journal of manpower, vol. 18, nos. 1/2, pp. 206–27. Gray, K.; Neng-Tang, H. 1992. An analysis of the long-term effects of educational attainment on yearly earnings. Journal of industrial teacher education, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 9–20. Herschbach, D.R.; Campbell, C.P., eds. 2000. Workforce preparation: an international perspective. Ann Arbor, MI: Prakken Publishers. Herschbach, D.R.; Davis, C. 2000. Planning, efficiency, and equity: a conceptual framework. In: Herschbach, D.R.; Campbell, C.P., eds. Workforce preparation: an international perspective, pp. 5–21. Ann Arbor, MI: Prakken Publishers. Lasonen, J.; Rauhala, P. 2000. Vocational education and training in the Nordic countries. In: Herschbach, D.R.; Campbell, C.P., eds. 2000. Workforce preparation: an international perspective, pp. 96–106. Ann Arbor, MI: Prakken Publishers. Metcalf, D.H. 1985. The economics of vocational training: past evidence and future considerations. Washington, DC: World Bank. Psacharopoulos, G.; Loxley, W. 1985. Diversified secondary education and development: evidence from Colombia and Tanzania. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Psacharopoulos, G.; Woodhall, M. 1985. Education for development: an analysis of investment choices. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Rondinelli, D.A.; Middleton, J.; Verspoor, A.M. 1990. Planning educational reforms in developing countries: the contingency approach. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Share, M. 1999. Investment in human capital: a cost-benefit approach. In: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, ed. Education and the Arab World, pp. 89–104. Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research.


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Silvey, R.; Elmhirst, R. 2003. Engineering social capital: women workers and rural-urban networks in Indonesia’s crisis. World development, vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 865–79. Task Force on Higher Education and Society. 2000. Higher education in developing countries: peril and promise. Washington, DC: Word Bank. Verspoor, A.M. 1992. Planning of education: where do we go? International journal of educational development, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 233–44. Warwick, D. 1980. Integrating planning and implementation: a transactional approach. In: Davis, R.G., ed. Planning education for development: Vol 1: Issues and problems in the planning of education in developing countries, pp. 379–411. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Woodhall, M. 2004. Cost-benefit analysis in educational planning. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP.


Chapter VI.6

South African Technikons and Policy Contestation over Academic Drift Andre Kraak

1 Introduction This chapter examines the issue of academic drift with reference to South Africa’s technikon (polytechnic) sector. The discussion provides a detailed account of how post-apartheid policy development has dealt with the issue of academic drift. The issue is located within the wider post-apartheid imperative of institutional transformation and mergers among higher education institutions previously segregated on the basis of race. A key issue that receives attention is the intense stakeholder contestation over policy, particularly from the technikon leadership. However, the outcomes of policy implementation a decade later have been contradictory. Although the technikon sector fought hard to retain the divide between technikons and universities and their distinctive career-oriented educational provision, once faced by the threat of merger and transformation, technikons ultimately chose to become universities of technology rather than remain as technikons, thereby narrowing the fundamental differences in institutional type. The chapter concludes by suggesting several new challenges facing these institutions as they attempt to become universities with a distinctive ‘technology’ mandate.

2 South Africa’s Technikon Sector One of the defining features of the technikon sector in South Africa has been its production of skilled personnel to meet the intermediate skill needs of the national economy. This has occurred primarily through the provision of national diploma and certificate programmes at Level Five of the National Qualifications Framework. Some 70% of technikon provision has been at the National Diploma and National Certificate levels. A further 29% of technikon enrolment occurs at the bachelors’ degree level, and only 1% of enrolment is in post-graduate study (Subotzky, 2003). Given the national economy’s high reliance on intermediate skills at the post-school, pre-degree level (see Kraak, 2004), this array of provisioning has been seen as a major national asset. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VI.6, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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Another asset of the sector has been its easier access criteria, particularly for learners with weak Grade 12 matriculation results. In South Africa, because of the ravages of apartheid education and economic under-development, those with weak school results are largely black and African. It is these students who have enrolled in the technikon sector in large numbers since the early 1990s when these institutions were effectively de-racialized. Technikons have provided an alternative entry point into higher education for students who would have been excluded on academic grounds from the university sector. Technikons only require a pass mark in the Senior Certificate Examination at the end of Grade 12, whereas universities require matriculation (a much higher achievement level) and, in the case of particular subject fields, universities require other pre-requisites, such as good mathematics and science grades. Table 1 reflects the differentiated enrolments between technikons and universities in South Africa between 1993 and 2003. The table also highlights the rapid growth rate of technikons in this period—73% for technikons as opposed to 44% for universities. This growth was largely due to increased African intake. However, even with this rapid growth, universities continue to dominate the higher education landscape.

Table 1 Enrolments in higher education, 1993–2003 1993 University enrolments Technikon enrolments Total enrolments

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1997

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

340,000 385,000 380,000 384,000 388,369 428,648 460,438 488,000 133,000 184,000 200,000 208,000 202,792 224,327 214,690 230,000 473,000 569,000 580,000 586,000 591,161 652,975 675,128 718,000

Source: CHE, 2004.

3 A Clash over ‘Academic Drift’ The technikon sector has not been able to rest on its laurels for too long. The advent of democracy in April 1994 triggered an era of intense policy formulation and contestation—an environment within which the technikon sector saw both itself and its distinct mission under severe threat. In the international literature, this problem has been referred to as ‘academic drift’—the sometimes unintended and often opportunistic movement of technikon-type institutions up the qualification hierarchy and across the academic/vocational divide in search of new learner markets, programme fields and income sources. In moving upwards in this way, institutions such as technikons begin to mimic key attributes of university-based institutions.

VI.6 South African Technikons and Policy Contestation over Academic Drift

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3.1 The Historical Genesis of South Africa’s Trinary Divide The evolution of South Africa’s distinctive trinary divide in higher education began with the Van Wyk de Vries Commission of Inquiry into Universities in 1974 (RSA, 1974). The commission maintained that universities should concentrate on teaching and research on the basic fundamental principles of science, with a view to the provision of high-level person-power. In short, Van Wyk de Vries was arguing that the business of universities was to induct students into the canonical principles of disciplinary-based sciences via bachelor, master and doctoral degree programmes. Technikons should concentrate on technology, the application of scientific principles to practical problems, and the preparation of persons for the practice, promotion and transfer of technology within a particular occupation or industry. The greater part of all technikon instructional programmes involves putting into practice existing knowledge, technology, results and formulas. The programmes technikons offer to accomplish these goals are in the main national certificates and national diplomas, although since 1993 they have offered a limited range of bachelor, master and doctoral degrees. Tertiary colleges provide vocational training in the higher education domain, specifically to semi-professional occupations, such as teachers, nurses, policemen and farmers (RSA, 1974). This trinary education structure maintained a fairly rigid differentiation of function between institutions until the dramatic government policy changes after 1994. However, even prior to 1994, the State acknowledged that the ‘present system was to a large extent characterized by rigidity and inflexibility, with each subsector and institution largely working in isolation of each other. This situation is not only inhibiting as regards the articulation of learners, but at the same time it hampers the essential exchange of expertise’ (RSA. DoNE, 1995). The government argued that the trinary divide was problematic because universities were also involved in professional or career training, that technology was increasingly more dependent on links with disciplinary and inter-disciplinary knowledge, and that the technikons had in any event moved well beyond their ‘application of technology’ mandate by offering courses in business, commerce and the social sciences (RSA. DoNE, 1995, pp. 12, 19). In short, the dying apartheid regime itself was indicating that the rigid trinary divide of higher education was beginning to dissolve.

4 South Africa’s Post-Apartheid Higher Education Policies The democratic dispensation that came to power after April 1994 proposed dramatic changes to the institutional landscape in higher education. The new policy framework, which sought the development of a ‘single, nationally co-ordinated system’ of higher education, triggered an intense period of policy contestation, largely around

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the role of technikons and the continuation of the binary divide between technikons and universities within a new ‘unified’ framework.

4.1 The Lack of a Sense of ‘System’ The first problem identified by the new government and the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE), which sat in 1996, was the absence of any sense of ‘system’. Two major systemic deficiencies were noted: 1. There was a chronic mismatch between higher education’s output and the needs of a modernizing economy. 2. There was a lack of regulatory frameworks, due to a long history of organizational and administrative fragmentation and weak accountability. This inhibited planning and co-ordination, the elimination of duplication and waste, the promotion of better articulation and mobility, and the effective evaluation of quality and efficiency (NCHE, 1996b, p. 2). This led the NCHE to propose a new regulatory framework that would co-ordinate higher education provision as a single coherent whole, applying uniform norms and procedures with sufficient flexibility to allow for diversity in addressing the multiple needs of highly differentiated learner constituencies. The new higher education policy framework called for a more open and unified system based on centrally driven planning and co-ordination. At the heart of the notion of a single nationally co-ordinated system was a strong emphasis on State co-ordination that would strategically ‘steer’ the higher education system via a regulatory framework based on financial incentives, reporting and monitoring requirements (particularly with regard to key performance indicators) and a system of programme approval. The shift in policy framework was dramatic, from the established trinary model to a single system with differentiation derived not from some historically acquired institutional role, but via programmes that would be identified through systematic planning and co-ordination so as to steer the entire national system in directions consonant with national socio-economic priorities.

4.2 Open Systems and Permeable Boundaries This emphasis on a single nationally co-ordinated system of higher education was strongly influenced by the global trend toward more open, massified and inclusive systems of higher education (see Scott, 1995). The determinants for mass higher education worldwide have been the widening of access to formerly excluded learner constituencies, particularly women, blacks and working-class students. These developments globally over the past decades have led to an impressive growth in programme offerings particularly in higher education institutions, going way beyond the provision of discipline-based degree qualifications. Much of this expansion


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has occurred in the fields of recurrent, continuing and professional education and training—the key access points to higher education for the working class and other previously marginalized constituencies. These developments have had the effect of moving national systems of higher education away from binary or divided systems towards a more unified single system with common features and a homogenizing mission. Indeed, convergence of this kind is a reality in many national systems as rigid functional distinctions between universities and polytechnics (technikons in South Africa) are diluted in response to the multiple impacts of massification, globalization and institutional creep. However, the erosion of functional differences between previously distinct types at each end of the binary divide does not suggest the rise of uniform missions for all institutions in unified systems of higher education. Indeed, system-wide dichotomy has given way to institutional-level pluralism and diversity (Scott, 1995, p. 169). The influence of these global trends—as characterized by Scott—are very evident in the NCHE report, for example, when it proposes a new unified model of higher education in South Africa which would represent a ‘radical departure from previously divisive and fractured social structures and a move towards new and more integrative forms of social organization’ (NCHE, 1996b, p. 76). The NCHE’s emphasis on increased participation signifies a shift away from a higher education system that ‘enrols primarily middle-class students into elite professional and scholarly pursuits, to a system characterized by a wider diversity of feeder constituencies and programmes’ (NCHE, 1996b, p. 76; RSA. DoE, 1996, pp. 18–19). Unfortunately, the formal adoption of this new approach—the emphasis on a single, nationally co-ordinated system of higher education—did not bring with it policy certainty and consensus in the wider South African educational community. Even though the idea of a single system became official policy with the passing of the Higher Education Act in 1997, the government itself wavered in its resolve to support such a policy position. External stakeholder dissent became more vocal in the years that followed the passing of the 1997 Act. One of the factors behind all this disquiet has been the unresolved question of institutional differentiation and the continuance of the binary divide in South Africa. Another factor was clearly the threat of institutional mergers. These two factors were inextricably intertwined during the policy process, because the institutional form that any merger would take was premised on the question of the continuation of the binary divide or its dilution in some new institutional arrangement. The next section will critically examine the depth and breadth of these policy disagreements through their various phases since the passing of the Higher Education Act in 1997.

4.3 Early Opposition to the NCHE There was considerable opposition to the idea of a unified system during the deliberations of the NCHE. This opposition arose from two sources: from the technikons themselves; and from the leadership of the historically disadvantaged institutions

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(HDIs), who believed the new approach would put them yet again at a disadvantage because of their lack of capacity to respond creatively to new programme offerings. A compromise position was to emerge on differentiation in the NCHE. The compromise was premised on a middle-ground formulation that supported ‘functional differentiation’ (a continuation of the binary divide) in the short to medium term, a position that was not principally opposed to a transition to ‘flexible differentiation’ (meaning a unified system) in the longer term. The interim ‘Discussion document’ of the NCHE reported that elements within the technikon sector had made submissions that argued strongly for the retention and reinforcement of the technikons as a distinct sector with a unique mission within higher education. The case of the technikons’ support for functional differentiation rested heavily on: the need to ensure an appropriate mix of graduates and diplomates to meet South Africa’s broad human resource needs. The view that the current mix is skewed in favour of university graduates, and the proposition that ‘career education’ is best ensured and protected within a higher education sector dedicated to this purpose, have been put forward. The argument is for the retention of functional differentiation with an altered balance to enhance the technikon’s role. [. . .] Technikons would have a delineated function in the offering of career and vocational education (incorporating experiential learning, and via programmes designed in conjunction with the relevant ‘employers’ grouping) and in development and product-related research. Universities, in contrast, would focus on general formative education, intellectual preparation for professions, and basic and applied research (NCHE, 1996a, p. 55).

Under a flexible approach, in contrast, differentiation would occur in terms of institutional missions and programme mixes. It would evolve in terms of a planned process based on emerging national and regional needs and not the inherited sectoral location of the institution (NCHE, 1996a, pp. 56–57). The final report of the NCHE, released in mid-1996, fudged these differences by adopting a middle-ground position. The NCHE resolution reads: The Commission’s task is not to propose a unified, binary or stratified institutional structure for the single co-ordinated system, but to recommend a set of transitional arrangements that will hold while national and regional needs are clarified, planning capacities are developed and institutional development proceeds. The Commission believes that the system should recognize, in name and in broad function and mission, the existence of universities, technikons and colleges as types of institutions offering higher education programmes. But these institutional types should not be regarded as discrete sectors with mutually exclusive missions and programme offerings. The new system will evolve through a planned process that recognizes current institutional missions and capacities, addresses the distortions created by apartheid, and responds to emerging regional and national needs (NCHE, 1996b, pp. 15–16).

The commission saw their proposal for a single, nationally co-ordinated system of higher education as occupying the middle ground in an often-heated squabble over differentiation. In this formulation, the concerns of those supporting functional differentiation could be reconciled with the arguments for greater flexibility. The NCHE conceived its proposal as pragmatic, providing a continuum along which


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the system could gradually move, from ‘functional differentiation’ towards a truly single system with softened boundaries (NCHE, 1996b, p. 283). Nonetheless, the dissenting voices remained. In the final 1996 report of the NCHE, Brian Figaji, former Rector of Peninsula Technikon, published a minority report that expressed opposition to further education and training colleges encroaching onto higher education turf by offering career and vocational education at higher education level. More significantly, Figaji also opposed the notion of differentiation being based on programme rather than institution. His view was that if any institution could offer any programme, it would ‘negate the current institutional missions and educational cultures’ of existing institutions such as technikons: ‘The result of this scheme is going to be “academic creep” at an unprecedented scale with vocational and career education once again sidelined in favour of the higher status “academic” programmes’ (NCHE, 1996b, p. 318). Figaji has been the most vocal in his opposition to the notion of programme differentiation. In a 1999 lecture, he warned against the dangers of a policy framework that inevitably would push institutions towards convergence and homogeneity— exactly the opposite of the differentiation desired by policy. In his speech, Figaji repeated the case for a ‘higher education system with different institutional types such as colleges, universities and technikons, each with its own distinct mission and programme’ (Figaji, 1999, p. 15).

4.4 The Contribution of the Council on Higher Education The tensions around differentiation were not to go away after the NCHE and the passing of the 1997 Act. In fact, several unforeseen difficulties began to emerge which fuelled the on-going debate. Chief amongst these were: (a) the highly competitive and imitative behaviour of institutions as witnessed during the mid- to late-1990s that overshadowed co-operation and led towards homogeneity and sameness; (b) the absence of planning capacity at institutional level to identify unique niche areas; (c) weaknesses and capacity problems in national and institutional planning processes that, in the short term, compromised the efficacy of these instruments to steer and regulate higher education; and (d) inadequate senior and middle-level management capacities within the system (RSA. DoE, 2001a, p. 51; CHE, 2000, pp. 33–34). All of these unforeseen difficulties led the then Minister of Education, Professor Kadar Asmal, to set up a ‘Size and Shape’ Task Team in July 1999 to review and reform the institutional landscape of higher education. The Task Team was set up in January 2000 under the auspices of the Council on Higher Education (CHE) which published its report in July 2000. The recommendations made by the CHE Task Team were controversial and to a large extent in conflict with the essence of the new higher education policy framework. At the heart of the Task Team proposal was the promotion of a highly diversified higher education system premised on institutional differentiation rather than programme differentiation, as advocated in all of the previous policy texts.

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The Size and Shape report proposed a new three-tiered institutional landscape. The three institutional types were defined primarily by prescriptions imposed on their core teaching and research functions. A bedrock higher education institution was defined as a dedicated undergraduate teaching institution with limitations imposed on the extent and spread of its postgraduate and research programmes. Its key function was to provide high-quality undergraduate teaching to a wide constituency of learners. A comprehensive institution has significant post-graduate and research capabilities, with its primary function being the production of new scientific knowledge and the training of the country’s future cadre of high-skill graduates. An extensive masters and limited doctoral institution was defined as an inbetween institutional structure with greater resources available than the bedrock campuses, that could offer masters programmes, but with similar limitations to those applicable to the ‘bedrocks’ in relation to doctoral programmes and knowledgeproduction functions (i.e. research) (CHE, 2000). Support for the CHE’s three-tiered model did emerge, unsurprisingly, from the technikon sector. This sector, particularly through its mouthpiece organization, the Committee of Technikon Principals (CTP), was notably enthusiastic about the key components of the CHE proposals. On differentiation, the CTP noted, ‘there is a strong argument for differentiation and diversity in the Report which the CTP fully supports, because it would facilitate more effective responses from institutions to the various social needs of the country’ (CTP, 2000, p. 2). The CTP was particularly encouraged by the Task Team support for the idea of a ‘university of technology’. It saw this recommendation as a way of putting technikons in South Africa in ‘line with the rest of the world where such institutions are called Technical Universities, Institutes of Technology or Universities of Technology’ (CTP, 2000, p. 3). The CHE recommendations—as could be expected—also triggered strong opposition from other stakeholders in higher education, particularly from the South African Universities Vice-Chancellors Association (SAUVCA). SAUVCA’s opposition to the proposals was essentially two-fold. First, there was concern that the three-tiered system would simply replicate the racial differentiation imposed by apartheid education. Secondly, the proposals were seen as a reversal in policy orientation, away from the single co-ordinated system emphasized in earlier policy texts towards a classical social stratification model of provision (SAUVCA, 2000, pp. 1, 5).

4.5 The National Plan of the Department of Education The government’s formal response to the ‘Size and Shape’ Task Team report was contained in the Ministry of Education’s National Plan for Higher Education released in March 2001. At the heart of the National Plan was a reaffirmation of a single co-ordinated national system that was simultaneously diverse. The National Plan also firmly rejected the rigid structural differentiation of the CHE report. The


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document added a further rider to the process of institutional restructuring: it aimed to formulate a plan for a new institutional landscape through mergers and regional collaboration by December 2001 (RSA. DoE, 2001a, pp. 1, 14–15). The most significant element in the National Plan with regard to institutional differentiation was its concern that the programme distinctions between technikons and universities—career-oriented versus general formative and professional degree programmes—had been dramatically eroded. Technikons had gradually increased their degree offerings, both at undergraduate and post-graduate levels. This led in turn to a number of technikons requesting a change in status to become ‘universities of technology’ (RSA. DoE, 2001a, p. 57). The tendency towards uniformity of provision, according to the plan, ‘is worrying’. There has been little evidence of attempts by institutions, it argues, to identify unique institutional strengths and niche areas, either existing or potential, that would differentiate between institutions. The Ministry’s response to these developments was to attempt to halt this erosion by retaining the binary divide between technikons and universities for at least the subsequent five years as ‘two types of institutions offering different kinds of highereducation programmes’ (RSA. DoE, 2001a, p. 57). Retaining the binary divide for a further five years was always a part of the NCHE proposals and so the National Plan was not suggesting anything new. However, it was also a response to the demands by technikons for their distinctive contribution— career-oriented tertiary provision—to be retained. The rejection of the rigid structural differentiation proposals of the CHE was clearly a response to the widespread opposition to those proposals from the university sector. The ministry’s National Plan, therefore, attempted to straddle the middle ground. The department, however, remained silent (as did the NCHE) on the strategic desirability of a strong binary divide in South Africa. What this defensive position failed to take into account were the new education and training demands of globalization, as was so clearly outlined by Scott earlier—demands that act to differentiate less between the institutional typologies of university and technikon and emphasize a higher level of education and training competencies across the entire workforce. A key signal from the National Plan was that institutional voluntarism had failed to promote the goals of the NCHE and 1997 Act. What was now required was ‘direct State intervention and stronger signals from government’ (RSA. DoE, 2001a, p. 81). Key areas requiring State intervention included: (a) a reduction in the total number of institutions in the country through mergers; (b) instituting stronger and more cost-effective forms of regional collaboration; and (c) attaining greater efficiencies across the entire system.

4.6 The National Working Group The National Working Group (NWG) was appointed by the Minister of Education in April 2001 to finalize the proposals for institutional mergers as suggested by the

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National Plan for Higher Education. The terms of reference for the NWG were very specific and rather narrow, instructing the NWG to focus on the establishment of a more consolidated system of higher education provision attained primarily through a reduction in the number of institutions. The NWG proposed an entirely new institutional landscape comprising four differing types: universities, technikons, comprehensives and provincially-based national institutes of higher education. The NWG report repeated some of the concerns raised by the National Plan regarding unplanned growth in the higher education sector, particularly with regard to ‘academic drift’ of technikon provisioning. Such growth threatened the continuation of the binary divide which was viewed as a crucial mechanism for the production of diverse skills needed in the national economy. Secondly, the NWG viewed the proliferation of distance education courses and the growth of satellite campuses as threatening the provision of other already existing residential universities offering similar programmes (RSA. DoE, 2001b, pp. 62–63). The NWG also privileged the more effective distribution of both university and technikon programmes across all regions in the country. Regional provision became a decisive factor in the determination of institutional restructuring and merger in each region. Indeed, the creation of an entirely new institutional type—the comprehensive university—was a direct consequence of the importance attached to this factor (RSA. DoE, 2001b, p. 61). The NWG also argued for the continuance of the binary divide, both in terms of the differences between universities and technikons, but also within the new institutional type—comprehensives—between their academic and career-oriented pathways. The NWG provides an extremely thin definition of ‘comprehensives relying largely on two characteristics: they will become institutions that offer a wider regional distribution of programmes than is the case currently, and secondly, they provide students with a wider (more comprehensive) choice of programmes, ranging from the purely academic through to the career and vocational’ (RSA. DoE, 2001b, p. 27). The Department of Education commissioned educational researcher Trish Gibbon to produce a concept document on the meaning of ‘comprehensives’ in the South African context. In her report, Gibbon warns that the use of the term in the international context varies widely along both the horizontal and vertical axes of higher-education provision. Horizontally, comprehensives offer ‘breadth’ of provision from career-oriented programmes all the way through to the more traditional academically-oriented baccalaureate degrees. Vertically, comprehensives can offer ‘depth’ of education and training, ranging from certificate and diplomas through to bachelor, master and doctoral degree programmes (RSA. DoE, 2004). Several South African higher education institutions operate to differing degrees along these two axes of provision, and hence concepts of ‘breadth’ and ‘depth’ as categories did not, on their own, provide a distinctive mission for South African comprehensives. Gibbon suggests the following four characteristics as key components of the institutional mission of comprehensives in the South African context:


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Diversity: through the offering of a wide range of programmes (vocational, career-focused, professional and general formative) of both the university and technikon type. Accessibility: through the opportunities created by the different entry and exit points of technikon and university programmes. Student mobility: through developing strong vertical and horizontal articulation pathways between technikon and university programmes. Responsiveness: through the development of a suite of educational programmes and research foci appropriate to local, regional and national needs. Flexibility: through the strengthening of relationships with community, civic, government, business and industry partners for local and regional development (RSA. DoE, 2004).

4.7 The Education Ministry’s Response The June 2002 response of the Department of Education to the NWG proposals was positive, with only a few alterations and concessions to protest and pressure by higher-education stakeholders. Most significantly, the ministry supported the continuance of the binary divide and, in doing so, it committed to maintain: in a flexible manner, the existing mission and programme differentiation between technikons and universities for at least the next five years. This is necessary to avoid academic drift, especially as there is a tendency for technikons to want to shift their focus from primarily offering career-oriented programmes at a diploma level to degree-level programmes at both the undergraduate and post-graduate levels. Academic drift would impact adversely on the ability of the higher education system to meet the government’s access goals and human resource development priorities, especially the goal of expanding career-oriented programmes at all levels, in particular, shorter-cycle certificate and diploma programmes in science, engineering and technology (RSA. DoE, 2002b, paragraph 4.2).

The ministerial response also reinforced the idea that comprehensives would assist in solidifying the binary divide by making technikon programmes more ‘readily available throughout the country, and in particular, in rural areas which currently were inadequately serviced by such provision’ (RSA. DoE, 2002a, p. 27).

4.8 Technikon Lobbying At this stage in the evolution of higher education policy (June 2002) there had been little mention or debate in the policy environment about universities of technology, nor of converting technikons into such institutions. This shift came about through political lobbying rather than through a planned process of policy evolution on the part of the State. The CTP, as has been seen in this chapter, was very influential in the policy debates right from the inception of the NCHE in 1995, particularly in demanding the continuance of the binary divide and defending the distinctive role technikons

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played in the South African economy. With the approval of the NWG proposals by both the education ministry and cabinet in 2000, the CTP continued to be disgruntled. They argued that even though the status of the technikons was protected in the NWG recommendations, their absolute numbers had declined from fifteen to five institutions. This was because of the formation of comprehensives which merged technikons with traditional universities and the merger of several technikons into fewer universities of technology. In their view, comprehensives blurred the distinction between technikons and universities even further: The ‘comprehensive’ hybrid organizations that will result from the merging of some technikons and some universities will aggravate the indistinguishability between institutions and could contribute to the further promotion of academic drift if not effectively addressed and managed (CTP, 2003).

The CTP began arguing that the ‘the name technikon had become a stumbling block’ (CTP, 2004, p. 7). Amongst the problems listed were that technikons were seen as inferior to universities, technikon graduates were not recognized by professional associations, and that technikons were seen as a second or third choice after universities. Membership of international university associations was denied to technikons as they were not accepted as degree-awarding institutions of higher education (CTP, 2004, p. 7). The CTP worked relentlessly at persuading the Minister of Education to reinstate the former pre-eminence of the five remaining technikons through a name change to that of ‘university of technology’. Even though the NWG was opposed to the name change, arguing that technikons should address their problems by ‘enhancing the quality of their programmes and the capacity of technikons to undertake research and to offer post-graduate programmes’ (RSA. DoE, 2001b, p. 17), the minister finally relented and gave his approval to the name change in October 2003. The process that gave rise to the category ‘university of technology’ again was not informed by a rational process of policy development but, rather, arose from political lobbying with minimal policy documentation to explain the new category and its institutional functions. The CTP, however, did produce a small policy literature on universities of technology in 2003 and 2004. In the most important of these documents, published in 2004 and entitled Position, role and function of universities of technology in South Africa, the CTP adopts UNESCO’s definition of technology as its anchor concept. Technology is ‘the know-how and creative process that may assist people to utilize tools, resources and systems to solve problems and enhance control over the natural and made environment in an endeavour to improve the human condition’ (CTP, 2004, p. 10). At a university of technology, the CTP maintains, all learning programmes and research projects are related to technology. In practice, this means that at universities of technology, science, engineering and management fields of study are the priority foci of the institution. The CTP then defines a university of technology as: Learner-centred education: defining quality and effectiveness in higher education in terms of outputs such as ‘what students need to learn’ and maximizing student performance.


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Employer-centred: defining the curriculum in terms of what students require to make them more skilled, more competent and more employable; providing constant upgrading through short courses; taking learning into the work-place; and liaising regularly with employers to ensure that prospective employees receive a relevant education. Experiential learning: A university of technology should find creative ways of drawing in employers to provide practical problems which students can solve during their work placements. Adult and continuing education: universities of technology should become specialists in ‘just-in-time’ education—experts in providing a continuous upgrading of knowledge and skills. This practical knowledge will be provided in a variety of modules and variations in contact and distance-learning programmes to graduates when and where they need it. Social engagement: universities of technology should be seen as institutions with a greater commitment of service to, and upliftment of the community than has previously been the case with higher education institutions in South Africa. In the teaching, research and development undertaken, the upliftment and transfer of skills to the community are of paramount importance (CTP, 2004, pp. 5–7).

The CTP document also proposes a distinctive research role for universities of technology around the related concepts of ‘technological innovation’ and ‘technology transfer’. It defines technological innovation as the ‘process that transforms new knowledge into wealth. It covers the different steps of the innovation chain, from the creation of new ideas, the development of technology in the form of products, processes and services, up to the ultimate successful commercialization and/or implementation’ (CTP, 2004, p. 21). Technology transfer, on the other hand, is the ‘formal transfer of new discoveries, innovations and technology, usually resulting from R&D [research and development] activities at universities, to the commercial and industrial sectors in the economy’ (CTP, 2004, p. 21). Such a research role would have the following characteristics:

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Enhancing R&D ‘downstream’ related activities, such as the patenting, licensing, commercialization and marketing of intellectual property and R&D results in the form of products, processes or services; Promoting and marketing a corporate culture for technological innovation, entrepreneurship and technology transfer; Developing appropriate policies, strategies and models for technological innovation and technology transfer; Promoting and developing knowledge and technology-intensive enterprises; and Participation in the establishment of technology and business incubators and related support structures.

5 Conclusion The new South African landscape is indeed dramatically different from that which existed prior to 2004. All in all, South Africa now has eleven traditional universities, five universities of technology, five comprehensives and two national institutes of higher education—in total, twenty-three institutions of higher education. This is a dramatic reduction from the previous thirty-six.

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The position of technikons in the institutional landscape has undergone a fundamental—although rather contradictory—transition. On the one hand, technikon leadership has fought strongly to retain the binary divide between universities and technikons so as to ensure their distinctive intermediate skills contribution of career-oriented education and training at the diploma and certificate levels. This has been a successful strategy, at least in policy terms, as all the policy documents refer to retention of the binary divide, at least in the short to medium term. On the other hand, technikon leadership itself has contributed over time to the dilution of the binary divide through, firstly, institutional creep into greater levels of degree and post-graduate provision but, more recently, through advocating a name change of technikons to that of universities of technology. That such a campaign has now succeeded imposes new conditions upon the universities of technology to indeed become more like universities, albeit with a more technological mandate. A number of constraints will stand in the way of the technikons achieving this equivalence. For example, there is the near absence of a research culture at the former technikons and low levels of staff with Ph.Ds who would be able to lead postgraduate programmes and R&D activities. In short, without a dramatic upgrading of teaching, learning and research practices at the universities of technology, it will be difficult to see how they will be able to establish an equivalent but (technologically) differentiated status to that of universities. In addition, articulation mechanisms within the post-school education and training system in South Africa have always been restrictive and, as a consequence, very few learners have progressed from one sub-sector to the next; for example, from the further education colleges into technikon education, or from the technikons into universities (see Kraak, 1994). These constraints on progression have not been adequately dealt with over the past decade and the restrictions remain even with the new policy emphasis of a single national system of higher education. The lack of learner progression across the system becomes an even more problematic issue with the launch of universities of technology and comprehensive institutions. For example, the policy motivation for comprehensive institutions is that learners in remote areas previously neglected by the education system will now be able to access higher education, exercise greater choice and, in so doing, move more freely from one type of provision (technikon) to another (university) within the same institution. However, the credit accumulation and transfer rules for such progression, as well as the determination of curriculum equivalence between the two types of provision, have not been established on a wide scale as yet, so this policy ideal is unlikely to benefit large numbers of learners in the medium term. Similar problems face learners enrolled on higher-education programmes in further-education colleges and who seek entry to higher education. The benchmarks for good practice in this regard have not yet been established, and franchise arrangements as well as other forms of partnership agreements between FET colleges, comprehensives and universities of technology have not been developed as yet. All of these factors limit the extent to which the new institutional forms will be able to widen access. These are the new challenges that face higher education in South Africa in the future.


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References Committee of Technikon Principals. 2000. Response to the Report of the Council on Higher Education Task Team: ‘Towards a new higher education landscape’. Pretoria: CTP. Committee of Technikon Principals. 2003. Reflections on the restructuring of higher education and the renaming of technikons—media briefing. Pretoria: CTP. Committee of Technikon Principals. 2004. Position, role and function of universities of technology in South Africa. Pretoria: CTP. Council on Higher Education. 2000. Towards a new higher education landscape: meeting the equity, quality and social development imperatives of South Africa in the 21st century. Pretoria: CHE. Council on Higher Education. 2004. South African higher education in the first decade of democracy. Pretoria: CHE. Figaji, B. 1999. Higher education in South Africa: differentiation or convergence? (Inaugural professorial lecture, Peninsula Technikon, Bellville, Cape, South Africa.) Kraak, A. 1994. Free or co-ordinated markets? Education and training policy options for a future South Africa. [Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Faculty of Education, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa.] Kraak, A. 2004. An overview of South African human resources development. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press. National Commission on Higher Education. 1996a. Discussion document: a framework for transformation. Pretoria: NCHE. National Commission on Higher Education. 1996b. A framework for transformation. Pretoria: NCHE. Republic of South Africa. 1974. Main report of the inquiry into universities. Pretoria: Government Printer. (Van Wyk de Vries Commission.) Republic of South Africa. Department of National Education. 1995. A qualification structure for universities in South Africa, NATED 02–116, Pretoria: DoNE. (March 1995 revision.) Republic of South Africa. Department of Education. 1996. Green Paper on higher education transformation. Pretoria: DoE. Republic of South Africa. Department of Education. 2001a. National plan for higher education. Pretoria: DoE. Republic of South Africa. Department of Education. 2001b. The restructuring of the higher education system in South Africa: report of the National Working Group to the Minister of Education. Pretoria: DoE. Republic of South Africa. Department of Education. 2002a. Transformation and restructuring: a new institutional landscape for higher education. Pretoria: DoE. Republic of South Africa. Department of Education. 2002b. The transformation and reconstruction of the higher education system. Pretoria: DoE. Republic of South Africa. Department of Education. 2004. Creating comprehensive universities in South Africa: a concept document. Pretoria: DoE. (A commissioned report by Trish Gibbons.) Scott, P. 1995. The meanings of mass higher education. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. South African Universities Vice-Chancellors Association. 2000. SAUVCA’s response to the CHE’s report. Pretoria: UNISA Sunnyside Campus. [Mimeo issued by SAUVCA and authored by Piyushi Kotecha.] Subotzky, G. 2003. Public higher education. In: Human Sciences Research Council, ed. Human resources development review 2003: education, employment and skills in South Africa. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press; East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.


Chapter VI.7

New Policy Actions and Government Roles: China’s Reconstruction of TVET Systems Since the 1980s Deyu Sun, Jingwen Lu and Jun Li

1 Introduction The history of the development of formal technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in China can be traced back to the late Qing Dynasty (1840–1911), but it was not until the early twentieth century that the framework of the modern school system began to emerge. It has only been in the last three decades that reform measures accelerated—the achievements have been remarkable. By 2004, China had 14.1 million students enrolled in 14,454 secondary vocational schools (China. Ministry of Education [MoE], 2005). To understand China’s ultra-large TVET system, this chapter first introduces an overview of developments since the 1980s. It then focuses on the role that the Chinese Government played in the reform and development of the TVET system, and highlights future policy actions for reform. The chapter ends with a discussion of some TVET problems unique to the Chinese context, as well as the implications for TVET policy actions.

2 China’s TVET System since the 1980s The TVET system in China was adapted from the USSR’s model after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in l949. With the adoption in March 1952 of the Instruction on Reorganizing and Developing Secondary Technical Education, the basic framework of the secondary TVET system was established. By 1958, the TVET system was fully co-ordinated with the economic development plans through four institutions: agricultural high schools; industrial high schools; handicraft high schools; and part-time vocational high schools. Further development of the TVET system, however, was seriously hampered by the ten tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution starting in 1966. After China opened its doors to the outside world in 1978, its TVET system gradually revived. The central government adopted new policies to speed up the reform of the TVET system, including transforming some general secondary schools into vocational schools, establishing educational networks for vocational education and training, and increasing the annual budget for TVET system, among other changes designed to augment enrolment and infrastructure (China. MoE/State R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VI.7, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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Administration of Labour, 1980). More importantly, much attention was directed to the quality of TVET schools, as well as to their efficiency. As a result, the size of TVET provision was greatly expanded. In 1980, a total of 3,314 agricultural schools were restored or opened with an enrolment of 450,000 students. Students recruited and admitted to regular technical schools also increased to 330,000 and 700,000 respectively (MoE, 1983, pp. 182, 188, 190). On 4 December 1982, the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China was enacted by the fifth session of the fifth National People’s Congress. The Constitution officially supports vocational education and explicitly requires that: ‘The State establishes and administers schools of various types, universalizes compulsory primary education and promotes secondary and vocational education, as well as higher education.’ Meanwhile, it requires that ‘the State provides the necessary vocational training for citizens before they are employed.’ This requirement provides legitimacy for the ‘trained-before-employed’ system and for expanding the TVET system. China’s TVET system has been back on track for rapid and appropriate development ever since. On 9 May 1983, the Opinion on the Structural Reform of Urban Secondary Education and the Development of TVET was signed jointly by four State departments (MoE, Department of Labour Resources, Ministry of Finance and State Planning Commission, 1985). This policy presented the new tasks, goals and strategies for the development of the TVET system in the 1980s. Up to 1984, 1.47 million students were enrolled in 7,002 secondary vocational schools. Additionally, the total number of enrolled students in regular secondary vocational and technical schools reached 3.7 million. This number accounts for 34.9% of the whole body of enrolled high-school students (Guo & Wu, 1996, p. 133). On 15 May 1996, the Law of Vocational Education, the first law on vocational education in China since 1949, was formally promulgated and implemented. This law is considered as a milestone in a new round of TVET reform in China and serves as a legal basis for redefining the role, school system, responsibilities, managerial system and financial resources of TVET. Ever since then, the social status of TVET has been strongly promoted to meet the needs of the socialist market economy and China’s rapid social changes. From the early 1980s to the late 1990s, the secondary vocational school system continued its rapid growth. It is reported that from 1980 to 2001, the proportion of regular upper high-school students among all the students in upper secondary education decreased from 81% to 54.7%, while the proportion of secondary vocational school students increased from 19% to 45.3%. During the same period, 50 million students graduated from secondary vocational education institutions (MoE, n.d.). By the turn of the new century, however, growth was slowing. In recent years secondary vocational schools have been reenergized and, once again, have achieved rapid development (Fig. 1). Since 2003, the vocational education system has expanded considerably (see Table 1). From 2001 to 2003, the total number of newly enrolled students in secondary vocational schools surged from 3.98 million to 5.15 million, representing an increase of 29%. In 2004, the number of newly enrolled and total students leapt to 5.5 million and 13.7 million respectively (Zhou, 2004). In addition, the higher

VI.7 New Policy Actions and Government Roles in China Total enrolments (tens of thousands) 541.6

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Fig. 1 Trend of enrolments and entrants in vocational secondary schools (1995–2004) Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2005, p. 692.

TVET system has also expanded considerably. The newly enrolled students in vocational colleges increased 3.7 times from 0.43 million in 1998 to 2 million in 2003, accounting for 58.5% of the total enrolment of students in regular colleges (Wang, J.P., 2005, p. 6). This rate of expansion will soon make it possible to have at least one vocational college in each metropolitan area. Meanwhile, the TVET system has also been diversified in terms of the subjects and training programmes provided. Based on a retrospective examination of TVET development in China since the 1990s, the following observations can be made. Firstly, TVET in China has been advancing gradually since the 1980s, having benefited from the enactment of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China in 1982 and the Law of Vocational Education in 1996 (Shi, 2001, p. 234). Until the late 1980s, TVET had not received sufficient attention from the field of educational research. Since then, more and more research centres or institutes for TVET have been established nationwide by universities or local governments. For example, the East China Normal University has offered master degrees and doctoral degrees for TVET studies since 1988 and 2001, respectively. In addition, its Institute for TVET Studies was upgraded in 2000.

Table 1 China’s vocational education system, 2004 Junior secondary

Senior secondary

Colleges

Total/average

Number of schools 697 14,454 872 16,023 20,574,101 Enrolment 525,134 14,092,467 5,956,500∗ Number of teachers 23,680 736,037 193,432 953,149 1:19.1∗∗ 1:30.8∗∗ 1:24.0∗∗ Teacher/student ratio 1:22.2∗∗ Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2005, pp. 689–90. ∗ = MoE, 2005. ∗∗ = authors’ calculations based on China statistical yearbook, 2005 and The national statistical communiqué of educational development, 2004.

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Secondly, TVET development is tightly constrained by technological innovation and social development. For thousands of years China was an agricultural society with low productivity and limited requirements for craftsmanship. Traditionally, artisan jobs have not always been viewed as decent occupations. Artisans were generally trained by Shi Tu Zhi, a traditional master/apprentice training system based on one-to-one individual partnership. Historically, TVET has not received the same social status as general education. This low social status underwent a remarkable change with the industrialization of traditional society and the professionalization of the labour force in modern China. The increasing demands for skilled workers emerged as a powerful driving force for the expansion of the TVET system. As a result, studying in TVET institutions has now become a valuable option for many young people in China, as well as for adults who want to pursue professional careers. Thirdly, China’s TVET development is not evenly spread across the nation due to the large size of the country and variations in social development. In China, there is a huge imbalance between different areas, such as the rural and the urban, the eastern and the western, the underdeveloped and the developed. This is particularly true when local economies and technology are compared closely. It is widely agreed that the development of TVET relies heavily on the development of the local economy and technology. This argument is confirmed in the case of China’s TVET development. Finally, the development of TVET in China has a promising future while the country continues its booming economic development. In the age of information technology, the rapid demand for large amounts of qualified workers with advanced technology or service skills is placing great pressure on the job market. China is fulfilling its dream of an affluent society and is catching up with the economies of developed countries. While the pace of China’s industrialization and urbanization continues to accelerate, its TVET system will have greater opportunities and better conditions for expansion and improvement in the near future.

3 Governmental Roles in TVET Reform and Development The Chinese Government, at both the central and local levels, has played a key role in the reform and development of the TVET system. Early in 1980, the State Council adopted the Report on Secondary Education Structural Reform submitted by the Ministry of Education and the State Administration of Labour. This policy document concluded that the reform of secondary education mainly affects the reform of high schools. It provided five detailed strategies for secondary education reform: (a) gradually increase the provision of TVET curricula for regular high-school students; (b) transform some regular high schools into TVET schools, such as vocational schools, agricultural schools, etc.; (c) encourage the opening of TVET schools by third parties, i.e. non-governmental or non-educational institutions or organizations—some TVET centres will be opened in metropolitan areas; (d) greatly expand technical schools and maintain the existing ones; and (c) make every effort to manage

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specialized middle schools efficiently. This report officially launched the nationwide reform of secondary education and began the rapid expansion of the TVET system. This policy action became the harbinger of a comprehensive reform of China’s education system. Later on in 1985, the Decision on Education System Reform was promulgated. This document clearly states that TVET is one of the key fields for educational reform. It required that the secondary education structure must be adjusted and the TVET system dramatically expanded. Meanwhile, the policy set the primary goal of the TVET system as the training of millions of knowledgeable, skilled workers for industry, agriculture, commerce, etc. In 1991 the State Council publicized the Decision on Energetically Developing Vocational and Technical Education. In this document, the State Council confirmed that one of the important tasks for TVET development in the 1990s is to ‘enhance the regular construction of the existing various vocational/technical schools with planning, and to concentrate on building up model and key schools’ (State Council, 1991). This document also proposed that student enrolments in TVET secondary vocational/technical schools must be expanded until they exceed those in regular high schools. In 1993, the Outline on Reform and Development of Education was promulgated by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council. The new document explicitly laid out the goals, guidelines and strategies for educational development in China. It aimed at mobilizing the contribution of all departments, enterprises, institutions and stakeholders, as well providing a better environment for the development of TVET. The outline required the government at various levels to play a stronger role in the reform and development of the TVET system. It further stated that ‘school-leavers who have finished junior secondary education but are not continuing their education further must receive some form of vocational training’. This requirement ensured that the new labour force in both rural and urban areas should receive technical and vocational training before being employed. In addition, the outline also required that ‘TVET schools at all levels must actively meet the needs of local development and the socialist market economy’. One point worthy of mention here is that this document urged a stronger governmental role in the new round of TVET development. For example, it required TVET schools to work closely with industrial partners under governmental supervision. In 1994, the National Working Conference on Education supported the expansion of experimental TVET schools based on the German ‘dual system’. The German system was approved by the National Conference as an effective education system and a successful method of human resource development for universalizing junior and senior vocational education and promoting the quality of the labour force. The National Working Conference reiterated that one of the educational priorities of the 1990s was to increase the quality of the labour workforce and to place priority on the development of TVET. By 1995, the newly enrolled and already registered students in primary vocational schools climbed to 290,000 and 700,000, increasing by 49% and 46% since 1990, respectively (China. MoE, 1996). The newly enrolled and registered students in secondary vocational schools surged to 1.90 million and 4.48 million respectively, increasing by 54.2% and 52% since 1990 (Editorial Board, 1991, p. 247; State Commission of Education, 1996, pp. 36–39).

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One year after the Law of Vocational Education entered into force in 1996, the former President Jiang Zeming, in his Report to the fifteenth National Congress, stressed that the strategy of renewing the Chinese economy through science, technology and education and achieving sustainable development should be implemented and that various forms of vocational education should be actively promoted. Later, in 1999, the State Council published the Decision on Deepening Educational Reform and Promoting Quality Education. Again, this document emphasized adapting the education system to the socialist market economy through the cohesive development of different types of education. It also stated that vocational education programmes should be energetically developed, particularly senior secondary vocational education. Since 2001, China’s TVET system has gone through an unprecedented period of development. The State Council, in July, 2002, hosted the Working Conference of National Vocational Education in Beijing. One month later, the Decision on Vigorously Advancing Vocational Education Reform and Development was officially promulgated (State Council, 2002). The new policy urged that local governments must allocate an increasing amount of the annual budget to TVET schools or institutions, and that the amount budgeted for TVET must not be less than 15% of total educational expenditure in urban areas and not less than 20% in areas where nineyear compulsory education is universal. In March 2004, the State Council approved the Rejuvenation Action Plan for Education in 2003–2007 submitted by the Department of Education, and agreed to launch the TVET Innovation Project as one of six priority projects. In June of the same year, the Joint Seven Departments of the State Council held the new Working Conference on National Vocational Education in Nanjing, and in September publicized the Opinions on Further Strengthening TVET. All of the above laws and policies demonstrate that in recent years the Chinese Government has made concrete and persistent efforts to reform and develop TVET.

4 Policy Actions for the Renewal of TVET The Chinese Government has recently made the development of TVET once again a national policy priority and expects that by 2010 the enrolment in upper TVET systems will reach 8 million, which will be equivalent to that in regular senior high schools (State Council, 2005). The working guidelines of TVET reform in recent years reflect the guidelines of the Training Plan for Rural Labour-Force Transformation and the Plan for TVET Schools to Train Scarce Skilled Workers of Manufacture and Modern Services (China. MoE, 2004). The guidelines include the following points.

4.1 A ‘Scientific Approach to Development’ Should be Followed The guidelines include: (a) encouraging innovation and reform, as well as an awareness of services and adhering to a system of innovation and teaching reform that


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fosters socio-economic development; (b) paying more attention to social demand and improving the quality of TVET, in accordance with China’s socio-economic development and the labour-market demands, enhancing TVET’s self-developing capacity and generally improving teaching quality; (c) meeting the demand of comprehensive development to reach an optimized structure, centring on the creation of a secondary TVET system that has equal enrolment in secondary TVET and in regular upper secondary education; (d) paying special attention to the role of vocational training and placing equal emphasis on regular education and vocational training; and (e) drawing attention to the TVET reform and its development, particularly in rural and western areas where it is most necessary. The Chinese Government anticipates that by 2007 the relative distribution of high schools across the country can be evened out, with the exception of some developed areas where a higher proportion of TVET institutions is required to meet present labour-market demand. Meanwhile, TVET institutions are expected to have more than half of their enrolment at the higher-education level. Generally speaking, higher TVET colleges will no longer be upgraded to university level in the future, nor will secondary vocational schools be upgraded into higher TVET colleges, be merged into universities or be downgraded into regular secondary schools. An adequate and stable level of TVET provision will be maintained in order to gradually build up a comprehensive educational structure.

4.2 Appropriate Planning for TVET Development In the near future, the goals for TVET development can be summarized as setting up a unique system, completing three tasks and ensuring two emphases (Wang, H.B., 2005, p. 8). Setting up one system means establishing an appropriate TVET system suitable for the socialist market economy and reflects the demands of the market and employment. This new TVET system will be characterized by an optimal structure, adaptability, unique characteristics and independent development. Three tasks, to be measured by statistical indicators, are set for TVET development between 2003 and 2007. The first task is to train 30 million graduates from secondary TVET schools and 10 million graduates from TVET colleges. The second task is to train 50 million employees in urban areas, more than 100 million farm workers in rural areas, and over 20 million rural farm workers for transformation. The final task is that, by the year 2007, more than 3.5 million students will be enrolled annually in secondary TVET schools; more than 1.2 million of them in western China. Ensuring two emphases means that two working foci must be kept in mind in the reform and development of TVET system. First, the reform and development of the TVET system must emphasize the secondary level, and an even proportion of TVET schools and regular high schools must be maintained. Second, since rural and western areas have been historically disadvantaged in socio-economic and educational development, TVET reform and development must pay particular attention to these areas.

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4.3 Providing Services and Reflecting Job-Market Trends The Chinese Government has repeatedly called for the reform and development of TVET to enhance the provision of services. In the government’s view, these services consist of four main types: (a) adapting to the economic structure and technological advancement; (b) promoting employment and re-employment; (c) serving rural areas and farm workers; and (d) speeding up development in western areas, as well as the rejuvenation of old industrial bases in the north-east. Meanwhile, the Chinese Government also called for the reform and development of the TVET system to reflect job-market trends. Graduates from TVET schools, especially secondary TVET schools, will find employment mostly in the fields of manufacturing, technology, management or services. Based on the belief that ‘to find a job is a basis for life,’ the Chinese Government views TVET as an ideal opportunity for individuals who will not go on to higher education, and intends to enhance this option by expanding the TVET system. In addition, the Chinese government realizes that the reform and development of the TVET system must begin with ‘three transformations’ which are particularly related to the decentralization of local governmental roles (Zhou, 2005). First, the central guidelines for the administration of TVET schools must be updated so as to reflect trends in the job market. The TVET system must be actively shifted from a supply-driven training system to a market-driven system, from direct governmental control to macro-governmental guidance, and from disciplinebased learning to employment-based training. Second, the way TVET schools are administered must be upgraded. Flexible, diverse and open modes are encouraged to meet the needs of the job market. For example, TVET schools must upgrade their programmes to satisfy the needs of ‘special requests’ from enterprises. Moreover, the TVET schools’ functions must also be decentralized concerning interschool co-operation, student and teacher recruitment, the administration of student registration, curriculum development, course arrangement and textbook selection. Finally, the TVET system must be open to market pressures. Minban TVET schools, with financial resources from the private sector, are warmly welcomed by the government. The Chinese government adopts the cardinal principle of ‘active expansion with official administration’. Meanwhile, a competitive system has been introduced into TVET schools, which includes public and private schools. The TVET system is required to establish close co-operation with third parties, including enterprises.

4.4 Building Up a Modern TVET System Since the 1990s, the market-oriented, privatization and decentralization processes have been accelerating in China. The education sector, and especially the TVET sector, is no exception. For example, Minban TVET schools have grown and expanded at a surprising speed. Various pressures on the existing TVET system


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are arising from the market place. In response to these new challenges, the Chinese Government has adopted the following four strategies for encouraging TVET reform. 1. Setting up and gradually optimizing a hierarchical administrative system under the control of the local government and involving the public. Local governments are urged to take more responsibility for the comprehensive planning of local TVET development (State Council, 2002). 2. Extending teaching and curriculum reform by implementing the educational guidelines set out by the Communist Party of China, generally satisfying the requirements of quality education and enhancing the professional training of students. TVET resources will be gradually optimized, and the contents and teaching strategies of curriculum and programmes will be adjusted to satisfy market needs. In addition, a new credit system, part-time learning programmes, in-service training programmes and internship programmes have already been introduced to increase the flexibility and availability of TVET. 3. Extending the reform of the TVET personnel management system by improving the quality of teachers. The Chinese Government advocates the reform of personnel management systems as a priority for TVET reform. Public recruitment, a competition system when applying for teaching posts and the contract system for teaching positions have to form part of the personnel management system of TVET (State Council, 2002). Furthermore, teachers, especially heads of departments, will receive regular in-service training. Principals and deans of TVET schools or colleges must receive certification in order to take up their positions. Additionally, a network of teacher education institutes has been set up for the TVET system to improve the quality of the teaching corps. 4. Finally, further reform of the employment system aims to introduce a stricter certification or licensing system for new employees. The employment admittance system, known as ‘trained before employed’, must be more strictly observed in conformity with occupational qualifications (State Council, 2002). The TVET that is provided shall correspond to the actual needs of the job market and occupational standards will be established by the State for classified job positions. On the other hand, TVET schools must provide appropriate and updated job-market information for students.

5 Discussion The Chinese government has tried hard since the 1980s to rebuild a TVET system corresponding to the socialist market economy in conformity with the Chinese context. Numerous policy actions have been undertaken to transform the traditional TVET system, and the outcomes are quite encouraging: (a) the volume of the higher TVET system is growing rapidly and that of the secondary TVET system is recovering; (b) the administration of TVET schools is changing through the

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involvement of multiple players; and (c) the employment rate of graduates from TVET schools/colleges is steadily increasing. The obstacles and problems with TVET reform and development, however, remain perplexing. For example: (a) the recent development of secondary TVET schools is slowing down, compared with that of higher TVET colleges; (b) the TVET structure is distorted in terms of school types and levels; (c) the TVET administrative system does not yet meet the evolving needs of the market; (d) the teacher workforce is not competent in terms of quantity and quality; (e) applicants for admission to TVET schools have much lower academic achievement than those to regular schools (Ma, Guo & Chen, 2005a, 2005b; Wang, 2005). A major obstacle to TVET reform and development is ‘the capital cost of improving the quality of training facilities and of implementing programmes for upgrading staff and revising courses’, as Fallon and Hunting pointed out (2000, p. 180). In fact, the annual State budget for TVET expenditure is not sufficient and, as a result, the campus facilities for TVET schools remain unsatisfactory. In addition, there are persistent nationwide contrasts among the TVET systems (privileged and disadvantaged schools), areas (the west and the east), or educational resources (the urban and the rural), etc. These problems pose serious challenges to Chinese policy-makers. The Chinese experiences of TVET reform and development provide a good example of how a centralized administration has employed multiple policy actions to rebuild the TVET system. The advantages of such experiences include the ability to upgrade an existing system by collective policy players and behaviours, compulsory participation and involvement, and optimized use of system resources. On the other hand, the disadvantages are also obvious: a rigid administrative structure and hierarchical mechanism, very limited flexibility, little school autonomy, asymmetrical communication between policy-makers and school implementers, and so on. In addition, it is extremely difficult for the Chinese Government to find a balance in the relationship between central control and decentralization. These dilemmas facing China’s TVET system represent a challenge for policy-makers and policy-analysts as they contemplate further actions in the future.

References China. Ministry of Education. 1983. Zhongguo jiaoyu chengjiu tongji ziliao, 1949–1981 [Statistics of China’s educational achievement, 1949–1981]. Beijing: People’s Education Press. China. Ministry of Education. 1996. 1995 quanguo jiaoyu shiye fazhan tongji gongbao [The national statistical communiqué of educational development 1995]. <www.edu.cn/ 20010823/207274.shtml> China. Ministry of Education. 2004. Nongcun laodongli zhuanyi peixun jihua [Training plan for rural labour force transformation]. Beijing: MoE. (Document Jiaozhicheng 2004, 1.) China. Ministry of Education. 2005. 2004 quanguo jiaoyu shiye fazhan tongji gongbao [The national statistical communiqué of educational development, 2004]. <www.moe.edu.cn/ edoas/website18/info14794.htm>


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China. Ministry of Education. No date. Vocational education in China. <www.moe.edu.cn/ english/vocational v.htm> China. Ministry of Education; Department of Labour Resources; Ministry of Finance, State Planning Commission. 1985. Guanyu gaige chengshi zhongdeng jiaoyu jiegou, fazhan zhiye jishu jiaoyu de yijian [Opinion on the structural reform of urban secondary education and the development of TVET]. China education daily, 1 December. China. Ministry of Education; State Administration of Labour. 1980. Guanyu zhongdeng jiaoyu jiegou gaige de baogao [The report on the structural reform of secondary education]. Beijing: MoE. Editorial Board. 1991. Zhongguo jiaoyu tongji nianjian, 1991 [Education statistics yearbook of China, 1991]. Beijing: People’s Education Press. Fallon, P.R.; Hunting, G. 2000. China. In: Gill, I.S.; Fluitman, F.; Dar A., eds. Vocational education and training reform: matching skills to markets and budgets, pp. 161–81. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Guo, F.C.; Wu, D.G. 1996. Jiaoyu gaige fazhan lun [On educational reform and development]. Shijiazhuang, China: Hebei Education Press. Ma, S.C.; Guo, Y.; Chen, S. 2005a. Shiyiwu qijian woguo zhiye jiaoyu gaige yu fazhan de zhuyao wenti I [The major problems of the reform and development of China’s TVET in the period of the 11th five-year plan I]. Communication of vocational education, vol. 4, pp. 11–14. Ma, S.C.; Guo, Y.; Chen, S. 2005b. Shiyiwu qijian woguo zhiye jiaoyu gaige yu fazhan de zhuyao wenti II [The major problems of the reform and development of China’s TVET in the period of the 11th five-year plan II]. Communication of vocational education, vol. 5, pp. 12–15. National Bureau of Statistics of China. 2005. China statistical yearbook, 2005. Beijing: China Statistics Press. Shi, W.P. 2001. Bijiao zhiye jishu jiaoyu [Comparative study on vocational and technical education]. Shanghai, China: East China Normal University Press. State Commission of Education. 1996. Zhongguo jiaoyu zonghe tongji nianjian 1996 [Comprehensive statistics yearbook of China’s education, 1996]. Beijing: Higher Education Press. State Council. 1991. Guanyu dali fazhan zhiye jiaoyu de jueding [The decision on energetically developing vocational and technical education]. <www.tgzhx.com/tushu/jygl1/ ZYJYYCRJYGLFLFG/1082.htm> State Council. 2002. Guanyu dali tuijin zhiye jiaoyu gaige yu fazhan de jueding [The decision on vigorously advancing vocational education reform and development]. Beijing. (Document no. 26.) State Council. 2005. Guowuyuan guanyu dali fazhan zhiye jiaoyu de jueding [The decision on vigorously advancing vocational education]. Beijing. (Document no. 35.) <www.gov.cn/ zwgk/2005-11/09/content 94296.htm> Wang, H.B. 2005. Qianxi woguo zhongdeng zhiye jiaoyu zhi fazhan [On the development of China’s secondary TVET]. China science and technology information, vol. 12, pp. 225–26. Wang, J.P. 2005. Woguo zhiye jiaoyu de xingshi he fazhan silu [The situation and development plan of Chinese vocational education]. Journal of Henan Vocational-Technical Teachers College, vol. 1, pp. 5–9. Zhou, J. 2004. Yong kexue fazhanguan tongling jiaoyu gongzuo quanju [Leading the whole operation of education by ‘a scientific concept of development’]. Speech at MOE’s Annual Working Meeting, 2005. <www.moe.edu.cn/edoas/website18/ info16025.htm> Zhou, J. 2005. Yi kexue fazhanguan wei zhidao shixian zhongdeng zhiye jiaoyu kuaisu jiankang fazhan [Speeding up the healthy development of secondary vocational education guided by ‘scientific concept of development’]. <www.moe.edu.cn/ edoas/website18/info10855.htm>


Chapter VI.8

Some Generic Issues in TVET Management George Preddey

1 Introduction This chapter of the UNESCO-UNEVOC International handbook identifies and analyses nine generic issues that are significant for TVET management. Six of these issues are presented as contrasting dichotomies—for example, the implications of centralization versus devolution for the management of TVET systems. The nine generic issues for TVET management that are considered in the following sections are:

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centralization versus devolution; autonomy versus accountability; inputs versus outputs and outcomes; governance versus management; public versus private funding and tuition fees; public versus private provision; TVET policy and legal frameworks; TVET system configurations; TVET institutional management systems.

Expanding on these generic issues, an overview of TVET management practice is set out in the next chapter, with particular reference to eleven specific TVET management functions. All governments will want their TVET systems to be responsive, effective and cost-efficient. Chapters VI.8 and VI.9 draw extensively on the collective experiences of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom—three countries that have reformed their public TVET institutions. The management and operational practices in these three countries and the associated legal, policy and organizational environments are benchmarks against which the TVET systems of other countries may be assessed. Contemporary TVET management in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom is focused on managing the operational efficiency, quality and accountability of TVET institutions to stakeholders—some of the principal areas of TVET management functions that are outlined in the next chapter. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VI.8, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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The collective experiences of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom are documented in a management handbook: Vocational education and training institutions: a management handbook and CD-ROM, a management resource produced under the aegis of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Asia and Pacific Skills Development Programme (APSDEP). It contains eleven modules and forty-three self-contained learning units, and is accompanied by a CD-ROM containing more than 400 resource documents on national training policies, legislation, operational documents and management instruments etc. These two handbooks i.e. UNESCO-UNEVOC International handbook of education for the changing world of work (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2009) and Vocational education and training institution: a management handbook and CD-ROM (Gasskov, 2006) are complementary. Whereas the UNESCO-UNEVOC International handbook is encyclopaedic in its scope, the ILO Management handbook is focused on contemporary management practice in TVET institutions and systems. Chapters VI.8 (generic issues) and VI.9 (management practice) in the UNESCOUNEVOC International handbook (2009) are cross-referenced to the relevant learning units in the ILO Management handbook (2006). These forty-three units contain substantial detail on contemporary TVET management practices and extensive links to original resource documents and reference material included on the associated CD-ROM.

2 Centralization Versus Devolution 2.1 Centralized TVET Systems Effective governance and management are key issues for the TVET sector. Many countries support large numbers of public TVET institutions that absorb substantial but static or even declining government budgets, yet are facing an increasing demand for skills development (Gasskov, 2006, p. xi—hereafter, only the page number will be given). Although national TVET systems and institutions differ significantly among countries and their management practices reflect national conditions, all governments will want their public TVET institutions to be responsive, effective and cost-efficient. In many countries, publicly-funded TVET institutions are part of the structure of central government. Their budgets are part of the central government budgets and institutional management and teaching staff are civil servants. International experience indicates that the responsiveness, effectiveness and costefficiency of TVET institutions are enhanced by the devolution of management, financial and teaching responsibilities to the institutions themselves. Centralization of TVET management and delivery commonly translates into a lack of incentives for staff to show initiative and for TVET institutions to improve their performance. Centralization may also fetter the contributions of private institutions to TVET delivery.

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2.2 The Case for Devolution In some countries, a different approach to TVET has been implemented through processes of public-sector management reform. The governments of these countries have restricted their roles in TVET to those of principal funders, regulators and assessors. Under this different approach, public TVET institutions have their own governing councils that represent their stakeholders, may employ their own staff and are responsible for their strategic management. TVET institutions in these countries are given the means to achieve agreed outputs and to benefit from their improved efficiency. International experience is indicating that the responsiveness, cost-efficiency and effectiveness of public TVET institutions are enhanced if they have greater autonomy in their management (pp. 8, 20 et seq.)

3 Autonomy Versus Accountability 3.1 Institutional Autonomy In countries where public TVET institutions are given significant autonomy, their governing councils assume the governance roles previously exercised by government officials. Institutional autonomy is strengthened through the appointment of chief executives responsible to the governing councils for their operational management. Enhanced institutional autonomy requires that governance and management arrangements are capable of achieving agreed objectives and maintaining the longterm viability of TVET institutions. A sense of institutional ownership develops that differs from traditional government ownership. Enhanced institutional autonomy provides stronger incentives for institutional managers and teaching staff to achieve better results. The actual level of autonomy of a TVET institution is determined by the activities that can be undertaken without the control or direction of government agencies. These include the abilities to:

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determine, appoint, employ and dismiss institutional staff; introduce organizational and management structures; determine staff conditions of service; develop courses and curricula and issue awards; enrol students and assess their progress; operate institutional bank accounts; generate, retain and manage revenue and surpluses; borrow, rent or lease; purchase, maintain, expand and dispose of institutional assets, including buildings and equipment (pp. 8 et seq.).

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However, governments as principal shareholders in autonomous TVET institutions are still able to influence their operations by the appointment and dismissal of governing councils, by specified powers to issue directives, and through external funding, performance assessment and accountability frameworks (pp. 31 et seq.)

3.2 Accountability Frameworks Autonomy, while increasing the opportunities for efficiency and productivity gains, also increases the operational and financial risks for governments. These risks, however, can be managed by the introduction of enhanced accountability arrangements operated by central governments or their agencies. These arrangements may include restrictions on autonomy (e.g. specified limits on borrowing, leasing and asset disposal) and prescribed monitoring and reporting processes—e.g. specified arrangements for financial reporting and audit (pp. 76, 153 et seq.). Enhanced accountability should be seen as a consequence of enhanced autonomy rather than as an instrument to fetter autonomy, but has important implications for institutional management.

4 Inputs Versus Outputs and Outcomes Governments invest in TVET to achieve desired economic and social outcomes, such as well-educated workforces for a competitive global market (pp. 121 et seq.). The inputs to TVET systems are the financial resources committed, often predominantly by governments, to TVET institutions. The outputs of TVET institutions contribute to desired outcomes and include the (intangible) knowledge, skills and competencies acquired by students. Various (tangible) proxies for the (intangible) knowledge, skills and competencies acquired by students are used as measures of outputs. These proxies may include enrolments, equivalent full-time students (EFTS), course completions and graduations. Proxies may have limitations when used as parameters in funding systems. For example, funding TVET institutions on the basis of graduation numbers would create perverse incentives for institutions to pass all of their students irrespective of performance. In centralized TVET systems, institutions are customarily resourced on the basis of what they cost (input funding) rather than on the TVET services that they deliver (output funding). This may result in weak linkages between budget allocations for TVET and desired TVET outcomes. Devolved systems of autonomous TVET institutions are more amenable to funding based on outputs or outcomes. For the reasons outlined above, outputfunding systems are customarily based on proxies for outputs (e.g. EFTS enrolments), but may include additional performance elements (e.g. course completions or graduations). Although EFTS enrolments could be perceived as inputs to TVET


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systems, they are customarily used as proxy measures of the knowledge, skills and competencies acquired by students—i.e. TVET outputs (pp. 125 et seq.).

5 Governance Versus Management 5.1 Governance Governance and management can operate at three levels: government; governing councils; chief executives and senior management. The roles of governing councils and chief executives and the distinction between governance and management become more significant as TVET institutions gain enhanced autonomy. In centralized TVET systems, the government agencies assume governance roles and chief executives are relegated to the role of line managers. In devolved TVET systems, governments relinquish their governance roles in favour of governing councils. Chief executives have responsibilities similar to those of the chief executives of private-sector companies and the members of governing councils have responsibilities similar to those of boards of directors. Table 1 outlines some distinctions between the governance and management roles for autonomous TVET institutions (p. 53). A key responsibility of governing councils is the determination of institutional policies—i.e. statements of intent or direction that provide guidance to chief executives and managers about how to carry out their delegated functions. Once governing councils have made policy decisions, implementation becomes the responsibility of chief executives. Effective councils monitor the implementation of their policies. If problems become evident or accountability mechanisms are not working, the governing councils may revoke their delegations. Some important aspects of management for governing councils to monitor include finance, academic matters, staffing, site and facilities, advocacy and public relations (pp. 54 et seq.).

Table 1 Differences between governance and management roles for autonomous TVET institutions TVET institution’s governance

TVET institution’s management

Governance sets overall direction by strategic planning and determining goals, strategies and policies (What to do). Governance ensures management accountability through reporting mechanisms. Governance determines institutional objectives (outputs and outcomes).

Management is concerned with achieving goals in accordance with strategies and policies (How to do). Management provides information for effective governance and management accountability. Management is concerned with the means for achieving objectives (outputs and outcomes). Effective management is hands-on.

Effective governance is hands-off.

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5.2 Delegations to Management TVET legal frameworks generally provide governing councils with the powers to delegate, normally to chief executives. These delegations recognize that council members cannot deal with excessive detail. Under this configuration, the chief executives manage the academic and administrative affairs of the TVET institutions and employ their staff. The governing councils ensure that the chief executives are managing the TVET institutions in accordance with their missions, objectives and required outputs. They ensure that the chief executives have the authority to manage the institutions through appropriate delegations. A key aspect of delegation is that, although governing councils may delegate authority to institutional management for specified actions, the responsibility for those actions remains with the governing councils. The chief executives of autonomous TVET institutions are customarily expected to:

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prepare management documents (corporate plans) for meeting objectives and delivering outputs; develop operating and capital budgets; establish internal controls to oversee expenditure and finance; manage staff employment and industrial relations; manage internal reporting on the implementation of corporate plans; prepare annual reports that compared actual institutional performances with objectives; prepare reports required by external funding and regulatory agencies.

6 Public Versus Private Funding and Tuition Fees 6.1 The Case for Tuition Fees Tuition fees recognize the private benefits of TVET that accrue to graduates: enhanced lifetime incomes, employment prospects and job satisfaction. Tuition fees encourage students to choose their TVET courses carefully and to be diligent, because they are meeting part or all of the costs of their training, even though the major costs may in reality be income foregone. Tuition fees also provide incentives for TVET institutions to be responsive to their students’ expectations since they are dependent, at least in part, on tuition fees for their financial resources. The additional revenue from tuition fees can be used to finance additional places, in principle enhancing equitable access (pp. 124, 143 et seq.) However, tuition fees may also discourage participation in TVET by students from poorer families. The disincentive effects can be mitigated by student support policies that include scholarships, targeted fee rebates and non-discriminatory loan schemes.


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6.2 Setting Tuition Fees In some jurisdictions, public TVET institutions are constrained from charging tuition fees and are expected to deliver TVET within the limits of revenue derived solely from their public funding. In some jurisdictions, governments or their agencies determine standard tuition fees, and in others, public TVET institutions either set their own unfettered fees or set fees subject to regulation. Various principles underpin tuition-fee-setting policies and involve balancing the benefits of TVET for individual students, for their employers and for the wider community while maintaining equitable access and also institutional viability. When governments set tuition fees and also allocate public funding, they are effectively determining the total cost of TVET delivery. When TVET institutions are able to set their own tuition fees to supplement their public funding, their enhanced autonomy in principle enables competition on the basis of price (fees) and on course quality. In principle, this may encourage greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness (pp. 140 et seq.).

7 Public Versus Private Provision 7.1 Government Ownership and Purchase Interests TVET systems often comprise a mix of public and private institutions. Private TVET institutions may occupy minor niche markets; they may complement the public provision of TVET; or they may actively compete with public TVET institutions. Governments have two distinct sets of interests in public TVET institutions (p. 122):

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as owners and regulators of institutional assets (ownership interest); as funders (purchasers) of TVET services (outputs) that the institutions deliver (purchase interest).

There is no compelling public policy reason why students enrolled at public and private TVET institutions should be treated differently by governments. From the students’ perspective, the ownership of TVET institutions should not be material to the delivery of TVET services to them. Governments do not own private TVET institutions. However, the TVET services that they deliver, in principle, are indistinguishable from the services delivered by public TVET institutions. There is no compelling public policy reason why governments’ purchase (funding) interests in TVET delivery should be different for public and private TVET institutions. The funding of TVET delivery should, in principle, be ownership-neutral. This arrangement does not preclude additional public funding for public TVET institutions that recognizes and protects public-ownership interests.

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7.2 Public Funding of Public and Private TVET Institutions In many countries, publicly-funded TVET is delivered principally or exclusively by public TVET institutions, often subject to stringent entry conditions. As a consequence, students from poorer families may be entirely denied access to TVET or required to pay cost-recovery fees to (lower quality) private institutions. On the other hand, students from affluent families—including those who failed the stringent entry conditions to public institutions—may be able to enrol at (higher quality) private TVET institutions. In principle, these inherently inequitable outcomes may be addressed by ownership-neutral funding systems. In some countries, students at public and private TVET institutions are treated more-or-less equally under various TVET funding policies that include:

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allocating TVET vouchers to secondary school-leavers that may be redeemable at any public or private TVET institution and that replace the public funding allocations to TVET institutions; allocating similar ownership-neutral funding to public and private TVET institutions for similar TVET outputs (without precluding additional funding to protect public ownership interests) (CD-ROM Unit 5.1).

Voucher systems remain controversial and have been implemented with mixed success by a number of countries. Although they appear sound in principle by maximizing student choice, they have experienced practical difficulties. Students make imperfect choices, as some countries have experienced but, on the other hand, TVET systems largely driven by centralized labour-market planning are also problematic. A compromise approach involves a mix of public and private TVET institutions in which students, institutions, industry, professions and (light-handed) government funding agencies determine collectively what TVET courses are offered where and to whom. Output-funding systems strengthen the linkages between budget allocations and desired TVET outcomes, while ownership-neutral funding systems, in principle, offer more equitable access to TVET and encourage private sector contributions to TVET delivery (CD-ROM Unit 5.1).

8 TVET Policy and Legal Frameworks 8.1 National TVET Policies National TVET policies are rarely determined in unique policy documents and may be changed by new governments. The policies generally make certain assumptions about the roles of TVET in economic and social development: for example, that a minimum level of education is necessary for individuals to function in society, as well as for social cohesion, or that equitable access to TVET promotes equal opportunities for employment and income.


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Comprehensive national TVET policies may acknowledge the respective roles of public and private TVET institutions and whether private TVET institutions are able to access public funding and, if so, under what conditions (pp. 15 et seq.).

8.2 TVET Legislative and Regulatory Frameworks Legislation is required in devolved TVET systems to provide appropriate legal environments for public VET institutions. It generally includes provisions for:

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institutional status and autonomy; the role, appointment and composition of governing councils; employment of staff; funding, performance and accountability frameworks; controls on institutional assets and financial operations.

In those countries that have both federal and state or provincial governmental structures, TVET institutions operate under the legislation enacted by the level of government that is constitutionally responsibility for TVET provision. The legislation may incorporate inter-governmental agreements over shared responsibilities for TVET delivery (pp. 3 et seq., pp. 31 et seq.).

8.3 Legal Status and Ownership of Public TVET Institutions Public TVET institutions may have the organizational forms of State companies, statutory corporations or trusts. Institutions operating as State companies may do so under conditions of competitive neutrality with the private sector, but are accountable to governments as shareholders. Those operating as statutory corporations are more centrally controlled by governments, but may have some of the freedoms of State companies, including property rights. Public TVET institutions registered as trusts are controlled by trust boards that act in place of governments as owners. Ownership is critical for asset management. Institutional autonomy presumes an ability to acquire or dispose of institutional assets that is predetermined by ownership. A clear test of ownership is whether governments carry the risks of ownership, including residual liability. The net equity of public TVET institutions may be included in governments’ budget statements of financial position. The trend in devolved TVET systems is for assets to be owned by the TVET institutions themselves (pp. 5 et seq.).

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8.4 Establishment, Disestablishment and Merger of Public TVET Institutions Legislative provisions for the establishment, disestablishment and merger of public TVET institutions are required to protect the operations, viability and reputations of other public and private TVET institutions and for the allocation of public resources. An important issue is whether the numbers and types of public TVET institutions should be regulated. The regulation of establishments, disestablishments and mergers may ensure that an adequate range of TVET services is available, but may also constrain other potential TVET providers from entry, potentially resulting in insufficient provision of TVET to meet particular areas of industry or student demand (p. 8).

9 TVET System Configurations 9.1 TVET Governmental Administrative Structures Devolved systems of TVET institutions require relationships with the machinery of government to ensure their accountability and to protect governments’ ownership interests. Various configurations of departments, ministries and government agencies may undertake regulatory and advisory roles on behalf of governments. Single entities should have overall responsibilities as links between the executive arms of governments and the TVET institutions. Their roles will depend on the levels of institutional autonomy. Organizational structures within the machinery of government include departments (operational focus) and ministries (policy focus). In some countries, groups of TVET institutions are split between the ministries of education and labour. Line ministries may supervise training in certain specialist areas, such as health and agriculture, although the international trend has been to merge all TVET activities within designated single ministries, departments or agencies (pp. 25 et seq.).

9.2 Agencies Providing Services to TVET Institutions The roles and functions carried out by departments and ministries are often devolved to government agencies established under enabling legislation. The essential distinction is that departments and ministries are accountable to responsible ministers, whereas agencies are governed by boards that have a degree of independence from ministerial direction and represent a broader range of stakeholders. Under these arrangements, ministries and departments are customarily responsible for policy development and advice to governments, whereas TVET agencies have operational responsibilities that include funding, accountability and qualityassurance systems operating within policy environments determined by governments. Some specialist agencies may have particular functions, including skills


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assessment and certification, curriculum development services, quality assurance, teaching-staff development and the provision of labour-market information. Support services customarily include best-practice dissemination and sector advocacy undertaken by national associations of TVET institutions. For services that are regulatory rather than supportive in nature (e.g. course accreditations), charge-for-service arrangements may avoid any potential conflicts of interest (pp. 27 et seq.).

10 TVET Institutional Management Systems 10.1 Governing Councils The size, composition and procedures for appointing governing councils of autonomous TVET institutions are generally prescribed in legislation and may reflect two distinct approaches to institutional governance:

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representational approach: council members represent the interests of stakeholders, including governments, employers, unions, staff, students, professional bodies and alumni; managerial approach: council members are individuals chosen for their particular relevant skills.

The representational approach generally results in larger representative councils, whereas the managerial approach results in smaller more business-orientated councils. There are arguments for and against both approaches, and examples of both can be found in various jurisdictions (pp. 51 et seq.). Even though their composition may reflect a range of stakeholders, governing councils must act in the best interests of TVET institutions rather than those of individual stakeholders. The roles and responsibilities of governing councils customarily include most or all of the following activities:

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strategic planning: i.e. mission statements or charters setting out institutional roles, functions and characteristics; development (councils/management); approval (councils); operational planning: i.e. formulation of objectives and corporate plans; development (management); approval (councils/funding agencies); delivery (management and staff); monitoring (councils/audit agencies); financial planning and management: preparation of budgets (management); budget approval (councils); budget monitoring (councils); preparation of annual accounts (management); approval (councils); academic planning and management: planning of TVET courses (management); monitoring delivery (councils); student management (management);

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determination of institutional policies: development (management); approval (councils); monitoring of adherence by management to agreed policies (councils); human resource management: appointment of chief executives and performance monitoring (councils); appointment and monitoring of subordinate staff (chief executives and/or senior management); site development, capital development, buildings, equipment, maintenance (delegated to management for approval by councils); accountability: preparation of annual reports (management); approval (councils); audit (external audit agencies); representation and communication: managing public relations and the media (council chairs, chief executives) (pp. 54 et seq.).

10.2 Alternative Organizational Structures of TVET Institutions The organizational structures of TVET institutions reflect external policy and organizational environments and the levels of institutional autonomy. Organizational structures may include the following elements:

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governing council; chief executive; senior management team of chief executive and senior managers; academic board (see below); a number of teaching departments; a number of academic, administrative and support departments (pp. 65 et seq.).

In some jurisdictions, the organizational structures include academic boards that are established to advise the governing councils on matters relating to training courses, curricula, awards and other academic matters. The relationships between governing councils, academic boards and chief executives vary among TVET institutions. Internationally, academic boards are increasingly involved in academic selfevaluations and internal audits, conducted through internal academic quality management systems approved by external agencies (p. 62). TVET delivery structures customarily involve breakdowns into departments based on broad vocational areas. Designated heads of department are responsible to chief executives for the activities and performance of their departments. Some TVET institutions are small and serve only single industries or sectors, whereas others, including polytechnics, are large enough to serve a wider range of industries and occupations. In the larger TVET institutions, training departments may be aggregated into larger faculties or schools. Technical, workshop and laboratory support staff in larger TVET institutions are commonly allocated at departmental level. In some TVET institutions, separate administrative sections under directors of administration provide administrative


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support services. The technical and administrative support services in larger TVET institutions customarily include separate departments or sections responsible for:

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human resources: staffing, payroll, recruitment, performance assessment, staff development; student management: courses, timetables, enrolments, academic records, student support; finance: accounting systems, purchasing, financial planning and control, internal audit; asset management: campus, buildings, equipment, maintenance, security; information management: library, computer systems, communications; marketing and development: student recruitment, industry liaison, market research; curriculum: curriculum development, relationships with external awarding/ assessing bodies; staff training and development (pp. 69 et seq.).

10.3 Internal Management Procedures The complexity of operating large TVET institutions makes it appropriate for governing councils to delegate management responsibilities to chief executives. Chief executives may further delegate operational decisions to heads of department or operational unit managers, as appropriate. A key aspect of delegation is that, although authority for action can be delegated, the responsibility for action is not (pp. 73 et seq.). The key responsibility of governing councils is to determine institutional policies that provide guidance for chief executives and managers in their application of delegated authority. The implementation of approved policies becomes the responsibility of chief executives and management. Governing councils can monitor institutional financial performance against institutional budgets provided that there is effective reporting by management. By agreeing to institutional budgets, governing councils have effectively endorsed management plans for each financial year. Management is required to perform in accordance with agreed budgets, and to be accountable to governing councils for any variation from them. Chief executives are responsible for establishing internal financial control systems, generally through delegation to designated staff (pp. 76 et seq.).

11 Conclusions and Implications Many countries support large numbers of public TVET institutions that absorb substantial but static or even declining government budgets, yet are facing an increasing demand for skills development. All governments will want their public TVET

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institutions to be responsive to labour markets, to operate effectively and to be costefficient. This analysis of nine generic TVET management issues draws extensively on the collective experiences of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom— three countries that have recently undertaken significant management reform of their public TVET institutions. Drawing on these international precedents, some future trends for TVET systems and institutional management can be identified. The most significant trend is the devolution of governance and management responsibilities by governments to the TVET institutions themselves (pp. xi et seq.). International experience indicates that the responsiveness, operational efficiency and effectiveness of public TVET institutions are enhanced by the devolution of governance, management, financial and teaching responsibilities to the institutional level. Legislation is required in devolved TVET systems to provide appropriate legal environments for autonomous public institutions. Enhanced autonomy, while opening up new opportunities for efficiency gains and service productivity, also creates greater operational and financial risks for governments. These risks can be managed by enhanced accountability regimes for TVET institutions that are operated by government agencies. Enhanced accountability regimes are natural consequences of enhanced institutional autonomy. Ownership is an important aspect of governance that is central to asset management. The trend in devolved TVET systems is for most assets of institutions to be owned by the institutions themselves (pp. 5 et seq.). A feature of many centralized TVET systems is that the institutions are resourced on the basis of what they cost (input funding) rather than the TVET services that they actually deliver (outputs). A consequence is a lack of clear linkages between governmental budget allocations and desired TVET outcomes. This matter is being addressed internationally by trends to funding systems based on outputs and outcomes (pp. 125 et seq.). Ownership-neutral funding systems may in principle offer more equitable access and encourage private sector contributions to TVET delivery. Tuition fees may encourage greater institutional responsiveness, efficiency and cost-effectiveness and, in principle, may enhance equity (pp. 40 et seq.). Expanding upon the generic issues in TVET management outlined above, an overview of contemporary TVET management practice is set out in the following Chapter VI.9, with particular reference to specific TVET management functions.

Reference Gasskov, V., ed. 2006. Vocational education and training institutions: a management handbook and CD-ROM. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO.

Chapter VI.9

An Overview of Contemporary TVET Management Practice George Preddey

1 Introduction In the previous Chapter VI.8 of this UNESCO-UNEVOC International handbook, nine generic issues relevant for TVET management were identified. Expanding on these generic issues, an overview of contemporary TVET management practice is set out below with particular reference to eleven specific TVET management functions. These functions include:


strategic and operational planning; financial management; information management; student management; staff management; course and curriculum management; managing TVET delivery; managing assessment; managing physical assets; quality management; performance and accountability management.

The TVET management practices of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have been systematically documented and recorded in an International Labour Organization Management handbook (Gasskov, 2006) of eleven modules and fortythree learning units. The handbook is accompanied by a CD-ROM that contains more than 400 resource documents. These two handbooks, the present UNESCOUNEVOC International handbook of education for the changing world of work (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2009) and Vocational education and training institutions: a management handbook and CD-ROM (Gasskov, 2006) are complementary—as was explained in the Introduction to Chapter VI.8. The eleven specific TVET management functions discussed below in this UNESCO-UNEVOC International handbook are cross-referenced to appropriate learning units in the ILO Management handbook. These learning units cover contemporary TVET management functions and practice in greater detail, and also inR. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VI.9, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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clude actual operational documents, management instruments and comprehensive references. (All references are to Gasskov, 2006—hereafter, only the page number will be given.)

2 Strategic and Operational Planning 2.1 Supply and Demand Factors for TVET Students make time commitments and forego income to undertake TVET and have vested interests in making sound decisions, particularly if they are also paying tuition fees. Nevertheless, they do not always make sound decisions and may be unduly influenced by peer group pressure or inadequate information. They can enrol only in unallocated places in TVET courses that institutions choose to offer them (p. 92). Industries and professions have a vested interest in supplies of trained graduates to meet their current and future requirements for skills. Under-supply may result in skills shortages and reduced productivity, whereas over-supply may distort labour markets. Industries and professions are better placed than students and TVET institutions to assess their own skill needs (p. 93). Governments have vested interests in TVET delivery in the context of their broader economic and social-policy objectives. They are least well placed to make delivery decisions because they lack first-hand knowledge of student demand and the skill needs of industries and professions. They are better placed to take a broader view by synthesizing information about TVET provision and labour markets. Governments are also uniquely placed to intervene in TVET delivery. Interventions are more likely to succeed by providing suitable policy environments that enable other stakeholders to make sound decisions, rather than by resorting to micromanagement of TVET delivery (p. 93). Institutions are well placed to make TVET delivery decisions if they are also aware of student demand and the skill needs of industries and professions. Jurisdictions with devolved systems of TVET institutions have generally opted for a combination of student and industry/professional demands as the predominant drivers of TVET delivery. Governments have various options for interventions in TVET delivery. They may provide support through targeted funding to national target groups or to identified priority industry sectors and associated TVET courses. National target groups may be identified to meet governments’ social policy objectives (e.g. to address particular examples of under-achievement or underrepresentation in TVET). Targeting may be on the basis of ethnicity, income, locality or other perceived indicators of disadvantage. Support for priority industry sectors (e.g. bio-technology) may be provided through additional publicly-funded places that encourage institutions to offer relevant TVET courses and/or encourage students to enrol in those courses (pp. 97 et seq.).

VI.9 An Overview of Contemporary TVET Management Practice

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2.2 Assessing Industrial and Student Demand for TVET The assessment of industrial demand for TVET courses is undertaken by key stakeholders. These include:

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government agencies undertake assessments to inform labour-market interventions and decision-making by industry, TVET institutions and their prospective students; industry training organizations (ITOs) set up by industries undertake assessments to ensure that their training needs are met; TVET institutions gather information individually or through their national associations (pp. 102 et seq.).

The information-gathering processes may include surveys, questionnaires and collation of statistical data on:

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occupational and qualification structures; industry-based training practices and opportunities for off-job TVET; graduate destinations (tracer studies); current workforces to establish principal entry points (reverse tracer studies); current job vacancies; unemployment and under-employment; future industrial and developmental projects (pp. 109 et seq.).

Demographic information on school-leaver cohorts is customarily gathered, collated and disseminated by government agencies that have responsibilities for compulsory education. Statistical information on enrolments, retention and graduation rates is generally available from government agencies responsible for TVET institutional funding. In some jurisdictions, the TVET institutions are required to furnish information to agencies as a prerequisite for public funding.

2.3 Strategic and Operational Planning for TVET Delivery Effective planning in autonomous TVET institutions takes place over different time scales:

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long-term strategic planning gives effect to the governing councils’ visions for their institutions, their agreed missions and their long-term strategic development; short-term (annual) business planning determines institutions’ TVET delivery for the forthcoming academic and financial years (p. 112).

Strategic plans are customarily developed by small groups with requisite skills that may be sub-committees of governing councils strengthened by secondees from management. Various planning techniques may be used:

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analyses of institutions’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT analysis); development of alternative scenarios for future development; structured consultation with stakeholders; development of performance indicators and milestones.

Strategic planning groups need to take into account the external inputs to planning. These include government training policies, labour-market forecasts, economic and demographic factors, and assessments of institutional capacities to implement strategic plans (pp. 114 et seq.). Autonomous TVET institutions customarily operate within annual TVET delivery and budget cycles that are covered by short-term business plans. Institutions’ annual budgets are important components of business plans. Performance indicators and milestones defined within business plans are often used in accountability regimes that determine whether the TVET institutions have delivered their expected TVET outputs and are operating within their approved budgets (p. 115).

3 Financial Management 3.1 Funding Sources and Mechanisms for TVET Public funding is allocated to TVET institutions by governments for two main reasons: to achieve desired national outcomes; and to enable societies in general to benefit from the recognized public benefits (externalities) of TVET (pp. 121 et seq.). In many countries, publicly-subsidized TVET is available principally through public TVET institutions and subject to restrictive entry conditions. In a number of countries, students at public and private TVET institutions are treated more-or-less equally in accordance with various TVET funding policies. These include TVET vouchers delivered to school-leavers and ownership-neutral funding delivered to institutions (CD-ROM Unit 5.1). When TVET institutions are permitted to set their own tuition fees to supplement their public funding, their enhanced autonomy allows competition on the basis of price (i.e. fees) and course quality. In principle, this may encourage greater costefficiency and effectiveness (see also Chapter VI.8, Public versus private funding and tuition fees). An optimal approach may be a mixed system of public and private TVET institutions in which students, institutions, industry, professions and (light-handed) government-funding agencies determine collectively what TVET courses are offered, where and to whom. Governments have options in how they fund public TVET institutions. The alternative funding methodologies can be variously categorized as:


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input- or output-based funding; negotiated or normative funding; absolute or relative funding (pp. 125 et seq.).

Under input-funding systems, governments fund the input costs of TVET institutions directly (e.g. by funding teachers’ salaries, costs of materials, utilities, etc.). Institutions are funded for what they cost and, consequently, governments have little appreciation of what value they are receiving for their investments. Under output-funding systems, governments directly purchase TVET institutions’ outputs, i.e. the skills and expertise of graduates—or, as proxies for outputs, the numbers of enrolments or equivalent full-time students (EFTS), etc. (see also Chapter VI.8, Inputs versus outputs and outcomes). Under this approach, governments have a better appreciation of what their investments are producing. International experience indicates that the cost-efficiency, effectiveness and accountability of public TVET institutions are enhanced under output-funding systems. Negotiated funding systems involve negotiations between TVET institutions and central funding agencies. Under normative funding, funding norms/standards/ averages, funding formulae and other quantitative factors are used, i.e. funding allocations are calculated rather than negotiated. Funding formula customarily include defining parameters for TVET institutions (e.g. approved numbers of funded EFTS) and funding parameters (e.g. prescribed funding levels per approved EFTS differentiated by field and level of study). In absolute (bottom-up) funding, TVET institutions submit their own funding requirements and overall budgets are the sum of institutional bids. In relative (topdown) funding, finite resources are allocated centrally to TVET institutions in proportion to their assessed needs. For practical fiscal considerations, normative funding systems generally adopt relative (top-down) approaches. The starting points are the politically determined budget appropriations for TVET at national levels. The appropriations are allocated among the TVET institutions by normative funding methodologies according to their relative needs. There has been a gradual international trend in the resourcing of TVET from input to output funding (pp. 127 et seq.). Under output-funding systems, governments have better information on and control of the TVET services that they fund. Outputfunding systems in principle increase cost-efficiency, effectiveness, responsiveness and accountability, but require that TVET institutions have adequate autonomy to operate under this funding model. In particular, they require sufficient autonomy to be able to match their input costs to their output-funding entitlements.

3.2 Institutional Budgeting Processes Under input-funding systems, managers are usually constrained from diverting funding allocated for a particular input cost (e.g. salaries) to meet a different input

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cost (e.g. new equipment). Decisions on the most effective use of public resources are essentially made by funding agencies. Institutional managers have restricted financial autonomy, while financial planning is centrally driven. Under output funding systems, TVET institution managers are free (within prescribed limits) to determine institutional outputs and to allocate funding resources among their competing input costs. Decisions on the most effective use of public resources are essentially made by institutional managers rather than by central funding agencies (p. 129). Annual budgets are important components of institutional business plans. They forecast future revenues and expenditures and generally incorporate financial performance indicators including:

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projected operating surpluses; returns on income and assets; operating cash flows; measures of liquid assets, working capital and debt ratios (p. 131).

Internal budgets are derived from institutional business plans and support their operations. Output funding is generally undifferentiated: i.e. institutional managers are free to decide how to allocate revenue from public funding, student tuition fees and fee-for-service income to meet their internal institutional operating costs (salaries, overheads, capital expenditure, etc.) (p. 133). Major cost items, such as capital expenditure on new buildings or equipment that serves the whole institution, are customarily dealt with at the level of chief executives, subject to approval by governing councils. Costs may be either regarded as overheads shared by whole institutions or met through debt financing (borrowing). Buildings and equipment will inevitably require replacement, and replacement costs are customarily incorporated into the costing of service delivery as allowances for depreciation (pp. 135 et seq.). Generally, there will be some degree of cross-subsidization among the various departments to ensure that TVET institutions offer acceptable ranges of courses, including uneconomic courses that attract low enrolments. New courses often have developmental and start-up costs that are met through cross-subsidization.

3.3 Financial Management From time to time, the management of autonomous TVET institutions may determine that their institutions lack the financial or physical resources necessary for effective operation. Where deficiencies are financial (e.g. insufficient accumulated cash surpluses to cover the costs of new buildings or equipment), prudent borrowing may be appropriate. Where deficiencies are physical (e.g. insufficient buildings to accommodate staff and students), prudent leasing may be appropriate (pp. 147 et seq.).


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Governments have legitimate interests in proposals by TVET institutions to borrow and generally regulate to protect their ownership interests. The degree of regulation is determined by the level of institutional autonomy and may vary from outright bans on borrowing to light-handed regulation that requires TVET institutions to produce business plans demonstrating that proposed loans are prudent (pp. 137 et seq.). Leases, like loans, are risks for both the TVET institutions and for governments (as owners), but may have advantages over substantial building programmes by offering enhanced flexibility. For similar reasons, leases are also often regulated. In jurisdictions where public TVET institutions are resourced by output-funding systems, the decisions on capital expenditure are delegated to the institutions themselves. Arguably, more than borrowing and leasing, capital expenditure exposes both TVET institutions and governments (as owners) to financial risks. Consequently, governments customarily regulate capital expenditure to protect their ownership interests, taking into account the levels of institutional autonomy. Regulation may range from centrally-managed capital work programmes operated by government agencies to requirements on TVET institutions to produce business plans demonstrating that proposed capital expenditures are prudent investments (pp. 137 et seq.).

3.4 Financial Statements and Audit For public TVET institutions to be granted a level of financial autonomy, their governance and management must be accountable for their use of public resources. Financial accountability is customarily achieved by requiring public TVET institutions to prepare standard sets of financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting practices. Standard sets of financial statements customarily include statements of financial performance, financial position, movements in equity, cash flows, commitments and contingent liabilities, and revenues and expenditure (p. 154). These statements are essential components of TVET institutions’ annual reports (see also ‘Quality Management’ below). Accountability raises the issue of who is to be held accountable. In some jurisdictions, required sets of standard financial statements must also include statements of responsibility under which governing councils and chief executives jointly accept responsibility for the integrity and accuracy of financial reporting. To give substance to statements of responsibility and to strengthen systems of internal financial control, autonomous TVET institutions require systems for the (internal) audit of all their financial transactions. In larger institutions, chief internal auditors carry out these functions. To enhance credibility, annual financial statements are customarily accompanied by independent audit reports from qualified external auditors. In some jurisdictions, financial statements are subject to external audit by State agencies established for this function. In other jurisdictions, TVET institutions are permitted to use qualified independent private sector auditors (pp. 155 et seq.).

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4 Information Management 4.1 MIS Design and Subsystems Modern TVET institutions require comprehensive management information systems (MIS) to support effective governance and their external reporting and accountability requirements. Governments and funding agencies require information on institutional performance, enrolments and quality-assured courses to enable them to support institutions and students effectively. TVET institutions need information about students to plan effectively, and financial information to support their internal financial and quality-management systems. Efficient and effective TVET systems generally have national data collection systems through which TVET institutions furnish information on their courses and students. National databases maintained by central agencies collect, store, analyse and disseminate information that informs public funding allocations to TVET institutions and the decisions of prospective students (pp. 79 et seq.). The standard components of MIS operating in autonomous TVET institutions will generally include systems for:

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financial management; human resource management; timetabling; student records and tracking; student activity monitoring; quality assurance; assets and facilities management; internal and external information and communication (pp. 83 et seq.).

4.2 MIS Development and Maintenance TVET institutions commonly develop MIS that suit their own particular requirements and purposes. These systems are often based on commercially available software packages or are developed for particular objectives by consortia or associations of TVET institutions that work collaboratively with private sector ICT companies (p. 87). When governments decide to introduce new student data collection systems, implementation can be a major challenge for current institutional MIS, particularly in respect of data compatibility. Prior consensus on data compatibility is facilitated by consultation between government officials and representatives of institutions or their national associations. National student identifier systems are key components of comprehensive national student data systems. Contingent on their introduction, TVET institutions are able to access and support student data systems (often as a precondition for public funding) through interface options that suit their own particular circumstances


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(p. 87). The operation of national student identifier systems is customarily an ongoing responsibility of central agencies and involves the maintenance of access protocols for TVET institutions and the provision of technical and operational guidance (p. 88).

5 Student Management 5.1 Student Selection and Enrolment Under open-entry policies, prospective students who wish to enrol in TVET courses may do so without restriction provided that they meet any prescribed minimum entry standards. If institutions charge tuition fees, access may be rationed by price (i.e. the students’ ability to pay tuition fees). Although restricted-entry policies minimize fiscal risks for governments, they also have consequences for equity. Competitive entry is equitable to the extent that competition for places is based on merit, but meritorious students may fail because they are from disadvantaged families (pp. 159 et seq.). Equity in competitive (merit-based) enrolment systems may be enhanced by arrangements intended to improve access for target groups. Targeting may be on the basis of student or family income or on gender or ethnicity, etc. Possible targeting mechanisms include:

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pre-entry or bridging courses that allow disadvantaged students to meet entry standards; means-tested scholarships or grants; non-discriminatory student loans; entry quotas guaranteeing minimum numbers of places for students from target groups (pp. 161 et seq.).

TVET institutions customarily attract enrolments by using the media (e.g. community and national newspapers, radio, etc.), by organizing special events (e.g. careers forums), and by liaising with secondary schools and industrial bodies. Promotional materials may include brochures, institutional web-sites and free-phone services. In some jurisdictions, government agencies maintain comprehensive web-sites that offer generic information to school-leavers on employment options, prerequisite skills and competencies, and options for TVET. Careers counsellors are well-placed to advise students in their final year(s) of schooling on options for TVET and employment (pp. 162 et seq.). Enrolment procedures customarily involve students providing information for TVET institutions. Prospective students may be required to demonstrate that they meet prescribed minimum entry standards. Some jurisdictions operate elaborate pre-enrolment systems that optimally match student preferences with the available TVET places, taking into account previous educational attainment. In other jurisdictions, TVET institutions individually select their own students (p. 163).

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5.2 Student Monitoring, Guidance and Welfare Monitoring and guidance processes for students may include procedures related to induction, recognition of prior learning, progress assessment, course evaluation, record-keeping and the management of students at risk of non-completion. Teaching staff are responsible for monitoring students’ progress against expected course outcomes (pp. 166 et seq.). Information provided at the commencement of TVET courses customarily covers:

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timetables, etc.; procedures used to monitor students’ progress and to determine course outcomes; student access to counselling, welfare and other ex-curricular services.

Processes for the evaluation of student performance generally fall into two categories: norm-referenced assessment; and standards-based assessment (see also ‘Managing assessment’ below). The welfare services provided for students while they are in training customarily include:

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financial support, e.g. hardship funds, financial advice; health and accident insurance services; student accommodation services, e.g. on- and off-campus hostels, accommodation placement services; social, recreational and cultural facilities; health and fitness centres; career, vocational guidance and job-placement assistance (pp. 174 et seq.).

TVET institutions may either provide welfare services from their own resources, contract external organizations to deliver them on a fee-for-service basis, or develop partnership arrangements with external agencies to deliver welfare services by referral.

6 Staff Management 6.1 Staff Selection, Recruitment and Appointment TVET teaching staff are often recruited from particular trades or professions to ensure that they have the requisite knowledge and skills. Teaching staff will also need adequate teaching skills to be effective. Non-teaching specialist staff (e.g. information technology, library, public relations, technical support, etc.) may be appointed for particular skills that are not necessarily specific to TVET (pp. 185 et seq.). In some jurisdictions, staff recruitment and selection for positions in public TVET institutions involves matching the attributes of aspiring appointees with job descriptions of vacant positions. Job descriptions customarily include:


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position/job titles; lists of superior staff positions (who appointees report to); lists of subordinate staff positions (who report to appointees); purposes of positions; key accountabilities (what is expected from appointees, sometimes called key deliverables, defined in terms of performance indicators); personal knowledge and experience specifications (expected prior experiences, formal qualifications, personal attributes and competencies, etc.) (p. 187).

In some jurisdictions, recruitment policies and processes remain the responsibility of central agencies, whereas in others, TVET institutions have the autonomy to recruit and select their own managerial, teaching and non-teaching staff (p. 188). In some jurisdictions, managerial staff are recruited for their demonstrated level of managerial skills (managerial approach). In others, teachers are customarily promoted from teaching positions to take on managerial responsibilities (collegial approach). There are arguments in support of both practices (CD-ROM Unit 7.1).

6.2 Staff Training and Career Guidance Effective TVET institutions require staff training systems that ensure that teachers have the necessary skills and competencies. Staff training systems customarily include arrangements for:

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inducting new staff; conducting training needs analyses to identify skills shortcomings and competencies; delivering staff training to address identified skill gaps; developing individual training plans; certification that provides portable, tangible evidence of skills and competencies; career guidance and development (pp. 190 et seq.).

6.3 Staff Performance Appraisal and Remuneration In autonomous TVET institutions, staff may be appointed by governing councils or by senior management under delegated authority. Levels of remuneration may be negotiated by management with prospective appointees. In some countries, remuneration and other conditions of employment are negotiated collectively between unions representing institutional staff and agents representing associations of TVET institutions. Although under these arrangements, institutional staff may no longer have job certainty, they are more likely to be compensated at true labour-market rates for their skills and competencies. Institutions also benefit by having greater freedom to

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match their input costs (mainly salaries) to their TVET delivery (outputs and output funding) (pp. 194 et seq.). Managers customarily undertake periodic staff performance appraisals that assess the performance of staff against their expected outputs (i.e. service delivery specified in job descriptions). Appraisals provide staff with feedback on their strengths and weaknesses and on their further career development. They also inform decisions on salary adjustments and promotions. Formal arbitration processes may need to be invoked to resolve disputed assessments (pp. 199 et seq.).

7 Course and Curriculum Management 7.1 Developing National and Institutional Courses and Qualifications Two broad categories of courses delivered by TVET institutions can be identified:

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national courses leading to national qualifications that are developed centrally, have automatic credit-transfer arrangements and can be delivered by any accredited TVET institution; institutional (provider) courses meeting local needs that are developed by individual TVET institutions, lead to institutional qualifications, often have no (or limited) credit transfer arrangements and remain the intellectual property of initiating institutions (p. 216).

High-level forums enable governments, employers, unions and TVET institutions to agree on occupational categories used in national courses and qualifications, and the levels of qualifications that will be provided within each occupational category. National TVET courses and qualifications are generally developed, maintained and approved by designated central agencies charged with these roles. They operate through appointed expert/industry committees assigned with the tasks of setting skills standards and developing and maintaining national TVET qualifications (pp. 205 et seq.). In TVET institutions that develop their own courses, academic boards may approve proposals for new courses on the basis of information that justifies the need for them. Representatives of institutional staff and industry stakeholders may decide course objectives and the means by which they are to be achieved (pp. 216 et seq.). Modular course structures offer significant advantages for credit transfer and articulation, e.g. enhanced opportunities for credit transfer between courses that include equivalent modules (see also ‘Managing assessment’ below). Course developers will need to decide whether all modules are compulsory, whether some are optional, and how all modules contribute to overall course objectives (p. 219). Course development begins with course outlines or structures. Decisions are required on important course parameters, such as entry levels, exit levels and course durations. Course outlines describe how courses are to be taught and are further


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expanded into course curricula that specify in detail what is to be taught. Curricula specify the topics to be covered and level of detail. They should include sufficient information for teaching staff to be able to develop their teaching plans for course delivery (pp. 217 et seq.). Knowledge, skills and competencies embodied in curricula may be generic (i.e. relate to a broad range of vocational fields) or specialist (i.e. relate to a narrow vocational field). They may also be theoretical (i.e. abstract or conceptual knowledge) or practical (i.e. manual skills, knowledge and competencies relating to particular utilitarian tasks). In general, theoretical knowledge, skills and competencies tend to be generic, whereas practical knowledge, skills and competencies tend to be specialist (pp. 228 et seq.).

7.2 Course Evaluation TVET qualifications, courses and curricula and their delivery require periodic evaluation. Curricula, in particular, are sensitive to changing job requirements. Evaluations are often focused on graduate outcomes or on employers’ views of the relevance of courses in the workplace. Course evaluations vary in scope, but generally give consideration to course relevance, design, delivery, assessment and cost-efficiency. Feedback from stakeholders (students, graduates and employers) is essential for robust course evaluations and may be obtained through:

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employer satisfaction surveys; graduate satisfaction surveys; graduate destination surveys (tracer studies); student satisfaction surveys; data on student enrolments and performance; teaching staff surveys (pp. 233 et seq.; pp. 276 et seq.).

The appropriate responses by academic boards to unsatisfactory course evaluations include changes to course curricula to improve course relevance, improvements to delivery (e.g. enhanced teaching resources, replacement of non-performing staff) and, when necessary, course termination (p. 234).

8 Managing TVET Delivery 8.1 Managing Teaching Autonomous TVET institutions are responsible for the organizational and staffing structures that determine the management of TVET delivery. Senior management is generally concerned with strategic planning frameworks and performance indicators. Departmental heads are responsible for organizing their staff, financial resources and TVET courses to meet expected outputs and the skill needs of

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industries, professions and the wider community. Institutional teaching staff are responsible for organizing the delivery of TVET to individuals and groups of students. These structures indicate three layers of management. Some responsibilities are shared: for instance, quality assurance and good health and safety practice. Generally, the structures include breakdowns into departments based on specific TVET fields. Faculty heads, heads of departments and course leaders are TVET (line) managers. They manage teaching staff grouped into delivery teams and are responsible to the senior management teams for efficient course delivery within their own areas (pp. 241 et seq.). In recent years, there has been a rapid expansion of off-campus learning (distance and e-learning). Often these modes are supported by on-campus study centres and e-mail communication systems. Distance and e-learning require specific course materials and their developmental costs can be substantial, particularly for specialist courses that involve small student numbers (pp. 246 et seq.). Post-school TVET is generally more student-centred than school education, which is strongly teacher-centred. Recent experience suggests that distance and elearning is more suited for mature-age students and students who are undertaking second or advanced qualifications. Virtual learning environments bring together in one piece of software and one integrated environment many features of TVET delivery. They require careful technical decisions about equipment location and networking, software, systems management and trouble-shooting. The teaching staff involved generally perform different roles in materials design and student supervision, and require different management skills (p. 248).

8.2 Managing Staff Resources The allocation of institutional teaching staff resources to the actual delivery of TVET involves decisions on appropriate teaching loads. These decisions must make reasonable provisions for:

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class contact time, i.e. time spent in the actual teaching and supervision of student learning; non-teaching time, i.e. time required for essential non-teaching duties; appropriate modes of delivery; appropriate class sizes; staff leave and sickness (pp. 251 et seq.).

Class contact times for teaching staff may be prescribed as maxima in employment contracts that take into account annual leave and other employment provisions. They generally decrease as the levels or complexities of TVET courses increase, and are further reduced by the demands of non-teaching time, such as involvement in curriculum development, applied research and industrial liaison.


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Customary deployments of TVET staff include lectures, tutorials, practical work in workshops and laboratories, clinical training in health centres, self-directed study and supervision of undergraduate research. Timetabling is a critical factor in the effective allocation of teaching and support staff resources to TVET delivery (pp. 255 et seq.). Timetabling packages are critical components of TVET institutions’ management information systems (see also ‘Information management’ above).

8.3 Monitoring Course Delivery Teachers are being effective only if students are learning. The monitoring of teaching staff provides information on their teaching skills. Its purpose should be made clear to staff at the outset and may include:

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providing evidence for performance appraisals; assessing the effectiveness of new courses; informing quality management systems (see also ‘Quality management’ below) (pp. 271 et seq.).

TVET institutions customarily have procedures for monitoring student progress through their courses, allowing the identification of students who are not coping (pp. 273 et seq.). The procedures include group discussions at the end of course components, structured questionnaires and regular assessments (see also ‘Student management’ above). Course outcomes may be assessed through graduate satisfaction surveys, graduate destination surveys (tracer studies) and surveys of employer satisfaction (p. 276).

9 Managing Assessment 9.1 National Qualifications Frameworks National qualifications frameworks are agreed system of qualifications that operate in particular countries. National qualifications are awarded by approved bodies and recognize that students have achieved prescribed levels of learning outcomes, standards or competencies. National qualifications frameworks support the coherent integration of qualifications and are intended to provide national consistency in the recognition of TVET outcomes. Credentials (certificates, diplomas, degrees, etc.) provide tangible and portable evidence of student achievement (pp. 206 et seq.). National qualifications frameworks generally provide direction on:

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principles that underpin framework designs: how and where qualifications can be achieved, operating principles, etc.; qualification structures: coverage, scope, sectors, levels, modules, units, etc.; qualification descriptors: required skills, knowledge and competencies;

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legal status of frameworks: i.e. voluntary, regulatory or statutory; determination of learning outcomes: i.e. competency-based (standards) or curriculum-based; recognition and credit mechanisms: automatic credit transfer, recognition of prior learning, etc.; awards/credentials: e.g. certificates, diplomas, degrees; protocols that ensure national consistency: protected titles, etc.

National TVET courses and qualifications are generally developed, maintained and approved by designated central agencies charged with these roles. The agencies operate through appointed expert/industry committees assigned the tasks of setting skills standards and of developing and maintaining national TVET qualifications (p. 208).

9.2 Assessment and Certification Once skill standards are agreed, standard-setting bodies may organize tests of attainment or agree to delegate this assessment function. Professional assessors are generally experienced teachers and may include the staff of TVET institutions. External assessments provide assurance against fraudulent standards and testing practices. In devolved TVET systems, skills assessment may be carried out by accredited TVET institutions or by registered assessors. Moderation processes may be required to ensure that accredited TVET institutions and assessors make consistent and reliable judgements about the work of students seeking qualifications (p. 209). Effective TVET institutions have procedures for monitoring the progress of students through their TVET courses that allow the identification of students who are not coping. Student performance is measured against planned sequences of learning and achievement. Assessment arrangements need to be explicit to guide students to clear understandings of what is expected of them (pp. 273 et seq.). Processes for the evaluation of student performance in general fall into two broad categories:

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norm-referenced assessment: ranks students against their peers according to their performance in class tests and assignments and offers an indirect measure of skills and competencies achieved; standards-based assessment: confirms that students have (or have not) achieved specified standards in defined skills and competencies, but does not rank their performances against their peers.

An advantage of standards-based over norm-referenced assessment is its ability to confirm that students meet prescribed standards of skill or competency. A disadvantage of standards-based assessment is that it does not allow students to be ranked. Under standards-based assessment, students are assessed as able (or unable) to carry out particular tasks according to prescribed standards. Abilities cannot be combined meaningfully as a measure of overall skill that would allow ranking (norm refer-


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encing). Standards-based assessment also requires that training courses be broken down into discrete modules for particular tasks pp. 171 et seq.).

9.3 Credit Transfer and Articulation National qualifications frameworks may facilitate linkages between qualifications by enabling individual learners to move from one qualification to another in more efficient and effective learning pathways. Qualification linkages are essential tools for the operation of effective national qualifications frameworks. They promote more open, accessible and relevant post-compulsory education systems and, inter alia, lifelong learning. National qualifications frameworks may facilitate linkages between qualifications through credit transfer and articulation arrangements. Credit transfer provides a means of linking individual components of existing awards, whereas articulation provides sequential pathways between qualifications. National qualifications frameworks facilitate credit transfer by providing direction on the determination of learning outcomes and on recognition and credit mechanisms. This direction enables arrangements to be developed for automatic credit transfer and for the recognition of prior learning (p. 207). Articulation—the development of flexible pathways that allow students to move easily between courses, qualifications, industries and professions—enables closer connections between secondary education, TVET and higher education. Articulation is a key process in building closer inter-sectoral relationships. Articulation may be enhanced by modular course structures that provide for credit transfer between courses including the same or equivalent modules. Modular course structures are also a prerequisite for standards-based assessment. For these reasons, national qualifications frameworks offering national consistency in the recognition of TVET outcomes and enhanced articulation are generally based on modular course structures and standards-based assessment of modules (p. 219). Credit transfer and articulation arrangements increase the opportunities for students with prior TVET experience and qualifications to access higher education, or increasingly vice versa by facilitating student mobility between institutions and sectors. Such arrangements should, however, not impinge upon the integrity of courses, nor on the autonomy of TVET institutions in taking decisions on admissions, prerequisites for on-going study, and the levels and amounts of credit or articulation conferred in these courses. On the other hand, students and intending students need reasonable assurance that they will be able to follow education pathways that recognize previous work and study outcomes and that give appropriate credit where these relate to further studies. Effective credit transfer and articulation are key components in making lifelong learning a reality and can deliver significant efficiencies in both time and money for students, TVET institutions and governments.

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10 Managing Physical Assets 10.1 The Management of Sites and Buildings In developing TVET systems, the management of the physical assets of public TVET institutions is normally undertaken by agencies acting on behalf of governments. Central intervention and direction are necessary until adequate capacities and systems are in place at the institutional level. In more developed TVET systems, capital funding may be included in the undifferentiated bulk funding allocated to autonomous TVET institutions to meet their input costs. In some jurisdictions, central funding agencies retain control over capital works programmes, whereas the TVET institutions have autonomy in the use of their operational (recurrent) funding (pp. 258 et seq.). Capital development needs to take account of TVET institutional sizes and delivery profiles. The experience of a number of countries is that efficiencies are achieved in TVET systems that comprise smaller numbers of larger institutions. Economies of scale are hard to achieve with larger numbers of smaller institutions. Large TVET institutions also have pedagogical advantages inherent in more comprehensive provision of TVET, and can adapt more flexibly to changing labour-market needs (p. 259). Adapting existing facilities to allow them to more effectively meet changing demands may be a better strategy than embarking on the construction of new facilities. Where new TVET facilities are necessary, their design should allow maximum flexibility. In some jurisdictions, there are national guidelines and norms for the space requirements of general teaching, practical workshops and library/private study at TVET institutions (pp. 261 et seq.). The efficient use of physical facilities is essential to achieve efficient TVET institutions. It is facilitated by a culture of institutional rather than school or faculty ownership (pp. 264 et seq.). Lecture theatres, classrooms, workshops, laboratories and other common teaching areas should be pooled and allocated as common resources. Central computerized timetabling systems increase the efficient use of accommodation (see also ‘Information management’ above).

10.2 The Management of Equipment and Learning Technologies The effective delivery of TVET requires that institutions not only have adequate teaching spaces, but that they also have adequate teaching aids and equipment. Traditional and newer aids that enhance teacher-centred learning include:

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simple photocopied handouts; wall-charts, blackboards, whiteboards, laser pointers, etc.; overhead projectors for slides and transparencies; video-projectors linked to VCRs/DVD players for videotape/DVD presentations, etc.;


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video-projectors linked to PCs for computer-based learning materials, etc.; databases and computer-based self-learning materials.

Teaching equipment, particularly desk-top computers, have short lives due to heavy use and rapid obsolescence. Their rapid depreciation should be taken into account in financial planning (p. 267). The efficient use of specialist teaching areas is affected by the mix and duplication of training equipment. A proliferation of large items of equipment (e.g. turning and milling lathes) consumes workshop space and may limit the capacity to diversify TVET courses and to respond flexibility to changing demands. An alternative approach is one in which workshops accommodate multi-functional equipment. Common items are available for different TVET courses and savings accrue in workshop space requirements and in the purchase, maintenance and replacement of specialist equipment. The use of adjacent equipment bays and mobile cabinets can facilitate multi-functional spaces in workshops (p. 267). A trend away from teacher-centred learning towards student-centred learning has resulted in the emergence of new forms of learning environments. Learning-centre approaches combine classrooms, seminar rooms and computer resource rooms with information services. Information service centres—formerly called libraries—may serve as communication and data hubs for whole campuses (pp. 269 et seq.). Like buildings, learning technologies should efficiently support well-planned curricula. In particular, students should not undertake study on outdated equipment and TVET environments should compare favourably with the students’ present and future workplaces.

11 Quality Management 11.1 Quality-Management Systems Autonomous TVET institutions accept responsibility for the quality of their own courses. Quality is generally assured through internal quality management systems subject to periodic audit by external quality agencies. Quality itself can be defined from three different perspectives:

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quality as excellence: makes comparisons between similar qualifications, courses and institutions; those that score highly on a predetermined scale are judged as excellent and therefore of high quality; quality as value-for-investment: based on stakeholders’ perceptions of whether qualifications, courses and institutions meet or exceed expectations, taking into account the time and money invested in them; quality as fitness-for-purpose: assesses the performance of qualifications, courses and institutions against stated outcomes or intentions (p. 282).

In practice, quality assurance of qualifications, courses and institutions usually involves consideration of both inputs and outputs. For example, TVET quality defined

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as value for investment by definition takes into account both value (outputs) and investment (inputs). Traditionally, the quality of TVET institutions is assured through certification processes and the quality of courses is assured through course approval and institutional accreditation processes. Certification confirms that independent, external bodies have audited the internal management systems of TVET institutions and have verified that they conform to prescribed standards (pp. 286 et seq.). TVET institutions generally require certification and accreditation to be permitted to deliver and assess courses leading to national qualifications. Accreditation processes verify that TVET institutions have quality management systems and meet their obligations to external quality-assurance agencies. TVET institutions may also apply for accreditation and course approvals to offer their own institutional courses. These are generally not recognized on national qualifications frameworks. Course approvals require TVET institutions to demonstrate that proposed courses conform to their quality management systems.

11.2 Quality Monitoring and Assessment Quality, defined as fitness-for-purpose, is applied in many jurisdictions as the most workable approach, without precluding quality defined as excellence and as value for investment in appropriate circumstances. Quality assurance may be either external, i.e. undertaken by external quality agencies, or internal, i.e. undertaken by institutional quality-management systems. A balance is required between quality assessments made prior to TVET delivery (certification, approval, accreditation) and post-delivery quality assessments (quality audit). Prior assessment has been criticized as over-emphasizing proposed TVET delivery and under-emphasizing actual TVET delivery. Quality audits address this criticism, but on their own would pose risks for students in poor-quality courses prior to audit and consequential remedial action. A balance is also required between quality assessments of inputs to TVET and outputs and outcomes of TVET. Quality assurance of qualifications, courses and institutions usually involves consideration of both inputs and outputs/outcomes irrespective of how quality is defined (pp. 303 et seq.). External quality assurance includes assessments of the quality of:

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inputs to learning, such as the quality of courses, student selection/monitoring/ guidance processes, staff quality and the quality of teaching delivery; outputs and outcomes from learning, such as knowledge and skills acquired, employability of students and their capacity for further learning.

External quality assurance agencies customarily carry out quality audits of TVET institutions against benchmarks or standards. These are developed by the agencies themselves in consultation with stakeholders and define the expected performance of quality-assured TVET institutions.


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In addition to quality benchmarks and standards that are specific to a particular jurisdiction, external quality assurance agencies may also use quality benchmarks and standards developed by international standards organizations. The most commonly used standard is ISO 9000, a generic management standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) (pp. 308 et seq.). External quality audits for TVET institutions are generally requirements for continuing certification and are undertaken by quality agencies. Audits are systematic, independent and documented processes that determine whether the structures, processes and outcomes of TVET institutions comply with the standards set by the certifying agencies. In jurisdictions that have devolved autonomy to TVET institutions, most quality assurance processes—including course approvals and institutional accreditations— are delegated by the external quality assurance agencies to the institutions. The institutions’ academic boards are customarily responsible for internal quality management systems and are subject to periodic external quality audits. Where responsibilities for quality assurance—including approvals and accreditations—are delegated to academic boards, the roles of external quality agencies are reduced to regular audits of institutional internal quality-management systems and to relatively infrequent quality audits of TVET institutions (pp. 306 et seq.).

12 Performance and Accountability Management 12.1 Accountability Enhanced accountability is a prerequisite for enhanced autonomy. Public TVET institutions are accountable to governments and to other stakeholders, including their students and the end users of acquired knowledge and skills, i.e. industries, enterprises and professions. The accountability of TVET institutions to governments as their principal funder includes financial accountability for public funding. Public TVET institutions are also accountable to governments as owners for their financial viability and for their stewardship of institutional assets. They are also accountable for their performance, i.e. their outputs and outcomes and for the quality of their service delivery. However, accountability systems serve no purpose unless they also provide for incentives, sanctions and other interventions by governments. Financial incentives and sanctions may be applied through funding systems. Other interventions available to governments include course closures, dismissals of failing councils and (worst case) institutional closures (pp. 313 et seq.).

12.2 Monitoring Monitoring systems are necessary to ensure that autonomous TVET institutions are accountable to stakeholders for their inputs, outputs and outcomes. Being monitored

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for accountability is a concession that autonomous TVET providers make for their enhanced autonomy. Accountability systems involve the quality and performance monitoring of inputs, outputs and outcomes. Monitoring tracks changes, analyses developments and evaluates progress achieved against benchmarks. Quality monitoring considers the quality of inputs to courses delivered by TVET institutions and the quality of the outputs and outcomes that result. Performance monitoring customarily focuses on quantitative measures of inputs, outputs and outcomes. Quality monitoring is used for the quality assurance of TVET courses through pre-delivery course approval, institutional accreditation processes and through postdelivery quality audits (pp. 318 et seq.). Quality monitoring processes may be devolved by external quality agencies to institutional academic boards (see also ‘Quality management’ above). Financial monitoring is a crucial aspect of performance monitoring and reporting. A necessary condition for public TVET institutions to be granted a level of financial autonomy is that their governance and management are accountable for their use of public resources. Where governments bear significant ownership risks, financial performance indicators may also be used for monitoring the financial viability of TVET institutions and for government interventions if necessary. Useful indicators include projected operating surpluses, returns on income and assets, operating cash flows, liquid assets, working capital and debt ratios (pp. 329 et seq.). Outcome monitoring of TVET courses is commonly implemented through graduate and employer satisfaction surveys and graduate destination (tracer) studies. These surveys may be undertaken by TVET institutions, by their service organizations or by government departments or agencies with monitoring and funding responsibilities (pp. 327 et seq.).

12.3 Reporting In a number of jurisdictions, the chief instruments for monitoring the accountability of autonomous TVET institutions for their inputs, outputs and outcomes are their annual reports. The content of annual reports customarily includes:

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vision and strategy statements from chief executives; institutional profiles including governance and management structures; performance indicators and assessments; financial statements; staffing reports.

Annual reports can be used as marketing tools by TVET institutions, since they often review progress achieved, significant institutional achievements, staff changes, accommodation developments, and qualifications and awards gained by their students. Public finance legislation may prescribe how financial statements in annual reports are to comply with generally accepted accounting practices and to fairly represent institutional financial positions (see also ‘Financial management’ above).


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Annual reports generally include statements of service performance that compare achieved performance with required performance according to measurable outputs and outcomes. Financial statements customarily include statements of financial performance, financial position, movements in equity, cash flows, commitments and contingent liabilities, and revenues and expenditures (pp. 334 et seq.). Annual reports may also include statements of responsibility in which governing councils and chief executives accept responsibility for accuracy. The reports of independent auditors may also attest that financial statements fairly reflect financial positions.

13 Conclusions and Implications Some future trends in TVET management practice that are leading to enhanced institutional responsiveness, cost-efficiency and effectiveness can be identified, drawing on the collective experiences of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The devolution of governance, management, financial and teaching responsibilities by governments to the institutional level is a key trend (pp. xi et seq.). Devolution requires effective governance and management at institutional level and effective accountabilities of governing councils to government agencies and of institutional management to governing councils. A clear separation is required between institutional governance and management. There has been an international trend from input to output funding of TVET institutions (pp. 125 et seq.). Under output-funding systems, governments have better information on and control of TVET delivery. Ownership-neutral output-funding systems in association with tuition fees may enhance institutional cost-efficiency, effectiveness, responsiveness, equity and accountability. Output-funding systems require adequate levels of institutional autonomy to be workable. The governance and management of autonomous TVET institutions are responsible for the quality of TVET delivery, customarily assured through pre-delivery certification, accreditation, course approval processes and post-delivery audit processes (pp. 303 et seq.). Quality assurance may be delegated to academic boards. National qualification frameworks offer national consistency in the recognition of TVET outcomes and enhanced articulation. They are generally based on modular course structures and standards-based assessment (pp. 206 et seq.). Autonomous TVET institutions are accountable to their stakeholders for public funding, institutional viability and stewardship of institutional assets, ensured through monitoring and reporting processes. Ultimately, they are accountable for their TVET outputs and outcomes.

Reference Gasskov, V., ed. 2006. Vocational education and training institutions: a management handbook and CD-ROM. Geneva: ILO.


Section 7 The Economics and Financing of TVET

David Atchoarena UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning, Paris, France


Chapter VII.1

Overview: Issues and Options in Financing Technical and Vocational Education and Training David Atchoarena

1 Introduction Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is increasingly considered to be an important instrument for public policy, not only for education but also for social and employment policies. While TVET’s objectives used to focus on preparing young people for work, it is now also expected to prevent and reduce unemployment, contribute to lifelong learning and act as a catalyst for social cohesion. The diversity of roles assigned to TVET goes beyond the boundaries of the education sector. As a result, TVET issues and policies involve a wide variety of stakeholders, including both educational decision-makers and labour-market representatives. This trend towards increasing partnership leads to a reconsideration of the responsibilities of the various actors, notably, the State, employers and learners. It is in this context that financing models are being reshaped. Based on the concept of human capital, an analysis of the economic effects of education has documented the increase in income that individuals gain from additional training. In addition to the private and social returns of investments in education, the distinction between core and specific competencies provides the rationale for sharing the cost of training. Typically, the instruction of general knowledge is primarily the responsibility of the State, while the acquisition of specialized skills is largely left to enterprises. However, beyond this search for rationality and efficiency, the allocation of roles between the various stakeholders is not free from considerations of a more general nature about the respective roles of the State, employers and individuals in financing social sectors. In fact, this perception about the nature of the partnership is often a key factor in explaining the differences between national TVET systems. It is within this framework that the debate about financing options and models for TVET takes place. The analysis of financing patterns used to focus on collection and allocation mechanisms. Increasingly, these concerns are being linked to the wider question of organizing training systems and particularly with the sharing of responsibilities between the key stakeholders. The approach that opposes supply-driven and demand-driven systems is clearly too simplistic. The performance of a training R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VII.1, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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system and its capacity to meet the needs of both companies and individuals require that interfaces be set up between the supply side and the demand side. In this respect, intermediary bodies, such as groups of employers, workers and communities, have an important role to play in achieving a balance between needs and provision through constant consultation and dialogue. Hence, financing strategies for TVET are part of a broader effort to engage all concerned parties, particularly companies and learners, in a dynamic process of skill acquisition. Achieving such a goal requires maintaining a careful balance between incentives and constraints according to national circumstances.

2 What are the Issues? The debate on TVET financing typically turns around two key questions: 1. Who pays for skills development? 2. What mechanisms can be put in place to finance skills development? What works best, in particular as far as spending public money is concerned? The discussion on funding skills development and financing principles is not a new debate. A large body of literature depicts both the rationale of funding and specific financing mechanisms. The impressive growth record experienced by East Asian countries generated a large debate on the factors that explain such success. Besides the macro-economic environment and the role of the State, a lot of attention was paid to skills formation. Relatively high levels of school enrolment contributed to an increase in the stock of human capital. The growth in secondary enrolment followed the expansion of primary schooling. In most cases, investment in technical and vocational education has also been significant. This human capital formation process is usually considered to have been instrumental in economic growth. Today, there are three new issues that influence the debate. The economic context has changed everywhere, and globalization has even had an impact on the informal sector and traditional agriculture. Globalization affects all countries; it deeply transforms the labour market and the related skills requirements. The importance of knowledge as a key contributing factor to economic growth is more readily recognized. TVET has an important role to play in coping with the emerging economic challenges. Policy responses to globalization now emphasize to a greater extent the importance of skills development. The fast-growing industries are knowledge-based. Economic returns tend to be ever more attributed to intangible factors, including skills. Financing training is crucial to expanding access and participation in skills development on a lifelong basis. Besides the changing economic climate, the emerging fiscal conditions constitute a second important influence for TVET funding policies. The financial context is tight in most countries, even among the most developed economies. Government

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spending capacity is limited, and public funds are often less available for skills development initiatives. While economic and financial issues present severe constraints for financing policies, a third element opens new opportunities. The wide body of knowledge on different funding mechanisms that have been developed internationally is indeed a valuable asset to policy decisions.

3 Who Should Pay for Skills Development? According to the economic rationale, those who benefit from training should pay for it. In many countries, pre-employment training, initial training and institution-based training are still considered to be a responsibility of the government, while financing continuing training and education is left to social partners. In reality, policies are trapped in a situation where extra resources are needed but public expenditure is restricted. In spite of their abundant resources, post-industrial economies are often obsessed by their commitment to reduce the government’s budget deficit. In developing countries and countries in transition, most resources available for social services are still absorbed by the financing of basic needs. A side effect of the Education for All commitments made in Dakar in 2000 has been to concentrate funding and policy attention on basic education, particularly at the primary level, to the detriment of other areas, such as TVET. Hence, for different reasons, the financial resources available for skills development are limited. Furthermore, the TVET system is often held in disdain. Funding for education and training are frequently based on tripartite mechanisms which include the government, individuals and employers. In countries where decentralization processes are progressing, more and more frequently local governments provide resources for training and skills development. Yet, little data is available on the sharing pattern in individual countries, even as regards initial training. In the above context, it has become more common for governments to promote co-financed mechanisms for TVET. This frequently includes creating incentives for employers and individuals to invest more in skills development. The current trend emphasizes the role of enterprises and learners in contributing to the costs of skills development. The concept of funding partnerships illustrates this approach. As already mentioned, it is important to stress that this trend towards increasing the employers’ contribution does not simply reflect a financial motivation. The aim is not only to mobilize additional resources, but also to increase the overall involvement of employers in steering and delivering mechanisms for training. Such an increased involvement is expected to improve the quality of training delivery and to align training supply with the requirements of the labour market. Hence, financing skills development is very much linked to the issues of responsiveness to market needs, and to the adaptation and relevance of training.

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4 Financing Mechanisms and Instruments Table 1 summarizes some of the benefits and limits of the use of payroll taxes to finance TVET. Table 1 Advantages and limitations of using payroll taxes to finance TVET Advantages

• Training funds are a powerful tool to expand training provision. • Training funds can stimulate employers’ investments in training and skills development. • Training funds contribute to the establishment of a market for training when resources can also be allocated to private providers, which lead to a competition between public and private providers.

Limitations

• Fund management, including the accumulation of surpluses and the diversion of funds, sometimes causes problems. • The system cannot operate on a sustained basis without sufficient support from the business community. • Formal sector employers are often resistant to supporting skills development in the informal sector, i.e. to cross-subsidize skills development in the informal sector. • The long-term sustainability of training funds in low-income countries remains an open question.

Traditionally, governments directly financed training providers and training delivery. In order to improve the effectiveness of public spending, new forms of management are being developed.

5 Towards an Expanded Agenda: From TVET to Lifelong Learning Throughout the 1990s, lifelong learning emerged as a key concept and a matter of growing concern in educational policies. It is now considered to be a central topic in the debate on the organization of education and training for the twenty-first century. In the context of globalization and modernization, it is often felt that individuals, organizations and societies need to learn on a continuing basis in order to adapt to and develop in the so-called emerging lifelong learning society. Several studies conducted during the last decade have clearly emphasized the issues and challenges involved in promoting lifelong learning. While the concept of lifelong learning is by definition holistic, covering all levels of the education system and embracing all age groups, one of its more crucial dimensions concerns youth and adults. Indeed, most policy attention was previously focused on pre-employment, school-based forms of education. Today, the impact of globalization and technological change, the concern for flexibility in the labour market and for employability, the ageing of the population and the search for more


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active forms of citizenship are contributing to a growing demand for youth and adult education and for a new functioning of education systems. In recent years, the debate on lifelong learning policies has been particularly vigorous within the European Union. In fact, since the mid 1990s, the European Union has emerged as a key player in the promotion of lifelong learning. This trend took place in a context of policy and system convergence among European countries. The retreat of the State, the deregulation of the economy and of labour markets, a growing shift towards market principles in the delivery of continuing education, and an increasing emphasis on individuals’ responsibility for training are some of the common elements of the transformation of education systems in Europe. In this context, lifelong learning is often considered as the new target for education policies, in order to meet the challenges of globalization. This growing attention to lifelong learning and the impact it produces on educational policies and systems is also felt in other regions of the world, notably in Asia, in Latin America and, to a lesser extent, in Africa.

6 Overview of the Contributions The chapters included in this section are a sample of today’s knowledge on TVET funding.

VII.2 Education, Skills, Sustainability and Growth: Complex Relations, by Kenneth King Kenneth King assumes that, with the vast amounts of money provided by international donors, universal primary education and perhaps also lower secondary education will one day be achieved in developing countries. But will their economies be able to sustain these education systems if these donations fluctuate or stop? And what will happen when massive numbers of school-leavers start looking for work in economies that are unable to absorb them? He reproaches international donors for not having paid sufficient attention to sustainable economies and infrastructures. He also fears that parents might lose confidence in education if the aspirations of school-leavers to find appropriate work in a modern economy are frustrated.

VII.3 Financing Mechanisms and Instruments: A Conceptual and Operational Approach, by Richard Walther Richard Walther provides a comprehensive review of financing criteria and models, illustrated by examples from eight countries in Europe and Africa.

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VII.4 Financing Training Through Payroll Levies, by Adrian Ziderman Financing mechanisms and instruments are generally seen as a way to mobilize additional resources. Payroll taxes and training funds constitute the most significant attempt to involve industry in the financing and regulation of a training market. Financial arrangements can also contribute to improving the efficiency of public spending. They are often part of a broader body of reform inspired by the new public management principles. An extended analysis of this topic is offered by Adrian Ziderman.

VII.5 Financing Vocational Education and Training in South Africa, by Martin Gustafsson and Pundy Pillay In many countries, increasing attention is paid to financing outputs instead of inputs. South Africa is currently formulating a reform of its technical and vocational education and training financing system along these lines. The chapter by Martin Gustafsson and Pundy Pillay provides an analysis of the on-going transformation of the complex South African TVET financing landscape, including both sectoral schemes and institution-based delivery.

VII.6 Voucher-Financed Training for Small Businesses, by Félix Mitnik Various countries have also been tempted to introduce demand-based funding through voucher systems. Félix Mitnik analyses in detail the use of vouchers to finance training for small and medium-sized enterprises in Argentina.

VII.7 Employers’ Participation in Training Finance: An Example from Brazil, by Candido Alberto Gomes In almost every country, decentralization and the increasing autonomy granted to schools deeply transform the way the education and training system operates. Consequently, public training providers are given increased autonomy. They are allowed to raise fees from participants and to manage their own resources. Nongovernmental institutions are, of course, in a better position to expand self-financing by establishing close links with the local labour market. Employers’ participation in a state of Brazil, described by Candido Gomes, illustrates how financial constraints can become catalysts for changing a training institution into both a resource centre for the local community and a territorial development agent.


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VII.8 Funding Lifelong Learning from a Life-Course Perspective, by Barry J. Hake In spite of the existence of abundant literature on lifelong learning and an impressive body of policy documents and legislation in many countries, the impact of major policy initiatives remains to be fully felt—most citizens still being far from enjoying a genuine lifelong learning experience. Changing the reality of public policies and investments to make lifelong learning a reality still requires major shifts in policy priorities and further innovations, particularly in the field of financing, to achieve a much more open and flexible provision of education and training throughout life. This perspective is analysed in detail by Barry Hake.

VII.9 Economic Perspectives on Technical and Vocational Education and Training in Australia, by Gerald Burke and Christopher Selby Smith The theory of collective action suggests new forms of State intervention focusing on co-ordination, dialogue and incentives. In this context, the financing of TVET constitutes a central policy instrument for regulating the provision of skills. Gerald Burke and Chris Selby Smith use Australia as an example, which illustrates how the role of the State is shifting towards more regulation and less direct provision. Furthermore, issues regarding the allocation of resources are as important as fund-raising methods.

7 Concluding Remarks The financing of TVET cannot rest solely on the government budget. Businesses, local governments, non-governmental organizations and individuals are therefore all called upon to contribute to this investment. Yet the temptation to rely increasingly on private-sector funding may face structural limits due to the already high, and sometimes increasing, cost of training in many fields. The new skills requirements linked to globalization, the constant search for competitiveness and the preservation of social cohesion clearly require new funding formulae. The policy debate on the financing of TVET has long revolved around two central questions: what are the available sources and how can they be mobilized? The human capital theory and the economic regime in place in a particular country served as the basis to answer these questions and to delimit the respective roles played by the market and the State. The transformation of the international scene, combined with recent developments in economic theory, has changed this perspective by stressing that the market, including the training market, does not exist ex nihilo and requires adequate government policy. This perspective is of particular importance

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for developing countries and countries in transition where the training market often does not yet exist as such. Accumulated experience from both developed and developing countries suggest that funding mechanisms and institutions can contribute to a better match between the demand and supply of skills. Yet, in many developing countries and countries in transition, the lack of employer interest in training issues and the absence of structured social partnerships still present significant challenges. Finally, the financing of TVET for disadvantaged groups remains an unresolved issue. This may continue to be the case until poverty reduction and social cohesion are given as much priority as profitability and competitiveness.

Chapter VII.2

Education, Skills, Sustainability and Growth: Complex Relations1 Kenneth King

1 Introduction For many developing countries since the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien in 1990, and more especially since the Dakar World Forum on Education in 2000, and the elaboration of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) later that same year, there has been an international concern to assist their reaching the six Dakar Goals. While there has been some very thorough work on analysing progress towards these Dakar Goals (e.g. the Education for All Global Monitoring Reports—EFA-GMR), there has been much less attention to the sustainability of these externally-assisted achievements. Will countries that have been assisted to reach universal primary education (UPE) be able to sustain this when development assistance is terminated? It is not therefore just a question of whether the world is on track to reach the Dakar Goals, but whether individual countries have an economic and political environment that will continue to secure them. Intimately connected to that challenge is an assessment of what is available after school to the millions of young people who have been persuaded to enter and complete basic education. What has happened to the labour-market environment, and especially to the nature of skills and of work in the widespread urban and rural informal economy, during the years that countries have been encouraged to focus on the achievement of the Dakar Goals? As a consequence, in the sphere of technical and vocational skills development (TVSD),2 there has been a recognition that this sector has come back on to the agenda of development partners, as well as of many national governments, especially in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (NORRAG, 2007; King & Palmer, 2007). Arguably, however, there is a direct connection between the emphasis on EFA over the last fifteen years, and the re-emergence of TVSD. Policy-makers in aid agencies and in national governments have been aware that the very ‘success’ of EFA has been producing some of the largest cohorts of young school-leavers ever recorded in some countries, and this has generated an intense debate about ‘Education for what?’, as well as on the role of skills provision as one response to the challenge. But, valuable though TVSD may be for school-leavers, it too is not a guarantee of work or of a job, whether in the formal or informal sectors. There is no automatic connection amongst school, skill and work. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VII.2, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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Policy attention has begun to shift, therefore, to an examination of what are the enabling environments in which EFA and TVSD can lead sustainably to poverty reduction and growth (Mayoux & Palmer, forthcoming). If there is no change in the productivity of work in the informal sector, and if foreign direct investment remains miniscule for many developing countries, what will be the impact on families who have invested in the basic education and training of their children over this last decade and more? Will they sustain these investments for their younger children if school and skill do not lead to improved economic outcomes for the older ones? The chapter addresses this question of whether the last eighteen years since Jomtien have witnessed an element of unsustainable financing of education and training. Has there been insufficient attention, in the focus on the six Dakar Goals, on the wider investments in agriculture, industry and infrastructures that the Commission for Africa (2005) and the UN Millennium Project (2005) have argued are necessary accompaniments to the securing of the MDGs? Evidence will be reviewed from a series of Asian countries, as well as from Africa. Some attention will be paid to China for the lessons that can perhaps be learnt for other countries from the ‘development-oriented poverty reduction’ in China’s own poorer western provinces (LGOP, 2003). It may be useful initially, however, to explore and clarify whether the current UN discourse about education for sustainable development—or about TVET, or literacy for sustainable development—has any connection with our concerns here about sustainable financing for education and training. That discourse then needs to be related conceptually to the discourse on aid dependency, with its intimate connection to sustainable national financing of education, skills training and other social goals. And that in turn leads straight back to the issue of continued economic growth at the country level—which tends not to look at the character of this economic growth in terms of environmental sustainability. Thus, it is suggested here that there is a set of key discourses that need to be connected (and interrogated) if any sense is to be made of the pursuit, simultaneously of the MDGs on the one hand, raising the levels of aid for developing countries, on the other, but also reducing aid dependency, through maintaining or increasing national levels of economic growth. It appears that the general term, ‘sustainable development’, is often a convenient envelope which actually can contain a series of frequently conflicting goals—not least the pursuit of financial sustainability and environmental sustainability along with the EFA and MDG targets.

2 Sustainable Development Versus Sustainable Levels of Development As a result of the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002, a Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) was declared from 2005 to 2014. UNESCO was requested to take leadership over this decade and to put forward an implementation plan for it. There are four major thrusts to this discourse of education for sustainable development (ESD). These are:

VII.2 Education, Skills, Sustainability and Growth

1. 2. 3. 4.

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Improving access to quality basic education; Reorienting existing education programmes; Developing public understanding and awareness; Providing training (UNESCO, 2005, p. 7).

Since accepting this leadership obligation, UNESCO has indeed developed an international implementation plan (UNESCO, 2005) and this document analyses the evolving notion of sustainable development. There are three core dimensions: environment, society and economy. In terms of our concern with sustainable economic growth in this present paper, it might be expected that the implementation plan would address the nature of economic growth. Surprisingly, however, there is almost no mention of economic growth at all in the entire plan.3 In fact, the discussion of economic issues is only in relation to poverty reduction and to corporate social responsibility and accountability. There is no attempt to discuss either the need for national economic growth to make EFA (and TVSD) sustainable, and to avoid long-term aid dependency, nor the trade-offs between such economic growth and environmental sustainability. Intriguingly, one of the peculiar characteristics of the ESD or DESD discourses is that they have a strong ethical tone to them. Thus, the implementation plan talks much more of values than of economic issues or of growth,4 while in the Prospects Open file on ‘Education for sustainable development’, the guest editor, Lopez-Ospina, talks of ‘sustainable development’ being ‘more a moral precept than a scientific concept, linked as much with notions of fairness as with theories of global warming’. He goes on to argue that sustainable development is ‘primarily a matter of culture. It is connected with values people cherish and with the ways in which they perceive their relationships with others’ (Lopez-Ospina, 2000, pp. 32–33). Similarly, in a thoughtful discussion paper on ‘Orienting technical and vocational education and training for sustainable development’, by the UNESCO-UNEVOC Centre in Bonn, it is argued that ‘sustainable development [. . .] is primarily a matter of culture: it is concerned with the values people cherish and with the ways in which we perceive our relationships with others and with the natural world’ (UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, 2006, p. 5). The UNEVOC paper does, however, also admit that technical and vocational education and training (TVET) are too often linked into ‘productivism’, providing skilled workers for industry, on the assumption of continued economic growth. The discussion paper argues, by contrast, that TVET can also be linked to economic literacy, sustainable production and sustainable consumption, but only with massive gains in technological efficiency and with the ‘dematerialization of production and consumption’ (ibid, p. 16). However, the paper is more concerned with how TVET courses can build an awareness of sustainable development than with the financial sustainability of providing education and skills for all, as part of the developing world’s bid for modernization.5

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3 Education for All Versus Financial Sustainability? It is surprising that neither in this literature of ESD and DESD, nor in other commentaries on sustainable development, does the obvious tension between the sheer cost of reaching and maintaining Education for All get much discussed in the same breath as sustainable development. For example, in the EFA-GMR for 2007, the following claim is made without any acknowledgement that there may be a tension between achieving universal education and sustainable development: Building on two United Nations instruments, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the international community adopted the Declaration on Education for All at Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990. At its heart is the recognition that universal education is the key to sustainable development, social justice and a brighter future (UNESCO, 2006, p. 13).6

Elsewhere in the EFA-GMR for 2007, it is acknowledged, in a single, brief paragraph, that there may indeed be a problem where aid contributes a substantial share of the education (or basic education) budget. For example, for the twenty country plans thus far endorsed by the Fast Track Initiative (FTI), on average onequarter of the costs will need to be covered by external aid. More worryingly, it was estimated in 2002 by the World Bank that to cover the financing gap for reaching universal primary education by 2015, ‘aid would need to reach an average of 42% of total expenditure on primary education and much more in some countries’ (UNESCO, 2006, p. 98). In other words, very substantial amounts of external funding would be needed in such countries if the education MDGs were to be reached. What is also acknowledged, however, is the volatility and unpredictability of this external aid. In other words, the likely unsustainability of aid flows is admitted. So, we have an interesting anomaly, apparently; the literature on education for sustainable development pays little attention to the sustainability of educational achievements which have, in some cases, been made possible by large amounts of rather unpredictable educational aid. This ESD literature seems more interested in how education and training at different levels can assist in transmitting messages about sustainable development than in the sustainability of national educational ambitions. On the other hand, the EFA literature on reaching the education MDGs seems much more preoccupied with raising the aid volumes to facilitate this process than with looking at the sustainability issues involved in reaching the MDGs on the back of external resources. It might have been thought that what we might call a sustainable development approach to the MDGs would have been highly appropriate, since it is clear that reaching the MDGs is not a one-year Olympiad in 2015, but a process that needs eventually to be sustained on local resources. However, the actual MDG (no. 7) which is directly concerned with ensuring environmental sustainability does not itself raise any of the complexity linked to the financial sustainability of the MDG process itself; it merely promotes the idea ‘to integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources’ along with reducing by half the numbers without


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access to safe drinking water, and improving the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.7 We should not underestimate the complex mix of factors that need to be borne in mind if education, skills and sustainable development are to be satisfactorily discussed. Thus, we shall first analyse the situation by focusing on education, and then include discussion on training and skills development. We shall find that it is not sufficient to talk about financing gaps, but rather about a series of other factors, including country-level commitment, economic growth, the enabling environment and aid dependency—to mention just a few.

4 The Dakar Goals and the MDGs In the most recent EFA Global Monitoring Report of 2007, we have already noted the claim that universal primary education is the key to sustainable development. But a closer examination of the argument suggests there was awareness in the GMR team of just how many factors needed to be considered in arguing for priority to the Dakar Goals. For one thing, if the price tag for the achievement of the EFA agenda is really as high as US$11 billion a year, as argued by the GMR 2007 (UNESCO, 2006, p. 102), then the share of basic education in total EFA in low-income countries would need to more than double if there is to be sustained progress towards the goals. But it is not just a question of making the case to donors, many of whom have been relatively well disposed, at least in principle, towards higher aid budgets since Gleneagles in 2005. As the EFA-GMR 2007 admits, there is also more competition for new aid money. Increasingly, aid donors and national governments are aware that the predominantly social expenditures associated with the Dakar and MDG targets need to be accompanied by more attention to infrastructure investments, if the expenditure on social spending is to be sustainable. Partly, this thinking has come from the Commission for Africa and from the Millennium Project Report, but certain donors—and notably Japan, now joined by China, and once again the World Bank—have been urging more attention to infrastructure development. We shall look briefly at some of these accounts of the needs for massive growth in investment in infrastructure if social goals and achievements are to be sustained. Both the Millennium Project Report and the Commission for Africa broke new ground by insisting that increased growth rates and investment would be required if the MDGs were to be made secure. Indeed, the Commission for Africa has argued strongly (in its chapter on ‘Going for Growth and Poverty Reduction’) that Africa needed to reach an average growth rate of 7% and sustain it, if all the closely linked other investments (including social) are to be secured and sustained. But the Commission for Africa is also clear that this economic growth target needs to be associated with a strong attachment to the three goals of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental (Commission for Africa, 2005, pp. 219, 248). In particular, there was an emphasis on the requirement that ‘sustainable economic

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growth’ involves ‘prudent use of natural resources and effective protection of the environment’ (ibid). It was also sure that substantially increased aid would be required initially to help achieve this crucial level of economic growth. Recent World Bank thinking on the complex connections amongst educational investment, sustainable growth and other enabling factors supports the stance taken by the Millennium Project Report and also the Commission for Africa. UPE is just the ‘beginning step for survival in today’s complex, fast-globalizing world’ (World Bank, 2005, p. 47). What it terms ‘education for dynamic economies’ is equally a requirement to increase productivity and sustain growth. This enlarged vision is a very welcome addition to the Bank’s education agenda, and it should be noted that ‘financial sustainability’ is included as one of the intersectoral issues that cannot be secured by focusing on development through a single lens, such as educational investment: Rather than concentrate on a particular level of education, it emphasizes a holistic approach that not only addresses needs at all levels, but, indeed, recognizes that the challenges of access, equity, education quality, efficiency, financial sustainability, and governance and management are intra-sectoral issues that will never be adequately understood and addressed if they are considered from the perspective of education levels (World Bank, 2005, p. 48).

It should be noted that the language of ‘financial sustainability’ is much more acceptable than ‘aid dependency’.8 The ambition in the Commission for Africa and in the Millennium Project Report to increase aid dramatically, especially to Africa, has naturally raised concerns about what it actually means for a country to reach the MDGs on the back of external aid (see King, 2004a, 2004b). Aid dependency is not a popular topic in a world that is expected to assist poorer countries in reaching the MDGs; and hence the term ‘aid dependency’ does not get much attention in any of these three reports. The Commission for Africa, under the heading of ‘Is extra aid forever?’, does briefly address the challenge of aid recipients becoming permanently reliant on aid. But the Commission’s firm position is that, from the Republic of Korea to Botswana, aid has been shown to be able actively to assist the transformation from being a recipient to a successful middle-income country. Their view, not dissimilar from the Millennium Project Report, is that there needs to be a sufficiently large ‘big-push’ from external assistance to help kick-start the growth process. ‘Where the growth process succeeds, aid tapers out’. It is only when national reform efforts, supported externally, are too small that they fear that the ‘world will be faced with a permanent aid programme to Africa’ (Commission for Africa, 2005, p. 327). The World Bank, in a somewhat parallel perspective, conceives that in the poorest countries of Africa, performance-based aid can play a role in giving the political space for reforms, but this may imply ‘high aid dependency for a sustained period of time’ (World Bank, 2005, p. 56). This open-ended commitment over many years must be a concern to many donors, even if the MDGs are seen as a minimum standard that needs to be reached, regardless of dependency. Some analysts worry that for external bodies, in effect, to be paying the teachers’ salaries of poorer countries is essentially unsustainable, not just because of the unpredictability of aid and the


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frequent political role of teacher lobbies, but because these investments do not alter the wider macro-economic environment that will ultimately be needed to sustain such payments.

5 Reaching and Securing the MDGs: A Sustainability Challenge Compared to the enormous international effort put into calculating progress towards the MDGs and their specific indicators (e.g. United Nations, 2007), and the estimate of what nations are ‘on track’ to reach the six Dakar Goals in education and which ones are not (through the EFA Global Monitoring Report), it could be argued that a good deal more attention than at present might have gone into analysing the sustainability of national education and skills development systems more generally.9 These systems, at secondary, vocational and tertiary levels, have in fact been directly affected, especially in economically weaker and more dependent countries, by the international preoccupation with the MDGs and the Dakar Goals (see King, 2007). This is a little-recognized additional impact of aid dependency. But the impact of the international agenda-setting around EFA since Jomtien and Dakar is not only to be measured in terms of agency shifts in aid priorities;10 the focus on the Dakar Goals and on the MDGs has also affected in some measure even those countries that were much less aid-dependent. The result, arguably, has been very much larger cohorts coming through primary than ever before. This, in turn, has created massive political pressure to expand both lower secondary (often said to be part of the basic cycle of education) and upper secondary education.11 This expansion has often been carried out with inadequate national financing, whether at secondary, vocational or tertiary levels. But the results of the entitlement agenda around basic education are the creation of a very large group of young people whose aspirations for work at a certain level have been lifted by completing full primary education, but for whom opportunities in the national economy have changed very little. Compared to the huge international preoccupation with the MDGs and the Dakar Goals, with their focus on the supply side of the future workforce, there has been much less attention given to the creation of new productive capacities in the developing world, with the exception of the ILO’s ‘Decent Work for All’ agenda, UNCTAD’s least-developed countries report (UNCTAD, 2006), and the Commission for Africa’s emphasis on ‘Going for Growth’ and ‘More Trade’ (Commission for Africa, chs. 7 & 8). In fact, it could be said that the EFA and MDG agendas are predominantly supply-side; whereas in the last ten years vocational educators and planners have become used to thinking seriously about the demand-side. There is, of course, an inherent tension in the rights-based supply-side thinking associated with meeting the goals or the targets for basic education, and the demand-led thinking now so widely associated with the planning of TVSD. The only parallel in the last forty or fifty years to the massive supply-side initiatives since Jomtien was the expansion, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, of

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education systems (at all levels) in the immediate pre- and post-independence period. Then, at least, there were a significant number of new jobs created in the burgeoning ministries and through Africanization of former European positions. But in this most recent expansion, there has been little corresponding job creation. In many countries, EFA expansion has been accompanied by jobless growth. Whatever the virtues of the universal access to basic education—and few would dispute this entitlement agenda—there is something inherently unsustainable about expecting poor countries (and poor families) to continue to invest in basic education when there is no corresponding work available, beyond what can be found in the informal economy (King, 2005). The dilemma of Sub-Saharan Africa’s abundant labour supply (fuelled in part by external aid for achieving EFA) and minimal labour-market demand has been set out very sharply by Fredriksen, former senior education advisor for Sub-Saharan Africa in the World Bank: As regards post-basic education, I see a real problem in most African countries where:

i

On the (labour) supply side there is a very rapid increase in the supply of youth with some primary and/or secondary education, driven by a combination of continued rapid population growth and rapid increase in intake and survival in primary education; and

ii

On the (labour market) demand side, a tiny modern sector (an almost non-existent manufacturing sector in most African countries) and limited possibility for creation of modern sector jobs (outside extractive industries) due, inter alia, to lack of competitiveness of these countries vis-à-vis China, Vietnam and other countries on export markets due to factors such as comparatively high labour costs, and a very poor business environment that does not attract direct foreign investment.

In fact, I would argue that there probably has never existed a region in the world where the gap between, respectively, supply and demand for ‘educated’ labour is larger than in Sub-Saharan Africa today (with the exception of a few countries). How they can reach the high level of growth needed to address this growing youth unemployment problem over the next two-three decades is for me a difficult problem (Personal communication from Birger Fredriksen, 27 August 2007).

Fredriksen points to the growth challenge presented by these uniquely great numbers of young people exiting basic education. From one international perspective, these numbers are part of a success story, as they constitute success on the EFA Development Index (see UNESCO, 2007, p. 196); but from another, they present a huge political problem. Aid has helped to create this EFA success in countries such as Ghana and many others. But what of the famous connection between aid and high growth rates that we were discussing above in relation to the Commission for Africa? Has Africa’s economic growth over the last decade and more begun to change the economic and labour-market environment which these young people will confront?


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6 The Paradox of Successful Growth: Little Poverty Reduction and Few Jobs One of the apparent success stories in Africa has been the persistently high levels of economic growth in recent years. For instance, Ghana has experienced growth in the 4 to 5% range over more than twenty years, and it was forecast to reach 6.5% in 2007 (Palmer, 2007, p. 1). And the IMF reported in 2005 that the number of African countries reaching 5% growth had hit a record high of twenty nations with inflation of less than 10%. However, the IMF has also warned that these economies are still not growing fast enough to reduce poverty levels, and that their business environments are still not friendly enough.12 Similarly, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has acknowledged that ‘Africa’s real GDP grew by 4.6 per cent in 2004, the highest in almost a decade, up from 4.3 per cent in 2003. [This] reflects a continued upward trend since 1998. Unfortunately, the growth has so far not been translated to employment creation or poverty reduction’.13 But are bodies like the Commission for Africa really saying that if only the growth rate were 7% instead of 5%, then all the positive effects would be gained? No, they are claiming that growth must indeed rise to 7% by 2010, but that it must be growth in which poor people can participate. In other words, a growth rate that is driven merely by higher oil and commodity prices is very different from growth that derives from a series of strategic investments in infrastructure, agriculture and the creation of a climate that fosters development (Commission for Africa, 2005, p. 251). It could, in fact, be argued that these new, higher growth rates for much of Africa have been positively assisted by India’s and particularly China’s search for oil and other commodities on the continent. But what Western analysts and agencies seem to be saying is that the growth rates not only need to be maintained and increased, but that parallel reforms need to be undertaken to make the investment and business environment more attractive, as well as ensuring the participation of poor people in the benefits of growth. For example, in Ghana, these are precisely the reforms that the government has been undertaking: The government is in the process of implementing other strategies aimed at stimulating growth and development, for example in: infrastructure, ICT, science/technology and health. Indeed, these kind of parallel strategies appear to be in line with much of the international literature regarding the need for large multi-sectoral investments to kick-start sustainable development (e.g. Commission for Africa, UN Millennium Project) (Palmer, 2007, p. 15).

But there is, in fact, a kind of ‘Catch 22’ in Africa’s pursuit of development via the MDGs and the Dakar targets. The continent has been urged to reach these targets, but it has been acknowledged that these goals and targets are pre-eminently social investments with little specified in the way of strengthening Africa’s productive capacities. Hence, if countries are to develop a sustainable infrastructure and economic base to maintain their achievement of these social goals, they not only need a solid revenue base, but they need to demonstrate to their peoples that investment in six or seven years of basic education for all their children does have a clear economic and

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labour-market pay-off—which may already not be the case today. What may well happen is that the pressure to provide some form of post-basic education to the most vocal (i.e. middle-class and urban populations) will mean that a substantial proportion of the primary age cohort, especially rural girls, handicapped and orphans, will not be covered by basic education, or will eventually withdraw—if they ever entered this level. For there are two dimensions of sustainability related to the achievement of these goals and targets. One is economic and relates to the national capacity to continue to fund the provision of EFA. But the second is equally vital and could be termed attitudinal sustainability. It relates to the sustained commitment of the people to send all their children to school. This will not happen without it being evident that basic education is of a quality standard, and that it can lead somewhere, either to higher levels of work or to post-basic schooling and skills training.

7 EFA, PBET and Economic Environments Our criticism, therefore, of the role of international agencies in the construction of the global education agenda which has held sway for fifteen years and more, since Jomtien in 1990, is not of course that it has diverted attention to basic education from other levels of education and training (see King, 2007). A focus on the right of all children to basic education, even in the poorest countries in the developing world, was long overdue. Rather, it has been with the lack of attention to the conditions needed to sustain EFA in these poorer countries. One aspect of this crucial, enabling environment is within the education and training system itself, and involves seeing basic education as one part of a necessarily holistic system of post-basic education and training. A second dimension is the role of the macro-economic environment in supporting the education and training system (but also in part being driven by the quality of the education and training system) (see Palmer, 2007). Currently, we lack adequate accounts of how EFA and post-basic education and training (PBET) are crucially affected by the wider macro-economic environment, and how they in turn can have a direct impact on that environment. China could provide one set of insights into this two-way process. One part of this account would be how China, through its nationwide campaign for nine-year schooling, moved from a situation where the per capita coverage of education in the workforce was just 4.3 years of schooling on average prior to 1985 to a situation in 2001 where the average per capita years of schooling was 8.1. This, of course, had a major impact on the capacities of China’s workforce, but this extraordinary achievement was also motivated by the opening up of China to the world, and the creation of a climate of new opportunities in work and in enterprises. Nor should it be forgotten that China has for twenty years sought to ensure that almost 50% of its upper secondary cohort should enter vocational secondary schools. China’s approach to poverty reduction affords a fascinating insight into this twoway interaction between educational and scientific provision on the one hand, and


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investment in productive capacity on the other. Its ‘Development-Oriented Poverty Reduction Programme’ gives a flavour of China’s national development strategy. It is interesting to note their use of the words, ‘holistic’ and ‘comprehensive’. First, stick to the comprehensive exploitation and all-round development. As cause for poverty is complicated [sic], so are the holistic measures for alleviating poverty. We must include the development-oriented poverty alleviation in the national economic and social plan so that we can have a favourable external condition for the task. We must intensify our effort to build water conservancy, transportation, electricity, and communication infrastructures in order to contribute to the development of the poor areas and the poverty alleviation and a better life. It is necessary for the poor areas not only to develop production, increase farmers’ incomes, but also pay attention to the development of science and technology, education, health care and culture, improve the community environment, raise the quality of life and propel a harmonious development and all-round progress. Only in doing so, can we eradicate the poverty at its root (LGOP, 2003, pp. 98–99).

Two years later, similar assumptions were made by the Commission for Africa. Currently, a series of other countries14 are being looked at in ways that would allow some consideration of how the provision and impact of skills training programmes also need to take account of the wider economic, social and political environment. Instead of a solely education-centric or training-centric approach, these two-way research approaches hope to show that the impact of education and training systems is inseparable from the environments in which they are embedded. This is not a deterministic position, because, as has been argued above, the character, quality and extent of education and training systems also have an influence on these surrounding environments. It may be useful to close with a listing of just a few areas where ‘going for growth’ needs to be rethought much more carefully in relation to sustainable education and training systems.

8 Provisional Propositions on Education, Skill and Sustainability

r r

r

The UN and UNESCO discourses around ‘Education and Training for Sustainable Development’ are highly edu-centric; they expect education and training to raise awareness of sustainable development. But they have thus far paid little attention to the sustainability of the systems of education and training themselves. The EFA and MDG discourses also seem to pay relatively little attention to the differential national capacity to sustain the achievement of the Dakar Goals or the MDGs, even when securing these is heavily dependent on external aid. Aid dependency is little discussed in these discourses, since the emphasis has often been on the dramatic need to increase external aid rather than review the dangers of its volatility and unpredictability. The Commission for Africa and the UN Millennium Project discourses assume a virtuous relationship between substantial, long-term aid flows and a certain rather high level of GDP growth (by OECD standards)—7%. In this thinking, aid

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is assumed to be able to play a key role in kick-starting a pattern of sustainable growth. Inadequate attention has been given to several sustainability dimensions of the relationship between education and skills development, on the one hand, and their surrounding environments, on the other. Such evidence as we have of the crucial two-way relationships between education and training and their enabling (or indeed disabling) environments would suggest that further research would throw valuable light on how the aspirations of young people and their families to stick with basic and post-basic education and training are connected to this wider economic context.

These few propositions suggest that theoretically we have a long way to go in understanding the complex interactions amongst education, skills and sustainable growth.

Notes 1. An earlier version of this article was presented at the ninth United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) International Conference on Education and Development ‘Going for Growth? School, Community, Economy, Nation’, Oxford, United Kingdom, 11–13 September 2007. 2. TVSD is an alternative to the more usual technical and vocational education and training (TVET). TVSD captures both the older sense of technical and vocational expertise, as well the newer and more general term, skills development. 3. On the DESD website, there is just one sentence: ‘Economy: a sensitivity to the limits and potential of economic growth and their impact on society and on the environment, with a commitment to assess personal and societal levels of consumption out of concern for the environment and for social justice.’ <portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL ID=23280& URL DO=DO TOPIC& URL SECTION=201.html> 4. ‘Understanding your own values, the values of the society you live in, and the values of others around the world is a central part of education for a sustainable future’, UNESCO, 2006, p. 7. 5. It suggests, for instance, including ‘sustainable development concepts in all courses for everyone (“TVET for all”)’, without commenting on its sustainability (UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, 2006, p. 23). Intriguingly, ‘economic growth’ occurs just once in 31 pages, while ‘sustainable’ occurs 116 times! 6. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Jomtien World Conference on EFA, coming one year before the Rio Summit, did not actually talk of sustainable development, but it did mention as part of its Framework for Action that ‘development agencies should establish policies and plans for the 1990s, in line with their commitments to sustained, long-term support for national and regional actions’ (UNESCO, 1990, p. 20). By the time of OECD/DAC articulation of the International Development Targets in 1996, however, there was not only a target specifically concerned with the securing of national strategies for sustainable development, but an acknowledgement that there was a ‘broad range of less quantifiable factors of importance to sustainable development. These range from improved capacity for managing economic and social policies to heightened attention to issues of accountability, the rule of law and human rights, expanded participation and the accumulation of social capital and appreciation for environmental sustainability’ (OECD/DAC, 1996, p. 8). What is valuable about this comment is that ‘sustainable development’ is distinguished from ‘environmental sustainability’.


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7. For a statement of the MDG (Goal 7) on environmental sustainability, its three associated targets and the seven associated indicators, see the United Nations’ MDG website, <mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Host.aspx?Content=Indicators/OfficialList.htm>. The indicators do not tackle at all the nature of the growth needed at the country level. 8. In certain agencies, it is known that employees have been actively discouraged from talking openly about ‘aid dependency’ as it might discourage donors from increasing their aid. For a valuable discussion of aid dependency, see Sida, 1996. 9. For a very early, critical discussion of the ‘expansionary approaches such as those of the Jomtien Conference which commit countries to build their education systems up further on weak foundations’ see Penrose, 1993, p. 26. 10. By no means all agencies have switched their priorities to the MDGs and the Dakar Goals in the sphere of education, but a significant number have. And the money available for higher education programmes and projects, such as university links schemes, is a fraction of what is now allocated, in some agencies, for basic education projects. 11. An interesting case in point would be Kenya which has for much of the last seventeen years not been heavily dependent on aid, but has nevertheless dramatically expanded its commitment to free primary education, as well as to the expansion of secondary education and TVSD in the four years since the new government took office. 12. See report posted on . 13. Reported in Africa Focus: ‘Africa: economic growth improving’ posted on <www.africafocus. org/docs05/eca0505.php>. 14. India, Pakistan and Ghana, which are part of the DfID consortium on analysing the outcomes of education (RECOUP), are hoping to do work on skills training that would seek to map this against changes in the surrounding, enabling (or disabling) environment.

References Commission for Africa. 2005. Our common interest: report of the Commission for Africa. London: DfID. King, K. 2004a. Development knowledge and the global policy agenda. Whose knowledge? Whose policy? (Paper presented at the Conference on ‘Social Knowledge and International PolicyMaking: Can Research Make a Difference?’, 20–21 April 2004, UNRISD, Geneva, Switzerland.) King, K. 2004b. The external agenda of educational reform: a challenge to educational self-reliance and dependency in sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of international cooperation in education, vol. 7, no. 1, April, pp. 83–96. King, K. 2005. Re-targeting schools, skills and jobs in Kenya: quantity, quality and outcomes. International journal of educational development, vol. 25, no. 1. King, K. 2007. Multilateral agencies in the construction of the global agenda on education. Comparative education, vol. 43, no. 3, August. King, K.; Palmer, R. 2007. Technical and vocational skills development: a DfID briefing paper. London: DfID. Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development—LGOP. 2003. An overview of the development-oriented poverty reduction programme for rural China. Beijing: China Financial and Economic Publishing House. Lopez-Ospina, G. 2000. Education for sustainable development: a local and international challenge. Prospects, vol. 30, no. 1, March, pp. 31–40. Mayoux, L.; Palmer, R. Forthcoming. The role of skills development in creating a new cycle of opportunity for the poor: impact and lessons from developing countries. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO.

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NORRAG. 2007. NORRAG News, no 38: special issue on technical and vocational skills development. <www.norrag.org> Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development/Development Assistance Committee. 1996. Shaping the 21st century: the contribution of development cooperation. Paris: OECD/DAC. Palmer, R. 2007 Technical and vocational skills development and impressive economic growth: policy and research challenges for Ghana. (Paper presented at the ninth UKFIET International Conference on ‘Education and Development: Going for Growth? School, Community, Economy, Nation’, Oxford, UK, 11–13 September 2007.) Penrose, P. 1993. Planning and financing sustainable education systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. London: Overseas Development Administration. (Education research serial no. 7.) Sida. 1996. Aid dependency: causes, symptoms and remedies. Stockholm: Sida. (Project 2015.) UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training. 2006. Orienting technical and vocational education and training for sustainable development. Bonn, Germany: UNESCO-UNEVOC. (Discussion paper, no. 1.) United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. 2006. Developing productive capacities: the least-developed countries report 2006. Geneva, Switzerland: UNCTAD. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. 1990. Framework for action: meeting basic learning needs. Paris: UNESCO. Retrieved on 5 November 2007 from: <www.unesco.org/education/efa/ed for all/background/07Bpubl.shtml> United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. 2005. International implementation plan: United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, 2005–2014. Paris: UNESCO. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. 2006. Strong foundations: early childhood care and education. In: EFA Global Monitoring Report 2007. Paris: UNESCO. United Nations. 2007. The Millennium Development Goals Report 2007. New York, NY: United Nations. World Bank. 2005. Education Sector Strategy Update: achieving education for all, broadening our perspective, maximizing our effectiveness. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Chapter VII.3

Financing Mechanisms and Instruments: A Conceptual and Operational Approach Richard Walther

1 Introduction The financing of vocational training, in contrast to that of general education which is almost exclusively the responsibility of public authorities, is a complex field. It relies on multiple arrangements that can be described from different angles: (a) the areas of training financed; (b) the types of players providing financing and/or regulating it; (c) the modes of direct or indirect financing used; and (d) the major financing mechanisms and instruments. This chapter is derived from the study ‘Financing vocational training: a EuropeAfrica comparison’, written for the Agence française de développement (AFD) (Walther, 2005). It will describe, in as precise a manner as possible, some of the financing practices and models which exist in the eight countries studied: France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom for Europe; and Algeria, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia for Africa. To this end, it will use financing criteria and models explained and analysed at the international level in various studies and reports published by organizations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank, UNESCO and the European Union. It will first clarify the criteria used for measuring countries’ overall training efforts and will outline a tentative typology of the countries according to their financing systems.

2 Financial Criteria for Measuring the Training Effort The concept of training effort was first used in the area of continuing training. It is quantified using data on training carried out (access rates, length, etc.). In this study, it is deliberately used as a means of aggregating all the financial expenditure devoted to the range of training measures that provide various categories of people with constant access to training throughout their working lives.

R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VII.3, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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2.1 The Usual Ways of Measuring the Training Effort It is very difficult to establish criteria for appreciating this effort, insofar as initial or post-initial vocational training, with the exception of specific training for adults in companies, is generally measured using three commonly used indicators (OECD 2003):

r r r

public expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP; the share of total expenditure on education within overall public expenditure; annual expenditure per student in educational establishments.

This difficulty is due to the fact that financial data on education and training often concern establishments and measures where no distinction is actually made between education and training. It is also stems from the fact that continued lack of esteem for vocational training in relation to general education has hindered the development of a documented information system. This means that there is little published data focusing on vocational training alone, and it is therefore very difficult to monitor and analyse relevant developments. As well as using data on the rate of access to training and the average length of training activities, measurement of the training effort for employees in companies can be based on expenditure levels calculated as a percentage of the total wage bill. It can also be calculated using the percentage of the total cost of continuing training activities in relation to total labour costs and total costs of continuing training activities per employee. This is notably the case in the European countries. The training effort for job-seekers is primarily determined by calculating the amount of public expenditure devoted to it, although such data are difficult to obtain for the African countries. With the Luxembourg process, Europe has introduced co-ordination of employment policies, and the annual publication of national employment plans makes it possible to access data on countries’ expenditure in this area. The regular availability of reliable data is a prerequisite for understanding a country’s overall training effort and for retrospective analysis of how effective the various financial instruments are in terms of their economic and social impact.

2.2 Overall Financial Data for the Countries Analysed Data are brought together in comparative tables providing basic information for each country. This makes it possible to consider the various data on training expenditure in relation to the country’s economic and social indicators on the one hand, and facilitates comparative analysis of the degree of priority accorded to the training effort on the other. Given that, as mentioned above, there are no comprehensive and regularly updated information systems on vocational training data, some of the figures used are estimates, some are lacking and some figures do not refer to the

VII.3 Financing Mechanisms and Instruments

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same year as the other data. It becomes clear that there are no identical statistical arrangements concerning vocational training at the international level, as is the case for general education. This comparative analysis cannot therefore be comprehensive. It can only be used to help identify some trends and highlight a number of major similarities or differences. The data on the four European countries (Table 1) come from the national reports, and are complemented with information published by the OECD (2003) and, as far as continuing training in companies is concerned, from the Continuing Vocational Training Survey (CVST-2—European Commission, 2000a), which was carried out in 1999 using a standard questionnaire for the whole of the European Union. Data on the relationship between public expenditure on education and training are not directly accessible and it has therefore been necessary to consult each country’s finance bills directly. Data on the African countries (Table 2) are partly drawn from statistics published by the World Bank (World Bank, 2004) and partly from reports published by the countries’ statistical institutes. Data on public expenditure on education and vocational training have been calculated on the basis of information contained in finance bills or gathered from public authority representatives met with during fact-finding missions.

Table 1 Overall data for the four European countries Indicators/country

Germany

Spain

France

United Kingdom

GDP growth rate (2002) Per capita income (2002) Unemployment rate (2002) Youth unemployment rate (2002) Education expenditure/GDP (2000) Public expenditure on education (2000) (as a % of total public expenditure) Public expenditure on training (as a % of education expenditure) (2002) People having at least completed upper secondary school education Expenditure by companies (as a % of the total wage bill) (1999) % of company employees with access to continuing training (1999) Average length of training in companies (1999)

0.2% $25,453 8.5% 9.3%

2.0% $21,347 11.1% 21.5%

1.1% $26,618 8.7% 18.9%

1.7% $26,715 5.0% 10.9%

5.3%

4.9%

6.1%

5.3%

9.9%

11.2%

11.4%

11.8%

–

–

16.6%

–

83%

40%

64%

63%

1.5%

1.5%

3.1%

2.7%

32%

25%

46%

49%

27 hours

42 hours

36 hours

26 hours

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R. Walther Table 2 Overall data for the four African countries

Indicators

Algeria

Morocco

Senegal

Tunisia

GDP growth rate (2002)

4.1%

3.2%

2.3%

1.7%

Per capita income (2001)

$1,784

$1,170

$470

$2,149

Unemployment rate (2002)

38%

11.2%

Youth unemployment rate (2002) Education expenditure/GDP (2001) Public expenditure on education (2000) (as a % of total public expenditure) Public expenditure on training (as a % of education expenditure) (2002) People having at least completed upper secondary school education Expenditure by companies

54%

N/A

N/A

N/A

5.4% (1995)

5%

6.5%

6.8%

18.2% (2004)

13.5% (2003)

–

20.8% (2004)

7.6% (2004)

1.6% (2003)

4.5%

–

62%

31.2%

N/A

67.8%

% of company employees with access to continuing training Average length of training in companies (1999)

r

r

14.9%

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Two major observations can be made in light of the data in these tables: It is difficult to obtain a precise idea about the overall initial vocational training effort in various countries, because it is not singled out in public expenditure statistics on education. It is difficult to access national documents (finance bills, among others) which would make it possible to set it clearly apart. Furthermore, data on continuing training in the African countries are not compiled because there is no standardized statistical system on this continent. The African Development Bank also stresses the urgent need to introduce a standardized statistical system for all countries to facilitate comparisons of situations and trends. While Europe and Africa’s economic and social situations vary considerably, their overall education and training effort, calculated as a percentage of GDP, tends to be of a comparable level. There is therefore a similar effort regarding investment in education and training in the different countries. However, every country’s particular situation should be borne in mind, as also should the fact that the African countries have an initial handicap in that they have much lower levels of schooling, and have poorly structured and little-used training systems.

3 The Main Modes of Financing Vocational Training Analysis of training practices in the different countries allows distinctions to be made between modes of financing according to whether they concern public or


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private education, apprenticeship or post-school training and continuing training for employees or job-seekers. These modes of financing have been defined pragmatically and can be refined or modified according to the particular circumstances of the training system of the country analysed. Above all, they serve as a tool to facilitate understanding and comparison of financial practices in the eight countries covered by the study.

3.1 The Fundamental Role of Public Authorities According to standard classifications, this category of training concerns establishments which come under the heading of upper secondary schools, and which this study’s national reports identified as providing upper secondary school vocational diplomas or secondary school final certificates. There are three modes of financing secondary school vocational education, excluding apprenticeship (OECD, 2000). 3.1.1 Direct Financing by the State The State covers expenditure on investment in establishments and their running costs, financing them directly on a cost-allocation basis. This is the case with public establishments in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Senegal. It should be emphasized that these countries’ public resources are often topped up by international funding providers (the World Bank, the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (MEDA) and the AFD). Morocco and Tunisia are introducing a variation of this approach by adding part of the funds raised by the levy on companies’ total wage bills to the public resources devoted to training establishments. The levy thus appears as a form of additional tax to make up for the lack of public resources in the field of training. Training establishments in the four countries can top up public funds with receipts from related activities, such as advisory and training services for companies, production of goods or services while providing training, or adult evening classes. Decentralization is in fact almost non-existent in the four African countries. The State covers all financial expenditure directly. 3.1.2 Co-financing by National, Regional and Local Public Authorities In the four European countries studied the various tiers of regional and local government share expenditure on investment and running costs, according to the regulations in place. Since the introduction of legislation on decentralization, France has moved investment expenditure on general and vocational secondary schools to regional budgets. The regions are currently acquiring decentralized administrative and financial responsibility for auxiliary staff in education and training establishments. Spanish initial vocational training centres are financed by the central government for all of the autonomous regions with no transferred powers in the field of education. In contrast, those autonomous regions which do have transferred

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powers provide funding directly. The European Structural Funds provide top-up funding for educational infrastructure and for developing technical and vocational education. Depending on their resources, families and pupils can also receive aid in the four countries. This is generally provided by the State. Decentralization of financing measures and arrangements is indeed one way of bringing the direct funding-provider closer to users, thereby making it more likely that people will be able to appreciate how the funds are used. This does not, however, detract from the fact that funding remains public and is topped up through transfers of funds from the State to local and regional authorities or through local taxes and levies.

3.1.3 Co-financing of Public Establishments by Private Funds In France, co-financing is not allowed, because free education is one of the republic’s fundamental values. It therefore only occurs in minor ways, with families covering certain educational supplies. In some départements, such costs are covered by the regional council. Co-financing is also minimal in Germany, coming from enrolment fees paid by pupils. In Spain, co-financing is generally used in certified centres which are not totally subsidized. They top up their receipts with their own contributions or those of companies or families. Co-financing is sometimes used by public centres for the purchase of educational supplies, transport and catering provisions. In the United Kingdom, funding of the colleges of further education by the public authorities (70% of costs) is topped up by students’ enrolment fees (10%), other external income (such as contributions of the European Social Fund) and the sale of goods and services (20%) (Atchoarena, 1998). Co-financing also occurs in Algeria, where external clients pay for services provided by establishments when they produce goods or services while providing training, and for continuing training in companies.

3.1.4 Co-financing of Private Education by Public Authorities Co-financing is used for private establishments, such as those under contract (i.e. grant-maintained) in France and the United Kingdom. In France, the State finances overall training expenditure and running costs, leaving investment costs and some related expenditure to the owners. This also occurs in Morocco, where private education qualifies for tax breaks on the purchase of consumer goods and tax exemptions on profits invested in training. In some rare cases, it can qualify for funds raised by the vocational training levy. In Tunisia, private establishments can access an investment support fund, which can cover up to 25% of material costs and 25% of intangible costs. In Senegal, a small part of compulsory contributions made by


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employers is transferred to the vocational training budget (the ‘CFCE tax’), but there is currently a debate on whether this contribution should be transferred in its entirety.

3.1.5 Exclusively Private Funding There are some private establishments whose only source of funding comes from enrolment fees paid by their students. This is the case in Algeria, where private education is in constant progression but, due to the limited resources of its users, does not manage to attract enough trainees to fill capacity. This is also the case in Germany, where such establishments must have received the public authorities’ approval (Article 7 of the Fundamental Law), but are run with their own resources. Funding support from the public authorities is possible, but only for students. Organizations exclusively financed by private funds also exist in the three other European countries, and in Senegal, where some private establishments are exclusively financed by families. This brief review of school-based initial vocational training financing models demonstrates that public authorities play a fundamental role as the main source of finance and principal provider of training, although such tasks are increasingly being passed to local authorities, which are in closer contact with the establishments where training is delivered. This role does not conflict with the development of private vocational education, because the State not only recognizes it but even subsidizes it. However, in all of the countries studied, it seems that public authorities consider that one of their core missions is to bring young people up to the levels of qualification needed by both the economy and the labour market.

3.2 Financing of Apprenticeship Training and Alternance Training Schemes The analysis of the structure and evolution of the various training systems clearly demonstrates that, although apprenticeship and alternance training have an educational status, they come under the shared responsibility of public authorities, companies and, in many cases, the social partners. The transition from primarily public management to a broad partnership approach is clearly reflected in the means of financing used. 3.2.1 Public/Private Partnership in the Various Modes of Financing Apprenticeship In all of the countries studied, a sort of general rule applies to the financing of apprenticeship. It can be described as follows: training in schools or training centres is paid for by public funds, and workplace training and apprentices’ wages are paid for

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by companies. Furthermore, apprentices participate in financing their apprenticeship by producing goods or services while training and by agreeing to accept a reduction in what they might otherwise be paid (OECD, 2000). There are some variations on this common rule, depending on each country’s specific circumstances. This review of the different apprenticeship financing systems reveals that they have one very strong element in common, namely that co-financing by companies and the State exists in all countries. The other factor they have in common concerns the wages or allowances paid to apprentices. Companies’ contribution to apprenticeship in the form of a tax on wages exists in the great majority of the countries, but it is managed in varying and frequently complex ways. Lastly, it seems likely that more will be invested in apprenticeship in the future. This is reflected in recent governmental decisions in France and the United Kingdom, and is part of the new social consensus reached in Germany in 2004. There seem to be similar policy intentions in Tunisia (2002), in Algeria (the outlook for 2009) and Morocco (the governmental department for vocational training set it as a priority for 2003).

3.2.2 The Specific Characteristics of Financing Alternance Training Alternance training, or schemes entailing periods of on-the-job work experience co-ordinated with institution-based training, is distinct from apprenticeship for historical reasons (it primarily emerged as a response to youth unemployment and the need to train young people in order to get them into work) and institutional ones (apprentices do not always have a contractual status as workers; their supervisors have a defined role to play in the training plan). In terms of financing, there are some specific characteristics that are particularly notable in France. With the exception of the French and British systems, post-initial alternance training is a developing area in which public authorities are primarily responsible for financial management.

3.3 Financing Continuing Training for People in the Workforce Evidently, continuing training for employees in companies comes under the responsibility of employers, because it generally concerns people in the workforce who either undergo training related to their work or do so during their working hours. Such training has a direct or at least indirect effect on the way they exercise their profession. However, the on-going trend towards lifelong learning, especially in France and the United Kingdom, has recently had repercussions on the way continuing training is financed.


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3.3.1 Financing of Training via a Compulsory Contribution Such an obligation exists in six of the eight countries studied. It is generally defined as being the introduction, further to an agreement between the social partners (in the case of France and Spain) of legislation or a decree determining the amount of contributions to be paid, or honoured in order to qualify for a rebate (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal). Depending on the country, there are differences in terms of the collection or refinancing methods and the established purposes for which the dedicated funds can be used. To fill in the whole picture, it should be remembered that Germany and the United Kingdom each have one or two sectoral arrangements based on the collection of contributions that have become compulsory further to a contractual agreement between social partners in the sector but, in both countries, such arrangements are not sufficiently widespread to be considered as being representative of a national approach. These different practices can be summed up as follows: the financing of continuing training for employees is based on the principle of companies making a minimum contribution to training. This contribution gives rise to direct or mutual financing of training activities that are of specific interest to the company (activities to adapt to change), of shared interest to the company or the employee (job or competence development activities), or of specific interest to the employee (activities linked to the various forms of training leave or those linked to the right to training, insofar as the employee keeps his or her rights when changing jobs). Employees mainly co-invest in training of shared or individual interest by contributing their time or foregoing part of their wages. It can be concluded that, whatever their contractual or legislative origins, all of the compulsory systems for financing continuing training have evolved towards financing models managed in partnership and according to priorities established by bipartite or tripartite agreements (France and Spain) or by the public authorities further to consultation with the social partners. For France and Spain, the level of contributions seems to be the minimum companies need to spend in order to keep their employees’ skills sufficiently up to date with regard to ongoing changes. The French contribution of 1.6% is largely exceeded by the real level of expenditure, which is nearly 3% of the total wage bill. Similarly, the 0.35% level of Spanish contributions is largely exceeded, with employers devoting 1.5% of their total wage bill to continuing training for employees (European Commission, 2000a). In the African countries, the various compulsory contributions are collected by dedicated funds, which have either been set up with difficulty (FNAC in Algeria, FONDEF in Senegal), or channel the money back into public finances (Morocco), or have established eligibility conditions that are potentially dissuasive to companies (Tunisia). The distribution and effectiveness of these funds is therefore affected by a governance problem. Lastly, it should be added that most of the systems and funds are topped up by public finance in accordance with strategic policies or priority target groups, and

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there is no watertight separation between private and public sources of finance in this area. 3.3.2 Financing that Gives Companies and Individuals the Freedom to Choose Germany and the United Kingdom come into this category. In the absence of explicit rules, other than those that companies have introduced themselves, it is difficult to give a precise idea about companies’ internal financing methods. They come under the exclusive responsibility of management. However, bearing in mind existing data on continuing training in the two countries and the importance they attach to training their employees, some useful remarks may be made:

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While they do not establish financing objectives which must be achieved, the two countries both have national targets to encourage companies to invest in training. Germany is less proactive than the United Kingdom in this area. However, it has also defined priorities for raising overall qualification levels, notably by adopting ‘guidelines for the promotion of lifelong learning in the Federal Republic of Germany’ in July 2004, which directly apply to companies. The two countries also have incentive measures to ensure that training for employees becomes subject to public/private co-financing in certain priority areas. This is notably the case regarding training for poorly qualified employees in companies, which, as in France and Spain, can qualify for national and European co-funding. It is the case in Germany for training activities in the former eastern Länder and for some types of training that are considered as being vital to the general interest, such as training to raise qualification levels. It is also the case in the United Kingdom for training of employees when it leads to recognized qualification levels. Tax reductions for companies that train are among other incentive measures provided by the two countries. Germany’s tax system enables companies to count education and training expenditure as a running cost, and these can be deducted against profits in order to reduce taxable revenue. At the same time, it seems that the absence of compulsory financing by companies goes hand-in-hand with greater investment on the part of individuals.

This analysis of the different ways of financing continuing training in the eight countries allows a clear distinction to be drawn between two different groups of countries: those which define training objectives in terms of financing obligations; and those which pursue such objectives in terms of performance targets. A similar distinction could also be made regarding the different type of investment individuals make, although at the same time it should be stressed that the countries in the first group arrange for companies to pay for the training of individuals, while the second group prefer pre-financing or co-financing by individuals, even though it is then largely paid for out of public funds. It seems that these institutional differences have no direct impact on a country’s real level of investment in continuing training. The CVTS-2 survey provided widely varying results which do not suggest whether one type of system is better than


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another (European Commission, 2002a). The real reasons for the effectiveness of training systems still have to be identified.

3.4 The Financing of Continuing Training for Job-Seekers Previous analysis of how job-entry training schemes have evolved clearly shows that the study of different means of financing should be carried out in light of three major observations:

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Financing of the different national employment systems, which increasingly focuses on efforts to help people into jobs, is largely the responsibility of public authorities, even though resources are made available by different ministries or channelled through local authorities and, in any case, largely drawn from companies’ and employees compulsory contributions. At the same time, expenditure on training is often topped up by social security contributions made by companies and employees. Closer scrutiny of preferred measures in the European countries, as seen in the national employment plans, shows that the financing of job-entry schemes is primarily used to support measures providing job seekers with real on-the-job work experience and additional training linked to their return to employment, even if aided. Different types of financing are furthermore targeted at three categories of worker: young disadvantaged people (who can benefit from post-school alternance-type training schemes), people who are returning to the labour market (notably women, bearing in mind that each country has identified that its workforce is too small) and older employees, who are being targeted by new heavily-supported measures in all of the countries.

This last observation indicates that a new trend is emerging in that companies are increasingly committed to measures to help people get jobs or keep them, and they participate in financing such measures in various ways. It can be concluded that training for job-seekers is starting to be considered as something other than an antidote to exclusion, and it is becoming more similar to company-based training. It is consequently also becoming part of a system that is increasingly oriented to lifelong learning. Its financing, which until recently was the responsibility of public authorities, is therefore starting to be shared by other players, including companies. There is a trend towards public/private co-financing, although the State’s ultimate responsibility for the matter is not in question.

3.5 In Conclusion This analysis of the different practices used for financing training for people of working age in their institutional context demonstrates that, with the exception

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of training for job-seekers, there are two major types of financing: that which is contractually or legally compulsory, with public/private mutualization and joint management of funds; and that which is directly financed by companies and, while dependent on their internal decisions, is an integral part of national moral obligations. These two types of financing are part of long traditions, but they are also dependent on the specific way society is organized in each country. However, such distinctions aside, some similarities between all of the countries studied are starting to emerge, which can be summed up as follows: (a) the co-financing approach is becoming increasingly common; and (b) management methods are becoming increasingly partnership-based, even in seemingly very liberal countries. It would nevertheless be appropriate to verify whether these observations are not merely the manifestation of other changes that have yet to be identified.

4 Financing Mechanisms in Their Institutional Context The description of the mechanisms and methods used for financing the various types of training made it possible to observe that different practices and instruments in the countries concerned are structured according to a number of major fields of data: training systems (school-based, post-school, training for employees and training for the unemployed); the main types of financing (public financing, private financing and co-financing); types of funding providers (central and regional government authorities, companies and individuals); and financing instruments (subsidies, levies or compulsory contributions, tax credits or training accounts). Taken together, these data establish the parameters within which an initial overall typology of the training systems’ financing mechanisms can be drawn up.

4.1 A Typology of Systems Rooted in a Common or Similar Tradition By putting the development of training systems and associated financing mechanisms into their historical perspective, it is possible to observe that the European and African countries have, in different ways, undergone major changes which have had, or continue to have, a structuring effect on the organization of their training systems and the ways in which they are financed. 4.1.1 The Situation in Europe European systems range from co-financing of schemes to tackle youth unemployment to a wide range of measures for financing lifelong learning. All of the European systems have been characterized, in a fairly identical manner, by the triple phenomenon underlying their respective situations and likely future development.


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This provides an explanation for the different types of approach, and can be resumed as follows.

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Helping young people find jobs, or the development of post-school training financed by public authorities and companies. The massive growth in unemployment, which started in the late 1970s, caused Spain, France and the United Kingdom to introduce a post-initial training system heralding the move towards alternance training. This, in turn, led to the introduction of forms of co-financing, which were primarily funded and managed by the public authorities in Spain and the United Kingdom, and by the economic and social partners in France. Because of the dominance of the dual training system, Germany managed to preserve a stable system and a very low youth unemployment rate for a long time. However, for the last ten years, there has been a crisis due to the lack of training places. This led to a bigger role for the public authorities in financing the creation of training places and introducing them into public administration. Even though this situation goes back to before the creation of post-school initial training, it is in line with what the three other countries are doing in that it relies on specific job-entry measures and strengthened co-financing by public and private partners. Industrial and technological change or the development of a culture of company investment in training. Continuing training for European employees did not really start to develop until the economic recession at the end of the 1970s and the acceleration of industrial and technological change in the 1980s, which forced companies to acquire a more adaptable and competitive labour force. However, such training was not really very significant until the introduction of financing instruments and evaluation processes making it quantifiable.

All of these stages show that European co-operation has had a direct influence on the way that countries have structured their continuing training systems. While they have not led to the development of common financial instruments, they have at least given rise to comparable methods and amounts of financing.

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Common realization about the importance of developing lifelong learning. Above and beyond the common European training culture, which has been forged by linking up national traditions, the culture of lifelong learning emerged from an initial joint observation (in the Amsterdam Treaty) that the knowledge society requires the constant development of everybody’s knowledge and competences, via regular and equal access to lifelong learning for individuals (European Commission, 2000b).

It is evident that the whole EU debate on this issue, as well as the Lisbon European Council objectives establishing joint qualifications and access targets for all European countries, stress the need to finance individual access to training, whatever the national mechanisms in place (European Council, 2000). Various attempts to respond to this need include the French system of co-investment by companies and individuals, and the use of training accounts developed in the United Kingdom.

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R. Walther In terms of measures

In terms of stakeholders

The European systems are focused on alternance-based jobentry training and shared public/private responsibility for management and financing.

Companies are considered as being responsible for providing and financing training for employees.

In terms of schemes and instruments Financial measures and instruments are used to mobilize all stakeholders and guarantee regular and open access to training and qualifications for everybody.

Fig. 1 Common characteristics of the European vocational training systems Source: Walther, 2005.

In conclusion to this rapid overview of recent history, it can be said that European systems, and notably the French, Spanish, British and German ones, have evolved in a convergent manner, according to three common features which characterize them (Fig. 1). 4.1.2 The Situation in Africa A transversal analysis of the situation in the three North African countries makes it possible to note that each has suitable financing instruments, but they are still waiting to be able to use them. Their use is hindered by burdensome administrative procedures which often seem insurmountable.

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The difficult relationship companies have with initial and continuing training. Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia are currently developing alternance training because it helps people to enter jobs and provides qualifications of immediate use to companies. In this respect, these countries mirror European trends towards co-operation between the education system and companies. They all have suitable financing tools for developing alternance training (an apprenticeship levy and funds for collecting and redistributing finance to companies), but their use is hindered by specific difficulties:

The situation is almost identical as far as continuing training is concerned. Financing obligations exist, but the conditions of access to finance are often complex (Tunisia), financing criteria and means remain to be defined (Algeria), or funds are mostly channelled back into the State budget (Morocco).

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A budgetary rationale which is ill-adapted to current developments. All three countries have introduced budgetary policies based on rolling forecasts of future expenditure on investment and running costs, and are therefore struggling to respond to real qualification needs. Algeria is setting up an employment and qualifications observatory, which should help improve how it calculates the country’s investment needs and then responds to them. This task is all the more important


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because 90% of the vocational training ministry’s current budget is spent on running costs and, if things continue this way, it will be unable to re-deploy its efforts and resources. Tunisia has opted for a sectoral partnership approach to respond to its qualification needs and financing requirements, but it still needs to define the preconditions for financing investment and running costs in order to establish realistic and efficient budgets. Morocco has introduced a financing approach which is designed to optimize public training supply, but there is a risk that quantity will be preferred over quality because of budgetary constraints. The challenges that the training systems are facing as a result of their countries’ opening up to European and world markets. The three countries are obliged to put their training systems’ funds at the service of a qualifications policy designed to deliver the skills and competitiveness levels required as a result of their recent (Tunisia) or future (Algeria and Morocco) entry into European free-trade agreements and the World Trade Organization.

International funding providers, who provide considerable amounts of support in the three countries, evidently accompany and speed up reforms the countries have started by setting the objectives to be achieved if funding is to be granted. At the same time, and especially as far as MEDA and AFD funds are concerned, they are helping to bring North African and European countries’ systems closer together. To conclude this analysis, the three countries’ training systems are characterized in three major ways, as shown in Fig. 2. In terms of measures The systems are focused on the development of alternance and apprenticeship training. However, there are not enough organized education-industry links to make training really effective.

In terms of stakeholders

The stakeholders have a budget rationale based on running costs and rolling forecasts. They do not have the means to cater for qualification needs through training.

In terms of schemes and instruments Financial instruments (levies and training funds) exist for developing continuing training. However, these instruments are neither efficiently managed nor adapted to the countries’ circumstances and needs.

Fig. 2 Common characteristics of the African vocational training systems Source: Walther, 2005.

4.1.3 The Situation in Senegal Although financing instruments exist, they are ill-adapted to the realities of vocational training. Senegal is in a particular situation because it has financial instruments similar to the levies and funds used in the North African countries, but it has a highly specific overall institutional framework in comparison to the other systems.

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Vocational training comes entirely under the responsibility of the national education ministry and, as such, it is not specifically distinguished from technical education. There is therefore no clear understanding about training content and the qualifications which students should achieve by the end. This is confirmed by the fact that there is no national reference framework for employment and qualifications. Vocational training is not only integrated into the education system in an indistinct manner, but there is an absence of mechanisms for planning budgets to anticipate specific needs in terms of running costs and infrastructure expenditure. Apprenticeship training is currently too closely associated with preserving existing informal working techniques and situations, and there is insufficient real apprenticeship focusing on anything other than the replication of knowledge and skills.

It will be difficult to give the existing financial instruments a proper purpose without first of all clearly identifying the aims of the system and the solutions it can develop to respond both to the qualification requirements of modern companies and to the development needs of the informal economy.

5 A Broad Typology in Which the Key Word is ‘Co-financing’ Having analysed the distinct characteristics of the various systems in each major geographical area, it would now be useful to summarize the information as a whole, by listing the type of financing used in each system for each different type of training—Table 3. The major categories of activity financed are shown for each type of financing source. This way of summarizing the information has the advantage of making it possible to identify the major characteristics of the systems analysed and thus to define a typology common to all of them. This table demonstrates several points:

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Contrary to some lines of thought, it clearly demonstrates that measures are no longer financed by one source. Co-financing has become current practice in the area of vocational training. Individual financing is particularly used in the area of continuing vocational training, especially in the European countries. The main reason for this is that continuing training is useful for both the individual and the company, especially when it focuses on competence development. This type of training is furthermore close to the concept of lifelong learning, which the European countries believe to be a shared responsibility of the different stakeholders. Public authorities are increasingly intervening in the area of continuing training when it leads to recognized or vital qualifications. This practice says much about policy changes in countries which consider higher skills levels among the whole population to be a national priority and therefore in the general public interest. It is furthermore totally in line with the Lisbon objectives, which have set similar

Public finance

Company finance

Individual finance

Public/private co-financing

Co-financing by several stakeholders

Initial school-based training

Running costs and investment

Traineeships

Yes

Yes

Initial training via apprenticeship

Financing of training in a centre

Yes

Yes

Post-school training

Financing of the centres Financing of individuals (including training accounts) Financing of strategic training

Costs of training in companies Wages of apprentices Costs of training in companies

Possible when training is carried out in a private centre Frequent, even though minimal

Possible in certain countries

Yes

Yes

Direct financing or co-financing of costs Indirect financing by training during their own time Loss of wages while on training leave

Yes

Yes

Continuing training of employees

Financing of training leading to a qualification Financing to provide incentives (including training accounts)

Costs of training in or outside companies Wages


Table 3 Major categories of activity financed by particular financing sources Financial measures/instruments

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objectives and priorities for all European countries, with a view to making the European Union the most competitive economy in the world by 2010. More generally, co-financing practices reflect the declared intention, notably in Spain and France, to integrate previously separate measures within single establishments. This trend can already be seen in the way financing partnerships have evolved in recent years.

5.1 A Typology Based on Financing, Refinancing and the Ultimate Payer Rather than describing the situation in each country, Table 4 aims to provide details about the modes of intervention of the three big funding sources (public authorities, companies and individuals). Their nature depends upon whether or not they correspond to the different measures identified and whether they take the form of direct financing, indirect financing or refinancing. By setting things out in this way, it is possible to go further than the superficial level of pre-financing, and to expand upon the observation that co-financing is now the rule by specifying which sources of co-financing are the ultimate payers of the various measures. The study intentionally avoids using the notion of refinancing in terms of income tax, in which case the ultimate payers would be companies and households (Germany. Federal Ministry of Education and Research, 2003). It uses the notion to permit analysis of the way the direct financing source for each of the different measures is ultimately refinanced by other stakeholders who do not appear as visible contributors per se. This table allows us to make a certain number of observations clarifying the exact role of each financing source for each measure:

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It clearly emerges that public authorities are the financing source and ultimate payers of the main training measures (school-based initial training and training of job seekers). Private centres exist, notably in the African countries, of which some receive public subsidies and others function exclusively with their own resources. However, the data on this subject is too vague or inconsistent for it to be possible to reach conclusions invalidating the overall observation about the role of the public authorities. Apprenticeship training has two main financing sources in all of the countries: (a) companies for what is spent on training apprentices and paying their wages; and (b) public authorities for what is spent on training them in a training centre or vocational college. However, the country reports, especially those on France and Germany, emphasize that there are two indirect forms of financing by companies and public authorities: (a) tax reductions or exemptions and the recently introduced scheme for taking apprentices on in public administration in Germany; and (b) the recruitment grant and social security exemptions in France. The result is that financing by companies is in reality considerably refinanced by

Direct public subsidies (State or regions)

Initial school-based training

In all cases, for public measures and private centres under contract

Initial training via apprenticeship

For the ‘training centre’ share in most countries

For the ‘in-company training’ share in some countries

Possible for the ‘in-company training’ share

Individual grants

Public refinancing through tax credits or tax exemptions

Direct financing by companies

Indirect financing by mutual funds

Direct financing by individuals

For traineeships

Is the case for part of the ‘mutual’ apprenticeship levy and for funds which contribute to State budgets

Costs of training, of apprentices’ supervisors, wages and trainee grants

Depending on the country, the funds cover companies’ costs or provide extra financing

In exceptional cases, in certain private centres which are neither under contract nor subsidized, and in certain certified centres Possible for financing costs not covered by other financing sources

Non-financial participation by individuals


Table 4 The modes of intervention by public authorities, companies and individuals Financial measures/instruments

By apprentices agreeing to earn less than they otherwise might do

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Table 4 (continued) Financial measures/instruments

Post-school training

Continuing training of employees



Possible for trainee grants For the ‘centre-based training’ share in most of the countries concerned

Social security exemptions For the ‘in-company training’ share in some countries

Possible for the ‘in-company training’ share

Social security exemptions

As incentive measures

Individual training account top-ups In the form of tax deductions in some countries





Costs of training, of tutors and trainees’ grants

Only if the collection of levies covers the financing of alternance training

Possible for financing costs not covered by other financing sources

By young people on alternance training agreeing to earn less than they otherwise might do

Opening of individual training accounts

For companies subject to the levy or making contributions

For training that employees have decided to do themselves

For training done outside working hours R. Walther

For training to adapt to change and training in the interest of the company

Table 4 (continued)

Training of job seekers



As additional financing for training leading to qualifications

In the form of interest payments on training savings accounts

For all of the measures in all of the countries as far as the financing of training is concerned, and in the form of a contribution to companies participating in job creation schemes




In addition to the company for training agreed on jointly

For the company work placement, which is being developed in the framework of active measures

Possible in the form of top-ups, which are often refinanced by employment agencies

In the form of a contribution to unemployment insurance, part of which is often used for job-entry training

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In the form of a contribution to unemployment insurance, part of which is often used for job-entry training

Some social security contribution schemes are managed by funds and then used for training the unemployed



Financial measures/instruments

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the public authorities. Furthermore, bearing in mind that part of the apprentices’ work is beneficial to the company (something which is quantified in terms of financial value in Germany), it can be said that the apprentices refinance part of companies’ financing through their output. Post-school alternance training, which in the strict sense is a specifically European phenomenon, benefits from direct public and private financing in Spain and the United Kingdom and direct financing by companies and/or mutual funds topped up by indirect financing from the State in France. By examining the range of forms of financing in the various countries, it is possible to identify who is ultimately responsible for two main types of measure: one is primarily managed by public authorities; and the other is primarily managed by the social partners. Companies are the main source of continuing vocational training financing in all countries. Employees’ contributions are made either in the form of a financial contribution or in kind (training outside working hours), depending on the objectives of the training (future return in the interest of the company or the individual) and the decision-making process (training chosen by the employee, the company, or in the framework of a collective bargaining agreement). The State can in reality play a role in refinancing individual contributions when expenditure by employees qualifies for tax deductions. As with apprenticeship, the State also refinances companies insofar as they can deduct expenditure on training from their profits or social security contributions. Public authorities are in all cases the main financing source for continuing vocational training for job seekers. However, companies and employees are increasingly contributing to unemployment insurance funds and special funds for training job seekers, which finance job schemes entailing a significant amount of training. The cost of job-entry training is therefore refinanced to a considerable degree by contributions from employers and employees.

6 To Sum Up By identifying financing practices that are present in all of the training systems, it is possible to establish some typological criteria which can be used to shed light on both the specific characteristics setting them apart and the structures and trends they have in common. These practices in reality provide parameters for understanding and analysing the systems, and they make it possible to go beyond the superficial level of who apparently does what, by providing an insight into the effective responsibilities and real commitments of those who implement the various measures. This can be summarized as follows:

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Vocational training financing processes in the various countries cannot be analysed solely on the basis of direct financing. There are also indirect forms of financing and refinancing which make the established relationship between


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sources and beneficiaries more complex. They can have a somewhat radical impact on the way the organization of measures is usually considered. The practice of co-financing characterizes practically all of the measures in all countries. This method seems to be in progression and tends to reflect the increasingly shared perception that training is everybody’s affair. This perception is at the heart of all studies and research on lifelong learning. Contrary to some preconceptions, the differences between private and public measures do not seem to be exclusive. Some training courses in public centres are co-financed by private funds, and there are private establishments co-financed by public funds. The real dividing line between the two types of measure and establishment can be seen more in terms of the types of training and qualifications offered than in the origin of funding. It is more likely that financing will be private if the training provided by an establishment is outside the national qualifications and certification framework.

The most frequent forms of financing are direct financing, refinancing through tax exemptions and rebates, refinancing through the collection and mutualization of funds and co-financing of individual initiative. Grants, training allowances and individual training accounts are notably used for the latter. It should be stressed that training accounts were used in the United Kingdom until 2001 and continue to be used in Sweden. There is currently a debate in the United Kingdom on how they can be given a new start.

COMMON CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SYSTEMS The practice of co-financing is used for all measures. ⇓ It is organized according to complex financing and refinancing processes. ⇓ The direct source of financing is not always the ultimate payer. ⇓ The identity of the ultimate payer determines the exact nature of the system.

SPECIFIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SYSTEMS The way financial instruments are used depends on the country’s particular culture. ⇓ They range from direct and/or indirect aid to incentive measures. ⇓ While the target groups financed are the same, the means of financing them differ. ⇓ The means differ according to whether the training initiative is a responsibility of the State, the social partners or individuals.

Fig. 3 Common and specific characteristics of the systems

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In reality, the differences between such instruments depend on whether they are used to implement a vision developed at the initiative of the State, the social partners or individuals. This is something to be dealt with when it comes to developing models for the types of system. These conclusions can be summarized as in Fig. 3.

References Atchoarena, D. 1998. The alternatives for the financing of vocational training: the example of emerging countries in Latin America. Thessaloniki, Greece: CEDEFOP. (Vocational training, no. 13.) European Commission, ed. 2000a. Continuing Vocational Training Survey (CVTS-2): Population and social conditions. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. (Eurostat Working Papers 3/2000/E/N◦ 17.) European Commission. 2000b. A memorandum on lifelong learning. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities. (SEC (2000) 1832.) European Council. 2000. Lisbon summit presidency conclusions. <www.consilium.europa.eu/ ueDocs/cms Data/docs/pressData/en/ec/00100-r1.en0.htm> Germany. Federal Ministry of Education and Research. 2003. Lifelong learning in Germany: financing and innovation. Berlin: BMBF. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2000. Where are the resources for lifelong learning? Paris: OECD. (Education and skills, 2000.) Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2003. Education at a glance: education statistics and indicators, 2003. Paris: OECD. Walther, R. 2005. Financing vocational training: a Europe-Africa comparison. Paris: AFD. (Notes and documents, no. 13). World Bank. 2004. World development indicators, 2004. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Chapter VII.4

Financing Training Through Payroll Levies1 Adrian Ziderman

1 Introduction Earmarked levies on enterprise payrolls have emerged as the most widely adopted funding mechanism for financing training, both in public training institutions (usually under the aegis of a national training authority) and in commercial enterprises. Usually set at around 1% of total wages disbursements, training levies are central to policies on the financing of training in many countries around the world, both developing counties and industrialized economies. There are two major types of training levy, reflecting the rather different objectives served. The more traditional, revenue-generating schemes (often referred to as the Latin-American model, after its origin in that region) are concerned with generating revenues to finance training provided by the public sector. The newer, levy-grant schemes aim at encouraging in-plant provision of training by firms themselves, through financial incentives that are funded through the training levy. Given the centrality of payroll levies in training finance, this chapter provides a presentation of the types, purposes, pros and cons and efficacy of payroll levies and concludes with a discussion of practical issues of implementation. Illustrations are provided from the working of payroll levy schemes around the world, with particular attention to the lesser-known cases in African countries.

2 Alternative Training Levy Schemes We have noted the usual division of national payroll tax schemes into two distinct groups, reflecting very different underlying objectives: revenue generation schemes (where levy proceeds are used to finance training provided by public sector institutions) and levy-grant schemes (aimed at encouraging training investment by firms themselves). However, this traditional dichotomy is becoming somewhat outdated as evolving levy schemes begin to take on a broader range of tasks, particularly in the context of the development of national training funds and training authorities. While many schemes, as we shall show, both finance public sector institutions and offer incentives for enterprise training, this distinction, nevertheless, remains a R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VII.4, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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useful analytical device. There are some cases of dual-objective, mixed schemes; but for most schemes the main thrust remains in one of these two directions.

2.1 Payroll Levies: Revenue Generation In levy schemes within this grouping, levy proceeds are used mainly to support public sector training provision, provided either by the State or a national training authority; the emphasis is on initial training at formal public training institutions. Such schemes are found typically in Latin America and Caribbean countries. Payroll levy schemes of this type may be seen as a mechanism for greater funding diversification, lightening the burden of training funding falling on the State. In addition to generating more funding for training, levies of this type may offer a more stable form of funding than is forthcoming from government allocations. First introduced in Brazil in the early 1940s, payroll levies of this type are in place in over a dozen countries in that region (Galhardi, 2002). This arrangement has spread to other continents. For example, the payroll levy scheme supporting the Vocational Education and Training Authority (VETA) in Tanzania is of this type. The bulk of funding goes towards the finance of VETA’s public training centres; financial support is also provided for the national trades testing system. Revenues from these levies have been employed to build up national training systems, usually run by a quasi-autonomous national training authority which, at its own training centres, provides a wide range of pre-employment and in-service training courses for manual workers, office workers and managers.

2.2 Levy-Grant Schemes Unlike revenue generation schemes aimed at financing training institutions mainly in the public sector, levy-grant schemes focus on company in-service training. They create incentives for a firm to invest more in the skills development of its workforce, be it in the sphere of training on-the-job (setting up or extending and improving existing company training) or by sending workers to train externally. The need for government intervention, via the introduction of levy-grant arrangements, arises because of shortcomings in the amount and/or quality of enterprise training. Such schemes are in place worldwide. They are to be found in industrial countries (such as France and New Zealand), transitional economies (Hungary) and in developing countries in Africa (Zimbabwe and South Africa) and Asia (Malaysia and Singapore). While there are numerous variants, Gasskov’s three-fold classification of various types of levy-grant schemes has been widely adopted and is presented here (Gasskov, 1994). He distinguishes between schemes concerned with cost reimbursement, cost redistribution (for which he employs the more general term ‘levy-grant’) and levy-exemption.

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2.2.1 Cost Reimbursement Under this type of levy-grant scheme, grants are made to firms who undertake certain designated forms of training (both on- and off-the-job) on a cost-incurred basis. These training grants are financed by the revenues generated by the payroll levy. The purpose of these levy schemes is often misunderstood, particularly among employers. The scheme aims not at reimbursement of the levy as such, but rather reimbursement of training expenditures incurred (to encourage firms to train more or better). Thus, a training expenditure reimbursement ceiling is usually set, up to a given percentage of the levy paid. Firms that train to acceptable standards will receive back part of the levy paid as grants; non-training firms are penalized by loss of the levy. The scheme could, in theory, provide for full reimbursement of the levy contribution (particularly where a large number of firms do not train and claim). In practice, reimbursement is set below the value of the levy paid, because of central administration costs and, particularly when run by a national training authority, where there are central expenditures, financed by the levy, on other training services. The payroll levy serving the Nigerian Industrial Training Fund provides a veteran example of a cost reimbursement scheme. In addition to running the reimbursement scheme, the fund finances and operates a number of its own training centres and its staff provides regular assistance to firms in identifying training needs and developing training plans (Gasskov, 1994). Because of these other calls on levy income, plus the cost of supporting the fund’s large bureaucracy, firms generally can qualify for cost reimbursements of not more than 60% of the levy paid; in practice, less than 15% of firms request training cost reimbursement.

2.2.2 Cost Redistribution This variant differs from cost reimbursement in that it aims at redistributing the burden of training expenditures amongst enterprises. Designed in particular to deal with the ill-effects on training supply of the poaching of skilled workers by nontraining firms, the mechanism provides for a sharper redistribution of levy funds, away from companies who do not train and towards those who do. Since the emphasis is on the redistribution of cost burdens, training companies may receive grants far in excess of the amount of levy paid and thus providing strong incentives for them to train. Such cost redistribution schemes act most strongly where the bulk of levy proceeds is redistributed back to firms as grants and not used for other (albeit training) purposes by the collection organization, be it the State or a national training agency. The classic example of this redistribution mechanism is the faulted system of industrial training board levies in the United Kingdom (UK). This levy-grant scheme, introduced under the 1964 Industrial Training Act, was the most comprehensive levy-grant scheme ever to be implemented. Some thirty industrial training boards were established, each with statutory powers to exact a levy from firms within its jurisdiction. In the largest of the boards, in the engineering industry, the training levy was set at a rate (2.5% of payroll)—sufficiently high to result in total levy proceeds

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approximating total annual training investments by all firms in the industry. This sum was then distributed back only to training firms according to particular formulae designed to measure company training efforts. In this way, firms that did little or no training would contribute towards the training costs of firms that trained substantial numbers of workers. While adopted successfully in other countries (New Zealand and Ireland), the UK scheme proved to be over-ambitious and unwieldy and was dismantled within two decades. Ziderman (1978) provides a critical review of the workings of the act. 2.2.3 Levy-Exemption Arrangements for levy-exemption are usually part of broader cost reimbursement schemes, whereby firms adequately meeting their training needs are allowed to withdraw from the levy-grant system or at least to benefit from reduced levy assessments in proportion to their recognized training investments. A major advantage is that firms are freed from the bureaucratic fatigues of levy payment and grant claims, and potential cash flow problems are avoided. This mechanism is found more typically in certain industrialized economies rather than in developing countries. Levy-exemption is present in the two payroll levies that fall on companies in France (the training tax and the apprenticeship tax). The Côte d’Ivoire scheme constitutes an example of levy exemption arrangements in a developing country. The Continuing Vocational Training (CVT) tax in Cote d’Ivoire is the main revenue source for the national training fund (Fonds de développement de la formation professionnelle). Under the CVT tax, firms are required to pay 1.2% of payroll (in addition, there is an apprenticeship tax of 0.4% of payroll). Firms may receive tax exemption of half their CVT tax obligations (0.6%) on submission, and fund pre-approval, of a company training plan (including training within and outside the firm), utilizing retained payroll tax obligations. There is an additional incentive element built into the CVT system. Firms have the possibility of retaining up to an additional 50% of exempted payroll tax payments (0.9% of payroll instead of 0.6%). To do so, they must submit and implement training plans for three years and justify training expenditures beyond 1.6% of payroll; only a few firms avail themselves of this possibility.

2.3 Mixed Schemes The division between countries with revenue-raising schemes and those operating disbursement schemes is analytically useful; yet, as with many institutional generalizations, the distinction should not be pressed too far. Countries may seek dual objectives from payroll levy schemes which, in practice, may incorporate elements of both approaches. The Mauritius scheme is an example of a dual-objective scheme. While about half of levy proceeds traditionally have been assigned to support public training


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institutions, some 25% has been reimbursed back to firms, a proportion that has been rising more recently to about 40%. In a number of Latin American countries, national training authorities (funded by payroll levies) have broadened their traditional role as training providers to become outward-oriented, encompassing the promotion and guidance of training activities in outside enterprises. Colombia, Peru and Paraguay provide examples of this complementary approach (Ducci, 1997). Many levy-grant schemes contain elements of revenue generation. Nigeria presents a clear case of dual objectives. The National Training Fund, established in 1971, is funded mainly by a 1% payroll levy, with additional financial support from federal government budgets. While the central activity of the fund is the encouragement of companies to invest in the skills development of their employees through the offer of training grants, in 1979 it opened its own first vocational training centre. Though operated on a very much smaller scale than its levy-grant activities, the fund has continued to expand its direct training activities. The levy-grant schemes in Kenya, the Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa all display elements of revenue generation activities. In both the Cote d’Ivoire and South African levy-grant schemes, part of levy income is designated for the financing of national training activities that are usually regarded as the concern of the government. In Côte d’Ivoire, some 30% of CVT tax proceeds (net of tax obligations retained by firms) have been assigned for financing training proposals submitted by NGOs, local communities and informal sector groups. Levy funds assigned to training for the informal sector have risen to some 20% of allocations. The crosssubsidization of informal sector training by levy funds raised from formal sector enterprises is unusual, but is matched by provisions in the levy-grant arrangements in South Africa. In South Africa, 20% of the revenues from the skills development levies on company payrolls are credited to the National Skills Fund for across-sector strategic training initiatives and for the training of disadvantaged groups, activities which are usually funded from central government budgets.

3 Rationale: The ‘Benefit Principle’ Neither public finance experts nor government treasury officials are enamoured of earmarked taxes (for training or otherwise); it is argued that they constrain the freedom of public officials to re-allocate public revenues on an annual, ad hoc basis according to current priorities. And many companies, claiming to see little benefit coming their way from a payroll levy scheme, point to the levy as constituting ‘just another tax’. There is now a sizeable literature (beyond the scope of this chapter) that attempts to identify the essential nature of payroll levies and to seek a theoretical justification for their imposition. One rationale for payroll levies, which has been fairly widely quoted—though not necessarily accepted—sees payroll taxation as a form of ‘reverse social security’ (Whalley & Ziderman, 1990). Based mainly on empirical literature from industrialized countries, it is argued that at least part of the incidence

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of a payroll levy is shifted onto workers in the form of lower wages. It is in this sense that a payroll levy scheme, earmarked for training, may be regarded as equivalent to a reverse social security scheme: the worker receives benefits in the form of training on entry into the labour market (or during the early years) and contributions are made subsequently over the working life. The relevance of this approach, even if broadly accepted, will depend on how far individual tax ‘payments’ match the training benefits received. This, in turn, will depend on how equitably training opportunities are spread amongst workers, which, of course, will differ from country case to case. At a more pragmatic level, there probably would be wide agreement on the following proposition. Most payroll levy schemes, whether revenue generating or levy-grant, are largely used to finance training that is relevant (directly or indirectly) to the needs of the companies that pay the levy. In levy-grant schemes, enterprises may claim back part of training costs incurred, while in countries where enterprise training is weak or undeveloped, levies are used to finance public training institutions that provide skills for the formal sector. In this sense, training levy schemes may be regarded loosely as examples of benefit taxation, where tax-paying individuals or institutions are major beneficiaries of the uses to which the taxes are put. Perhaps the most quoted, non-training-related, argument against the imposition of payroll levies is that, in raising the price of labour, they lead to a substitution encouraging more capital-using production methods and to lower employment. It is unlikely that this argument bears any weight in practice. Even where there is no tax shifting onto workers in terms of lower relative wages, a small addition to labour costs (usually only of 1%) is highly unlikely to affect wage employment significantly, except on the margins.

4 Coverage Coverage of payroll levy schemes varies considerable from country to country, both in terms of the size of firm included in the scheme and of sectoral coverage. Most schemes define eligibility in terms of firm size, usually exempting small firms. While the Nigerian scheme includes enterprises with twenty-five workers or more, and those with ten or more workers in Colombia, most schemes are more comprehensive in coverage. Those in Kenya and Tanzania exclude all employers with three or less workers, and firms with less than five workers are exempted in Honduras, Peru and Venezuela. All enterprises are covered in the Mauritius and South African schemes. In Costa Rica and Honduras, exemption may be claimed on the basis of capital assets. The efficacy of such broad coverage in many developing country schemes is questionable. In practice, the bulk of revenue is collected from the minority of large and medium-sized firms. The relatively large number of micro-enterprises, the blurred definition of the informal sector and the difficulties of small-firm identification, registration and levy collection, all combine to result in considerable


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non-compliance in many countries. Legislation provides for fines and/or imprisonment for non-payment in most countries; but these measures are either generally not employed (as was the case in Tanzania until the reversal in policy in this regard, introduced in 2001) or not applied to very small firms. The reason is clear: in very many cases it is simply not cost-effective to follow up on small firms through litigation or even through dispatching inspector/collectors. But considerable noncompliance brings the law (and the levy scheme) into disrepute and beams negative signals to complying firms regarding continuing levy payment. A strong case can be made out for raising the minimum firm size for inclusion in payroll levy schemes in developing countries with large informal sectors. In many schemes small firms are excluded both because inclusion would not be practical (in terms of levy collection), but also because it may not be justified, particularly in the case of levy-grant schemes. The administrative costs of applying for grants may be disproportionally high for small firms. Moreover, the training needs of very small firms differ from those of larger firms, in terms both of expenditures (in relation to operating costs) and type of training; much of the training for which rebates may be obtained in many schemes is not very relevant to very small firms. Increasingly, financing schemes are being put in place in various developing countries (Kenya and Ghana, for example) to deal with the needs of micro-enterprises and informal sector firms; but these tend to be based on subsidy (usually from government and donors) rather than on levy-grant approaches. Countries differ in the sectors covered by the levy. Agriculture is usually excluded and most schemes exempt the public sector (Mauritius and Tanzania, for example), which results in a cross-subsidization of training for public sector employees by the private sector, to the extent that levies finance public training institutions. In some countries (such as in Colombia and Honduras), the government sector is included but levied at a lower rate. In South Africa, central and provincial government remains outside the purview of the training levy legislation, but government departments are required to budget 1% of personnel costs for skills development. Given the extent of sectoral coverage, some countries operate a number of sectoral-based schemes, rather than a unified national scheme. The leading example was the former industrial training board system operating in the UK. Sector-based schemes have met with varying levels of success and, clearly, their main advantage is that they offer a means of tailoring the levy format to the specific characteristics and needs of the sector in question. The disadvantage of sectoral levies is their narrow focus obviating an integrated, national approach to the finance and planning of skills development. Most countries have opted for standard, national-level levy schemes.

5 Avoiding the Misuse of Payroll Levy Revenues Payroll levies have been a stable form of funding for training in many countries and have brought additional funding to the public sector. However, there are a small

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number of notable cases where the payroll levy system has not resulted in more training because levy proceeds have been dissipated into general government revenues. This is the case in Gabon, Togo and, for a period, in Côte d’Ivoire, leading to a collapse of the respective training funds that they financed. Payroll levies may constitute an over-sheltered source of funding leading to unspent surpluses (Dougherty & Tan, 1991). The Zimbabwe scheme has resulted in income generation far in excess of cost reimbursement demands, leading to questionable forays into fields very loosely related to the objectives of the scheme. Surpluses generated by the scheme in Mauritius have led to a drastic cutting of complementary government funding for the training fund. The initial levy rate may be set too high, especially in the case of cost reimbursement schemes or a rate that may have been appropriate at one time is not revised downwards as financing needs modification. In Nigeria the levy rate, initially set at 3% in 1971, was reduced subsequently to the current rate of 1% four years later. Surpluses may lead to inefficiencies and top-heavy bureaucracies; alternatively they may lead to the use of payroll tax revenues for purposes other than training. Herein lies the role of strong controlling boards, representing the major stakeholder interests, to monitor the system and to ensure that abuse does not ensue. The root of the problem, however, arises from the arbitrary way in which levy rates are fixed and in the inflexibilities of the system (with the tax rate often enshrined in the legislation setting up the scheme). In the initial stages of setting up a scheme, only too frequently the levy rate is fixed arbitrarily. Often, the pragmatic approach adopted is to ask how much the system (i.e. employers) will bear and to emulate current rates in other countries, rather than to estimate revenue needs (which may change in the future), from which an initial tax rate is derived. This highlights the basic dilemma: how may a payroll tax system be fashioned to be flexible enough to respond to changing expenditure needs (and avoid surpluses), without foregoing the benefit of stable funding? It would be advisable to include within the enabling legislation a requirement to review the levy rate periodically (say every four to five years), but to guarantee a stable levy rate between revision dates.

6 Enhancing Enterprise Training Payroll levies have been a useful device in offering incentives for the development and strengthening of enterprise training. Training grants (financed from payroll levies) are employed in many countries to counter a tendency for firms to under-train. In these cases, direct training subsidies are provided as part of a levy-grant system. Two alternatives are available in the form of the direct subsidy to enterprise training by the government or of indirect subsidies offered through concessions on company tax obligations for firms that train. In this section we compare these three forms of incentives for enhancing company training and consider how far they may be successful in improving the training outcomes of enterprises.


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6.1 Direct Subsidies: Government Grants Versus Levy-Grants Some countries offer direct subsidies (out of public funds) to encourage company training; in what ways does this differ from cost reimbursement, as part of a levygrant scheme? With a government subsidy scheme, incentives may be indirect and insufficiently focused, failing to catch the attention of senior management. Perhaps too much reliance is placed on the initiative of the individual firms involved—in knowing that the subsidy scheme exists and that the firm is eligible for subsidy and in overcoming company lethargy in committing themselves to the burdensome process of involvement in the scheme. But in the case of levy-grant schemes, ‘involvement’ is assured automatically by the compulsory payment of the levy; anecdotal evidence suggests that senior company finance officers may tend to exert pressure on the training function to ensure that ‘we get back the levy’, through appropriate training provision. Moreover, there are likely to be positive longer-term effects from a regime of levy-grants. The experience of the former UK industrial training levy-grant system was that, in time, the process did exert the beneficial effect of increasing training consciousness in the firm; the training function, as a generator of income, moves more towards centre stage in the firm’s operations. Finally, we shall argue that one advantage of a well-developed levy-grant scheme over direct government subsidies is that the former is better positioned to adopt a structured, comprehensive approach to training, rather than a more ad hoc one. The central lacuna in training underprovision is not only that the amount of training provided is too low, but also that it is often piecemeal and not sufficiently well integrated.

6.2 Indirect Subsidies: Company Tax Concessions In most countries, training expenses incurred by companies are tax deductible. The tax treatment of training expenditures (a form of human capital investment) is typically more favourable than that of machinery and equipment (Dougherty & Tan, 1991). Training expenses are tax deductible immediately, whereas physical assets are tax deductible only in instalments, over a number of years, through depreciation allowances. However, a training incentive may be given in the form of further tax concessions for company training expenditures, in addition to the usual deduction of training expenses for tax purposes: we refer to these as ‘company tax concessions’. The generally successful and extant scheme in Chile is often quoted as an example of the use of company tax credits as an incentive device for enterprise training. However, there are a number of (lesser-known) examples; generally, they have proved to be unsuccessful. Brazil and South Africa constitute two notable instances of failed and phased-out tax concession schemes. The South African scheme, established under legislation in the 1970s, allowed for the deduction of 200% of training expenditures (reduced to

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150% in 1984), thus effectively reducing training costs of profitable firms by half (at a corporation tax rate of 50%). The scheme was faulted by ‘gross abuse’ of the concession by employers and difficulties in policing claims. Moreover, employer uptake was very low; well under 1% of firms in the country claimed these tax concessions for in-service training. The Mauritius scheme is unusual in that it operates in tandem with a levy-grant scheme. The presence of two schemes together is not unique—Brazil, for example, also operated both schemes in parallel. What is unusual is the close integration of the two schemes. Overall, the administrative and supervisory costs of the scheme are unnecessarily high. There has been conflict over the interpretation of the rules governing the interrelationship of the two schemes and, as a consequence, the reimbursement element of the levy-grant scheme has remained small. The major problems with tax concession schemes are simply stated. A prerequisite for the introduction of the scheme is a well-developed and broadly-based system of corporate taxation—something not usually present in many developing countries. Firms with low profits and perhaps poor training capacity do not benefit and are not encouraged to train. Tax concession schemes only offer benefits to stronger, profitable firms. And unlike levy-grant schemes, it is the government that bears the cost of these schemes in the form of lost tax revenues. In this sense, these arrangements are akin to direct training subsidies by the government and may be regarded as representing ‘subsidies in disguise’.

6.3 Encouraging Enterprise Training: Strengths and Weaknesses While sharing some common weaknesses, the three mechanisms are not equally efficacious. Table 1 lists some of the major weaknesses and—if any—notable advantages of each approach. A major advantage of levy-grant systems is that they do not draw on public funds, a point of some importance in times of parsimonious government budgets. In addition (as discussed above), they can lead to more systematic, structured enterprise training (although they are often not designed to do so). The disadvantages of tax concession schemes militate against their adoption in other than a very few countries.

7 What Forms of Training Should a Levy-Grant Scheme Support? 7.1 Training Off- or On-the-Job? Enterprise training can take on many forms. Training may be provided in the form of apprenticeship (often divided between training on-the-job and attendance at courses


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Table 1 Mechanisms for encouraging enterprise training: strengths and weaknesses Mechanism

Notable strengths

Levy-grant systems

Costs do not fall on public budgets—they are met by enterprises (or, with incidence shifting, by workers). Can facilitate a more systematic, structured approach to enterprise training.

Weaknesses

General training subsidies

Cost burden falls on public budgets (increased expenditures).

Company tax concessions

Requires a well-developed and broadly-based system of corporate taxation. Cost burden of the scheme falls largely on public budgets (reduced tax revenues). Responsiveness of firms is low in those economies where few firms earn sufficient profits to benefit from the tax exemptions.

Source: Ziderman, 2003.

provided at an outside training institution). It may take place wholly on-the-job as initial or continuing formal training, or training may be less formal and ad hoc, though not necessarily less important to the skills development of the firm. It may be provided off-the-job, in the form of formal courses, for workers, management or professionals at specialized training institutions. There is a dilemma here. It may be important to encourage certain forms of on-the-job training, but these may be expensive to monitor for quality and abuse may be difficult to detect. Other forms of training, such as those for professional qualification at recognized external institutions, may more readily be subject to surveillance but are not always of highest priority for the firm. This may explain the focus of a number of levy-grant schemes. Apart from apprenticeship training, which is largely in decline, most training that is recognized for cost reimbursement in the Zimbabwe scheme is training for upgrading or professional qualifications at external institutions. More hands-on, practical training does not receive sizeable support. Similar considerations seem to apply to the Kenyan scheme.

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7.2 Systems Approach Versus Piecemeal Reimbursement A related issue is the breadth of the overall programme of training supported by a levy-grant scheme within a firm and its sustainability over the longer term. We may recognize two contrasting approaches here. One—we may label this as the ‘external approach’—is typified in the Zimbabwe scheme. Here, a detailed list is produced of approved forms of training and courses that are eligible for rebates; firms are then invited to apply for cost reimbursement for those forms of (mainly external) training they have sponsored and which match items on the approved list. But this approach, while offering rebates to firms for certain forms of training and probably encouraging firms to train more (in designated eligible areas) is unlikely to have more than a limited, short-term impact on skills development in the firm and may indeed distort the balance of forms of training provision within the enterprise. This is because it gives recognition, and financial support, to more standard forms of training—usually provided externally to the firm—that are more readily recognized and easily monitored (and thus countering potential financial abuse) rather than supporting more needed forms of training, varying across firms and often less formal or standardized, which is lacking in individual enterprises. An alternative, ‘systems’ approach takes a broader view. In Côte d’Ivoire, levy exemption and cost reimbursement are contingent on the preparation, and approval by the fund, of a company training plan. In the Nigerian case, grant payment is conditional on the firm adopting a systematic approach to training based on given criteria. Thus, firms are encouraged to begin to think systematically through preparing a training programme, defined in terms of their real skill needs, rather than applying for rebates on a purely ad hoc, short-term basis. This more progressive approach has also been adopted within the framework of new funding arrangements put in place in recent years in South Africa.

8 Payroll Levies: A Balance Sheet of Advantages and Limitations Payroll taxes, usually levied as a percentage of company payrolls, are now established throughout the world as the most pervasive mechanism employed for funding training systems. In this policy-oriented section, we draw up a balance sheet, setting out the strengths and advantages of training levies against their possible dangers and limitations (Table 2). This listing is then followed by a discussion of key issues in training levy design and implementation that may be crucial factors in augmenting the benefits to be secured from training levies, while limiting—if not eliminating— some of their weaknesses.

9 Issues in Levy Scheme Design Table 3 summarizes a number of crucial issues in payroll levy scheme design and implementation that have been raised in this chapter. They are discussed more fully


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Table 2 Payroll levies: advantages and limitations Advantages

Limitations

Diversifies the revenue base for financing training by mobilizing additional revenues.

Given their particular training needs, many firms, particularly small ones, do not benefit from the scheme; this breeds resentment, opposition and compromises the status of training levies as ‘benefit taxation’.

Can provide a stable and protected source of funding for national training provision; this is particularly important in the context of national budgetary instability.

Earmarked taxation does not conform well with the principles of sound public finance and weakens attempts to unify the national tax system.

Where forming part of a levy-grant system, can encourage firms to intensify their training efforts, increase training capacity and raise training quality.

Under fiscal pressure, the government may incorporate training levy proceeds into general public tax revenues.

A strong case can be made for viewing earmarked payroll levies as ‘benefit taxation’.

Levy proceeds may be diverted to non-training uses.

Training levies collected from formal sector employers can serve as a vehicle for cross-subsidization of training, especially from the formal to the informal sector.

Payroll levies may constitute an over-sheltered source of funding, leading to unspent surpluses, inefficiencies and top-heavy bureaucracies. Payroll levies raise the cost of labour to the employer, possibly discouraging employment. Employers may shift the incidence of the levy on to workers in the form of lowered wages; in this case, workers and not the employers bear the burden of the tax.

Source: Ziderman, 2003.

in Ziderman (2003). Failure to pay due attention to these issues is likely to compromise the prospects for successful operation of a payroll levy scheme.

10 Concluding Remarks In over forty countries worldwide, levies on the payrolls of companies have become a principle source for financing skills training in specialized training institutions (often under the aegis of a national training authority) and for encouraging enterprise training without calling upon public funds. An attraction of these levies is that they form a sheltered source of funding for training, as well as more generally

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A. Ziderman Table 3 Issues in levy scheme design and implementation

Issue

Commentary

Levy rate

Levy rates to be subject by law to periodic review to avoid accumulation of surpluses. Levies, where feasible, should vary across sector and industry to reflect the differing skill composition of the labour force and training needs. Levy coverage should be as wide as possible across economic sectors and to include public enterprises, NGOs, etc. Very small firms should be exempt from levy payment, on both efficiency and equity grounds. Levy collection should be placed in the hands of effective agents; self-collection by funding organization to be avoided. Special attention should be given to guarding levy revenues from raiding by the government (especially where tax authorities act as the collection agent), by placing in special, closed accounts. Employers should be involved in payroll levy policy formation and execution. Payroll levies may be inappropriate where levy-income generating capacity is weak - either because of the limited size of the formal sector or administrative/organizational difficulties of levy collection.

National or sectoral levy rates Sectoral coverage Company size Levy collection Security of levy proceeds

Employers buy-in Avoidance of premature introduction of payroll levies Source: Ziderman, 2003.

offering a means of mobilizing funds otherwise inaccessible to the public sector. While there is a general predisposition to regard earmarked taxes as unnecessarily constraining on governments, payroll levies can act as an insulator against economic uncertainty and budgetary parsimony in situations where it is societally desirable to take a longer-term view. The provision of skills to meet the needs of economic growth and technological change may constitute a case in point. Be that as it may, this method of training finance has emerged as the most widely adopted alternative to government budgetary allocations.

Note 1. This chapter draws heavily on earlier papers written by the author, particularly: Whalley & Ziderman, 1990; Ziderman, 1994; and Ziderman, 2003.

References Dougherty, C.; Tan, J.P. 1991. Financing training: issues and options. Washington, DC: World Bank. (Population and Human Resources Department working paper series, no. 716.) Ducci, M.A. 1997. New challenges to vocational training authorities: lessons from the Latin American experience. International journal of manpower, vol. 18, nos. 1–2.


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Galhardi, R.M.A.A. 2002. Financing training: innovative approaches in Latin America. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. (Skills working paper, no. 12.) Gasskov, V., ed. 1994. Alternative schemes of financing training. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Whalley, J.; Ziderman, A. 1990. Financing training in developing countries: the role of payroll taxes. Economics of education review, vol. 9, no. 4. Ziderman, A. 1978. Manpower training: theory and policy. London: Macmillan. Ziderman, A. 1994. Payroll levies for training. In: Husen, T.; Postlethwaite, T.N., eds. The international encyclopedia of education, 2nd ed., vol. 8. Oxford, UK: Pergamon. Ziderman, A. 2003. Financing vocational training in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank.


Chapter VII.5

Financing Vocational Education and Training in South Africa Martin Gustafsson and Pundy Pillay

1 Introduction Participation in education in South Africa is high. In 2004, around one-third of all South Africans were enrolled in some form of educational institution on a full-time basis. However, only around 2% of those enrolled were enrolled in an institution other than a school or a tertiary institution (Statistics South Africa, 2005). This is to some extent the concern of this chapter. Poor quality in education and training is perceived as a problem. The starkest manifestation of this in recent years is probably the very poor performance of South Africa in the international Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) tests in 2003. Skills shortages exist in a variety of fields, but are particularly acute in the engineering, computer-related, education and nursing fields. At the same time, the unemployment rate amongst the unskilled is particularly high. The official unemployment rate for 2005 was 27%. High unemployment rates have been a feature of the South African economy since at least the 1970s. Since the advent of democracy in 1994, various indicators have improved. Certain improvements can only be expected to have a wider impact in the medium to long term. On the education supply side, total public spending on education and training has risen in real terms, though as a proportion of GDP it has dropped. Public expenditure on each African school pupil doubled in real terms between 1994 and 2005. The post-apartheid period has seen the emergence of an entirely new set of institutions, policies and quality interventions, all explicitly geared towards undoing the apartheid human resources legacy. Those relating to pre-tertiary vocational education and training are discussed below. On the labour demand side, a set of employment equity rules has been established to counteract the racial and gender discrimination entrenched over many years in the South African workplace. Economic growth, 4.5% in 2004, is higher than it has been for twenty years. Whilst the growth experienced is arguably not of the jobless growth variety, a parallel growth in the demand for jobs means that a decisive and satisfactory decline in the unemployment rate has not been realised yet. The spending breakdown for education and training is shown in Table 1 for 2005. This chapter deals with South Africa’s spending policies in relation to the two lines in Table 1 that deal with vocational education and training at (mainly) the R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VII.5, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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M. Gustafsson, P. Pillay Table 1 Public spending on education and training, 2005

Education and training sub-sector National education expenditure Administration and governance Tertiary education Provincial educational expenditure Administration and governance Early childhood development + Grade R Schools (Grades 1 to 12) FET colleges Adult basic education and training National Skills Fund and SETA expenditure Skills development Grand total

Millions of rand

% of GDP

539 10,810

0.04% 0.71%

4,841 511 60,984 1,572 620

0.32% 0.03% 3.99% 0.10% 0.04%

5,000 84,875

0.33% 5.55%

Sources: Government budget documents.

pre-tertiary level: ‘Skills development’ and ‘FET colleges’. A first section deals with skills development, and a second one with further education and training (FET) colleges. Within the two parts, and in the conclusion, actual and potential links between the two sectors are described.

2 Financing the National Skills Development Strategy 2.1 Rationale and Legislation The National Skills Development Strategy (NSDS) introduced by the Government of South Africa in 2001 is funded through an employee payroll tax. The rationale for the introduction of such a levy to fund training of the employed and unemployed was two-fold. First, the new democratic government of 1994 inherited an education and training system characterized, inter alia, by a chronic shortage of the skills necessary for stimulating economic growth and reducing unemployment. Second, and related to the above, the private business sector of the apartheid era seriously under-invested in work-place training initiatives, mainly because of an undue emphasis on short-term profits and a tendency to see training as a cost rather than as an investment. For these reasons the post-apartheid government was compelled to develop and implement a tax-funded skills development strategy which was met at its commencement by a high level of hostility by the private business sector. The NSDS was intended to ‘radically transform education and training in South Africa by improving both the quality and quantity of training to support increased competitiveness of industry and improved quality of life for all South Africans’ (RSA. DoL, 2004). The first NSDS (NSDS-I) was launched in February 2001 with targets to be achieved by March 2005. The strategy was underpinned by the Skills Development Act (SDA) of 1998 and the Skills Development Levies Act (SDLA) of 1999 (RSA.

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DoL, 1998; RSA. DoL, 1999). This legislation provided the basis for the skills development system, which was aimed at addressing the structural problems of the labour market inherited from the past, and at transforming the South African labour market ‘from one with a low skills base to one characterized by rising skills and a commitment to lifelong learning’ (RSA. DoL, 2001). The five objectives of the NSDS were:

r r r r r

Developing a culture of high-quality lifelong learning; Fostering skills development in the formal economy for productivity and employment growth; Stimulating and supporting skills development in small businesses; Promoting skills development for employability and sustainable livelihoods through social development initiatives; and Assisting new entrants into employment (RSA. DoL, 2001).

Twelve success indicators and three equity targets were associated with these objectives.

2.2 Institutional Mechanisms: The National Skills Fund and the SETAs The implementation of the NSDS is the responsibility of the National Skills Fund (NSF) and the sector education and training authorities (SETAs). The NSF is managed by the Department of Labour (DoL). It is funded through receiving a portion of the levies paid by employers. All employers are required by the SDLA to pay 1% of their payroll to the South African Revenue Service. From this levy, 80% is transferred directly to the SETA in which the employer is registered. The remaining 20% is transferred to the NSF. The NSF was created to provide funding to address issues of national importance including job creation, small business development and special assistance to women, youth and rural people and people with disabilities. The DoL’s provincial offices, labour centres and SETAs, as well as other disbursing agencies, are allocated funding from the NSF for specific projects that meet the objectives of the NSF. Twenty-five SETAs were established under the SDLA in March 2000. They are responsible for developing sector skills plans, approving, registering and promoting learnerships, quality assuring training and administering levies and grants. As stated above, they are funded through the 1% levy paid by employers, of which they receive 80% (10% of which is spent on administration). SETAs disburse mandatory grants on the receipt of workplace skills plans (WSPs) and implementation reports from employers. In addition, they disburse ‘discretionary grants’ for projects that address specific sectoral needs identified in their sector skills plans.

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2.3 NSDS-I: Achievements and Challenges In its assessment in 2004, the DoL claimed to have met or exceeded the following targets:

r r r

15% of workers should have embarked on a structured learning programme, of whom at least 50% have completed their programme satisfactorily—this target had been exceeded by over 100%; 40% of enterprises employing between 50 and 150 workers should be receiving skills development grants and the contributions towards productivity and employer and worker benefits should be measured. In 2004, 53% of these enterprises were receiving skills development grants; 20% of small businesses should have been supported in skills development initiatives—in 2004, this figure had reached 37%.

Substantial progress had also been made in meeting the following targets and they were likely to be met in the next financial year (2005/2006):

r r

70% of workers achieving a level 1 qualification; and A minimum of 80,000 people under the age of 30 in learnerships (2004 achievement—69,306).

However, while there had been some improvements in the equity targets, the DoL acknowledged that it was still short of meeting some of them, especially the disability targets. The following findings were reached by a study commissioned by the DoL to investigate the impact of the NSDS on skills training (Peterson, McGrath & Badroonian, 2003):

r r r

r r r

There is general satisfaction about the number of firms that are claiming their grants. A larger percentage of firms with low training rates did not claim grants; the implication being that firms which claimed grants were more likely to have higher training rates. The pattern of grants claims among SETAs was extremely variable, ranging from 78% in the financial services sector and 72% in the banking sector, to 27% in the health and welfare, 23% in the chemicals and 20% in the education sectors. These differences could be ascribed, inter alia, to a number of factors, such as the size of the sector, the number of small firms in the sector, the level of organization of the sector and the past history of training in the sector. This large variance may also be ascribed to differences in the capacity of the SETAs themselves to administer and support the levy-grant system. Statistical analysis showed that a significantly larger proportion of firms that had WSPs also claimed grants. Firms that claimed to have developed WSPs exceeded the number of firms that reported claims grants. The proportion of firms that claimed to have a WSP was 10% higher than the proportion of firms that actually claimed grants.


r

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63% of firms reported being registered with a SETA: 95% of large firms; 56% of small firms; 9% of firms were not sure of their registration status.

A study commissioned by the DoL to investigate skills development in the public sector identified the following challenges:

r r r r r r

Critical skills needs are not being adequately addressed in the areas of financial management, computer skills, project management, human resources management, customer care, communication skills and adult basic education and training. Low exposure of management to key skills, such as financial management and computer skills. Slow progress on the implementation of learnerships. Insufficient expertise in the collection of skills development information and reporting on training. Low attention paid to quality assurance of training. Low proportion of training staff to government workers.

2.4 NSDS-II In response to the challenges arising from the implementation of NSDS-I, the government introduced NSDS-II in March 2005. According to the DoL: [The] NSDS 2005–2010 spells out the national priority areas to which the projected over R21.9 billion income from the skills development levy will be allocated over the next five years. It provides the aggregate performance indicators of the skills development system that will be used as a basis to formulate performance indicators through legally binding Service Level Agreements with the SETAs and projects funded under the NSF (RSA. DoL, 2005).

The five objectives of NSDS-II are:

r r r r r

Objective 1: Prioritizing and communicating critical skills for sustainable growth, development and equity. Objective 2: Promoting and accelerating quality training for all in the workplace. Objective 3: Promoting employability and sustainable livelihoods through skills development. Objective 4: Assisting designated groups, including new entrants, to participate in accredited work, integrating learning and work-based programmes to acquire critical skills to enter the labour market and self-employment. Objective 5: Improving the quality and relevance of provision.

NSDS-II sets out ambitious targets to be achieved by March 2010, including the following:

r

At least 80% of large firms and at least 60% of medium-sized firms’ employment equity targets to be supported by skills development.

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At least 40% of small levy-paying firms must be supported by skills development, and the impact measured. At least 80% of government departments must spend at least 1% of their personnel budget on training, with the impact of training on service delivery measured and reported. At least 500 enterprises must achieve a national standard of good practice in skills development approved by the Minister of Labour. The number of small Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) firms and cooperatives supported by skills development is to increase each year. Progress is to be measured through an annual survey of BEE firms and BEE co-operatives within the sector from the second year onwards. There must be an annually increasing number of people who benefit from incentivized training for employment or re-employment in new investments and expansion initiatives. Training equity targets are to be achieved. Of the number trained, 100% are to be South African citizens. At least 700,000 workers must have achieved at least Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) Level 4. At least 450,000 unemployed people should be trained. Of those trained, at least 70% should be placed in employment, self-employment or social development programmes or engaged in further studies. At least 2,000 non-levying enterprises, non-governmental organizations and community-based organizations or co-operatives are to be supported by skills development, with a targeted success rate. At least 100,000 unemployed people are to have participated in ABET programmes, of which at least 70% are to have achieved ABET Level 4. At least 125,000 unemployed people should have been assisted to enter programmes, and at least 50% should have been successfully completed, including learnerships and apprenticeships, leading to basic entry, intermediate and highlevel skills. 100% of learners in critical skills programmes must be covered by sector agreements with further and higher-education institutions and gain experience locally or abroad, of whom at least 70% are to find placement in employment or selfemployment. At least 10,000 young people must be trained and mentored to form sustainable new ventures, with a minimum of at least 70% of new ventures still in operation twelve months later. Each SETA is to recognize and support at least five institutes of sectoral or occupational excellence within public or private institutions and through public/private partnerships where appropriate, spread as widely as possible geographically, for the development of people to attain identified critical skills, whose excellence is measured in the number of learners successfully placed in the sector and in employers’ satisfaction ratings of their training.

NSDS-II introduced radical changes to the way that the nearly R22 billion income from the skills development levy would be allocated. The biggest single change is


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in the way grants are paid out. In the past, companies were repaid 15% of their skills levy for submitting their workplace skills plan and 45% for submitting an implementation report, and 10% was available in discretionary grants for learnerships and research projects. Under the new skills strategy, 50% will be repaid in mandatory grants—based on new, tougher criteria—while 20% is available in discretionary grants. The mandatory grant mechanism is now more closely linked to companies’ compliance with employment equity and broad-based Black economic empowerment targets, as opposed to merely lodging their reports. The emphasis is now on rewarding implementation of plans. The strategy makes it clear that SETAs are required to ensure through the mandatory grant mechanism that companies have effectively implemented employment equity. Companies will not get back the 50% of their skills levy if they have not implemented employment equity. To receive their mandatory grant, companies are expected to satisfy three criteria: 85% of people who benefited from their workplace skills plan must be Black; 54% must be women; and 4% must be disabled. Because the DoL does not have the capacity or business network to implement employment equity, it has made the SETAs its tool for compliance. Another shift in the strategy is a greater emphasis on scarce and critical skills in learnerships, and hence the greater proportion of the levy devoted to discretionary grants. The new strategy now also prescribes who SETAs can accredit to offer training and development. The change proposes greater co-operation between private service providers and public training institutions—for instance the public FET colleges.

2.5 Conclusion: Assessing the Pay-Roll Tax-Funded NSDS Much attention over the past five years has focused on the problems faced by SETAs and their inability to disburse funds, cumbersome bureaucracies, failure to reach targets, the slow pace of progress and failure to reach the poor and unemployed. Much of this is true. However, it should be remembered also that SETAs have been in existence for only five years—a relatively short time in which to establish structures that are charged with delivering training on a scale never before seen in South Africa. While some have disappointed, many other SETAs have exceeded their targets set in the first NSDS, and they should be applauded. Some, such as the chemical industries SETA, the financial and accounting SETA, the banking SETA, the insurance SETA and the services SETA, have overachieved with respect to set targets. SETAs have also highlighted the critical need to address the needs of adult South Africans who are either totally or functionally illiterate. SETAs fund ABET programmes that reach the most educationally disadvantaged, who cannot access learnerships because of a lack of working knowledge of English and maths. SETAs have also injected life into the monolithic National Qualifications Framework (NQF),

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turning it into a functional concept where credits earned on courses count towards further training and, therefore, upward mobility. A challenge that all SETAs now face following the launch of NSDS-II is to expand their delivery to the poor, the unemployed and to the rural areas. It is evident also that the management of the skills levy grant system needs to be reviewed. Key areas in need of improvement include: (a) ensuring grants are used for high-quality training instead of maximizing rebates; (b) directing firms to invest in accredited training; (c) eliminating burdensome bureaucracy; (d) ensuring flexibility in the levy grant system based on the differing needs of specific industries; (e) preventing accumulation of huge surpluses by SETAs; (f) stringently monitoring training plans and reports; and (g) discouraging SETAs from venturing into extraneous activities beyond their statutory obligations (Rasool, 2005). Moreover, the NSDS should be aligned to supporting the government’s accelerated shared growth initiative. In essence, what is required is an adaptable strategy that is responsive to significant structural changes in the economy and labour market. Equally important, this strategy should be flexible enough to accommodate the skills development priorities of specific industries.

3 Financing the Public FET College Sector This section deals with the financing of the pre-tertiary VET component governed (indirectly) by the national Department of Education (DoE) and (directly) by the nine provincial departments of education. This component is referred to as the public further education and training college sector, or simply the ‘FET college sector’. A few basic facts relating to the size and cost of this sector will be outlined, after which the strategic thrust of the 1998 White Paper on FET will be explained. Most of the section will be taken up by a discussion of five key policy questions. It is instructive to compare the public FET college sector to Grades 10, 11 and 12 in public schools (Table 2). These three school grades are essentially the non-vocational side of FET. Several aspects of the five policy challenges that will be discussed are reflected in these figures. The fact that per capita spending in colleges should be 40% higher than that in schools, underlines the importance of efficient use of the available resources in colleges. Arguably, however, there is an efficiency inherent in the great difference between raw headcounts and full-time equivalent students in colleges—there are 2.8 headcounts per full-time equivalent. Each US$1,043 in the college sector thus delivers a service to 2.8 part-time students on average, whilst each US$743 in the schooling system covers just one (full-time) student. The differential between the provinces with the highest and lowest per capita expenditure in the college system is US$633, against the US$216 differential in the schooling system. These high differentials in the college system are partly a result of differences in college size, but mostly they seem to result from a variety of other historical factors. Specifically, there is little to suggest that provinces spending more per full-time equivalent student offer a better quality training service. In fact, the opposite seems to be true,


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Table 2 Public FET in colleges and in schools Number of institutions

Enrolments 2004

Average enrolment per institution Proportion of enrolment that is Black African Proportion of enrolment that is female Gross enrolment ratio (using 15 to 17 year olds as the denominator) Highest and lowest province for the above Public spending as a proportion of total public education spending Average recurrent spending per learner (US$) Highest and lowest province for the above Ratio of learners to educators

FET in colleges

FET in schools

50 (152 colleges became 50 multi-campus colleges in 2003) 394,027 (equals approx. 139,619 ‘full-time equivalents’) 7,881

6,253

73%

83%

40%

54%

5%

79%

Gauteng: 12% Eastern Cape: 3% 2%

Limpopo: 93% Eastern Cape: 62% 17%

1,043

743

Free State: 1,442 Limpopo: 808 24

Northern Cape: 882 KwaZulu-Natal: 667 32

2,321,345

371

Sources: RSA. DoE 2004/2005a/2005b; RSA. National Treasury 2005a/2005b. The most recent figure available in the period 2002–2004 was used (population estimates were for 2005, however). Note that wherever ‘students’ are the denominator in the first column, full-time equivalent students is used (and not raw headcounts).

with the more industrially developed province of Gauteng offering a better quality service below the national average cost. Understanding what it should cost to offer particular training programmes in different contexts is clearly a key challenge. In terms of equity of coverage, the college sector lags somewhat behind the school sector in terms of race and gender—the latter sector is almost fully representative of the population. One striking difference is how small the college system is relative to FET in schools. There is considerable political pressure to expand the FET system— a target of 1 million students by 2010 was set by the Minister of Education in 2003 (RSA. DoE, 2003). Recapitalization funds, amounting to US$160 million, or twothirds of annual recurrent spending in the sector, have been allocated for spending in 2005 to 2008. Any new system governing the regular funding of colleges would need to be designed with a view to both expanding the college sector and sustaining it at a level well above the current one. The Proposed new funding norms for FET colleges, released in 2005 by the national Department of Education, are the outcome of several years of debate and

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strategizing regarding the future of the public FET colleges. A milestone policy document was the White Paper on Further Education and Training published in 1998. The section of the White Paper dealing with funding of colleges states: Funding will be a key instrument for influencing the responsiveness of FET institutions to the achievement of national goals, the enhancement of the performance of the system, the widening of participation and the promotion of equity and redress (RSA. DoE, 1998).

The White Paper emphasizes strongly ‘formula funding of programmes’, also referred to as ‘programme-based funding’. Though a formal definition is not put forward, it is implied that a more transparent and efficient public funding system is required, where the level of funding is more explicitly linked to the type of training service being offered, and the number of full-time equivalent students. Such a system should partially focus on training outcomes, such as graduation rates or even labour-market readiness of graduates. Participation of historically disadvantaged students would be promoted mainly through fee exemptions for the poor. The apartheid backlogs would furthermore be tackled through targeted investments in institutional infrastructure and capacity. Integration with the NSDS system described in the previous section is envisaged, specifically through the participation of FET colleges as training providers in this market. The White Paper moreover promotes a gradual approach to the implementation of the new funding system, with colleges implementing ‘dry runs’ of the new system whilst the old system is being phased out. The development of new information systems to support the funding regime is required. Finally, the new funding system would take effect in the wake of the implementation of a new training curriculum in colleges.

3.1 Key Policy Question–1 Should public and private, or only public institutions, qualify for public VET funding? It is widely recognized that public funding of a service does not necessarily require public provisioning of the service. Public funding of private providers, to deliver training that is needed in the public interest, may result in better value for money, and can stimulate valuable competition between public and private institutions. The optimal mix of public and private providers of publicly-funded services is a question often not given the attention warranted, frequently because not enough is known amongst planners about existing private providers. This is arguably the case in South Africa. The White Paper essentially steers away from the question and focuses on how public FET colleges can offer the training needed. The little analysis that has occurred of privately provided pre-tertiary VET in South Africa indicates that: (a) the private sector may be almost twice the size of the public FET college sector in terms of enrolments; (b) the training offered is highly demand-driven; (c) capital-intensive training programmes tend to be avoided; and (d) the quality of training is largely unknown (Akoojee, 2003). Apart from the inadequacy of the knowledge base about the private VET sector, other reasons that may have contributed towards the strong focus on using only public providers could be,


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firstly, that private providers have not been funded in any systemic way in the past (this is unlike FET in schools, where a small but vocal ‘independent school’ sector has been funded publicly since before 1994) and, secondly, that private providers do have access to the quasi-public funding of the NSDS system. The latter factor implies direct competition between public FET colleges and private providers for the same training contracts. The fact that the public funds earmarked for the public FET colleges should be around US$200 million per annum, whilst NSDS funding should amount to around US$700 million, underlines how, in the broader picture, there is ample opportunity for dynamic competition between public and private providers, even if some 23% of the overall amount, and 100% of what we can regard as ‘public funding’ in the strict sense, is still considered the exclusive preserve of the public institutions. Currently however, participation by public FET colleges in the NSDS market is more hypothetical than real. Financial reports indicate that no more than 3% of college income derives from the skills levy—in other words, participation in this market is still extremely low.

3.2 Key Policy Question–2 How is the targeting of more relevant training programmes promoted? The ‘manpower planning’ approach to training, whereby future demand for various specializations is projected and the current funding of various training programmes is adjusted accordingly, has been tried and found not to work. However, it does not follow that government planning of what training to fund, based on projections of future skills demand, is a fruitless exercise. Such work must be carried out, but it should balance central planning and local responsiveness, and above all effective information and research systems that can yield a more rigorous demand picture need to be built and sustained. South Africa’s HRD review (Human Sciences Research Council, 2003) is illustrative both of the value of periodic and publiclyfunded research into labour-market demand and training trends, and the difficulty of compiling information that is sufficiently reliable to be usable for hard policy decisions. During the last decade, FET colleges have largely continued with the pre-1994 mix of training programmes and, where changes have occurred, this has mainly been driven by decisions by college management as to what programmes to offer in the new academic year. Changes could modify a college’s share of the relatively fixed provincial pool of teaching and non-teaching posts, and non-personnel funding. For example, the 1998 post-provisioning norms weight engineering students (full-time equivalents) 1.1 times as much as business studies students when the distribution of the pool of teaching posts is determined—engineering and business studies each account for around 45% of all public FET college enrolments. The 2005 proposed funding norms for colleges put forward a formula funding of programmes approach that not only brings about a more integrated resourcing package—all recurrent and capital replacement funding is dealt with in one formula—but also implies a major transfer of power from the college to the

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provincial government with regard to the determination of the programme mix within each college. Essentially, provincial departments of education would ‘buy’ training of a particular type and for a particular number of students from each college at ‘prices’ set largely at the national level. How much of each training programme to ‘buy’ would be determined through an annual province/college planning process, which would involve at least one province-wide consultation per province and one college-specific consultation per college in each year. Though the final determination would be the prerogative of the provincial government, the importance of college and industry inputs in the planning process, and of on-going research at the national level into the skills requirements of the economy, are emphasized. For the first time, programme delivery would be planned within a three-year rolling plan, more or less in line with the government’s Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) (one slight but unavoidable misalignment would be that the former would use the academic or calendar year, whilst the latter uses a different ‘financial’ year). There are two risks, both linked to the planning capacity of provincial departments of education. One risk is that the current low levels of provincial or national planning with regard to college enrolments will continue indefinitely, and that provinces will simply approve whatever training plans colleges come up with, without engaging with these plans, or aligning them to provincial or national development plans. There would be one inevitable difference in this scenario, however. Because the new funding system would attach actual monetary amounts to each student per programme, as opposed to weights (as is currently the case), there would need to be explicit trimming down of college plans where the implied cost exceeded the available provincial budget. The second risk is that provinces will use their new powers to enforce directives not adequately underpinned by the necessary training and labour-market analysis. Given serious limitations currently in the planning capacity of the FET college offices in the provincial departments, the solution seems to lie in a gradual stepping up of provincial (and national) engagement in the formulation of college plans (which colleges have been producing for some years, though now they would need to comply with the new funding norms in terms of formats) as planning capacity in the provincial departments improves.

3.3 Key Policy Question–3 How is efficiency and quality in service delivery promoted through the policy? Given that analysing and planning the mix of training programmes is inherently easier than analysing and planning the quality of the training being offered, it is perhaps understandable that the latter should receive insufficient attention. Yet the quality of the training and, linked to this, the amount of quality training that is obtained with the finite budget available, is in many ways the central policy challenge in VET, especially in a country such as South Africa with a rapidly evolving but ‘dual’ economy, where large segments of society have suffered systematic exclusion from education and training opportunities in the past. The White Paper highlights the value-for-money problem inherent in the high failure and repetition rates of the FET


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college sector. The pass rate, or proportion of students passing their examinations, was 57% in 2002, with college-specific pass rates ranging from 39% to 84%. The ‘throughput rate’, or proportion of students enrolling for a programme who successfully pass the examinations, was 51% in 2002 (RSA. DoE, 2004). Currently, the funding system does not create any incentives for efficiency or quality. Colleges are resourced according to enrolments alone. Output measures play no role. The 2005 proposed norms intend to promote quality outputs in two ways. Firstly, in the process of replacing a system where colleges essentially attract more funds from a finite pool through increasing enrolments, with a system where the province ‘buys’ training from each college, colleges will be forced to compete with each other in offering solutions to the provincial government’s (and industry’s) training demands. Of course, this assumes that provincial planners have adequate information about industry’s demands and the quality of the training being offered in each college, and allow this to inform the distribution of funding across colleges. The proposed funding norms mention the importance of using tracer studies that track the labour-market performance of graduates. A valuable example of such research is that of Cosser (2003). This research revealed, for example that, of a sample of 3,500 former college students graduating in 1999, 31% were neither employed nor studying further in 2001, and that only 1% were self-employed. This seems to confirm the quality problem in much of the training being offered. In a related study of employer responses, Maja and McGrath (2003) found that 78% of employers of the surveyed graduates were satisfied or very satisfied with the training offered by colleges, suggesting perhaps an unevenness in the quality of training offered by the sector. Importantly, more detailed data is required if provincial planners are to distribute funds based on the relative efficiency of individual colleges in offering particular training programmes. The existing research is a valuable start, nonetheless. The second way in which the proposed funding norms promote quality is through an ‘output bonus’. This is an incentive bonus that colleges would receive for outstanding throughput rates, achievement of goals laid out in their development plans and examination results. The output bonus is an allocation over and above the cost of offering the training (the implication is that the funds would be used for institutional development). The amount and methodology is a provincial prerogative, though guidelines regarding transparency are laid down. A national formula for the calculation of the output bonus is explicitly rejected on the basis of the argument that provincial circumstances differ, and that the consultation process to arrive at the output bonus formula is in itself of value in promoting a focus on efficiency and quality.

3.4 Key Policy Question–4 How is a pro-poor funding system realised, and how are some of the specific apartheid legacies of inequality and disadvantage tackled? The incentives for

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private funding of vocational training are high, both for employers and individuals, given the very obvious returns to this training. Government should focus on funding the VET of those who cannot afford it, and on specific niche training (for the rich or the poor) where the developmental value of this training may not be obvious to private individuals. The data suggest that, currently, public FET colleges are less accessible to the poor than FET in schools. This is due in part to the geographical concentration of colleges, which implies a need for student accommodation, and in part to tuition fees being somewhat higher in colleges than in schools—the average annual fee for full-time students is around US$450 in colleges and US$130 in schools. The proposed funding norms deal with the tuition fee barrier, but provide no concrete solution to the accommodation barrier. With regard to the latter, the government is required to explore loan schemes with private lending institutions. The norms propose setting a reasonable level of tuition fees for specific training programmes as part of the national programme costing process. This level would be reasonable for non-poor students. The norms moreover propose the implementation of a system of means tests in all colleges. The data collected from this system would be used to gauge inability to pay the prescribed fees across colleges, and to calculate an amount per college representing expected exempted fees. This amount would be paid to colleges as compensation for exemptions to be granted. The means test would be a national one, and the national department would furthermore maintain rules and guidelines for the management of fee exemptions at the college level. The system challenges implied by the pro-poor fee exemptions are considerable. The existing means test used in the tertiary education system, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), can be expected to serve as an important model (information on NSFAS is available at: <www.nsfas.org.za>).

3.5 Key Policy Question–5 How is the cost of training programmes determined? The current disparities in spending per student in FET colleges, discussed above, are partly the result of the absence of a link in the existing system between the number of students and the size of the budget. The unintended consequence of a rise in enrolments would be a decline in per student expenditure, if budgetary increases lagged behind the enrolment increases. This can obviously be detrimental to the quality of the training service. The proposed funding norms require the national department to determine a ‘national funding base rate’ in monetary terms. This rate would describe the per capita cost of a full-time programme that can be delivered in a relatively large class, and that requires the minimum in terms of learning and teaching materials. This programme could be hypothetical, as opposed to actual. The cost of each actual training programme in the curriculum would be represented by a ratio indicating the programme cost relative to the national funding base rate. For example, a programme with a ratio of 1.5 would cost 1.5 times as much to deliver as the (possibly hypothetical) basic programme. Provinces would be able to deviate from the nationally determined cost structure, within limits. At the college level, whilst funding received


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from the province would be linked to a specific number of student places, colleges would have the flexibility to organize spending within the college in whatever way that best served the desired outcomes. Where the norms do place a limitation is in terms of the cross-subsidization of completely private programmes using public funds. Specifically, colleges are prohibited from charging a private client a price for a training programme that is less than the prescribed cost of the equivalent public programme. The effectiveness of this control obviously rests on the prescribed cost representing the actual cost. In fact, it is envisaged that the national cost schedule of publicly funded programmes will serve as an important signal to the private market, in particular the NSDS market, providing a benchmark for private clients with regard to reasonable prices to pay for quality training.

4 Conclusion During the last ten years, South Africa has developed a funding system that has pushed the financing and incentivizing of vocational education up to around 0.43% of GDP. The NSDS system accounts for 0.33% of GDP, and of this around 20% is earmarked for training identified by the State as being in the national interest. The remaining 80% is paid to firms in the form of an incentive to carry out workplace training in accordance with equity guidelines that are in the line with the country’s post-apartheid values. Whilst the NSDS system has already undergone a process of revision, the FET college system, which accounts for 0.10% of GDP, has only recently begun to embark on a major post-apartheid reform in terms of its funding systems. The link between the two systems seems to lie in the opportunity to raise the quality, and not just the quantity, of vocational training. Currently, only a small portion of the training offered by FET colleges is aimed at the NSDS market. However, a more output-focused funding system, in combination with a major recapitalization programme, places colleges in a better position to set the standard for quality vocational training in the country, and to compete with each other, and with private providers in the NSDS market, whilst they continue in their role as providers of pre-employment training funded by the provincial authorities.

References Akoojee, S. 2003. Private further education and training. In: Kraak, A., ed. Human resources development review, 2003: education, employment and skills in South Africa, pp. 396–415. Pretoria: HSRC. <www.hsrcpublishers.ac.za/index.html?HRD.html∼content> Cosser, M. 2003. Graduate tracer study. In: Cosser, M. et al., eds. Technical college responsiveness: learner destinations and labour market environments in South Africa, pp. 27–55. Pretoria: HSRC. <www.hsrcpublishers.ac.za> Human Sciences Research Council. 2003. Human resources development review, 2003: Education, employment and skills in South Africa. Pretoria: HSRC. <www.hsrcpublishers. ac.za/index.html?HRD.html∼content>

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Maja, B.; McGrath, S. 2003. Employer satisfaction. In: Cosser, M. et al., eds. Technical college responsiveness: learner destinations and labour market environments in South Africa, pp. 57–64. Pretoria: HSRC. <www.hsrcpublishers.ac.za> Peterson, A.; McGrath S.; Badroodien A. 2003. A national skills survey, 2003. Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council. Rasool, H., 2005. South Africa needs a highly skilled workforce to grow economy. The star: Business report, 23 November. Republic of South Africa. Department of Education. 1998. Education White Paper 4: a programme for the transformation of further education and training. Pretoria: DoE. (Government notice, no. 399.) Republic of South Africa. Department of Education. 2003. Report on the proceedings of the 3rd Further Education and Training Convention. Pretoria: DoE. <www.ccf.org.za> Republic of South Africa. Department of Education. 2004. Quantitative overview of the further education and training college sector. Pretoria: DoE. <www.ccf.org.za> Republic of South Africa. Department of Education. 2005a. Education statistics in South Africa at a glance in 2003. Pretoria: DoE. Republic of South Africa. Department of Education. 2005b. Education statistics in South Africa at a glance in 2004. Pretoria: DoE. Republic of South Africa. Department of Labour. 1998. Skills Development Act No. 97 of 1998. Pretoria: DoL. Republic of South Africa. Department of Labour. 1999. Skills Development Levies Act, 1999. Pretoria: DoL. Republic of South Africa. Department of Labour. 2001. The National Skills Development Strategy. Pretoria: DoL. Republic of South Africa. Department of Labour. 2004. NSDS Implementation Report. Pretoria: DoL. Republic of South Africa. Department of Labour. 2005. National Skills Development Strategy, 2005–2010. Pretoria: DoL. Republic of South Africa. National Treasury. 2005a. Budget review 2005. Pretoria. <www.treasury.gov.za> Republic of South Africa. National Treasury. 2005b. Provincial budgets and expenditure review: 2001/02–2007/08. Pretoria. <www.treasury.gov.za> Statistics South Africa. 2005. General household survey: July 2004. Pretoria. <www.statssa.gov.za>

Chapter VII.6

Voucher-Financed Training for Small Businesses1 Félix Mitnik

1 Introduction Is it possible to persuade small businesses to invest on a regular basis in staff training through a policy of providing information and special subsidies? Are vouchers the best way to create the necessary incentives? How do economics, sociology, pedagogy and organizational psychology contribute to answer these questions? This chapter explores these issues. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, it examines an experience with a pilot programme carried out in the province of Córdoba, Argentina, and draws some lessons that are likely to be useful for those designing or implementing similar programmes.

2 Background Information The Agency for Economic Development of the City of Córdoba (ADEC), a public/private partnership of sixteen trade associations, the city council and other entities, operated a training programme for small companies (called Programa de Capacitación de Trabajadores en Empresas) from 1999 to 2003. This programme was developed in a province with a population of 3 million people, whose economy depends on farming and cattle raising (10%), industrial production (27%) and services (63%). Its formal economy comprises almost 100,000 enterprises, including some multinational companies, some large local companies, 150 small and medium-sized hardware and software companies, some large flour mills and many dairy plants of various sizes. However, 90% of these 100,000 companies have five or less employees. The main goal of the programme was to make micro- and small enterprises (MSEs), of up to twenty employees, more competitive. The policy selected was, through information and subsidies, to use vouchers to develop a job-training market geared towards the needs of these firms. The funds to implement the programme— US$3 million—were provided in equal parts by the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), managed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), by the beneficiaries and by the ADEC. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VII.6, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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Similar programmes have been implemented in other Latin American countries— Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru and the Dominican Republic—and in other parts of the world, for instance Australia, Belgium, Indonesia, Kenya, France, South Africa and Ukraine.

3 Why was a Programme Needed? The need to develop a market for job training in Córdoba emerged from consultations with experts in the field. They pointed out that MSEs in Latin America lacked competitiveness. They identified low investment in training as one of the reasons and claimed that an ‘increasing demand for qualified workers in the labour market’ had to be addressed by providing flexible and effective training (Grupo de Asesor´ıa Multidisciplinaria, 1996). Based on standard economic theory, they advanced the hypothesis that the problem was a discrepancy between the actual functioning of the training market and the theoretical assumptions of the ‘perfect competition’ model.2 Among these ‘market failures’, or discrepancies between reality and the model, they argued that the most important was imperfect or incomplete information regarding the skills needed, the costs and benefits of investing in them, the quality of the providers of training services, and the available training methods. According to their argument, because agents were ‘risk-averse’, this generated uncertainty that led to insufficient investment (that is, investment below the ‘rational optimum’). The experts concluded that it was necessary to provide information to the demand side of the training market, and to encourage the supply side ‘to answer in a more flexible, practical and concrete way to the manpower training needs’ of small businesses, with the objective of ‘increasing their productivity and competitiveness’ (Grupo de Asesor´ıa Multidisciplinaria, 1996).

4 The Design of the Programme 4.1 The Assumptions The designers of the programme adopted the following premises, drawn in good part from neo-classical economics:

r r r r r

The ‘competitiveness’ of small businesses can be increased by providing business development services (BDS); Training can be provided as a stand-alone BDS; Firms should pay for specific human capital investments; Training markets are the most efficient institutional arrangement for allocating resources to human capital investment; The training supplied will respond to the demands of firms if there is an information system set up for those supplying and demanding training, and a system of demand subsidies that mitigates uncertainty;

VII.6 Voucher-Financed Training for Small Businesses

r r r r

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The positive impact of training on profits will motivate firms to buy training again; The programme’s target population may be a small share of the total number of companies, since a ‘demonstration effect’ will induce the other firms to follow suit; Fixed-period and standardized in-class training results in the acquisition of skills that are then automatically transferable to and used in the workplace; Training suppliers know the state of the art in their fields, and automatically adjust their training services to meet the demand of companies.

4.2 Why Vouchers? The designers of the programme considered that vouchers were the best mechanism to transfer subsidies to firms, because vouchers:

r r r r r r

Give firms freedom of choice, and thus lead the training market to function according to the logic of demand instead of the logic of supply; Set an upper limit to the subsidy; Involve procedures that are simpler and more flexible than those normally used by the State, and thus have lower administrative costs; Increase competition among suppliers, which it is assumed will automatically improve quality or price; Can be implemented together with a system of information provision; Reduce risk on both sides of the training market, due to: (a) cost reductions for demanders; and (b) lower collection risks for suppliers.

4.3 The Operation The initial design included two components: a system of training vouchers (STV) and a system of reference information (SRI). It also included a training needs diagnostic system, operated by a private organization. The goal of the STV was to stimulate the demand for training by firms and to match the supply of training to that of demand by means of a partial subsidy of $50 (enough to cover 50% of the average cost of a twenty-hour course). The STV had a three-level organizational structure. The financing donors were located at the upper or third level. The managing agency, which received the funds to be distributed among the training institutions (TIs), was located at the second level. TIs operated at the first level. The success indicators for the STV were the number of vouchers redeemed, the number of companies that took advantage of the vouchers and the number of companies that used them repeatedly. The goal of the SRI was to provide companies with information about training courses available and to inform the TIs about firms’ needs. The SRI had to identify any unmet training demands and inform the training suppliers about these business

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opportunities. The success indicators for this component were the number of TIs registered and the number of courses offered. In order for a company to send an employee for training, it first had to obtain information about available courses, select those ones that best met the company’s needs and receive the respective voucher. At the end of the course, the company had to pay the difference between the total value of the course and the voucher. The voucher, signed by a company representative as proof of successful training, had to be returned to the managing agency’s offices via the TI to receive its value in cash. Each course had to be at least twenty hours long. All of this assumed that the managing agency would play a ‘neutral’ role, limited to facilitating transactions between the participating economic agents (companies and TIs) but without intervening in their decisions. In other words, the agency had to limit its activities to disseminating information and managing the subsidies, while keeping ‘transaction costs’ as low as possible.

5 The First Phase: According to Theory During the first stage of implementation, the programme attempted to disturb the functioning of the market as little as possible. It used a strategy of uniform dissemination of information, based on widespread advertising, on the assumption that the targeted businesses were homogeneous. During this phase, a study commissioned by the programme uncovered significant differences in the attitudes of firms towards training (Parisi et al., 1999). The study showed that there was a small number of companies with the ‘habitus’ of investing in training.3 These companies had more than seven employees, had been founded recently, were part of the formal economy and belonged to the service sector. The study also indicated that smaller and older companies did not perceive any ‘unmet training need’ and did not conduct training because they considered it irrelevant. Finally, the study found that there was a direct relationship between investments in human capital and the perceptions company owners had of their own responsibility in their companies’ fortunes: the small number of firms with a greater level of ‘self-responsibility’ (as opposed to those that attributed most responsibility to external circumstances) were also those most likely to train. The research also found that the problems faced by micro-enterprises were significantly different from those of small companies, and that informal companies behaved differently than formal ones with regard to training and public policies. The programme, which had been designed before the aforementioned research was conducted, did not take into account demand heterogeneity and offered exactly the same to all firms: six $50 vouchers per year to each company (regardless of size), and information on formal training services available from third parties (Matta, 2006a). By design, the training was to be supplied by private companies, State institutions and non-governmental organizations, which were expected to adjust their services to the demand in an ‘immediate and automatic manner as a result of the provision of information and subsidies’ (Matta, 2006a). During the execution


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of the first phase it was observed, however, that the responses of training suppliers were very heterogeneous. Moreover, as in other Latin American countries (Abdala, 2000), suppliers exhibited serious weaknesses in terms of the quality of the services they offered, their institutional structure and, as a survey-based study showed, their marketing capacity and strategies (Halac, 2000). In addition to this, training suppliers had limited competitiveness, as is often the case with small firms. Unaware of their weaknesses, the training institutions had a positive selfperception of their services and business capacities. They believed—like most small companies—that their problems were beyond their control. Few of them followed a ‘differentiation strategy’ (the few that did focused on a niche with high purchasing power), while nearly 80% followed a ‘strategy of reduced costs’. The latter group tended to engage in ‘price wars’ at the expense of quality. This strongly suggests that the market for training suffers from ‘adverse selection’ (worse quality is supplied to companies less capable of identifying the true quality of training).4 This market failure leads to a reduction in the average quality of the training actually offered in the market, therefore reinforcing the attitude of small firms who do not see the point of investing in human capital.

6 The Second Phase: From Passive to Active Strategies Albert Einstein, the most famous physicist of the twentieth century, once stated that theory is killed, sooner or later, by experience. This is precisely what happened to this programme after its first stage, when it was found that design assumptions like ‘demand-driven training’ did not actually exist in practice (the majority of courses emerged on the initiative of suppliers). Among other things, this can be attributed to the fact that selection of the training supplier by companies was based largely on the firms’ trust in the training institutions (i.e. on social capital) and on the latter’s prestige (i.e. on symbolic capital). As a result, the programme had to modify its ‘action paradigm’ from ‘passive strategies’ to ‘active strategies’. On the demand side the programme introduced four operational changes affecting the rules for using the vouchers and the amount of the subsidy. First, in order to strike some balance between the size of a company and the number of vouchers it received, while still favouring the smallest companies, the absolute limit of six vouchers per company per year was replaced by a new policy of one voucher per employee per year, with a minimum of six per company and a maximum of twenty. Second, to induce companies to perform training needs analyses, the programme doubled the number of annual vouchers for companies that conducted them. Third, as customized training can only be profitable for a TI if the same training is provided to a group of similar companies, the programme doubled the number of vouchers for companies that associated together to buy training. Lastly, as the TIs serving informal businesses—mostly non-profit organizations—could charge less since they usually received subsidies from other sources, employed trainers

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with lower opportunity costs and had lower overheads, a voucher of lesser value for micro-enterprises ($35) was created. On the supply side, the programme also introduced four operational changes. First, the distant relationship between the programme and the TIs was transformed into a co-operative relationship aimed at identifying unmet training demands. Second, the programme offered marketing support and ‘training the trainer’ courses to the TIs in order to improve their performance. Third, the programme promoted the formation of business alliances between TIs. Lastly, TIs were required to submit the design of their training courses for approval by the programme. In brief, the programme moved from an approach premised on the idea that its intervention had to disturb market mechanisms as little as possible, to an approach based on the idea that a much more active role was needed for the training market to develop and work efficiently. On the supply side, the programme decided to play a co-ordinating, regulatory and supporting role. On the demand side, it decided to play a steering role, aimed at promoting associational structures and at shaping the demand for training in the direction most likely to improve the performance of firms. After this change of strategy, it seemed that the programme was working fairly well. As shown in Table 1, the average number of vouchers granted per year in the second phase was almost five times higher than in the first phase. The actual course supply—comprised in nearly equal parts of training courses geared towards technical skills and towards clerical and managerial skills—was, at this point, well established. (It was difficult to determine if the training beneficiaries were primarily employees or owners, because of the prevalence of family-owned micro-enterprises.) The technical courses covered a wide range of topics, from hair dyeing for hairdressers to the handling of computer-controlled machine tools, to the repair of electronic starting systems, to computer-aided design, to food technology, to basic accounting. Moreover, it is clear that the demand for subsidized training grew markedly between 2000 and 2001, which suggests that, ceteris paribus, the demand for subsidized trainings could be expected to experience further growth in the future. The main problem in this second phase was that TIs and people who were not part of the target population (newcomers to the labour market and unemployed workers) colluded to deceive the programme by using training vouchers for which the latter were not eligible. These fraudulent practices led the programme to introduce new

Table 1 Number of vouchers placed by the programme Phase 1

Phase 2

1999

2000

2001

2002

Phase 3 2003

Number of vouchers

1358

4583

7871

2741

4769

Cumulative number of vouchers

1358

5941

13812

16553

21322


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control norms and procedures. Although successful, they increased the overheads of the programme to 41% (higher than expected).

7 The Third Phase: Surviving Amongst Chaos The third stage of the programme was initially implemented under political, social and economic circumstances that put Argentina in the world’s spotlight (from December 2001 to February 2002). ‘During this period, the government confiscated bank deposits and defaulted on its foreign debt, five different presidents were named in thirty days, the national currency was devaluated by 200%, and the quality of life deteriorated’ (Matta, 2006a). One immediate consequence of the devaluation was a large reduction in the price expressed in dollars of training courses; thus, the subsidy came to represent a substantial part of their cost (often more than 50%). To eliminate this distortion, the programme implemented a matching-grant mechanism by which each voucher covered 50% of the value of any course (up to $50 for formal companies and up to $35 for informal ones). Fixed-value vouchers simplify administrative procedures. However, they can create distortions when used to finance courses requiring capital goods or trainers with high opportunity costs, or to finance very inexpensive courses. In the former case, the contribution of the subsidy can be marginal. In the latter, it can amount to much more than 50%. More crucially, as shown in Table 1, the economic crisis led to a marked reduction in the use of vouchers during 2002. However, the demand for vouchers recovered in less than a year, suggesting that the new strategies adopted in the second phase had helped constitute a robust training market for small firms. This impression was further supported by the fact that, at the end of the third phase, all the performance indicators showed that the immediate goals of the programme had been achieved or surpassed. The programme exceeded 287% of its target in terms of businesses serviced (7,752 instead of the 2,000 projected) and 115% in terms of vouchers placed (23,000 instead of 20,000). In terms of ‘access’ or ‘targeting’, the programme met its objectives. It focused on the smallest companies (about 80% of the companies served were micro-enterprises of up to six employees, as shown in Table 2); participation by firms in different economic sectors reflected their relative weights in the economy; and female participation was slightly higher than the share of women in the economically-active population. Also, participants manifested a high degree of satisfaction with the training they received: 84% of the courses were rated by them as either ‘good’ or ‘very good’ (Matta, 2006b). Lastly, an evaluation by independent consultants concluded that the operational efficiency of the programme was as good as or better than those of similar programmes. The resilience of the programme, and the fact that it performed very well in terms of all pre-established indicators of success, could lead to the conclusion that it was also successful in terms of its ultimate policy goals. As we will see in the following

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F. Mitnik Table 2 Composition of the demand for vouchers

Number of companies receiving vouchers

Phase 1 1999 690

Phase 2 2000 1,624

Phase 3 2001 2,755

2002–2003 2,683

TOTAL 7,752

Companies by number of employees 1 employee 2 to 6 employees 7 to 10 employees 11 to 15 employees 16 to 20 employees

49% 28% 14% 6% 3%

37% 42% 8% 8% 5%

42% 41% 8% 5% 4%

45% 38% 8% 5% 4%

45% 38% 8% 5% 4%

sections, success in placing training vouchers and good evaluations from voucher users should not be interpreted as proof of the overall success of the programme.

8 Don’t You Want More Vouchers? One of the central problems the programme confronted was the lack of interest among served companies in repeating the use of the subsidy, in spite of the fact that participants were highly satisfied with the training services they received. Four quantitative indicators are useful to assess the magnitude of this problem. The first such indicator is the number of subsidies used per employer over the life of the programme (total number of vouchers/total number of companies). The average value of this indicator was 2.3 vouchers per company. This indicates that the companies served by the programme seldom repeated their use of vouchers more than once. The expectation was an average of ten vouchers per company. Nevertheless, the programme achieved better results than similar programmes in Paraguay (1.6), Ecuador (1.8) and Peru (2). The second indicator is the number of subsidies used per employee over the life of the programme (number of vouchers used/number of employees per company). This turned out to be about 0.5 on average, regardless of company size, with the exception of companies with one employee (= 2), and those with two employees (= 1). This means that the larger companies served by the programme did not use more vouchers, after adjusting to their size, than the smaller ones. This and the next two indicators were measured over the first three years, and the results used to extrapolate for the life of the programme. Two other indicators, which give information on whether the vouchers were used to fund the same or different courses, are the ‘coefficient of diversification’ and the ‘utilization of opportunities for diversification’. The ‘coefficient of diversification’ is the number of different courses taken per company over the life of the programme, and measures the use of vouchers in different training courses. A company that took a single course has a coefficient of 0, one that took two different courses a coefficient of 1, and so forth. Figure 1 shows that the average coefficient of diversification is very low, regardless of the size of the company (it varies between 0.7 and 1.7). The average for companies of any size is

Coefficient of diversification


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1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Number of employees

Fig. 1 Coefficient of diversification

in all cases smaller than 3 (remember that 1 corresponds to one additional course). The ‘coefficient of diversification’ does not express well enough the opportunities the programme offered to companies. A micro-enterprise, for example, could have taken advantage of a maximum of eighteen courses (since it received six vouchers per year regardless of the number of employees) and a company with twenty employees could have taken up to sixty courses (one voucher per employee per year). The last indicator is the ‘utilization of opportunities for diversification’, that is, the number of different courses taken by each company compared to the number of vouchers available to that same company. Figure 2 indicates that, on average, this indicator was between 2 and 6% of the possible maximum for each company size—well below expectations. One possible explanation for the low repetition and diversity in voucher use could be that the training services used by firms had little impact on their performance. The evaluation of this impact depends on firms’ perceptions. However, agents construct these perceptions, and the way they do it reflects many other things beyond the impact of training (or lack thereof). Moreover, the baseline that those interviewed use as a yardstick for comparison is unknown. It is also difficult to correct for ‘cognitive compensation bias’ (i.e. any effort to obtain a result is judged positively), while ‘gratefulness bias’ is unavoidable when inquiring about ‘free-of-charge’ training. These problems make it difficult to reach a clear conclusion about the impact of training on performance. Nevertheless, some qualitative evidence suggests that the impact of training on firm performance and, therefore, firms’ inclination to invest, were probably larger in five cases: (a) when groups of companies associated to invest together; (b) when the training strategies employed were state-of-the-art; (c) when the training in question overcame a constraint that prevented the development of a micro-enterprise; (d) when the diagnostic tool was properly applied; (e) when the training took

Utilization of opportunities for diversification

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0.07

0.06

0.05

0.04

0.03

0.02

0.01 0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Number of employees

Fig. 2 Utilization of opportunities for diversification

place at the job site. In the remaining cases—the majority—firms seldom repeated voucher use. In contrast to these adverse results, in the final impact measurement study— involving countless technical issues well beyond the scope of this chapter— companies stated that they were willing to continue training after the end of the programme, thus suggesting that the ultimate policy goal of the programme had been achieved (Bologna & Fraire, 2006). This conclusion, however, is not warranted. On the one hand, participating companies were those most motivated to invest in training, with or without the programme. On the other hand, the low values of the indices of subsidy-use repetition and diversification indicate that the purchase of training was lower and narrower than firms claimed. ‘To continue investing in training’ is likely to be the answer company owners felt they were expected to give. Indeed, given that in Argentina education is highly valued as a means of social progress, we can assume that company owners hold all types of education, including job training, in high esteem. And this is likely to be the reason why they tended to select the ‘politically correct’ answer in the final impact measurement study (Bologna & Fraire, 2006). All in all, the evidence examined in this section leads to the conclusion that it is unlikely that the programme had been able to increase significantly the number of companies that trained on a regular basis.

9 Why Don’t You Want More Vouchers? Different social sciences suggest different hypotheses regarding the factors that led to the low investment in subsidized training by the micro- and small companies served by the programme.


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From the perspective of neo-classical economics, one possible explanation is that the training market for small companies was in an efficient equilibrium with low consumption (Storey & Westhead, 1997), and for this reason firms did not use vouchers repeatedly. According to this hypothesis, this equilibrium would be the joint result of several structural factors: (a) the short life expectancy of small companies, which makes it less likely that they would be able to recover any investment in training; (b) the low wages paid by, and reduced or inexistent opportunities for promotion at, small companies, which means that trained staff would be easily lured away by larger companies; (c) the high opportunity cost of formal training for small firms (the absence of even one person in a small company may greatly disturb its operation); (d) the greater negative impact that ‘adverse selection’ in the training market has on small firms; (e) lack of evidence that, on average, training has a positive effect on firm performance; (f) the high riskaversion of firm owners, who often see their micro-enterprises as temporary solutions vis-à-vis their own difficulties in finding adequate employment; (g) the elevated cost of offering customized quality training to individual small firms; (h) the lower returns that small firms obtain from their training investments, due to several of the factors previously identified; (i) small firms’ lack of funds to finance their share of training costs, particularly in family-owned micro-enterprises; (j) the higher transaction costs of TIs when dealing with small firms (contacting every client is more expensive in this case); and (k) the fact that subsidies and information were not enough to improve training quality among training suppliers (Mitnik & Descalzi, 2006). From the point of view of critical sociology, the reduced rate of repetition in voucher use could originate in the following factors:5

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the universe of firms was very heterogeneous in terms of technology—both hard and soft—and in the work experience and educational histories of company owners and employees; a large number of these firms operated according to methods for which further training was unnecessary; the acquisition of job skills involves complex social practices, engendered by agents’ ‘habitus’, which means that these social practices cannot easily be understood as rationality-driven transactions, and hence cannot be easily altered by economic incentives and information about prices and qualities; the market development paradigm used in the programme did not fit well with the practices of private and public agents; private agents, in particular, re-interpreted the programme according to their own ‘habitus’, and did not behave as rational investors because of ingrained dispositions that lead them to conceive of training as an extra expense for themselves and of its provision by the State as an obligation; in spite of the programme’s efforts to explain the voucher mechanism to firms, the latter often re-interpreted it according to their own cultural codes, which often meant that vouchers were not perceived as having purchasing power that firms could freely use to buy training services;

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the suppliers of training did not behave like commercial companies; the training supplied was of low quality, because most companies providing training services were small and did not invest in the training of their own personnel (see Matta, 2006b).

Additionally, organizational psychology makes it possible to posit an explanatory hypothesis based on the analysis of the way in which knowledge is generated and transferred within small companies. The few available studies suggest that knowledge in these companies is mainly acquired through ‘implicit training’ (the individual learns a number of skills and unwritten rules that allow him or her to act appropriately, without this requiring him or her to be able to describe or express them in words or using numbers and formulae). This informal learning is very likely to generate the greatest benefits to organizations, since it produces competitive advantages that are difficult for the competition to replicate (this is not the case with formal education or explicit training, which is equally available to all companies). On the other hand, in this type of firm there is a very close relationship between the personality of the business owner and his or her company. As a result, the global performance of the company and its competitive advantage depend, to a large extent, on the owner’s attitudes, decisions and actions, which lead to the intensive use of on-the-job training. The owner acts as a trainer, transferring specific human capital closely associated with his or her particular management style, with the mission and goals the owner has implicitly set for his or her company, with the characteristics of the firm’s economic sector, and with the company’s scale of operation. According to this hypothesis, the demands for explicit personnel training in small firms would be minor and very specific, and this would account for the programme’s reduced rate of voucher use repetition (see Mitnik, Coria & Torres, 2006). The psychology of learning, for its part, shows that a careful consideration of the factors affecting the transference of learning to the workplace is a necessary condition for training to be productivity-enhancing. As the training offered by the TIs mostly ignored transference problems, the most likely result is that it would have no effect on firms’ performance. This could also contribute to explain firms’ limited interest in buying subsidized training (see Mitnik, Coria & Garc´ıa Goette, 2006).

10 Conclusions The main goal of this chapter has been to analyse the experience of a voucherfinanced training programme in order to shed some light on the more general issue of whether the provision of information and partial subsidies constitute a policy likely to induce small businesses to invest regularly in the training of their staff. The programme’s modest results suggest that boosting the productivity of small firms by inducing them to train their employees is likely to require much more than providing information and subsidies.


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We have argued that: the claim that imperfect information is the main cause of small firms’ low investment in human capital is likely to be incorrect; given how heterogeneous small firms are, homogenous intervention strategies are likely to perform poorly; the suppliers of training services for small firms find it difficult to upgrade the quality of the training they offer; and the ‘habitus’ of company owners is likely to lead them to expect lower returns from investments in the human capital of their employees than from other investments.

The analyses of the programme’s experience from the point of view of different social-science disciplines allow us to draw three main conclusions. First, there are structural factors that tend to keep the training market for small companies in a low-consumption equilibrium. Second, in small companies knowledge is generated and transferred through implicit training. This generates competitive advantages that other firms cannot easily replicate. Lastly, the ‘habitus’ shaping companies’ investment in training is hardly resistant to policies based on the provision of information and economic incentives alone. Everything seems to indicate that the subsidies offered by the programme were acquired by training suppliers without this increasing the share of companies training their staff on a regular basis. This suggests that to boost the competitiveness of small firms a systemic intervention is necessary. Such intervention would involve putting in place an encompassing business development system that not only produces high-quality customized training but also deals with many other factors affecting the competitiveness of small firms. The experience of the programme also indicates that market-based policies need to be backed by an efficient State (or by efficient quasi-public agencies) able to guarantee the quality of training services (in particular by verifying the qualifications of trainers and the institutional infrastructure of training suppliers). The State must also promote innovation, methodological development and research in all fields of training. Focusing on the instrument itself, vouchers do not seem to be a particularly adequate tool for implementing an incentive-based training policy for small companies. Vouchers, however, possess symbolic value in the eyes of those who believe that public programmes will necessarily work more efficiently when they use mechanisms that imitate the operation of markets. This symbolic value has been reinforced by the success of some large voucher-based programmes, in particular those that use food vouchers to assist the poor, the most important of which concerns food stamps in the United States.The reasons why vouchers work well in this case have been carefully studied: ‘The market for food is well established and well organized, there are a large number of buyers and sellers, the transaction costs are small, competition is strong and prices are kept in line by that competition and the characteristics of the products are easily identified (there is relatively little scope for private information on the quality of the good and for asymmetric information leading to suboptimal

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provision)’ (Moffitt 2000). The voucher-mechanism is less likely to work well in the training market for small firms in which products might be highly customized and very heterogeneous, and which is plagued by very-hard-to-reduce information asymmetries. In this context, vouchers should be simply considered as one of the many instruments in the toolbox of the designer of public policies.

Notes 1. This chapter is based on work by a team directed by the author (see Mitnik, 2006). The team included Ricardo Descalzi, Guillermo Ordón˜ ez, Andrés Matta, Eduardo Bologna, Adela Coria, Juan Torres, Corina Garcia Goette and Vanina Fraire. The author is grateful to Pablo Mitnik for his invaluable help. The usual disclaimer applies. 2. In a simplified version, the perfect competition is a model assuming that: (i) economic agents possess complete, perfect and equally distributed information; (ii) transaction costs are zero; (iii) transactions do not generate gains or costs to third parties; (iv) no market agent holds enough power to influence prices; and (v) there aren’t any ‘public goods’. 3. The concept of ‘habitus’, introduced by Bourdieu (1988), describes an agent whose acts are based on ‘reasonable dispositions’. ‘Habitus are schemes of perception, appreciation and action internalised during the entire life of an individual, which form a true system of stable dispositions to act, think, and perceive. Agents incorporate these preferences throughout their social life, often unconsciously and based on their objective conditions of existence. They are lasting [. . .] and tend to resist change, therefore generating continuity in the life of a person’ (Matta & Bologna, 2006). 4. Assume, for analytic purposes, a market offering two qualities of training—good and inferior— where those offering the better quality charge a higher price. Also assume that companies cannot distinguish between training qualities. ‘Since the company owners cannot distinguish between qualities, they perceive an “average price” of a “hypothetical” training hour of an “average quality”. The share of both types of training determines the “average price”. If the supply of the inferior product increases, this will influence the perception of companies regarding the “average quality” of the training offered in the market, generating a decrease in the price demanders are willing to pay, given that training quality cannot be determined with certainty. In turn, this decrease in price generates a reduction in the supply of better quality training. The companies make a biased selection in favour of inferior training due to their lack of information about quality. In equilibrium, only low-quality training remains available’ (Mitnik, Descalzi & Ordón˜ ez, 2006). 5. To adopt the perspective of critical sociology, in a discipline in which there are several traditions that differ in the way they construct their theoretical objects, in the methods they use, and in how they interpret reality, entails adopting a perspective that approaches economic practices as ‘total social facts’, that is, that takes into account the conditions in which the agents of economic, cultural and social production and reproduction operate (Bourdieu, 2001).

References Abdala, E. 2000. Experiencias de capacitación laboral de jóvenes en América Latina. Montevideo: CINTERFOR-ILO. Bologna, E.; Fraire, V. 2006. Evaluación de impacto: la medición ex post. In: Mitnik, F., ed. Pol´ıticas y programas de capacitación para pequeñas empresas: un análisis multidisciplinar desde la teor´ıa y la experiencia. Montevideo: CINTERFOR-ILO.


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Bourdieu, P. 1988. Cosas dichas. Buenos Aires: Gedisa. Bourdieu, P. 2001. Las estructuras sociales de la econom´ıa. Buenos Aires: Manantial. Grupo de Asesor´ıa Multidisciplinaria. 1996. Estudio del mercado de capacitación microempresarial y descripción del programa de bonos de capacitación. Montevideo: GAMA. Halac, A. 2000. Programa de capacitación para trabajadores en empresas: informe final de consultor´ıa en marketing. [Mimeo.] (Report prepared for the Programma de Capacitación de Trabajadores en Empresas.) Matta, A. 2006a. El sistema de bonos: ejecución y aprendizajes. In: Mitnik, F., ed. Pol´ıticas y programas de capacitación para pequeñas empresas: un análisis multidisciplinar desde la teor´ıa y la experiencia. Montevideo: CINTERFOR-ILO. Matta, A. 2006b. El sistema de bonos: problemas y aprendizajes. In: Mitnik, F., ed. Pol´ıticas y programas de capacitación para pequeñas empresas: un análisis multidisciplinar desde la teor´ıa y la experiencia. Montevideo: CINTERFOR-ILO. Matta, A.; Bologna, E. 2006. Una perspectiva sociológica de las prácticas económicas. In: Mitnik, F., ed. Pol´ıticas y programas de capacitación para pequeñas empresas: un análisis multidisciplinar desde la teor´ıa y la experiencia. Montevideo: CINTERFOR-ILO. Mitnik, F., ed. 2006. Pol´ıticas y programas de capacitación para pequeñas empresas: un análisis multidisciplinar desde la teor´ıa y la experiencia. Montevideo: CINTERFOR-ILO. Mitnik, F.; Coria, A.; Garc´ıa Goette, C. 2006. Reconstruyendo las esperanzas: la calidad de la capacitación. In: Mitnik, F., ed. Pol´ıticas y programas de capacitación para pequeñas empresas: un análisis multidisciplinar desde la teor´ıa y la experiencia. Montevideo: CINTERFOR-ILO. Mitnik, F.; Coria, A.; Torres, J. 2006. Esperanzas y fracasos en la capacitación para empresas. In: Mitnik, F., ed. Pol´ıticas y programas de capacitación para pequeñas empresas. un análisis multidisciplinar desde la teor´ıa y la experiencia. Montevideo: CINTERFOR-ILO. Mitnik, F.; Descalzi, R. 2006. Subsidios para pequeñas empresas: de la econom´ıa a la pol´ıtica. In: Mitnik, F., ed. Pol´ıticas y programas de capacitación para pequeñas empresas: un análisis multidisciplinar desde la teor´ıa y la experiencia. Montevideo: CINTERFOR-ILO. Mitnik, F.; Descalzi, R.; Ordón˜ ez, G. 2006. La perspectiva económica de la capacitación. In: Mitnik, F., ed. Pol´ıticas y programas de capacitación para pequeñas empresas. un análisis multidisciplinar desde la teor´ıa y la experiencia. Montevideo: CINTERFOR-ILO. Moffitt, R. 2000. Lessons from the Food Stamp Program. In: Steuerle, E. et al., eds. Vouchers and the provision of public services. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Parisi, A. et al. 1999. Encuesta a pequeñas empresas de la ciudad de Córdoba. Córdoba, Argentina: Universidad Empresarial Siglo 21, Instituto de Investigaciones de la Opinión Pública. Storey, D.J.; Westhead, P. 1997. Management training in small firms: a case of market failure? Human resource management journal, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 61–71.


Chapter VII.7

Employers’ Participation in Training Finance: An Example from Brazil Candido Alberto Gomes

1 Introduction How are small farmers and herdsmen to be turned into skilled industrial workers after tax incentives have attracted industry to a previously agricultural region? How can the high wages and settlement costs associated with recruiting workers from other regions or other countries be avoided? One possibility is to provide training within the region, to prepare the local workforce for participation in the modern economy. But what is to be done when the government and the public agency responsible for training fail to develop an appropriate programme? Local industries must then take it upon themselves to train their own workforce. This was the strategy adopted by a group of businessmen in Montes Claros, in the state of Minas Gerais, who in 1976 decided to establish a vocational school. Because of its unusual nature, the International Labour Organization requested a case study of the institution in 1990 (Gomes, 1991). Fifteen years later, at the request of UNESCO-UNEVOC, the Montes Claros Educational Foundation was revisited. Formerly obliged to struggle for financial survival and without any foreseeable sources of funding, it was now found to be larger and more stable, generating the greater part of its resources itself, less dependant on local industries and carrying out a kind of ‘Robin Hood’ action in sustaining a number of its low-income students in its technical school. This is a formidable challenge insofar as industrial technologies are becoming more and more sophisticated and now require a foundation of complete general education. Vocational education itself is increasingly expensive—all this to be achieved in an environment of social exclusion. How can equity and high-quality vocational education be reconciled?

2 Background Montes Claros is a regional centre in the State of Minas Gerais, located in a semiarid area between the valleys of the São Francisco and Jequitinhonha rivers. The city is an island of relative wealth surrounded by rural poverty, and it attracts large numbers of rural migrants to its many slums. In 1985, its population was 214,472 R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VII.7, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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and had reached 336,132 in 2004, according to official estimates. In 2002, 4.1% of its GDP came from farming and cattle-raising, 43.9% from industry and 52.0% from trading and services. The industrialization process started with tax incentives conceded to the impoverished north-eastern region, and the city was therefore eligible for fiscal incentives provided by the regional development agency—SUDENE. In an effort to reduce regional inequalities in Brazil and more specifically to reverse the chronic poverty and backwardness of the north-east region, this industrialization programme was implemented in 1961. The available evidence suggests that the programme was successful in promoting significant industrial development. However, it is widely acknowledged that the programme was not so successful in creating jobs. Urban unemployment and underemployment did not decrease but actually increased while the programme functioned (Magalhães, 1983; Jatobá et al., 1985). Problems with the local labour force then encouraged the adoption of capitalintensive technologies. Labour is abundant in the north-east, but productivity is low because of generally poor levels of health and education. Unit labour costs are therefore high, even though wages are, on average, lower than in other regions. It was in this context that the industrial park of Montes Claros was established at the end of the 1960s.

3 Official Inaction and Corporate Action The main obstacle to early industrialization in Montes Claros, according to those in charge of the first enterprises that moved to the city, was the lack of a qualified local labour force. Even for the basic construction projects, about 40% of the workers were brought in from elsewhere, including carpenters and labourers. There were two main labour problems. On the one hand, local workers were in need of training and had difficulty adapting to an urban-industrial environment. The re-socialization that was needed even included teaching recent arrivals (used to going barefoot) not to cut holes in their protective shoes when they developed blisters. On the other hand, the cost of bringing workers to Montes Claros from other countries and regions was very high, and such workers had difficulty adapting to life in a small provincial city. Turnover was very high and bidding for qualified workers was intense. According to various informants, the regional development agency was not very concerned with the social conditions encountered by workers. In the words of one informant, with regard to the needs of local industries, this agency thought ‘like the average Brazilian businessman: get them started, and then let the fittest survive’. Trapped between the costs associated with workers recruited elsewhere and the deficiencies of workers recruited locally, firms in Montes Claros sought a number of solutions. One attempt was to bring an agency of the para-state National Industrial Apprenticeship Service (SENAI) to the city. Though SENAI is ordinarily responsive to the needs of local industries and is mostly funded by a pseudo-tax levied on the

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payroll, in this case there was disagreement about where the training centre should be located. These efforts were abandoned and only taken up again many years later. With the traditional training alternatives eliminated and absolutely no possibility that the State or local governments would take on the responsibility, a group of local businessmen called a meeting of the Commercial and Industrial Association in order to devise a plan for occupational training. Experiences with on-the-job training provided by skilled workers from other regions had produced encouraging results. These efforts had demonstrated that, in spite of their initial deficiencies, local workers were quite capable of mastering new skills. Some members of the association had visited a technical school in a neighbouring city and had determined that it was cheaper to train locally than to import skilled workers. About thirty members of the association attended these early meetings. However, when asked to make an initial capital donation and a monthly pledge to establish the Educational Foundation of Montes Claros (FEMC), many firms declined to participate, not wishing to commit themselves to pay for a service which was, in their view, a governmental responsibility. The president of the association argued that what was in question was an investment, and not a charitable donation, and fifteen firms finally agreed to participate in the establishment of the foundation in 1976. A local university professor was recruited to establish the school. Relying on a blend of bureaucratic and predominantly charismatic leadership (Weber, 1968), he put together a faculty and defined an institutional philosophy in collaboration with the businessmen backing the school. Using rented classrooms and discarded equipment, a series of short courses started in areas of urgent need, including welding and pipefitting. In 1989, there were 2,029 students enrolled, 47.1% of whom attended lower-secondary and high school (in partnership with State and municipal governments) during the day shift, 33.6% went to technical courses during the evening shift and the remaining 19.3% were divided among vocational courses offered in the main buildings and in other places, including neighbouring municipalities. It is evident that the FEMC, like any formal organization, formed part of a variety of power relationships and interacted with a variety of other actors. According to Downs (1967), to survive and grow, organizations must continually demonstrate the utility of their services to one or more constituencies with sufficient influence to ensure the continued flow of resources. Moreover, the growth of organizations takes place only with the adoption of new functions or the incorporation of functions previously fulfilled by less dynamic organizations. In the case of the FEMC, the adoption of new functions occurred in a vacuum in which there were no competitors. For this reason, the expansion of its activities was encouraged by those who benefited from its services, including local firms (among them the patrons of the foundation) and former and potential students. The value of the foundation’s work was more widely recognized however, both in the community and beyond. The firms behind the foundation were adept at building support in the community, allowing firms that did not contribute to the foundation to participate in training programmes and winning the political backing of both state and municipal

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governments. With the advantage of having a reputation based on the quality of its programmes and with the support of important local constituencies, the FEMC was not threatened by competitors offering similar services. Nevertheless, its expansion was limited by competing claims on resources among local firms, students and public agencies.

4 Expansion for Survival At the end of 1989, the students in FEMC programmes were mostly poor, even by the standards of a municipality where average incomes do not normally exceed the statutory minimum. An analysis of the subjects taught by the school was based on the subjective criterion of neighbourhood socio-economic status. The results revealed that about 80% of the students were from low-income families, 17% lowermiddle income and 3% middle income. In confirmation of this finding, nearly all of the students had previously attended public schools. In general, therefore, the students were more interested in acquiring a profession than in continuing their academic studies, as the likelihood of continuing their education in a higher education institution was small. Here, a traditional division can be seen between the two branches of secondary education: academic and vocational. In spite of successive reforms to overcome this dualism, the continuation or termination of secondary school studies continues to be linked to students’ social origins. That is why if the technical school were not recruiting its students from among the less-privileged social strata, graduates would turn away from vocational studies and future technical jobs. Prejudice against manual labour has systematically impelled students away from manual occupations and towards preparatory education for a higher education course (Souza & Castro, 1974). If young people were succeeding at the secondary level, why would they want to enter a technical course? When a panel of educators examined the 1989 data sixteen years later, they agreed that the socio-economic composition of the student body had not changed much during the intervening period. However, an on-the-spot observation makes it apparent that the level of social origin has indeed risen. Even as far as subjective differences are concerned, times have changed. Technical occupations now demand more refined technologies and depend on information technology. Thus, the technician of today is not exactly the equivalent of the blue-collar worker of yesterday. Not only has the presence of women increased considerably in some courses (28%, on average, in the technical school), but at least part of the middle class has become attracted by the complexity of the curricula and the laboratories and by the professional prospects that are not to be scorned in a country where juvenile unemployment is widespread. There is thus a tug-of-war going on between technological sophistication and social inclusion. In this sense, there are two important access channels for socially less-privileged youngsters and adults: scholarships (almost always limited to partial grants) offered by companies or even by the FEMC itself and the monitoring system.


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In the case of the former, one of the bigger companies holds admission exams for ex-students of government-run schools. The latter accepts students based on the combined criteria of need and merit, and assists them with their academic tasks. Things have changed over the course of the last fifteen years. There was a reduction in industrial activity in Montes Claros during the 1990s, especially after the closure of the SUDENE programme. The economy veered largely towards the tertiary sector and the region even became an important centre for higher education, although in state planning it is classified among clusters of biotechnology, fruit growing and semi-precious stones. However, the struggle for competitiveness has led to the use of ever-more complex, labour-saving technologies that were less demanding than the occupations offered by the technical school. In other words, the school became less useful and imperative for companies and more useful for the community. How could this challenge be met? The response was to widen the activities so that some activities could finance others. To this end, a junior and senior high school and an engineering faculty were set up. With the higher status accorded to technical occupations, senior high-school students are able to take not only the general education course but a technical course at the same time. They have several extra hours of lessons each week, which almost results in full-time schooling, in contrast with the Brazilian tradition of half-day schooling. Furthermore, students in the technical school must study at night for one extra year. (Senior high school consists of three years of general education.) As a sign of the new times, 85% of students choose to participate in the technical courses whilst the rest continue with general education alone. Thus, this establishment is structured to qualify candidates already involved by the mould of the technology culture, not only for the technical school but also for the recently established higher education institution. It was in this way that the field of engineering courses opened up in response to the increasing complexity of industrial technologies and occupations. A Higher Education Institution was set up and offers courses in chemical engineering, automation and control, telecommunications and computing. These make use of common libraries and laboratories and rely on of the relationship between industrial companies, the school and the technological culture that has been constructed over the years. As will be seen later, this relationship is the most precious resource of all insofar as its financial surplus meets the costs of financing the technical school, which has experienced a noticeable fall in demand in comparison with former periods when the ratio of candidates to places available reached 20:1. Nevertheless, this school continues to be the dream of many low-income youngsters whose eyes shine when they see in it the path to social mobility. Furthermore, the total enrolment in regular courses (not including lifelong education courses in the school itself and in other municipalities) went up from 1,639 in 1989 to 2,037 in August of 2005. The premises of the technical school have been doubled thanks to a federal grant and another building has been rented for the engineering school. Today, the total constructed area is 8,123 square metres and exhibits a growing sophistication, with a greater number of laboratories and more equipment.

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Another response to the challenge was the change in focus from educating for a specific occupation to educating for a wider field of work. Industrial technologies that dispense with labour, sub-contracting to third parties and the shrinking of the formal labour market have brought about a change in the FEMC’s purpose. In this sense, an entrepreneurial spirit now inspires the curricula and seeks to prepare the students for a wider range of work opportunities. On the other hand, an ‘enterprise incubator’ was created encompassing fifteen companies and projects. In spite of its small size, it is expected to become part of a large-scale initiative—the technological park—containing an estimated 220 establishments. Some signs of new times can be mentioned. One of these is the concern for social inclusion. Students in the technical and higher education courses participate in a social training period dedicated to diversified citizenship activities that may range from distributing food to offering professional training courses, creating projects for digital inclusion and providing support for public schools whose students are socially less privileged. Although the sale of services is one of the sources of financing for the FEMC, a group of students developed software for the use of cemetery administrators and donated it to the municipality, thus contributing to the solution of long-standing problems. As the social training period became obligatory, an ethicsrelated subject was included in the curriculum to make students aware of their social responsibilities. In this field, the neighbouring presence of the city’s most violent slum led to the creation of a project for sixty children all enrolled in public schools. As these children study part-time, the FEMC carries out activities in arts, culture, citizenship and leisure, both in the morning and in the afternoon. In other words, the school is available to them full-time. This sub-project also includes work carried out with parents so that they too become involved in the education of their children and the activities of social promotion to improve their living conditions. Participating children and adolescents have guaranteed access to the technical school when they finish junior high school. The atmosphere in the school continues to be energetic and committed. The school and its students are even more visible in the community and are subject to continual evaluation by local businesses. As a result, teachers in the school appear to enjoy considerable social status and maintain a significant esprit de corps. In fact, they seem very proud of what they do. Teachers who work after hours, projects undertaken by groups and efforts to ensure the excellence of each course continue to be hallmarks of the school. Local businesses are actively involved in all activities. Even short courses are offered only after assessment of local training needs. Follow-up contacts are made with the supervisors of students and former students. The board of directors plays a strategic role as a bridge between businesses and the school. One consequence of this participation is the continual modification of curricula, training methods and enrolments in response to changing needs. In addition to these regular academic programmes, the FEMC offers a wide variety of courses, including some at a distance. These are offered in municipalities throughout the region under agreements with local businesses or public agencies,


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and/or financed through student fees. Lifelong technical and vocational education has been a new horizon explored in the face of accelerating technological and economic change. The marketing division is in charge of detecting and proposing new business, as well as taking care of the institutional image. The most remarkable initiative in this field is perhaps the annual science and technology fair. The last one took place in the city mall, attracting numerous visitors until the facilities had to be closed. The programme included the presentation of interesting projects by groups of students from the secondary, technical and engineering schools. They are very often interdisciplinary, making difficult technical concepts easier to understand by practical demonstration. The Ministry of Science and Technology has also financed a series of lectures given by State scientists. In general, local businessmen regard FEMC students and former students very favourably. Moreover, the need to generate its own revenue keeps the FEMC alert to changes in the needs and expectations of its clients, in contrast to schools with more predictable sources of revenue, which only rarely alter their programme. It is important, however, that financial uncertainty does not reach excessive levels if the organization is to remain innovative and responsive to its environment.

5 Walking the Financial Tightrope In 1989 the income of the FEMC came from the fees paid by students and their families (58.3%), from scholarships and other contributions provided by local firms (27.1%) and from the sale of services (14.6%). It was a part of the operating philosophy of the school, maintained until today, that students should pay at least a part of the cost of the education/training provided. Individual fees varied with family income, with most students paying between 30 and 70% of the total cost. In March 1990, the maximum annual payment for the secondary evening class programme was US$643, which was the equivalent of 53% of the fees charged by the most expensive private secondary school in the city, where the course was academic rather than technical. As a rule, fees ranged from US$200 to US$439. These amounts were far from insignificant for the local income levels, so the fees paid by each student were supplemented by a scholarship provided by a local firm, even if the student was not employed by that enterprise. The share of the costs of FEMC programmes paid by students and local businesses has varied over time. On average, student fees have covered 48.7% of the costs, while business contributions have covered 23%. However, the share of annual costs covered by student fees has varied from a low of 32% to a high of 76%, whilst the share covered by business contributions has varied between 12% and 57%. A critical point was reached in 1989, when the share of costs paid by students exceeded the previous maximum at the same time as the share paid by local firms fell below the previous minimum. In order to make up for this decrease in business support, the possibility of increasing school fees was discussed. However, this would probably have shifted the composition of enrolments in favour of better-off students more

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interested in preparation for higher education than in a terminal vocational programme. As this change would have subverted the basic objectives of the FEMC, however, the board of directors recommended that firms should not only increase the value of their scholarships but also join together to contribute to the reduction of the foundation’s operating deficit. The FEMC could not cover its costs by relying on student fees and business contributions alone. The gap in funding was then covered through the sale of services and the provision of short courses, which were obliged to generate profits. Compared to other similar institutions, FEMC Technical School has generally had lower costs. Its annual cost per student, calculated in 1989, was US$1,166 per year, whereas in the SENAI technical schools this figure reached US$1,880 and the federal technical industrial schools attained US$1,516 (the latter figure refers to 1985). If relatively low per-pupil costs are an indicator of good management on the one hand, they are also, on the other hand, a reflection of the difficulties that the school faced in keeping its equipment and training programmes up-to-date. According to local informants, the FEMC has been able to cover its recurrent costs—with difficulty—but necessary capital expenditure was a major stumbling block. At this point, the talents of the FEMC in acquiring equipment at a minimum cost came into play. Help was solicited from firms in the region and elsewhere, with the argument that the school provided a showcase for their products. One informant pointed out the school’s first micro-computer (kept today as a relic), comparing it to ‘a miser’s first dollar bill’. The computer was provided in return for a course offered by the FEMC. Since it arrived, the school had been offering courses in data-processing, with all income from these courses reserved for the purchase of additional microcomputers so as to increase its training capacity in that area. However, this creative and partially-improvised organization with a predominantly charismatic leadership reached the limit of its possibilities by the mid-1990s as the economic panorama of Montes Claros underwent changes. Financial difficulties increased and a debt to the social welfare system accumulated (now renegotiated). The FEMC was on the verge of insolvency, whilst at the same time bitter pedagogical disputes divided the teaching body. As a divided house cannot rule, so the board of directors decided to reformulate the entire administrative and financial system. According to statements, the FEMC moved from a predominantly academic culture to an entrepreneurial culture, but one that paid respect to social and educational objectives. Its degree of bureaucracy also increased (Weber, 1968), even affecting the school’s leadership. An administrative system typical of a business was implanted; that is to say, the board decided to administer its own daily medicine. An administrative and financial director, whose training was completed in half-day sessions in various local industries, was contracted. Budget, cost and management accounting was implanted, as was a system of information management for the decision-making process. (Financial data were made available to the author in a quarter of an hour!) A five-year budget is under discussion. In spite of all these alterations, no diminution of enthusiasm, esprit de corps or pride of belonging was detected among the persons who are part of the institution.


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In addition to these changes, the improvization in capital expenditure of former days has been overcome, thanks to participation in a Ministry of Education programme favouring vocational and technical education and partially financed by the Inter-American Development Bank. The Federal Government attributed high value to community or so-called third-sector participation, and opened up opportunities for organizations like the FEMC to compete for resources. In practice, the Foundation signed a loan agreement in 2001 with the Ministry of Education for US$985,076, 31.9% of which is for infrastructure, 56.8% for equipment, 4.8% for capacity-building and training, 3.8% for teaching material, 2.3% for consultancies and 0.4% for services. In this way, the constructed premises of the technical school have doubled, the number of laboratories was more than doubled and equipment was updated. However, this federal programme has fallen victim to discontinuity. It must be asked how the question of financing future investments as a response to advances in new technology will be dealt with. The data presently available (Table 1) refer to the current expenditure per student plus capital expenditure for the year. The value of the equipment and installations has not been attributed and thus the figures cannot strictly be compared with those from 1989. The composition of the income per unit of the foundation shows that the technical school has effectively become less dependent on the companies, which once again raises the question of the socio-economic selectivity of the student body. In turn, according to Table 2, current expenses per student vary from 91.7% to 89.2% of the total whilst capital expenditures planned for the year oscillate between 4.9% and 10.8%. The proportion of expenditure on staff is high, especially in the technical school, which has recently had its installations and laboratories expanded and considerably improved. The engineering school has the greatest share of the total current expenditure and the technical school the lowest. Although data for comparison are scarce, it is sure that the FEMC Technical School average expenditure per student is lower than that of the Federal Centre for Technological Education (CEFET), which is more sophisticated and includes higher education programmes. In contrast, the Paula Souza Centre, a State technical/vocational education network successful in increasing equity, has an average expenditure per student of US$847 in 2005. On the income side, the cost of monthly tuition is lower for the technical school, but even so it represents half of a minimum salary, i.e. around US$127. According Table 1 FEMC sources of funding by unit, 2005 Sources

High school (%) Technical school (%) Engineering school (%)

Tuition paid by students Company contributions Government loans to students School loans to students Total

90.7 9.3 – – 100.0

63.3 36.7 – – 100.0

84.8 0.8 9.4 5.0 100.0

Note: Other sources of funding in 2004: Ministry of Education, 5%; SEBRAE (support for ‘enterprise incubators’), 2%. Source: FEMC, January/August 2005.

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C.A. Gomes Table 2 FEMC average annual expenditure per student and tuition by unit, 2005

Kind of expenditure

High school US$ %

Technical school US$ %

Engineering school US$ %

Current Salaries Other current Capital Total Tuition per month (US$) Tuition as % of the minimum salary Average no. of students/class

1,245 1,089 156 111 1,356 94 74 38.9

1.078 972 106 57 1,035 64 50 33.5

2,018 1,085 933 244 2,262 254 200 28.7

91.7 80.3 11.4 8.3 100.0 –

95.1 93.9 1.2 4.9 100.0 –

89.2 53.8 35.4 10.8 100.0 –

Source: FEMC. The values for the whole year were projected on the basis of those for January to August.

to the 2000 Census, the monthly median income in the municipality was US$117. In the same year, 37.6% of the wage-paid population earned up to twice the minimum salary. Even so, the technical school expenditure up until the month of August 2005 was 4.3% higher than its income. Tuition fees for the high school are 15% lower than those for the best renowned high schools in the city. Nevertheless, it is deficient insofar as, by Brazilian standards, some classes are under-populated. In turn, the unit with a balance sheet surplus par excellence is the engineering school, where the monthly tuition fee is 200% of the statutory minimum salary. It should be noted that, in spite of its being relatively inexpensive when compared to countrywide levels of tuition rates, it is still difficult for the students to pay these fees and a group of them has sought support in government financing, as well as through a fund created by the school itself.

6 Finance and the Way Forward Fifteen years ago, the published case study (Gomes, 1991) expected that the recognition accorded to the accomplishments of the school, in combination with the chronic insufficiency of income in relation to expenses, might lead to changes in the FEMC programme. In 1989, a financial crisis was averted only when the board of directors called for increased contributions from local businesses. What would have happened if this policy had not been approved? The answer was speculative, but since organizations seek survival before all else, it would be likely that the FEMC would have shifted its programme focus so as to respond to financial exigency. Compensating for the loss of business support by collecting higher fees from students would have meant the enrolment of fewer poor students. Lacking competitors in the region, the FEMC would have had no difficulty in recruiting students able to pay the higher fees, but in this case, enrolments in the school would have become more like those in other technical schools throughout Brazil, where equity has declined and most students are more interested in continuing their education. In other words, students would increasingly have attempted to use the school as a springboard to higher


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education rather than committing themselves to jobs in the industrial and commercial sectors within the region (Gomes, 1999). The FEMC used other strategies to avoid a decline of equity at the technical school. To the extent that Brazil’s economic/financial situation required firms to cut costs and technologies economized on labour, business support did, in fact, decrease. However, the ‘Robin Hood’ effect produced by the school of engineering made it possible for the technical school to avoid becoming an elitist school. Furthermore, the aforementioned federal grant programme assured modernization and covered the urgently needed capital costs. Therefore, the organization changed recruitment patterns as a whole to preserve a certain level of democracy in technical courses. Indeed, in the 1990s and the early years of the twenty-first century the great challenge in preparing professionals for industry has been the ever-increasing complexity of technologies and the consequent increase in the costs of professional and vocational education. The para-statal ‘S’-system1 has gone through a serious crisis. Because of the foreign debt crisis, recession and unemployment have had a direct effect on the income of traditional bodies like SENAI and SENAC, both financed by a pseudo-tax levied on the payrolls of their respective sectors. SENAI found its way out of this difficult situation by improving and selling services. As a result, it is no longer as wide a channel for the social ascension of blue-collar workers as it was in the 1970s. For their part, federal technical education institutions have been successful in increasing their participation in public funds in part through competing with other public and community organizations for the funds of the federal programme already mentioned. This has meant that almost all of them have become higher education institutions that offer technological courses in addition to regular technical courses, somewhat like American community colleges. One of them has, in fact, become a technological university. In view of all these changes, several reactions have been noticeable. In the ‘S’system, SENAR, dedicated to the rural sector and created in 1991, went the road of sub-contracting services, decentralizing and operating according to the mechanisms of the market (Gomes & Câmara, 2004). This contrasts with those pioneer institutions that formed the first generation of the ‘S’-system. With SENAR, although a highly flexible network has been created with low overheads, it lacks the accumulation of experience and other factors that led to the success of the first generation. On the other hand, several states, especially Sao Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, have opted to create and/or expand their technical education networks. In the case of the former, the Paula Souza Centre managed to increase the percentage of working students from 33% to 48% between 1995 and 2002 (Sao Paulo, n.d.). At the same time, faced with unemployment and under-employment, especially among people in the low-income bracket, the federal government established the National Plan for the Further Training of Workers (PLANFOR) in 1995, which was succeeded by a similar plan in 2003. Resources have been allocated to a large array of partners, such as trade unions, non-governmental organizations and state and municipal governments in order to offer mostly short courses.

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In the specific case of Montes Claros, the technical school has managed to maintain a certain degree of democratization, but companies are tending to become increasingly sophisticated so that, in addition to their requirements for general education, the tendency is to contract specialized staff for relatively few work posts. How long will it be possible to maintain the present levels of equity? One alternative is the FEMC’s proposal to set up partnerships with the municipal school system, which would enable around another 500 students to have access to the technical courses. Although the FEMC is the largest organization preparing people for industry in the region, it must be stated that the SENAI resolved its differences with the municipal government some time ago. In 1988, it opened a site donated by an industrialist where it offers basic professional training courses and one technical course in electro-mechanics. However, it is estimated that it only reaches 15% of the market.

7 In Conclusion Some lessons can be learned through revisiting the FEMC. Firstly, thanks to the expansion and vertical extension of its activities, it has become possible to make better use of and enrich the culture of technology. Secondly, it has also been possible to compensate for the reduction in the contributions made by companies and apparently to maintain a similar degree of equity for lower socio-economic levels in the technical school. Thirdly, in spite of being an experience illustrative of neo-liberal principles, like de-regulation and the reduced role of the State, the FEMC’s leap forward took place through management reform, but above all through the partnerships with the Federal Government for those investments which its own income could not satisfy. Thus, it remains a fruitful example of partnership. The financial uncertainties of the FEMC favoured its dynamism and adaptation to new circumstances. However, walking the financial tightrope introduced new critical factors that came to threaten the survival of the organization and could have lowered the levels of equity. Finally, the achievements of the FEMC could be repeated elsewhere, depending on the commitment of businesses. Even after the initial challenge of replacing workers from other regions with local manpower had been surmounted, local firms have continued their support. There were advantages in their continued participation; besides tax deductions, they have been able to design training programmes in accordance with their own needs, to keep wages and turnover down and to employ trainees at relatively low wages. Furthermore, the increased complexity of the FEMC structure corresponds to new stages of technological refinement. However, some of the challenges that still exist and go beyond the limits of the industrial district can be found right alongside the technical school in the slums, where organized crime recruits children threatened with a life of underemployment. In Montes Claros, as in the greater part of Brazil and Latin America, complex industries exist side-by-side with masses of people without any prospects in life. Many of them are second- or third-generation rural migrants, with low levels of


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education and no vocational skills who are marginalized by the lack of job opportunities. The informal sector in all its facets has been the escape hatch for survival. This segmentation of the labour market contributes to huge income disparities It is possible that businesses in similar circumstances elsewhere might adopt the same strategy if certain conditions were met. Business leaders must recognize that education and training are investments and accept that businesses must pay a share of the costs if public support is not forthcoming. It is unlikely that the full cost of training can be borne by students in Montes Claros in anything but exceptional circumstances. It was the recognition of these realities that made the success of the FEMC possible.

Note 1. The ‘S’-system refers to the network of training agencies set up to address the skill needs of particular sectors: SENAI for industry; SENAC for commerce; and SENAR for the rural sector.

References Downs, A. 1967. Inside bureaucracy. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co. Gomes, C.A. 1991. Vocational education financing: an example of participation by employers in Brazil. Prospects, vol. 21, no. 3. Gomes, C.A. 1999. New perspectives for secondary school: the case of Brazil. International review of education, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 45–63. Gomes, C.A.; Câmara, J. 2004. Training for rural development in Brazil: SENAR. Paris: UNESCOIIEP; Rome: FAO. Jatobá, J. et al. 1985. Pol´ıtica de emprego para o Nordeste. Brasilia/Recife: Ministério do Trabalho/Massangana. Magalhães, A.R. 1983. Industrializaça˜ o e desenvolvimento regional: a nova indústria no Nordeste. Brasilia: IPEA/IPLAN. Sao Paulo. Secretaria da Ciência, Tecnologia, Desenvolvimento Econômico e Turismo. No date. Centro Paula Souza: competência em educaça˜ o pública profissional. Sao Paulo, Brazil: Centro Paula Souza. Souza, A.M.; Castro, C.M. 1974. Mão-de-obra industrial no Brasil: mobilidade, treinamento e produtividade. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: IPEA/INPES. Weber, M. 1968. Economy and society: an outline of interpretive sociology. New York, NY: Bedminster.


Chapter VII.8

Funding Lifelong Learning from a Life-Course Perspective Barry J. Hake

1 Towards a Political Economy of Investments in Lifelong Learning It is exceedingly difficult to find a policy document on education and training that does not make use of the ‘lifelong learning agenda’ in order to: (a) legitimate policy strategies; (b) identify specific policy measures; and (c) argue the choice for specific policy instruments. This reflects the worldwide consensus concerning lifelong learning from the mid-1990s onwards that has informed policy documents from the World Bank, UNESCO, OECD, the G8, the European Commission, national governments, non-governmental organizations in the field of education and training, and education and training institutions themselves. The realization of lifelong learning is seen as a key factor in meeting the challenges of globalization and the emergence of knowledge economies, the competitiveness of national economies, creating jobs and reducing unemployment, generating individual employability, and securing the social inclusion of groups at risk of exclusion from the learning society. Globalization is regarded as the driving force behind the knowledge economy. The knowledge economy in turn is widely viewed as demanding the development of lifelong learning and a learning society. There is now a hegemonic ‘grand coalition’ of international economic organizations, transnational polities such as the European Union, national governments, employers and trade unions that has warmly embraced lifelong learning as the motor of the knowledge society—necessarily a lifelong ‘learning society’. Despite this all-too-apparent consensual policy rhetoric about the need for lifelong learning in order to create knowledge economies and learning societies, the most fundamental problem remains the lack of any agreement with regard to how societies, organizations and individuals would benefit, or not, from investments in lifelong learning (Hake, 1999). Given the dominance of the needs of the economy and the emphasis upon individual employability in current policy narratives, it is also necessary to pay attention to the ‘wider benefits of learning’ generated in the life-worlds of individuals beyond the sphere of work.

R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VII.8, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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2 The Political Economy of the Knowledge Society as a Risk Society Since the mid-1990s, dominant policy narratives have focused upon the importance of lifelong learning as the crucial policy initiative that informs worldwide policy responses to the challenges posed by globalization, the transformation of industrial societies into post-industrial knowledge societies, the need to ensure the competitiveness of national economies, the maintenance of employment through economic growth, and the need to promote the social inclusion of potentially marginal groups. The common argument is that all such problems can be addressed by lifelong learning policies that are geared to the promotion of employability. This leads almost inevitably to the development of policy instruments and the implementation of policy measures that are intended to lead to the promised land of ‘employability for all’ in the knowledge economy. The globalization that dominates current policy narratives needs to be understood first and foremost in terms of the world-wide reorganization of economic activity that is dominated by the boundary-less and deregulated accumulation of economic capital on a global scale. This is a process that is also characterized by the almost instantaneous communication of knowledge and information without respect to national borders, and virtual access to this information and knowledge without regard to space and time. The routine availability and application of knowledge and information in all spheres of social life has become the most dynamic feature in the transformation and reorganization of post-industrial societies. This in turn produces the transformation to the learning society where learning throughout life becomes the key competency if individuals are ‘to learn to survive’ (Giddens, 1992). In policy narratives that proclaim the necessity of the learning society, the individual is reconstituted as a ‘permanently learning subject’ (Dumazedier, 1995), while there is now no question of opting out from learning if one is to become an ‘active citizen’ in the learning society. Globalization confronts societies, organizations—including education and training organizations—and individuals with learning challenges as they struggle to cope with new risks, and seek to survive in rapidly changing and unstable environments at the global, national, regional and local levels. The learning society is characterized by these structural challenges and the necessity to learn in order to survive on many fronts. The ‘individualization of risk’ refers here to the learning society as a ‘risk society’ in which individuals are ‘at risk’ with regard to their chances of survival in the face of change and uncertainty (Beck, 1992). To become ‘a learner’ is now the determining criterion for acquiring the competencies of ‘active citizenship’ in the learning society. Not to be a learner is to run a serious individual risk in the learning society. This is a salient description of the learning society as a risk society. This directs attention to the potentially negative consequences for individuals of the all-pervasive requirement to learn throughout life or ‘a life long of learning’. Management of individual risk in post-industrial knowledge societies now seems to lead inevitably away from the collective interventions of the welfare State towards

VII.8 Funding Lifelong Learning from a Life-Course Perspective

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the retreat of the State, with deregulation, flexibility, individual employability and consumer choice in the learning market-place as the keys to successful survival strategies. This is now the chorus of almost every policy paper. Despite this neoliberal rhetoric of individual opportunity and choice often associated with lifelong learning narratives, individuals are confronted with the risk of exclusion given the uncompromising demands of the learning society. The fundamental question is whether the traditional educational strategies of communities, families and individuals in industrial society are still adequate in the learning society? (van Damme, 2000). Is access to learning opportunities and the acquisition of survival skills equally available to all? If not, this has important consequences for an increasing number of ‘at risk categories’, and carries with it the potential of social exclusion and a threat to social cohesion. Globalization processes and the rise of the learning society would seem to produce both winners and losers in the form of the ‘knowledge rich’ and the ‘knowledge poor’ (du Bois-Reymond & Walther, 1999). On the one hand, processes of structural modernization in the knowledge society lead to increasing differentiation of learning environments in diverse social arenas beyond formal educational institutions. This includes the rise of the workplace as a non-formal learning environment and the more informal learning environments concerned with active citizenship and social cohesion in civil society. On the other hand, there is greater diversity in the learning trajectories pursued by individuals as they redistribute their own learning efforts across increasingly diverse life courses, and as they seek to combine their learning efforts with work, caring tasks, leisure-time and social participation (Glastra et al., 2001). These processes impact in particular upon young people in their often difficult transition from an extended period of education to finding work, but they also impact upon lowqualified women, older workers and the minorities, and those no longer employed for life. Such developments are even more significant for groups and individuals caught-up in global and regional migration processes and who have to struggle with the risks involved in their potential exclusion as ethnic, cultural and linguistic minorities. There are significant contradictions, furthermore, between the emphasis upon neo-liberal market principles as the determinant of provision and consumption of education and training and the persistence of unequal distribution of the opportunity structures enabling individuals to utilize both the traditional and new learning environments for the purposes of education, training and lifelong learning. On the one hand, specific social groups continue to be at a disadvantage in ‘front-ended models’ of education and training as a preparation for ‘a life long of learning’. On the other hand, there are also significant social groups who are also unable to establish themselves in the new diversity of non-formal and informal learning environments and the market-place for learning. There are indications here of a significant degree of potential market failure in the delivery of education and training and a skewed distribution of opportunity structures that can lead to the non-delivery of education and training to specific social groups (van Lieshout, 1999).

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3 Integrated Funding Models for Investments in Lifelong Learning The redistribution of opportunity structures throughout the individual life course in the context of lifelong learning demands an exploration of policy discussions during the last two decades about the so-called ‘integrated approach’ to investments in lifelong learning. Given the intimate relationship between lifelong learning and the employability agenda in recent policy debates, priority has been given to socalled ‘integrated funding models’ for lifelong learning. This discussion has directed attention in particular to the discussion of the respective responsibilities of governments, social partners and individuals for investments in lifelong learning. In particular, recent policy developments have involved a new balance between direct public investments, para-fiscal investments agreed by the social partners and fiscal measures to encourage individuals to invest in their own employability. This priority has focused upon the integration of lifelong learning and labour-market policies with an emphasis upon both reformed and new funding instruments in order to finance education and training during working life (Levin & Schütze, 1983). In different national economic and labour-market contexts, this debate has been dominated by the need to close the so-called ‘skills gap’. This ‘skills gap’ has been commonly formulated in terms of the ‘learning gap’ between the needs of the knowledge economy for highly qualified employees and the inadequate educational levels available among the current workforce. A core element in this discussion has been the respective financial responsibilities of governments, social partners and individuals for investments in integrated strategies for vocational education and training which are intended to make a contribution to bridging the ‘learning gap’. The closing of the learning gap thus involves the mobilization of public, semi-public and private resources for funding the employability of the workforce and the unemployed. This ‘learning gap’ can be illustrated as in Figure 1. This approach has led to the exploration of funding instruments that are based upon combinations of public, para-fiscal and individual investments in order to promote higher levels of participation in education and training as a public, mixed or individual good.

3.1 Investment in Education and Training as a Public Good

r

r

The traditional responsibility of governments for public funding of front-ended systems of initial education and training with the guarantee of universal entitlements up to the age of compulsory schooling, while post-initial vocational education and training is regarded as the responsibility of the social partners and individuals. Government responsibility for the investment of public funds in post-compulsory education and training to ensure the acquisition of so-called ‘start qualifications’


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Employment line Lifelong learning Unemployed

Employed

Le

£

ar ni ng

ga

p

Public

Low skilled

£ Private

Skills development

High skilled

Fig. 1 A model of lifelong learning with a ‘learning gap’ Source:

as a guarantee of access to the labour market for unqualified young people and for low-skilled adults among the unemployed and job-seekers.

3.2 Investment in Post-Compulsory Education and Training as a Mixed Good

r r r r r r

Establishment of para-fiscal systems of compulsory funding levies by employers to finance recurrent education for employees. These arrangements for employers’ contributions towards the costs of education and training are financed by a flatrate percentage of their wage-bills; Collective bargaining agreements between the social partners to establish voluntary para-fiscal arrangements for development and training funds for those employed in specific branches. These are also based upon agreed levies upon all employers. Agreements between the social partners to facilitate arrangements for paid educational leave. These vary from income-guaranteed non-work periods of study on full pay to time-guarantees to take a period of non-work financed by loan/grant systems. Collective bargaining with regard to the duties of all employers to draw-up a training and development plan for their employees. These plans may be associated with targets agreed with or laid down by governments. Collective agreements about the rights of all individual employees to a ‘personal development plan’. Such agreements may be national or agreed per sector. Collective bargaining agreements to finance ‘personal development budgets’ for individual workers within existing sectoral development and training funds.

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B.J. Hake

Individual learning accounts (ILA) that are regarded as a form of ‘education and training account’ or ‘voucher system’ based upon contributions by government, employers and employees. Fiscal facilities for both employers and individual workers enabling them to claw back the costs of their investments in education and training from corporate or income taxes. Fiscal facilities for employers to stimulate their investments in specific target groups, such as the low-qualified, older workers and the long-term unemployed.

3.3 Investments in Education and Training as a Personal Good

r r r

‘Career-break programmes’ that enable individuals to take time-off from paid work for the purposes of undertaking unpaid caring work in the direct or extended family, a period of education and training, or other purposes. Individual learning accounts based upon voluntary ‘income savings’ arrangements for individual employees that enable them to save a percentage of annual earnings on a tax-free basis for the purposes of education and training. Life-course savings accounts based on voluntary ‘income savings’ free of tax which enable individuals to save for a period of leave for caring tasks, a period of education or training, or to finance early retirement.

It has to be recognized, moreover, that the integrated funding instruments developed in the specific context of lifelong learning policies focus upon the opportunity structures that are available to the employed and to those seeking employment. They are dominated by labour-market issues. Policy instruments within integrated funding models have largely concentrated upon the funding of education and training in relation to access to the labour market, reintegration of the unemployed and the disabled, and the promotion of individual employability. Of no little importance in this context is that para-fiscal funding models are related to the significant changes currently taking place in the workplace as a new arena for the creation of opportunity structures and the social allocation of individuals. It is here that decisions are increasingly taken about the learning opportunities made available to different categories of employees. This is particularly important given that decisions about access to education and training in the workplace take place with little if any public scrutiny of the resulting redistributive effects. It is open to question, therefore, as to whether this diverse mixture of public, para-fiscal and private investments in education and training actually contributes to the social inclusion of at-risk categories and the promotion of social cohesion. Integrated funding models have little relevance for either the structurally long-term unemployed and, in particular, for those not in paid work let alone the ‘no-longer employed’ sections of the population. In this regard, it is necessary to examine more critically the consequences of the introduction of free market forces and individual choice in the funding of education and training. Attention needs to be devoted to


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the possibility of market failures in the delivery of learning opportunities to specific categories at risk of exclusion. This demands that funding models for lifelong learning need to be examined in terms of their ability to deal with the sometimes conflicting demands of market forces and the need for regulatory mechanisms to assure social solidarity and cohesion between those included in and those excluded from the workforce. There is also the issue as to whether such integrated funding models adequately address the changing relationships in the architecture of initial and post-initial education within the perspective of a political economy of lifelong learning. A key problem here is whether such models assume that the priority should given to frontended models of initial education as a preparation for ‘a life long of learning’, while post-initial education and training is regarded as no more than a periodic ‘toppingup’ investment for the purposes of maintaining and refreshing knowledge and skills. Current funding models tend to assume that the source of the problem of risk and social exclusion is based upon low levels of initial education among the ‘knowledge poor’. As yet, they devote little attention to the specific needs of the low-qualified. Labour-market dynamics, together with the emphasis on high knowledge and skill levels, combined with the ageing of the population in most post-industrial societies, now provides the basis for the need to encourage older workers to continue working for longer periods and to reverse the trend of the last two decades towards early retirement. In the context of lifelong and life-wide approaches to investments in education and training, the above critique suggests that most current proposals for integrated funding models are primarily focused upon one specific dimension of the life-world of adults: namely the world of paid work. They also concentrate, furthermore, upon one specific phase in the life courses of adults—again the phase of active engagement in paid work. In this manner, they tend to replicate the traditional model of the (male) life course which is based upon three phases of preparation for paid work, participation in paid work, and withdrawal from paid work into retirement. They are not informed by emerging understandings of the need for a life-course approach to the redistribution of lifelong learning (Tuijnman & van der Kamp, 1992), let alone a life-wide approach to lifelong learning in the diverse areas of the life-world. They do not address questions concerning inequalities in opportunities to participate in lifelong learning throughout the more flexible life courses of individuals and between the generations. In this respect, they comprise instruments more appropriate to the organization of risk-bearing in industrial society rather the new demands of the knowledge society.

4 Flexible Life Courses and Risk in the Knowledge Society In industrial societies, the social protection of individuals in the face of risks was organized in the form of collective insurance and the individual rights of citizens to universal social—including educational—entitlements to benefits. Systems for

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collective investments in education, social protection in work and retirement benefits in industrial societies were in large measure closely related to the organization of the standard (male) life course. This standard life course was defined in terms of three periods comprising: (a) education and training in the youth period; (b) paid work in adulthood for men and unpaid work for women; and (c) the withdrawal from paid employment and retirement. There was a very strong link in industrial societies between social policies and the institutionalization of this standard (male) life course. Entitlements to universal rights with regard to education, work, unemployment and retirement supported this age-related—indeed generation-differentiated— life course to the degree to which age norms were legally defined in educational and social legislation. In other words, industrial societies were based upon a standard chronological system of ‘social ages’ for investments in and the distribution of social rights and benefits. State interventions in industrial society determined and indeed policed the appropriate ages for participation in compulsory education, the length of the period of active employment and in establishing the fixed age for compulsory retirement and pension rights (Guillemard, 1986). This ‘policing’ of the life course through legislative and administrative arrangements also endowed each period with a sense of individual meaning and identity within a sequence of clearly recognized transitions between education, paid work and retirement. Current patterns of investment in education and training for young people, vocational training for the working population and the pension schemes for the retired are still largely based upon the standard male life-course of preparation for work, involvement in work and the withdrawal from active employment. Indeed, the current system of social insurance may be regarded as an ‘age-differentiated’, or preferably a ‘generation-differentiated’, system for the distribution of opportunity structures. Recent innovations with regard to funding arrangements for lifelong learning, for example individual learning accounts, are significant in the degree to which they are frequently built into collective social security and collective bargaining agreements. In this regard, they form part of the larger structures of provision for social insurance and risk sharing for those engaged in paid work. This also means that they are closely related to the period of paid work and are embedded in the standard life course of industrial society. This system is not able to manage the redistribution of learning opportunities across the increasingly flexible and diverse life courses of individuals in a greying society. In the knowledge economy, the traditional assumption about these periods of education, involvement in paid work and retirement is gradually undermined and, indeed, turned upon its head. Significant shifts towards the more flexible organization of work and diverse patterns of participation in paid employment are key characteristics of the knowledge economy, while at the same time changes in the organization of households are taking place. These structural changes are increasingly reflected in the more flexible and precarious life courses of individuals (Marsden, 1999). The breakdown of the standard life course of the (male) breadwinner has to be extrapolated to include an analysis of the increasingly flexible life courses of the younger and the older generations in the knowledge society. This can be witnessed in the problematic transition of low-qualified youngsters from initial education and


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training to the labour market, the risks of failing to adapt to flexible labour markets, the threat of losing work, the decline of jobs-for-life, and the widening diversity in uncertain patterns of exit from the labour force and permanent retirement. Time spent in work is also now less uniform with major variations in involvement in particular for the younger generation entering the labour market, schemes for helping the unemployed to return to work, periods of temporary withdrawal and re-entry programmes for women, the preferences of many women for part-time work and the development of schemes for flexible retirement. Furthermore, the determining factor of retirement is no longer a fixed ‘life event’ at a ‘legislated age’. It is now being replaced with a longer period of transition as individuals leave active employment and enter more or less permanent retirement over a much longer period of time. These increasingly complex patterns of entries to the labour market, transitions through and temporary points of exit from and re-entry to employment, together with more variable patterns of exits from the labour market, result in new categories of risk that undermine traditional systems designed to provide social insurance of risks in industrial societies. The emergence of new forms of risk is intimately related to demographic trends in post-industrial knowledge societies. This relates to the so-called ‘greying of society’ in post-industrial knowledge societies, the ageing of the workforce, and the larger numbers of people who are no longer engaged in paid work but who have entered a longer phase of retirement. Such societies are characterized by low birth rates, comparatively fewer absolute numbers of young people in initial education and entering the labour market than in previous generations, higher levels of participation in education among the young, and low educational levels among older workers. The emergence of the knowledge society is in effect responsible for the disorganization of the traditional phases of involvement in education, work and retirement together with the orderly arrangement of the generations in the standard (male) life course. Given the new times of the knowledge economy and the learning society, the orderly arrangement of generations with the appropriate forms of funding participation in education and training, work and retirement is breaking down as the life courses of individuals become less unforeseeable and new—and unexpected—risks become manifest (Riley, Kahn & Foner, 1994). Changing patterns of individual life courses pose a major challenge to traditional understandings of collective educational and social entitlements. The advent of post-industrial economies and knowledge societies is rapidly undermining traditional arrangements for the organization of public and private investments in terms of the standard chronology of the life course. Variability in life courses involves new forms of risk that challenge the traditional funding mechanisms intended to provide social insurance in order to cope with the linear succession of risks at the traditional transition points in the standard (male) life course. It can be argued that the ‘de-institutionalization’ of the standard life course poses major challenges to the funding mechanisms appropriate to investment in the ‘front-ended’ model of initial education and training as a preparation for working life, the organization of working-life itself, and the period of withdrawal or disengagement from work (Best, 1981).

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In particular, this demands an intergenerational approach to the redistribution of opportunity structures between generations in the form of new models for the relationships between investments in initial and post-initial education and training, training in the workplace and flexible retirement. The financing of lifelong learning within the perspective of life-wide learning and the wider benefits of learning cannot be negotiated in terms of front-ended models of initial education, the current forms of integrated funding of the post-initial needs of workers, and the period of withdrawal from paid employment. This demands a far more comprehensive model of integrated funding that will call upon the resources presently made available through public and private investments in education and training, social insurance and retirement pension schemes. The question is whether it is possible to bring policy instruments together in a system of funding measures that will make it possible to fund an ‘age-integrated’, or preferably ‘generation-integrated’, structure of learning opportunities that recognizes the flexibility of life courses and supports solidarity between the generations.

5 Reconfiguring Investments in ‘Flexible Learning Lives’ Collective and individual insurance of risks is complicated by the reality of new and unknown risks given the new uncertainties associated with flexible life courses and the demise of the traditional transitions between recognized phases in the life courses of individuals. Innovative funding models for investments in lifelong learning will have to be based upon the understanding that a life-course approach to both lifelong and life-wide learning has to take account of the increasingly flexible ways in which people need to organize their personal lives in contemporary knowledge societies. Such understandings of issues concerning the organization of lifelong learning in a knowledge society are based upon: (a) the individualization and flexibility of life courses; and (b) the fundamental dynamics of demographic change that call for an inter-generational approach to the funding of both lifelong and life-wide learning. It is also clear that policies for funding policies and specific policy instruments for lifelong learning in post-industrial societies will have to be based upon the dynamics of demographic change in conjunction with the implications of such dynamics for inter-generational relationships. In other words, there are significant problems involved in the reconfiguration of funding lifelong learning in a knowledge society that is also a ‘greying society’. This poses a fundamental challenge to collective and individual forms of funding insurance against risk in post-industrial societies. It is necessary, therefore, to reflect upon how investments in education, social security and pensions can be reconfigured given the tendencies towards the diversity characteristic of modern life courses (Guillemard, 2000). Public and private investments in education and training, the functioning of labour markets and retirement pensions have to be reconsidered in response to the breakdown of the standard


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ordering of the chronology of the life course and the blurring of the thresholds between points of entry and exit to education and training, paid work and retirement. The redistribution of lifelong learning across the life course of individuals will involve major reconfigurations of opportunity structures that are more in accord with the increasing differentiation and the flexibility in the life courses adopted by increasing numbers of individuals in post-industrial societies. Redistributing rights to education and training throughout life at the discretion of the individual give rise, however, to a number of fundamental questions that are relevant to the search for integrated funding models within a life-wide perspective on investments in lifelong learning. How can lifelong learning be financed in terms of the share of the respective contributions from public funds, the social partners and individual learners? What would be the features of a system for financing the redistribution of learning throughout the individual life course in terms of different collective and individual responsibilities in the face of flexible life courses and uncertain risks? Is there an inevitable shift from collective forms of social insurance towards the responsibility of individuals for insuring themselves in the face of uncertain risks? The issue now at stake is the reconfiguration of investments in opportunity structures in such a manner that individuals can more effectively cope with the new risks that arise as a consequence of the more flexible and risk-prone life courses of individuals. We now appear to be entering a period when investments in education and training need to address these new patterns of flexibility, the uncertainties of individual life courses and unforeseeable risks (Guillemard, 1997). In the terms of the emphasis on individualism in formulations of neo-liberal policies, this is no longer simply a question of the unquestioned transition from predominantly collective towards more individual investments in learning. There have been increasing calls in policy narratives associated with ‘learning for earning’ for a revision of systems of investment that will enable individuals to become responsible for their own investments in the face of growing flexibility, uncertainties and unknown risks in their life courses. This means that collective investments to meet the risks associated with the traditional chronological phases of the life course are being actively reconfigured and refinanced in a plethora of individual funding and insurance schemes. These are intended to facilitate the management by individuals of the uncertainties of their life courses. The ad hoc nature of such arrangements does not auger well for the financing of lifelong learning and new ways of creating forms of both collective and individual insurance in the face of the new risks in the learning society. One of the most innovative contributions to funding of the collective social insurance of risk and individual entitlements has been formulated in the ‘Supiot Report’ commissioned by the European Commission (Supiot, 1999, 2001). Supiot and his team produced proposals for a fundamental reconfiguration of collective insurance and individual entitlements in a system of social protection and risk-sharing based upon ‘social drawing rights’. Their report is based upon the recognition, on the one hand, of changes in the conditions of employment towards greater flexibility and short-term contracts and, on the other hand, of changes in the structure of households with more women participating in paid work. The authors also recognize recurrent periods of involvement in education and training as an integral part of

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working life, together with the growing trend towards more and irregular transitions between paid work and other unpaid social activities. At the heart of their report is the need to recognize the entitlements of individuals to income-support in the complex transitions between different kinds of social engagement, such as paid and unpaid caring work, and above all engagement in education and training whether within or outside the workplace. Basic to their report is the recognition of collectively-funded individual entitlements that extend beyond income support as protection for those in paid work or the unemployed to include the entitlements of those in unpaid work, those engaged in education and training, and the no-longer employed. Such entitlements would take the form of ‘social drawing rights’ for all individuals to enable them to finance periods of unpaid participation in non-work activities, such as caring tasks in the family or a period of recurrent education and training. This constitutes a development of the notion of ‘individual drawing rights’ which was originally formulated during the 1980s with regard to the funding of recurrent education (Rein, 1983). As such, the Supiot report formulates collectivelyfunded individual entitlements to a ‘social income’, irrespective of whether one is or is not employed in paid work. The basic argument is that individuals should no longer be locked into paid or unpaid work, but that they would be able to move between these two modes without the social risks of loss of income currently associated with such transitions. The availability of social drawing rights introduces a greater degree of individual choice and responsibility for decision-making, which the Supiot report refers to as the ‘right to exercise a freedom’. By making social entitlements—for example to a period of education and training—less dependent upon paid work and the current job, the Supiot report argues that this would spread the risks associated with short-term and uncertain employment more widely. This would increase both the possibilities and willingness by individuals to engage in paid work, non-paid work and periods of education and training on a more flexible basis than is now the case. At the heart of the Supiot report is the idea that individuals should have access to income maintenance for whatever kind of paid or unpaid work they wish to do at any one point in time. This is based on the assumption that most, if not all individuals, will be involved in the labour market and in periods of further education and training at some point in their lives. In the context of rights to lifelong learning, this means that access to education and training is a guaranteed entitlement and is not something that is limited to those with a permanent contract of employment. The preference expressed in the Supiot Report for the collective funding of individual drawing rights from social funds is clearly different from other recent proposals that place greater emphasis upon the self-responsibility of the individual to save money from current income in order to establish a personal savings fund or individual insurance that will enable them to finance a period in non-work activities. These social funding mechanisms are primarily based upon mixtures of para-fiscal funds and individual insurance to meet the demands of non-work periods at some point in flexible and unpredictable life courses. Such measures effectively favour individual rather than collective insurance against risk. Individualized schemes convert the risks of flexibility into new patterns of choice for individuals, but they do not


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operate on the principle of solidarity which is at the core of Supiot’s proposals for flexible transitions between paid and unpaid work. The shift towards individualized personal savings arrangements for insurance against risk means that it is the responsibility of individuals to take decisions to make use of—often fiscal—facilities that enable them to save for periods of non-work. While they provide a degree of security for individually chosen trajectories in the face of the risks associated with flexible life courses, they effectively depend upon the willingness or not of individuals to anticipate and invest in risks. Seen in the broader perspective of the Supiot Report, the question is whether such individualized funding mechanisms actually possess the potential to increase the flexible integration of activities such as paid work, unpaid caring tasks, leisure time, voluntary activities and engagement in lifelong learning activities. The funding of social or individual drawing rights comprises a policy to support diversification and flexibility in the life courses of individuals and the self-regulation by individuals of their allocation of time for the purposes of paid work, caring tasks, leisure and education and training. It is a collectively-funded system that enables individuals to utilise their lifelong entitlements to social benefits as part of a comprehensive social insurance system which provides individuals with the right to income maintenance in non-work periods. This is a risk-sharing social insurance rather than a system of opting to take part in risk-bearing insurance by individuals. What is proposed is a singe comprehensive system for the funding of all periods of voluntary or age-determined unpaid work. It would replace the present differentiated systems for financing initial education, post-initial education and training, vacations and leisure, and retirement that require income maintenance in the absence of paid employment. Each individual would have access to ‘an individual lifelong account’ that would comprise an account of the individual’s right to claim benefits upon public funds in terms of the contribution by the individual to public funds via personal taxation, social security and pension contributions. As argued above, such benefits are now subjected to strict age-determined criteria with regard to compulsory education, unemployment protection and retirement offering little choice to individuals. In the system of individual drawing rights from a collectively financed system, individuals would be able to self-regulate the use of an agreed part of the rights accrued for specific purposes, including education and training. It would also be possible to introduce financial incentives that would encourage individuals to invest in their education and training, while it would also be possible to introduce redistributive measures between different income groups and generations. Highly specific forms of social insurance—for example, disability, sickness and accident insurance—would still function as before. In the case of becoming unemployed, individuals would not be required to use their individual drawing rights for education and training. They would be able to make use of the standard unemployment insurance with the risk that they will have fewer opportunities of gaining access to the labour market if they do not make use of their individual drawing rights to raise the level of their competencies. Individuals would, of course, be subjected to certain limitations on their rights to draw upon their individual life accounts. It will be of vital importance that a reserve is available in individual accounts for the increasingly

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extended period of retirement from paid work. However, the system of individual drawing rights could contribute to the effective division of life into the three distinct periods of education, work and retirement.

6 Alternatives for Investments in the Funding of Lifelong Learning Throughout post-industrial knowledge societies, demographic change and the greying of the population now dominate policy agendas. The solvency of public and private pension schemes would seem to be the priority at the moment. Radical changes are required if we are to reconfigure funding models for education and training throughout life in pursuit of the implementation of a life-course approach to lifelong learning. A life-course approach to lifelong learning demands an ‘intergenerational approach’ to the redistribution of structures of opportunity between different generations in the form of new models for funding investments in lifelong learning. In addressing the problems of providing collective security in the face of risks, together with the preference for individual choice in the self-regulation of flexible life courses, this final section will explore the funding of a more flexible ‘life long of learning’ for the younger generation after the compulsory period of initial education. As such, the proposals put forward are variations upon the theme of establishing individual drawing rights on the basis of collective funding rather than individual funding.

6.1 More Flexible Learning Lives for the Young? The financing of lifelong learning can no longer be negotiated in terms of frontended models of initial education, the current forms of funding of post-initial education and training workers, and the period of withdrawal from paid employment. One of the major problems related to the restructuring or reform of education and training throughout the life course is the continuing dominant emphasis upon a short-term, front-ended approach to lifelong learning with an emphasis upon high levels of participation of young people in initial education. Current educational policies are dominated by securing high levels of participation by the young in primary and secondary initial education, reducing drop-out rates, and with the participation of at least 50% of the younger generation in some form of higher education. The funding of participation in front-ended models of initial education, including higher education, has to be radically restructured. Despite high levels of participation in initial education and training, there are still significant numbers who drop out of compulsory education without qualifications and have difficulty in gaining access to the labour market. Others leave initial education after the completion of compulsory secondary education and do not participate in higher education. Participation in higher education determines


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the degree to which the young benefit from public investments in post-compulsory initial education. In most post-industrial societies, access to publicly funded higher education is subject to a cut-off point at a certain age (for example the age of 30 in the Netherlands). Those who do not participate are subsequently unable to make any claim upon or benefit from these public investments in post-compulsory initial education—even if they wish to return. This suggests that the distribution of public funding for post-compulsory initial education should be radically restructured to deal with these unequal opportunity structures with an age limit. This would result in more flexible learning trajectories for individuals than at present in the tight corset of mass initial higher education. One proposal to achieve this is that all young people leaving compulsory initial education should be able to draw upon a publicly financed ‘individual lifelong education account’ up to a certain agreed cut-off age—let us say 35. This would take the form of funding that individuals can draw upon to finance various forms of post-compulsory initial education when they wish to do so. Postponement of using these rights would be an individual choice, but the entitlements would remain valid up to the agreed cut-off age. Use of some of these rights to support income for any period of education and training would be rewarded by a premium paid into the individual lifelong learning account. Account-holders would be able to use their rights when they wish to do so, at their own speed, and purchase learning from both public and private providers of education and training. Non-use of the available entitlements would not be penalized, but any unused funds would have to be repaid at the agreed cut-off point. The major advantage of this system is that it would equalize the distribution of public investments to a larger number of young people than those now entering higher education. Although the funds available to each individual might be lower than is currently the case, this could be supplemented by a system of loans or income from part-time work. In the case of account-holders engaged in paid employment, both the employer and the account-holder would be able to make additional contributions to the individual lifelong learning account. This would make it possible to save for an additional period of participation in post-compulsory initial education that would have to commence before the cut-off age of 35. An important feature of such a proposal is that the public funds invested in postcompulsory education and training would no longer comprise direct transfers by the government to post-compulsory education and training institutions. An agreed sum would be transferred into individual lifelong learning accounts and the accountholders would be free to purchase post-initial education and training from any accredited public or private institution. The amount of funds invested in an individual’s lifelong learning would be determined by the average costs of a specified period of participation in public post-compulsory education and training. Those who choose to purchase courses from private institutions would have to contribute themselves to any difference in fees involved. A number of proposals have been made with regard to the level of funds invested in individual lifelong learning accounts. This could be the equivalent a period of seven years from the age of 16 or three years from the age of 18 according to the school-leaving age. This is the equivalent of the

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completion of the first cycle of higher education according to the Bologna process. A more radical proposal would extend the period during which the individual lifelong learning account can be used up to the age of 55. This would certainly change the age of students attending higher education and allow very flexible learning careers.

7 In Conclusion The key question is whether governments, political parties and the social partners, and more importantly workers themselves, adequately understand the full implications of demographic change towards the ‘greying of society’, the demands of the knowledge society upon all generations, and the necessity in the longer term of a life course perspective on investments in education and training throughout life. The provisional answer must be negative. Lifelong learning policies need to pay more attention to the redistribution of learning opportunities throughout individual life courses but also between the generations. This leads in turn to the argument that the funding of lifelong learning has to be radically redesigned and that the ‘front-ended’ investment in initial education as a preparation for ‘a life long of learning’ demands fundamental revision. As such, this requires much more than greater flexibility in the application of the highly segmented systems for financing initial education, training schemes for the unemployed, education and training funds for the employed, occupational disability benefits, and new combinations of education and training with the maintenance of social benefits. It is necessary to redesign the entire architecture of initial and post-initial education and training, general education and vocational education and training, and formal and non-formal learning. Rather than the age-defined breaks in generational entitlements to publicly financed education and training that are characteristic of front-ended models of educational and training investments for life, lifelong learning policies demand a lifelong recurrent redistribution of individual entitlements to education and training in diverse learning environments throughout the life course. One conclusion could be that the division of responsibilities between government, employers and individuals for investments in lifelong learning must necessarily include the responsibility of governments for publicly-funded entitlements to the acquisition of core competencies throughout life and, indeed, into retirement for all. Such responsibilities can no longer be delegated to para-fiscal arrangements for those in paid work or privatized as the responsibility of individuals in income-savings arrangements. Lifelong learning policies need to be deeply engaged in the social construction of human subjectivity both in paid work and beyond throughout the lives of individuals. This involves active engagement with the complex processes of disruption in everyday life, the risks arising from flexibility in individual life courses, together with the development of the competencies that are required by all generations to survive in the learning society. Globalization posits threats to traditional patterns of social life but it also presents new opportunities for the development of the


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self-regulation by individuals of their own flexible lives. Policies for lifelong learning need to address the continuous and often difficult transitions between the spheres of paid and unpaid work, the private spheres of families and relationships, and the public sphere of civil society. This can only be achieved by the recognition of the diverse learning environments that facilitate reflection upon acquired knowledge, skills and attitudes, together with their translation into competencies that can be put to use in diverse social arenas. Lifelong learning policies are now required that are able to ensure the broadest possible provision of opportunity structures, the recognition of competencies acquired in diverse learning environments, together with the social acceptance of the diversity of rich patterns of learning in paid and unpaid work, civic and private lives throughout the life courses of individuals. The economic viability of such structures throughout the individual life courses will demand the radical reconfiguration of the entire social architecture of education and training in the context of an increasingly older society and intergenerational solidarity. How lifelong learning is to be financed throughout the life course and how the intergenerational redistribution of learning opportunities can be achieved comprise the key questions to which we seem at the moment to have few firm answers—let alone good questions. The core issue is whether we fully understand the challenges that arise from the commonly held assumptions about the ongoing transformation towards the knowledge society. It might be most appropriate to explore the implications of the development of ‘learning societies’ and to explore how learning can be best managed by ‘permanently learning subjects’. This would enable individuals to more effectively organize their own learning lives, to self-regulate their investments in education and training, and manage their own life courses. The knowledge society is a reality today and is not a future state of affairs that will be a problem for the young to cope with on the basis of the front-ended provision of initial education and training.

References Beck, U. 1992. Risk society. London: Sage. Best, F. 1981. Flexible life-scheduling: breaking the education, work, retirement lockstep. New York, NY: Praeger. du Bois-Reymond, M.; Walther, A. 1999. Learning between want and must: contradictions of the learning society. In: Walther, A.; Stauber, B., eds. Lifelong learning in Europe: differences and divisions. Vol. 2: Strategies of social integration and individual learning biographies, pp. 21– 45. Tübingen, Germany: Neuling Verlag. van Damme, D. 2000. Adult learning as strategic behaviour and strategic learning as competence. In: Alheit, P. et al., eds. Lifelong learning inside and outside of schools, vol. 2, pp. 444–72. Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde University; Universität Bremen; Leeds University. Dumazedier, J. 1995. Aides a` l’autoformation: un fait social d’aujourd’hui. Education permanente, vol. 122, pp. 189–206. Giddens, A. 1992. Modernity and self-identity: self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Glastra, F. et al. 2001. Work, personal life, and public sphere: lifelong learning an arena of struggle. LLinE: lifelong learning in Europe, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 222–29.

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Guillemard, A.M. 1986. Le déclin du social: formation et crises des politiques de la vieillesse. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Guillemard, A.M. 1997. Rewriting social policy and changes in the life course organization: a European perspective. Canadian journal of ageing, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 441–64. Guillemard, A.M. 2000. Ageing and the welfare state crisis. Newark, NJ: Delaware University Press. Hake, B.J. 1999. Lifelong learning in late modernity: the challenges to society, organizations and individuals. Adult education quarterly, vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 79–90. van Lieshout, H. 1999. Enhancing the operation of markets for vocational education and training. In: Wieringen, F. van; Attwell, G., eds. Vocational and adult education in Europe, pp. 49–86. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer. Levin, H.M.; Schütze, H., eds. 1983. Financing recurrent education: strategies for increasing employment, job opportunities, and productivity. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Marsden, D.W. 1999. A theory of employment systems: micro-foundations of societal diversity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Rein, G. 1983. Individual drawing rights. In: Levin, H.M.; Schütze, H.G., eds. Financing recurrent education: strategies for increasing employment, job opportunities, and productivity, pp. 67–80. Beverley Hills, CA: Sage. Riley, M.W.; Kahn, R.L.; Foner, A. 1994. Age and structural lag: society’s failure to provide meaningful opportunities in work, family and leisure. New York, NY: Wiley. Supiot, A. 1999. Au-delà de l’emploi: transformations du travail et devenir du droit du travail en Europe. Paris: Flammarion. Supiot, A. 2001. Beyond employment: changes in work and the future of labour law in Europe. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Tuijnman, A.; van der Kamp, M. eds. 1992. Learning across the lifespan: theories, research, policies. Oxford, UK: Pergamon.

Chapter VII.9

Economic Perspectives on Technical and Vocational Education and Training in Australia Gerald Burke and Christopher Selby Smith1

1 Introduction The economics of education and training are concerned with the efficient use of resources to achieve individual and societal objectives. This chapter takes Australia as an example in reviewing recent approaches to improving the use of resources and discusses some lessons learned. In education and training, the objectives pursued are improved educational achievement and skills for members of society, for their personal fulfilment— including access to work—for greater participation in civic society and for the broader benefit of the whole community. In Australia, the objectives for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) that have received most emphasis in recent years have been:

r r

to meet the skill needs of industry where employment patterns and technology are rapidly changing due to the impact of the globalized economy; to improve equity in access to education and training and to employment.

More recently, the relative needs of individuals have received more attention in the objectives compared to those of industry, while the needs of regional communities and indigenous people have also received emphasis. In many countries increased private funding has been sought to raise the resource level or as a substitute for public funding. Along with this, governments have sought an increase in the pressure of market forces on education and training in the belief that market competition will lead to more efficient delivery of the type of education and training that employers and individuals want. This has led to a partial shift in the role for the government: as the regulator and part financier or purchaser of training rather than the sole provider of education and training. An OECD review team presented the Australian goals for reform of the TVET system based on five underlying principles (Schwatz et al., 1997): (a) the need for a national training system; (b) a competency-based system; (c) a client-focused and user-driven system; (d) multiple pathways and flexible delivery; and (e) continuing commitment to access and equity principles. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VII.9, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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As this chapter will illustrate a range of issues in the economics of education and training with reference to Australia, it is useful at first to list some basic features of the Australian economy and its education and training system.

2 Australian Economy, Society, Education and Training 2.1 The Economic and Social Context Australia is among the fastest growing high-income economies in which the only negative issue is the high level of the balance-of-payments deficit and the accompanying high levels of international private indebtedness. Key aspects to note are:

r r r r

Public-sector activities have been restructured or privatized from the mid-1980s, and the private sector exposed to greater international competition through globalization. Australia is a less equal society in income and educational achievement than most European countries; it is more comparable to the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Australian has a population of 20 million people, most living in the major cities on the coast, with a high rate of immigration—and a very high proportionate level of international students. The Australian population is ageing, but much more slowly than other developed countries.

2.2 The Education and Training Context Table 1 provides summary information about spending on and enrolments in education and training.

r r r

r

Over a quarter of expenditure on all education and training is privately financed and the private share is growing, especially in public universities, but more slowly in the publicly supported TVET system. TVET provides for about a quarter of all enrolments in the education system, most of them part-time, many of them adults and proportionately more from lower socio-economic backgrounds than those attending universities. Australia has a large system of apprenticeships and traineeship: — apprenticeships for traditional trade training, usually over three or four years, involving paid employment and often with one day per week spent off-thejob attending a public or private TVET provider; — traineeships for a wide range of occupations, usually of shorter duration than apprenticeships and some undertaken almost wholly on the job without time release for attendance at a TVET provider. Training delivered to apprentices and trainees makes up about 20% of all training undertaken by TVET providers.

VII.9 Economic Perspectives on TVET in Australia

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Table 1 Overview of expenditure and participation in education and training, Australia, 2003 (approximate figures) Total expenditure Government primary and secondary schools Non-government primary and secondary schools Vocational education and training (TVET) Universities Total formal education system Enterprises: direct spending on structured training

A$ billion

% govt.

Enrolments (millions)

18

100

2.3

10

57

1.1

5

80

1.7

12 45

44 73

5

12

0.9 6.0 Employees trained (million) 5

Source: Compiled using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Department of Education, Science and Training and Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. Based on Burke (2003).

r r r r r r

Employer expenditure on structured training for employees is about as large as government expenditure on persons enrolled in the formal TVET system. The average quality of formal education is good, as is indicated by Australia’s high ranking in PISA and other international tests (OECD, 2004b). The overall rate of participation in education and training is high—Australia has the highest rates of participation of persons aged 30 and over (OECD, 2004a, Table C1.2). There are good lifelong education and training pathways for most people, but not for those with poor initial levels of education and training. There has been little change in equity in education in recent years. Australia has a federal system of government consisting of a national government and eight state and territory governments, with shared and contested responsibilities for funding and regulating education and training.

In the range of system types in OECD countries, Australia is closer to having a ‘loosely coupled’ system than it is to having the tight connection between education and the labour market. The United States of America, which has no national system of qualifications or apprenticeships, typifies the loose connection. German-speaking countries and parts of Scandinavia represent tight coupling (McKenzie, 1998; Soskice, 2002).

3 The Structure of this Chapter Against this background, we consider some of the main strategies to improve the match of education and training with the needs of industry, individuals and society— including improved equity—and the incentives to do this efficiently. Below we give attention to five sets of policies.

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3.1 User Choice To help employers to obtain the type of training they want for apprentices and trainees, a system called ‘user choice’ was implemented in 1998. The intention was that employers and apprentices/trainees could jointly choose the provider and assessor of training. Government funds for training would then flow to that provider, whether a public or a private one. This scheme has not been fully implemented and its functioning differs across states and territories.

3.2 National Qualifications Based on Standards of Competency A nationally consistent qualifications system for TVET based on industrydetermined competency standards has been developed. A vocational competency comprises specification of the knowledge and skills and their application within an occupation or industry to the standard of performance required by employment. Industrial training boards determined the units of competency that from 1997 have been organized into ‘training packages’. These training packages also contain the assessment procedures and the qualification levels associated with groups or units of competency.

3.3 Government Incentives to Employers The Australian federal government and the state and territory governments provide financial assistance to employers to encourage them to engage apprentices and trainees. The size of these incentives and the restrictions on eligibility influence the level and distribution of apprenticeships and traineeships.

3.4 Tuition Fees and Income-Contingent Loans In general, the fees charged in publicly-funded TVET are low in Australia and many exemptions are provided for low-income students. However, not all students can obtain such places. This means that full-cost places offered by public and private providers are available to those who did not gain exempted places. There is pressure too to increase fee levels overall and particularly for those courses seen to lead to higher education—where higher fees are charged and where income contingent loans are provided by the Australian government. Australia has a system of national grants for support to full-time students aged 16 and over based on their personal and parents’ income and assets. There are on-going issues about the adequacy of financial assistance and the need to extend it to persons in part-time education and training.


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3.5 TVET and Regional Development While economic growth for Australia is high, the non-metropolitan areas have tended to lag behind. TVET is seen to be part of the whole government approach to lessening the unevenness of development. Attention to regional development is important for equity, for maintaining social inclusion and for the contributions of regions to the overall growth of society.

4 User Choice in the Development of a Training Market From the beginning of the 1990s, and with the establishment of co-operative national arrangements for vocational education and training, priority was given to the development of a more client-responsive system. An emphasis on competition in TVET reflected the 1995 decision of the federal and state governments to implement a national competition policy based on the principles of the 1993 Hilmer Report, which advocated, with some exemptions, that all private and public activities be part of an open national market through: (a) removal of regulations restricting competition; (b) restructuring of public monopolies; (c) third-party access to public facilities; and (d) competitive neutrality between government and private businesses (Hilmer et al., 1993). Until the mid-1990s, moves to open up the training market concentrated on the supply side. In some states and territories, management responsibility and accountability had been devolved to individual TAFE institutions, while barriers to market entry for private and industry providers were removed. There had also been some measures affecting the demand side, including separation of the purchaser and provider roles of training authorities, and the opening of some publicly-funded TVET funds to competitive tendering. The Australian National Training Authority (ANTA), established in 1992, commissioned a report (Allen Consulting Group, 1994) to consider the move towards more market-based arrangements. The report noted that the lack of responsiveness, flexibility and relevance of many public providers was a recurring theme in their discussions with industry. It recommended a move towards a market-based system under which government funds would be allocated directly to enterprises to purchase accredited training from any registered provider able to meet their needs— including the enterprise itself if it obtained registration. ANTA accepted much of the proposal, but recommended that, rather than being paid to employers, the funds would pass directly from the training authority to the provider. The scheme called ‘user choice’ was agreed to by national, state and territory ministers in 1996 for progressive introduction with full implementation for apprentices and trainees from January 1998. Nevertheless, most training authorities in the states and territories were at best lukewarm about ‘user choice’ and implementation varied considerably. The contested nature of TVET in Australia became more apparent between levels of

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government, between the industrial partners, and between the public and private sectors. Various evaluations have been undertaken of the ‘user choice’ initiatives of the pilot projects; by individual States and at the national level (Selby Smith et al., 2001; Ferrier & Selby Smith, 2003a, 2003b). In general, the evaluations have been supportive of ‘user choice’, but each one identified areas for improvement. State and territory jurisdictions are understandably concerned to retain control of public expenditures, to maintain educational quality and to manage potential risks. Mechanisms are available to manage TVET within a given financial allocation, including limiting the number of eligible training providers, the funding provided per qualification, and the range of qualifications available to clients. Employer organizations generally wished to see the ‘user choice’ arrangements expanded. Common resourcing priorities in TVET, including those for ‘user choice’, are unlikely to be achieved if there is a significant difference in the objectives being pursued by different states and territories. ‘User choice’ was introduced at the urging of industry and its expansion has been supported by industry, while the enthusiasm among educational authorities has been much less evident. Resource allocation limitations have reflected the attitudes and practices of educational authorities rather than those of industry. The latter also give higher priority than the educational authorities to the training needs of existing workers compared to entry-level workers. Interestingly, pilot projects in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, in regional and remote locations, in prisons and sheltered workshops, have demonstrated how ‘user choice’ can empower previously disadvantaged clients of the TVET system.

5 National Qualifications Based on Industrial Competency Standards A major thrust of reforms in Australia in the 1990s was the desire to make education and training programmes more relevant to the needs of clients—particularly to employers. In part, this thrust was supported by reforms to funding, encouragement of a training market and ‘user choice’, as discussed above. It was also strongly supported by the move towards a national system of training and qualifications underpinned by what are called training packages. Oversight of the national system is undertaken by state and territory authorities. These have agreed to abide by what is called the Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF). Any organization wishing to deliver nationally recognized training has to become a registered training organization (RTO) under the rules of the AQTF. The RTOs registered in any state and territory can deliver training in any part of the country and the qualifications awarded will be similarly recognized on a national level. A major part of the reform in the TVET sector was to base certification on industry-determined competency standards. As mentioned earlier, a vocational


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competency comprises the specification of the knowledge and skill and its application within an occupation or industry to the standard of performance required in employment. A system of national industry training boards, now being replaced by a small number of national skills councils, with employer and union membership, advised on industry standards across occupations covered by TVET sector training. It should be noted that the providers of training, of which the major ones are the government-funded technical and further education colleges, were not directly represented in this process. Industry boards were given control of the content of training. From 1996 the competency standards have progressively been assembled in what are called ‘training packages’. Training packages contain (at least) the details of units of competency, assessment procedures, and the qualifications that can be awarded upon successful completion of particular units of competency. The development of training packages stressed the need for assessment of competency to be undertaken in the workplace or in a simulated workplace. The development of training packages facilitated the development of, and recognition of, training accomplished in the workplace, including training entirely on the-job with no release for off-the-job training. By 2004 there were over eighty training packages, nine of which were enterprise training packages (developed privately by enterprises). These can lead to some 1,000 qualifications ranging in the categories Certificate 1 to 4, Diploma and Advanced Diploma (Schofield & McDonald, 2004). Nearly 60% of the training delivered in the TVET sector, perhaps 70% of publicly-funded TVET and nearly all the training delivered to apprentices and trainees, is based on training packages. There has recently been a major review of training packages and a range of shortcomings have been identified—though the training authorities remain committed to the concept of training packages. The criticism centres on the neglect of more generic or employability skills and of broader educational outcomes, the flexibility of training packages to be adapted to emerging skills and their appropriateness for all clients of the TVET sector, such as those who wish to progress to higher education. There is the on-going concern that the providers of training who have the most understanding of the processes of teaching and learning have not been directly involved in the process of development and revision of the training packages. Reform to address several of these issues is underway In general, this reform is limited to the TVET sector. The education provided in secondary schools is not based on competency standards, except for vocational subjects in the final two years of schooling. An on-going issue is the credit given to TVET graduates when they seek entry to higher education institutions. Successful completion of units of competency under training packages leads to a grading as ‘competent’ and not a ranking that is commonly understood by schools and universities. This has led many providers to also provide their students with graded results, but there is no common system and the issue is unresolved—if beginning to receive attention.

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6 Employer Training Incentives Employers considering employing a person as an apprentice or a trainee under ‘user choice’ have to consider the costs of labour and any workplace training costs. The Australian national government and the state and territory governments have long provided financial support to employers who engage an apprentice or a trainee. This support is reasonably substantial, although its value in relation to wage costs varies with the length of course and the level of qualification. There are several elements:

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a cash payment to an employer by the Australian government when an apprentice or trainee is engaged and a cash payment on completion of Certificate III or IV programmes; state and territory support, such as exemptions from state and territory payroll taxes, or some cash payments; a traineeship wage system involving a lower rate of payment in recognition of the time the trainee spends in training; and rates of pay for apprentices recognizing their lower initial productivity, with pay rising over the years of apprenticeship.

Where a course is taken successfully, e.g. for a Certificate III in eighteen months, the various incentives form a substantial proportion of employee labour costs, possibly more than 30%. The development of training packages for occupations previously not covered in the national training system and the emphasis on these in workplace assessment led to programmes for trainees consisting entirely of on-the-job training—with no time release to attend classes at a training provider. Employer subsidies encouraged expansion in the number of such traineeships. Together with user choice, this led to the state and territory governments meeting the costs of the provision of training and assessment for workers whose training took place almost entirely on the job. There was an explosion in the numbers participating in traineeships in the late 1990s. The numbers of trainees grew four-fold and they made up 70% of the total of apprentices and trainees in 2004, compared with less than 40% in 1997. The growth has largely taken place in traineeships for areas where the traditional form of apprenticeship was not available, such as retail, business, transport and hospitality. The growth in traineeships in the last few years has been largely among ‘older’ persons. People aged 25 and over made up 20% of the total of apprentices and trainees in 1998, but over 40% in 2004. Many of these older persons are existing workers rather than those commencing a job. Apprenticeships tend to last for three or four years. The majority of traineeships were expected to last for one year or less in 1997, but the length of the courses taken by trainees has increased, with most trainees taking Certificate III courses which take longer than a year—and attract the Australian government completion subsidy for employers.


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There has been concern about the balance of training by level and by occupational group and with the quality of training being achieved under traineeships. A number of state and territory reviews have been undertaken and eligibility for various types of funding has been reviewed. There are quite large differences among the states and territories in the programmes that can be funded. An on-going concern is that, while the rapid expansion in traineeships was occurring, stagnation took place in training for traditional trades in the construction, metallurgy and automotive industries where there have been complaints about shortages for many years. Though there is a need for closer analysis of extent and causes of such shortages (Shah & Burke, 2003), the complaints are symptomatic of some on-going dissatisfaction by employer groups about the training system, despite extensive reforms to satisfy their interests.

7 Tuition Fees, Loans and Support for Living Costs 7.1 Tuition Fees In Australia, in the publicly-funded TVET sector, tuition fees for students are low, representing less than 10% of course costs. There have been recent increases in fees in some states, but they still remain relatively quite low compared with university fees. In addition, students from low-income backgrounds or suffering some other type of disadvantage are exempt from most of these tuition fees. Even so, there is a limitation on the amount of public funds made available for TVET and therefore on subsidies to students’ fees. Unlike secondary schools where enrolment is almost universal, not all students who wish to enrol in TVET are able to do so. In addition to those courses supported by public funds, public TVET institutions and private TVET providers provide programmes at full cost to students or to employers. Public TVET funding has been constrained in recent years, which has had the effect of reducing the real resources available per student trained. There is on-going pressure to raise fees in TVET. If fee increases continue, there will be a strong case to provide income-contingent loans, which are already available for university students in Australia but not for TVET students.

7.2 Income-Contingent Loans University fees were abolished in 1974 but were reintroduced again in late 1989. A substantial fee was introduced accompanied by an income-contingent loan. There have been several changes to the scheme since then, with the fees tending to increase and they are now generally in excess of 30% of the costs of the education. All undergraduate Australian students in publicly-funded courses are liable for the fee and no exemptions are made for low-income background. However, the undergraduate Australian university student does not have to pay the tuition fee while he or

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she is studying. Some students and their families do chose to pay up-front, as there is a discount for an up-front payment set at 20% in 2005. Repayment is not required until annual income reaches a specified level. This level is set at A$35,000 in 2005 (approximately US$26,000). This is about the level of the beginning salary of new graduates. It means that persons who do not get full-time work or only low-paid work do not have to repay their loans. The loans are repaid through the income-tax system. Reviews of the scheme operating over the last fifteen years suggest that very few young persons have been deterred from entering higher education. Some older persons who are already earning above the income threshold for repayment have been deterred from enrolling. The main purpose of the re-introduction of fees in higher education was to reduce government outlays on persons who would go on to earn good salaries. The money saved could be used to expand the overall level of enrolments in higher education and to support other areas of education. Chapman (2002) argues that income-contingent loans should be available for TVET students. The exemptions given for low-income students do, however, suggest that very few students would be deterred by the current fee structure for publicly-funded TVET. The case for income-contingent loans in TVET would be much stronger if fees were increased substantially. The case for higher fee levels is not as strong as it is in higher education. Students in higher education tend, on average, to be from a higher socio-economic background and go on to earn aboveaverage incomes. In TVET, a large number of the students come from low-income homes and tend not to earn above-average incomes after their courses—though clearly some do. The case for higher fees for particular advanced courses may be stronger than for fee increases in general in TVET

7.3 Student Assistance Students have to meet living costs. The national government gives grants for living allowance to full-time students aged 16 and over, subject to an assessment of the student’s and the parents’ income and assets. Over a quarter of all fulltime students receive a grant. Only about 10% of TVET students attend full time, but they tend to come from low-income backgrounds. There is a special scheme for Indigenous Australians, many of whom in any case are from low-income backgrounds. The rate of assistance is higher for persons aged 21 and over than for younger persons; it is also higher for those with a dependent spouse and children. For adult single persons living at home with their parents, the maximum rate is less than a quarter of the full-time minimum wage, although the student is permitted to earn some income from employment. There are on-going issues about the adequacy of the assistance and the need to extend it to persons in part-time education and training.


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8 Regional Issues Australian regions have shown uneven economic and social development, with consequences for the social exclusion of persons in poorer areas and for the overall development of the country. TVET is seen to have an important role in conjunction with a range of other institutions in the economy. The need for TVET policies to be co-ordinated with industry and social policy is gradually becoming acknowledged in relation to regional development. Some non-metropolitan regions in Australia continue to thrive, but Howard and Buultjens (1999) found that rural and regional Australia have generally underperformed relative to metropolitan Australia in terms of unemployment and job growth. Typically, with the contraction of agricultural or mining that had previously attracted other businesses to their region, the economic base declines. The young leave to seek opportunities elsewhere, withdrawing the potential human capital essential to long-term recovery. The elderly, unable to make the transition elsewhere, find themselves increasingly deprived of basic services, such as government offices, post-offices, banks and hospitals. It is to be noted that TVET institutions employ staff, purchase goods and services, and construct facilities. In certain cases they are one of the larger enterprises in terms of their economic contribution to the local economy (Selby Smith, 1975). Education and training resources are a vital ingredient for regional growth. Bradley and Gans (1998) examined 104 Australian urban centres and concluded that growth was positively associated with the share of the population holding postsecondary educational qualifications. Post-secondary education and skills are seen as critical for the capacity of enterprises to innovate, both to conduct technological change to improve productivity and competitiveness and to capture new markets or retain existing ones. The capacity to innovate depends on being able to learn from the experience of others, as well as to create new knowledge. TVET has an important complementary role alongside higher education in providing and maintaining a strong learning culture in regional communities; and TVET providers are well placed to be learning network partners with local industry. Provision of different TVET courses, at different academic levels, in different locations and for different skills and occupations can potentially have effects on other economic activities in the region and on the particular skill mix chosen by local enterprises (Maglen & Selby Smith, 1995). There are, however, the difficulties of making wide-ranging TVET provision when the number of students for any course is low and the prospects of local employment fairly limited. Considerations include how much to rely on distance delivery strategies or to invest in more substantial infrastructure and the chances of recruiting adequate, critically aware and innovative teaching staff (including parttime staff from industry). A further question is how much should regional provision be related to the local economy versus broader vocational opportunities to which young people might migrate after training. Some of these issues were explored in a study in Gannawarra, a non-metropolitan region in Victoria (Selby Smith & Ferrier, 2004). It found somewhat surprisingly

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high levels of innovation are occurring in the industries and enterprises of the region. This is contributing to changes in the types of training being sought. A range of possible ways of enhancing the relationships among TVET providers and industry were explored. The establishment of local learning and employment networks by the Victorian Government has been successful in strengthening relationships between educational providers, communities and industry. This suggests that similar networks might also be successful in other parts of Australia in improving planning for and provision of education and training to meet local needs. As an example of recent policy, the state of Queensland has recognized that regions often form natural labour markets as people live, work and undertake training in the same area. Within these markets, specific training and employment needs and opportunities emerge. Queensland is developing TVET plans for six departmental regions in the state to ensure that government-funded VET is aligned with regional economic and social development priorities (Queensland Government, 2003). There is a Central Queensland employment and training strategy, which has been implemented in response to the A$8 billion projects planned for the region (mainly in mining and construction); and there are special employment and training interventions for areas experiencing drought. The Cape York employment and training strategy is another example. It is a co-ordinated whole-state government response to the need for more flexible and responsive training in Cape York—which has a high proportion of indigenous people. The Cape York partnership provides for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to have maximum involvement in decision-making at all stages. The principles of the partnership are used to guide TVET developments to meet their needs.

9 Conclusion Australia has made major changes in the ways it regulates and funds vocational education and training, with an increased emphasis on competition to promote the efficient delivery of the types of programmes that students—but especially employers— want. Australian national and state and territory governments have increased the role played by employers in several ways:

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by basing nationally-recognized training on industry-determined competencies; by giving employers and apprentice/trainees some choice about the TVET providers that the governments fund; and by enhancing the subsidies to employers of apprentices and trainees.

Equity in access to TVET has been supported by a system of low tuition fees and exemptions for low-income students—in the face of a very different system of higher fees and income contingent loans for higher education. However, a limitation on the number of publicly-supported places means that some students cannot obtain entry. A national system of student income assistance means that low-income students aged 16 and over in full-time schooling, TVET and higher education students are provided with an important—if minimal—level of assistance. And a range of


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policy initiatives based on various forms of partnerships is underway to address the problems of uneven regional development.

9.1 Results Competition and employer demand affects the balance of provision of TVET across occupational skill areas, but this is still partly determined by direction from state and territory training authorities, which conduct assessment of industry and community needs before allocating public funds. These authorities also take account of individual student demand based on their reaction to job prospects and personal career aspirations—if students do not wish to take particular courses, it is wasteful of public resources to fund places that are not filled. The distribution of training amongst public and private providers is to some degree based on market competition. But Australia still has a large majority of its TVET students in government-owned public institutions. ‘User choice’ extended the degree of market competition for the provision of apprentice and trainee programmes, but there are boundaries on the extent to which public funds flow to the private sector or even among public providers under ‘user choice’. Market competition has made both public and private providers of training more responsive to employer needs, but it has also increased the marketing and management costs at the expense of resources for delivery (Anderson, 2005). Most of the programmes now taught by public and private providers of TVET are based on nationally-agreed industry-determined competencies. Providers who seek to be registered as deliverers of nationally-recognized training must meet nationallyagreed standards and are monitored to see that they correspond to them. There is still uneasiness about the quality of some of the traineeship provision, especially for wholly on-the-job training. Quality assurance has been based on regulations and there has been increasing recognition of the need for incentives to stimulate and develop staff and providers for continuous improvement. Despite the range of policy aimed at making training more aligned with the needs of the economy, some employer groups remain dissatisfied—they draw attention to the continuation of shortages in some skilled trades. In 2004, this led the Australian government to introduce policy to fund some specific-purpose technical colleges and to set up a national centre for trade-skills excellence. Closer analysis of the issues of skills shortages suggests that their extent is not well measured and that the causes of shortages are complex—they may reflect less-than-attractive employment conditions rather than lack of availability of training places. Nevertheless, there may be a case for closer scrutiny of the operation of employer subsidies and of ‘user choice’ policies, so that incentives can be targeted more closely with emerging job opportunities. Since most places in TVET are still provided by public institutions, there is a case for developing better information on the labour market as a basis for advice by authorities to providers of TVET and to students. Another line of criticism of the current system is not its failure to meet all employer expectations, but that it has gone too far with the result that individual student

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needs have been somewhat neglected in the reforms. Some training packages are seen to have too much emphasis on current skill needs, rather than on underpinning knowledge that will allow for future learning. Some remedies for this are considered in the reviews of training packages, but the development of broader programmes, apart from training packages, is also advocated. The broad policies on fees and of student support have not changed, though pressures remain as public funding per student has been restrained. There is little indication that educational equity among socio-economic groups has improved in Australia in the past decade. One continuing issue is that, whereas secondary schools admit all students who apply, there are some thousands of students each year who cannot obtain a place in publicly-supported TVET. Additional places are available at full cost, but this is clearly not an option for low-income students. There are plans for improved and co-ordinated policies for regions and communities seen to be in particular need. Indigenous persons are given increased priority in recent policy statements, but the realization of these actions is yet to be seen.

Note 1. The authors express their gratitude to Fran Ferrier with whom they have worked jointly on related projects over many years.

References Allen Consulting Group. 1994. Successful reform, competitive skills for Australians and Australian enterprises. Brisbane, Australia: Australian National Training Authority. Anderson, D. 2005. Trading places: the impact and outcomes of market reform in VET. Adelaide, Australia: National Centre for Vocational Education Research. Bradley, R.; Gans, J. 1998. Growth in Australian cities. The economic record, vol. 74, pp. 266–78. Burke, G. 2003. Australia’s educational expenditures. Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, Centre for the Economics of Education and Training. (CEET working paper, no. 50.) Chapman, B. 2002. A submission on financing issues to the Department of Education, Science and Training Inquiry into Higher Education Reform. Canberra: DEST. (Submission 317.) Ferrier, F.; Selby Smith, C. 2003a. An investigation of ACCI’s user choice proposals. Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, Centre for the Economics of Education and Training. (CEET working paper, no. 47.) Ferrier, F.; Selby Smith, C. 2003b. The user choice experience of Australian firms: a further investigation. Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, Centre for the Economics of Education and Training. (CEET working paper, no. 49.) Hilmer, F. et al. 1993. National competition policy: report of the independent committee of inquiry. Canberra, Australia: Australian Government Printing Service. Howard, D.; Buultjens, J. 1999. Labour market performance of Australia’s non-metropolitan regions. Australian bulletin of labour, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 105–16. McKenzie, P. 1998. The transition from education to work in Australia compared to selected OECD countries. (Paper presented at the sixth International Conference on Post-compulsory Education and Training, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia, December 1998.) Maglen, L.; Selby Smith, C. 1995. Pricing options: a report for the New South Wales TAFE Commission. Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, Centre for the Economics of Education and Training. (CEET working paper, no. 1.)


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Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2004a. Education at a glance, 2004. Paris: OECD. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2004b. Learning for tomorrow’s world: first results from PISA 2003. Paris: OECD. Queensland Government. 2003. The smart investment: Queensland training and employment priorities. Brisbane, Australia: Department of Employment and Training. Schofield, K.; McDonald, R. 2004. Training packages today. Brisbane, Australia: Australian National Training Authority. (High level review of training packages.) Schwatz, R. et al. 1997. Country note on Australia for the OECD transition review. Paris: OECD. Selby Smith, C. 1975. The costs of post-secondary education: an Australian study. Melbourne, Australia: Macmillan. Selby Smith, C.; Ferrier, F. 2004. Regional development, innovation, skill needs and training: a pilot study in the Shire of Gannawarra, Victoria. Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, Centre for the Economics of Education and Training. (CEET working paper, no. 55.) Selby Smith, C. et al. 2001. The economics of vocational education and training in Australia: CEET’s stocktake. Adelaide, Australia: National Centre for Vocational Education Research. Shah, C.; Burke, G. 2003. Skills shortages: concepts, measurement and implications. Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, Centre for the Economics of Education and Training. (CEET working paper, no. 52.) Soskice, D. 2002. The role of industry and economic institutions in shaping vocational training. In: Burke, G.; Reuling, J., eds. Vocational training and lifelong learning in Australia and Germany. Adelaide, Australia: National Centre for Vocational Education Research.


Part V

Teacher Education for Vocational Education and Training


Section 8 The TVET Profession

Stephen Billett School of Education and Professional Studies, Faculty of Education, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia


Chapter VIII.1

Overview: The Technical and Vocational Education and Training Profession Stephen Billett

1 Introduction The teaching profession within the broader sector of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is differentiated by the way in which this educational provision is manifested in a particular country, the institutions within that country, and what purposes it seeks to serve at a particular moment in that country’s social and economic development. As a sector of education that is often seen as needing to be highly responsive to changes in the kinds of skills and knowledge that countries require to be developed, it has particular cultural impetuses and forms. Not the least of these is the degree to which its purposes are aligned with directly training the skills required for work by the community, or some other educational goal, such as more general competencies associated with the quality of working life. For instance, a long-standing debate within Western countries—but also evident in practice elsewhere (e.g. Brazil, China and Russia)—is the degree to which this form of education should be focused on developing specific vocational knowledge and skills, or comprises a form of education that generally serves as a foundation for paid vocations. That is, whether workplace competence or general education is its primary goal. In other countries, this division of purposes takes particular forms. For instance, as contributors in this collection propose, particular values or ideologies or moral education are to be developed alongside workplace competence in China and Russia, whereas there are requests from Brazilian contributors for a reinstatement of values associated with community and individual needs. However, the emphases on specific occupational outcomes will probably fluctuate over time as economic circumstances change. As global economic competition has increased, many Western-style countries have intensified the focus on workplace competence within vocational education provisions rather than on more general educational outcomes. Where they exist, these more general purposes are sometimes manifested as more generic workplace competencies suitable for several occupations. Similarly, such emphases are also being realized in countries such as Russia and China as they compete within a globalized and expanded economic system, yet from a different developmental basis and societal and institutional foundation that is distinct from that of Germany and Australia, for instance. Yet, trends associated with meeting the requirements of a globalized economic system should not R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VIII.1, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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be seen as leading towards a set of common educational goals and provisions. This is because across these countries the manifestations of TVET and its professional practice remain quite distinct in reflecting the current imperative—societal needs and institutional structures. For instance, in many northern European countries and in Australia there is a vocational educational sector whose main purpose is focused on developing the skills required for specific occupational roles. It is in these countries that there are strong traditions and provisions of apprenticeship learning, and the vocational education institutions often reflect the key trade callings. Often, these apprenticeship type provisions have mandated or legislated arrangements combining experience in workplaces with periods in educational institutions. These arrangements tend to see the institutional base include the interests of both employers and employees in particular occupational sectors. However, in the United Kingdom, and more so in the United States, the provision of vocational education might be intermingled with adult, general and preparatory educational provisions, and the institutional arrangements are less regulated. Then, in many Asian countries, the provision of vocational education is that of technology education undertaken within schools by school-teachers with limited contact with experiences outside the school. Here, the educational processes and goals are developed through and enacted within the educational sector that is primarily concerned with general education. Yet, in a different way, in Russia and China there are levels of vocational education that are masked by activities across educational sectors more institutionally distinct than in other countries (e.g. colleges, polytechnics, universities). All this leads to provisions of TVET and professional practices that are in some ways distinct and hybrid in each country. The important point here is that the kinds of roles that TVET professionals will undertake are likely to be quite varied given the different educational purposes, institutions and sectors in which they practise. Moreover, the particular trajectories of the education systems in which they practise are likely to shape the way in which their professional roles and activities will be transformed. These shape not only the conduct of professional practice, but also the training programmes that prepare individuals for the profession and in-service professional development. Yet, within all of this difference and across these distinct provisions there are likely to be at least two elements of commonality: constant change and relatively modest prestige. These also affect the professional preparation and career development of teaching staff. Firstly, the roles that TVET professionals assume will be subject to particular requirements during their initial preparation, which may well reflect current imperatives (e.g. government policy or professional requirements) and are then subject to constant change throughout their subsequent professional lives. The degree and focus of this change will vary, but it is certain that the activities of most educational professionals will be subject to change. Given the particular economic imperatives that must be reflected in technical and vocational education, these changes are likely to be on-going, frequent and often initiated and influenced by agents outside the TVET teaching profession. Therefore, it is important to understand the bases for initial preparation for professional practice and the processes by which TVET

VIII.1 The Technical and Vocational Education and Training Profession

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professionals are able to maintain the currency of their practice through a career characterized by changing demands and goals. Hence, in this section attention is given to both the approaches to initial teacher education and also in-service development throughout professional life. However—and the second common element mentioned above—the teaching profession per se, but particularly the field of technical and vocational education, often suffers from low standing. Contributors within this section frequently refer to the poor prestige of vocational education and the implications this has for both preservice and in-service teacher training throughout their professional life. It is as though we are dealing with a sector whose contributions are not fully appreciated or understood, and whose status is shaped by societal views and sentiments about the learning of vocational knowledge. To those who are working in the sector, its importance influences issues associated with securing community, government and institutional support for the initial preparation of teachers and their in-service development. It also comprises a contradictory discourse for the TVET sector: on the one hand, it is highly valued in achieving national social and economic goals and, on the other, it is considered not mature enough to organize its own practices and futures.

2 Overview of the Contributions This section is divided into two sets of contributions that examine the preparation and on-going development of those who practise as teachers within TVET. These contributions can be divided into chapters 2 to 12 dealing with the profession and its preparation; and chapters 13 to 19 focusing on professional development, particularly changing roles and further development for TVET professionals. In different ways, the first set of contributions largely discusses the current and emerging societal requirements for TVET teachers and their pre-service preparation from a range of perspectives in different countries. These requirements are often premised on particular imperatives that the contributors clearly identify. For instance, both the Russian and Chinese contributions discuss the crises being faced in each of these countries in securing suitably qualified teachers who have both technical capacities and those required to teach young people effectively. But elsewhere, there are also concerns about the level of both pertinent and current vocational/technical knowledge, as well as teaching competence. Moreover, these imperatives are shaped by evolving societal requirements.

VIII.2 Professionalization of VET Teachers and Lecturers and Practices in TVET Institutions in an International Perspective, by Philip Grollmann Grollmann argues in his chapter that, globally, the TVET teaching profession faces both the challenge of its low status and the emphasis on factors that serve to maintain

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it at this low level. He proposes that the key to enhancing the status of the profession is through a process of professionalization that needs to be enacted by individuals themselves and supported by TVET institutions which provide the provisions, as well as those partners in the community whose interests are served well by it. In other words, the very institutions that utilize and benefit from the activities of TVET teachers’ work need to afford them opportunities to exercise the professional practice and enjoy the benefits of professional autonomy. These institutions need to support the TVET profession and grant an appropriate level of status and freedom for those in the profession.

VIII.3 Teachers, Instructors and Trainers: An Australian Focus, by Erica Smith Smith also takes up the theme of professionalism in her chapter when reporting on the Australian vocational education and training context, including the preparation of teachers and trainers. In this contribution, however, the emphasis is less on institutions than on the individuals themselves. She suggests that, ultimately, the responsibility for maintaining instructional and technical capacities resides with the individual TVET professional. In this way, she embraces the notion of the professional as an autonomous and self-directed worker and includes within this idea the central role for the vocational education professionals to maintain their teaching competence through the inevitable periods of change that will affect their working lives.

VIII.4 TVET Teacher-Training Requirements in the Russian Federation, by Vasiliy P. Kosyrev, Petr F. Kubrushko and Andrei N. Kouznetsov Kosyrev, Kubrushko and Kouznetsov suggest that, in Russia, there are different requirements for professional practice according to the level at which the TVET provision is practised. Yet, across these levels there is a concern to improve the educational component of TVET professionals’ work. This is central to the modernization of the Russian provision of TVET.

VIII.5 TVET Teachers and Their Professionalization in China: A Problem Analysis, by Zhiqun Zhao and Lianwei Lu Zhao and Lu also note that, in China, while there has been a long tradition of craft, it is only in relatively recent times that vocational education has become a key


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educational sector. There is a growing demand for vocational education and yet, even in command economies such as in China, there are difficulties in securing sufficient numbers of suitable teachers. Moreover, there are imperatives to develop vocational specialisms, but from a very different skill base from that of Germany, for instance. Teacher education programmes in China are shaped to address this dynamic complex of societal factors. Nevertheless, there are barriers that inhibit elevating the prestige of vocational education and educators, including the sector’s traditional modest standing, a lack of stability in policy-making and the failure of vocational educators to organize themselves politically.

VIII.6 The Development of Training Modules for Instructors, by Fred Beven One contentious issue is certainly who are the curriculum-makers and to what degree are TVET professionals empowered not only to enact what others have decided should be taught, but also to design and develop further the goals of students’ learning and the means by which that learning is supported? Beven, in his chapter, argues for an expansive role to be assumed by TVET educators. Their role, he proposes, cannot be restricted to that of being the implementers of a curriculum designed elsewhere. Rather, TVET professionals have a key role in applying their pedagogic and curriculum knowledge in designing learning experiences for students that are based not only on government and industry directives, but also upon the situational factors that shape the enactment of any curriculum. Therefore, he proposes that the curriculum process needs to take into account the importance of the student, who ultimately experiences the curriculum.

VIII.7 Literacy and Learning: Are TVET Professionals Facilitators of Learning or Deliverers of Knowledge and Skills? by Jean Searle In her chapter, and using the example of assisting literacy and learning, Searle argues that there is a complex pedagogical role to be carried out by TVET professionals that includes understanding not only the nature of literacy knowledge as a general attribute, but also its situational qualities and pluralities of meaning and impact for learners. This includes assisting students to understand the ways in which power and control are enacted through knowledge of this kind. Hence, she argues for a broad and expansive professional role for TVET teachers, which includes making judgements about how and when to intervene in the teaching process. For example, when is it appropriate to be a facilitator of students’ learning and when is an instructional approach most appropriate? Her point of view suggests a need for a thorough and critical approach to TVET teacher education.

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VIII.8 Vocational Education in the Private Sector in Brazil, by Elenice Monteiro Leite, Marinilzes Moradillo Mello and Nacim Walter Chieco In their chapter Leite, Mello and Chieco also propose that the role of the TVET professional needs to go beyond that of just being a teacher of vocational practice. Instead, a broader role of engaging in social as well as economic development is required to be enacted within the TVET sector. They refer to the extent to which particular groups of neediest individuals should be able to benefit from a TVET provision enacted through private institutions and enterprises. The authors refer to the accumulation of disadvantage and economic backwardness for some under such a scheme. In this way, they identify structural factors that are often beyond the scope of TVET professionals to significantly influence the outcome.

VIII.9 TVET and Teacher-Training Curricula: A Developed National Perspective, by Vasiliy P. Kosyrev, Petr F. Kubrushko and Andrei N. Kouznetsov Kosyrev, Kubrushko and Kouznetsov give an account of the Russian university TVET teacher-training system. They describe the State educational standard, which provides an obligatory framework and contents of training and is worded and issued by the Ministry of Education. To provide a better understanding, a comparative analysis is conducted of the Russian and the American systems of higher education teacher training for TVET.

VIII.10 Vocational Qualifications: The Role of Trade Unions as Negotiation Fora, by Antônio Almerico Biondi Lima and Fernando Augusto Moreira Lopes Lima and Lopez also argue that, given the failure of TVET to overcome social disadvantage in developing countries, there has to be a central role for trade unions as negotiating fora to ensure that the interests and perspectives of those who undergo TVET are able to be represented and reflected in these provisions. They claim that both government policies and private enterprise interests, as articulated through the organization of TVET, work against the interests of workers and those who are socially disadvantaged. Consequently, the authors argue that TVET will never achieve its legitimate role and important educational purposes unless it addresses the needs of those who are most disadvantaged, who may be potentially further marginalized through existing provisions.


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VIII.11 Vocational Education and Development, by Gaudêncio Frigotto, Maria Ciavatta and Marise N. Ramos Frigotto, Ciavatta and Ramos similarly propose that in Brazil TVET provisions focused on occupational training and development often fail to educate students in the kind of relations that lie behind the occupations and practices they learn. Consequently, they argue for an expansive concept of TVET which explicitly focuses on the socially excluded in order to transform their prospects for participation in society. Consequently, they propose that TVET needs to expose the structural factors that provide asymmetrical outcomes among social groups, particularly as found in developing countries. So, in this chapter, a range of perspectives about TVET provisions in different countries, settings and their implications for the role of the TVET professional is advanced.

VIII.12 A Technical and Vocational Teacher-Training Curriculum, by Bonaventure W. Kerre Finally in Part I, Kerre offers an approach to the preparation of TVET educators that is suited to African countries. The author holds that the educational provision of TVET is most likely to be effectively delivered through the schooling system, given the strengths of the existing educational institutions. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare specialist teachers to deliver quality TVET through the schooling system. The in-service development of the TVET professional becomes an imperative following the kinds of demands described above. Clearly, pre-service teacher education will not be sufficient to meet the evolving demands placed upon TVET professionals throughout their teaching careers. Moreover, there are clear limits and particular emphases within initial teacher preparation that are not able to extend to particular kinds of TVET practice.

VIII.13 Transforming Teachers’ Practice Through Action Learning, by Stephen Billett For instance, Billett describes how vocational educators in Australia are prepared to become industry training consultants through an action learning-based process that aims at building the range of capacities required for independent consultancy work. Here, it seems that institutional support, the development processes themselves and also individual teachers’ capacities are essential in developing these particular kinds of professional capacities. As is often referred to in the professional development literature, unless individuals take the time to develop their capacities to perform professional tasks effectively (i.e. with success), it is unlikely that they will adopt these

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tasks as part of their on-going practice. Hence, the provision of support, practice and guidance that comprises professional development seems essential for developing TVET teachers’ professional capacities as new demands arise and the professional’s role changes.

VIII.14 Professional Learning and TVET: Challenges and Perspectives for Teachers and Instructors, by Christian Harteis Harteis makes a similar point in his chapter where he argues that a combination of practice-based and academic-institution-based experiences are the ones most required to develop expert capacities in TVET teachers. It is through these two contributions that the integration of both of these kinds of experiences can provide the kinds of teacher-training processes that Harteis promotes as being essential for effective professional development.

VIII.15 Industrial Attachments for Instructors in TVET Delivery, by Sarojni Choy and Sandra Haukka Choy and Haukka propose a similar set of concerns about the opportunities for professional development that can be provided through the use of industry placements for TVET professionals. These placements can have particular value in terms of updating, further developing or even assisting the content development of TVET professionals. However, these opportunities have not always been effectively taken advantage of. Therefore, in their chapter they describe a number of schemes for utilizing industry placements and propose how these might best be organized to secure effective professional development outcomes for TVET teachers.

VIII.16 I Hate Left-Handers or Occupational Health and Safety Training, by Richard Gagnon Similarly, Gagnon uses the example of occupational health and safety to argue that it is important for TVET provisions generally, whether those associated with preservice training or on-going professional development, to be organized in ways that seek to secure a balance among the interests of sponsors, institutions and participants. At the heart of this process is securing agreement through negotiation. Without such processes and attempts at consensus, Gagnon suggests that everybody’s interests may well be frustrated. In other words, the needs of all individuals who participate in TVET may not be fulfilled. Yet in failing to engage in understanding the needs of participants, other goals, such as those of sponsoring institutions and agencies, are also unlikely to be realized.


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VIII.17 The Bologna Declaration and Emerging Models of TVET Teacher Training in Germany, by Frank ¨ Bunning and Alison Shilela In their chapter, Bünning and Shilela analyse the major changes to degree structures in Germany following the implementation of the Bologna Declaration. According to the authors, the recommendation to adopt a two-cycle system of degree awards (bachelor’s and master’s) within a given timeframe represents a radical conceptual shift for curriculum designers and policy-makers in German universities, where the traditional degree system consists of one block of study leading to a master’s award. The introduction of this reform has remained a current issue in the university sector and can be observed as the theme of conference proceedings over the last six years. As the dust begins to settle on the landscape, a clearer picture of the newly established models for bachelor’s and master’s degrees can be observed. The paper considers the extent to which such developments have remained in keeping with the original intentions of the Bologna Declaration and whether the new degree models will achieve their originally intended aims.

VIII.18 Standards for Occupation-Directed Professional Development of TVET Personnel in Developing Countries, by Peter Gerds In his chapter Peter Gerds talks about the implementation of technical and vocational teacher qualification standards in developing countries. In a first step, he analyses the possibilities and challenges of national teacher qualification standards in general. He then sets up criteria for the development and evaluation of technical and vocational teacher qualification standards in the case of developing countries. The chapter closes with an account of the establishment of a national teacher qualifications standard in Ethiopia within the framework of the Ethiopian-German Technical and Vocational Education and Training Programme.

VIII.19 Curriculum Research and Design as a Subject of TVET Teacher Training: Practice and Experiences from Two International Projects, by Joachim Dittrich The chapter by Dittrich deals with work and experiences, concepts and backgrounds of selected international co-operation projects in the field of TVET. More specifically, these are two projects funded under the EU-Asia-Link Programme of the European Commission, the current activities of the ‘United TVET Network on Innovation and Professional Development’ (UNIP) and a German-Malaysian cooperative Ph.D. programme.

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So, collectively, the contributions to this section provide helpful and diverse perspectives on the role of the TVET professional, programmes associated with their initial development and processes and secure on-going development throughout professional life.

Chapter VIII.2

Professionalization of VET Teachers and Lecturers and Practices in TVET Institutions in an International Perspective Philip Grollmann1

1 Introduction This chapter analyses the different factors exerting an influence on the professional knowledge, practices and the performance of teaching staff involved in technical and vocational education and training (TVET). In addition to teacher education, which is a crucial lever for increasing the quality of teachers and their professional performance, the institutions in which teachers work constitute another crucial factor shaping the quality of their provision. Therefore, the institutional environments are held not just as independent variables, but are also closely interconnected with teachers’ professional practice. This means that any reform trying to professionalize TVET—whether on the global or the local level—needs to take into account both levers.

2 Two Major Obstacles There are two major obstacles to the professionalization of teachers in TVET on the global level: the low status of TVET; and the general problem of increasing the status of the teaching profession. Firstly, one of the core problems of vocational educators’ search for professional recognition is based on a paradox. While vocational teachers and trainers are essential to supporting skill development in the workforce, they are not granted high status in performing this role. In industrialized countries, some two-thirds of the workforces that constitute the backbone of each economy are intermediate-level workers and employees, who have learned a substantial part of their occupational skills and knowledge through the support of teachers, trainers and instructors from the domains of non-academic technical vocational education and human resources development (cf. CEDEFOP, 1998). Given the basic importance of vocational training for economic advancement, it is remarkable that in many countries TVET has failed to achieve the level of social recognition that is needed to establish it as a wellregarded profession attracting societal support, including appropriate individuals to perform as vocational educators. R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VIII.2, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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This is reinforced by the second fact: that teaching generally has always had problems gaining professional recognition, and has even been referred to as a ‘semiprofession’ (Etzioni, 1969). However, given the increasing emphasis on lifelong learning, teachers and trainers as learning facilitators could now be regarded as a core profession in the knowledge society. Improving the standing of teachers is, therefore, a significant lever for increasing the quality of vocational education, as acknowledged by many international and national organizations. These include the recent monitoring activities of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) with regard to attracting, developing and retaining teachers, the working group of the European Union on the qualifications of teachers, activities in the Asian context or the work of UNESCO-UNEVOC (Battezzati et al., 2004; Carnoy & DeAngelis, 2002; Central Institute for Vocational Technical Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2000; European Commission, Directorate-General for Education and Culture, & Working Group ‘Improving Education of Teachers and Trainers’, 2003; Hopkins & Stern, 1996; Leney & The Lisbon-to-Copenhagento-Maastricht Consortium Partners, 2005). However, the empirical significance of vocational learning is often overshadowed by the greater emphasis societies place on academic education and credentials. As regards teachers, this is embodied in the fact that many of these international studies do not make particular reference to the peculiar problems of teachers in vocational education. The last comprehensive international studies on vocational teachers occurred more than thirty years ago (International Labour Organization, 1964; UNESCO. Section for Technical and Vocational Education, 1997; UNESCO, 1973). However, a more recent study has been published (Grollmann & Rauner, 2006). In summary, the low professional status of teachers in TVET as described in the preceding paragraphs is accompanied by a fragmentation of the profession through the variety of existing profiles and multiple ways of teacher training and recruitment.

3 Basic Profiles of TVET Teachers Therefore, and in order to understand the needs and requirements of vocational educators, it is necessary to describe the diversity of ways in which they practise. Based on the scarce information available through the studies referred to above, it is possible to distinguish among the following basic professional profiles of teachers, trainers and instructors in vocational education and training:

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Teachers or lecturers working in formal school or college settings and providing instruction in vocational courses; Instructors and laboratory assistants working in school or college settings in vocational laboratories: — who teach with a high degree of autonomy; or — sometimes act as assistants to other vocational teachers;

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Trainers, tutors and others in enterprises who undertake training and educational functions within their jobs to varying degrees (e.g. from incidental to full-time

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teaching of trainees and apprentices). In dual systems of trade preparation, for instance, this function is often separated from human resource development functions within some companies, while in others this distinction is not strongly delineated; Instructors and trainers working in labour-market training institutions supported by governments and public authorities, often with a strong focus on social inclusion and basic occupational competences; Instructors and trainers working in employers’ organizations, such as chambers of commerce, sectoral training institutions or privately-owned training companies and providers that focus on upgrading technical competences, training in communication skills and so on.

In this chapter, the convention is adopted of referring to all these categories of teaching staff as TVET teachers who are working in institutions mainly devoted to the purpose of vocational learning and education, but not those in enterprises or directly within the work process. However, some of the major professional challenges remain the same for all of the different listed categories. In addition to these broad categories, other professionals may be involved in TVET learning processes, such as human-resource professionals who play an important role, particularly in France and Japan, and guidance counsellors, general subject teachers, or social and youth workers, who provide specialized services. Sometimes, these additional services are integrated with teaching, thus expanding the teaching or training role; sometimes, they are purposely excluded, such as in the case of France where teachers are only responsible for the actual instruction and the remaining educational tasks are delegated to other types of staff in the schools in order to allow teachers to concentrate on their ‘core-business’ (Troger & Hörner, 2006). In the same order as specified above, the clusters correspond to different age groups that must be served. Vocational teachers can be found within the spectrum of early pre-vocational education within lower secondary education, but increasingly also in adult education settings, where they deal with adults of different age groups. Given only four basic models of school-to-work transition (Rauner, 1999) and the six different teaching profiles described above, we already have twenty-four different profiles of TVET teachers, lecturers and instructors. Global reality will be much more complex than that! What can be seen is that, in addition to the low status of TVET and its teachers, the situation on the global level is heavily fragmented given the vast number of different profiles and functions of TVET teachers. Even as manifold as those profiles are, so are the ways TVET teachers are recruited and prepared for their jobs. This will be described in the following paragraphs.

4 To Increase the Professional Performance of TVET Teachers The professional skills of the teachers and trainers engaged in vocational education constitute a crucial factor in determining the success of the teaching processes that they conduct. One of the levers for improving the quality of TVET teachers is

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the qualifications needed and the education received leading to those qualifications. Figure 1 illustrates the relative position of the different dominant TVET teacher education pathways in the countries covered by the study of Grollmann and Rauner (2006). In Figure 1, the vertical axis describes the dominant formal level of TVET teacher education—from a certificate level training to a master’s degree. The horizontal axis describes the content of the programmes. Four types can be identified:

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A purely methodological training on teaching methods. Examples are the teaching certificate in the United Kingdom (UK) as a preparatory measure or the in-service courses at the Danish institute for vocational teacher education (DK). This is often connected to an exiting-model mainly based on the recruitment of practitioners of a certain field of occupational work. An additive concept, which is based on a sequence of studying the subject matter (e.g. at the B.A. level) and then obtaining an appropriate entry qualification to the education sector through acquiring general teaching skills in a designated course programme (typical in the United States—USA). This concept can also be found in Turkey (T), with a share of almost 65% of the programme covering the subject matter, leading to a four-year B.A. degree for the prospective vocational teacher. A model based on the concurrent study of a subject matter and educational sciences leading to a bachelor’s or master’s degree. Often the subject-matter study takes the form of a part of the ordinary business or engineering degree. Sometimes special vocational didactics are added. A model based on an integrated conception of vocational disciplines, which entails the subject matter as it is derived from the world of work (i.e. not from the respective engineering discipline) and a model of competence development within this domain. This is called ‘integrated’ here because it is based on an inclusive concept of learning and working in a ‘trade’. This paradigm of vocational learning leading to teacher education can be found in northern German teachereducation institutions and to a certain extent also in the reform of Norwegian (N)

Formal level of teacher-education M.A.

B.S./B.A.

Teaching certificate diploma

DK J Brazil UK

F USA

Germany China R,T, N

Additive concept Methodological

Fig. 1 Dominant TVET teachers’ formal qualifications

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and some Chinese TVET teacher-education programmes—but nowhere is it the dominant national orientation. Another difference can be noted in the sequencing of the training and recruitment. A very common model is the in-service model, in which a teacher’s qualification is first acquired within a usually probationary phase of employment. The length of this qualification varies from forty hours to that of bachelor-of-art (B.A.) equivalent degrees. Typically, the in-service model does not take into account the actual subject matter. Instead, it is mainly focused on psychological and basic educational knowledge and on teaching methods and techniques with some variations. In most cases, the precondition to employment as a vocational teacher is securing a B.A. degree, plus having relevant work experience. Sometimes, these in-service courses are offered at the university level and sometimes in specialized public institutions tailored to teacher training, such as in the case of France’s Instituts universitaires de formation des maˆıtres (IUFM). The in-service model of teacher preparation can be found in different variations, sometimes with a short pre-service training period as the dominant model, as is the case in Denmark, the United Kingdom, the United States, or more extended preparatory training, as in France. Work experience is often required in TVET as a pre-condition for employment as a vocational teacher. However, this is often seen as an alternative and less preferable route compared with general teacher recruitment and is associated with lower formal expectations of teachers. When looking at individual careers in countries with high demands on the formal side of recruitment, occupational experiences are very common. Even in Germany, which maintains the highest formal level in terms of academic requirements for entering the vocational teaching field, there is usually an amount of real-work experience prescribed through university curricula. The majority of student-teachers in Germany hold an occupational qualification in their field and if they lack this qualification they have to undergo an internship in an enterprise. For many countries with a consecutive sequence of teacher training (subject matter first, then educational qualification), the B.A. is the typical entry requirement for enrolling into teacher-preparation courses. Some of the former specialized teacher-training institutions have been or will be transformed into institutions with university status in Europe consistent with European-wide prescriptions provided through the Bologna process (European Ministers of Education, 1999), which opens up new possibilities for those who have obtained teaching qualifications to deepen their studies at the master-of-arts (M.A.) level. Even though the integrated model was held as the most promising model of teacher education in early publications (International Labour Organization, 1964), only limited progress has been made in establishing such programmes. The most significant challenge is the integration of subject matter and pedagogical training. Attempts are being made in some European countries to build coherent research and training programmes that reflect the integration of subject matter and pedagogy in TVET. One example of this kind of integration is the idea of research on occupational clusters (Berufsfeldwissenschaften) as developed within the Working Group on ‘Gewerblich-Technische Wissenschaften’ in the Gesellschaft für

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Arbeitswissenschaften network of German university institutes for the training of vocational teachers and trainers. In this process, all research activities are focused on ‘core-problems’ and ‘developmental tasks’ within specific occupational clusters, such as manufacturing, electronics, ICTs and so on. A similar approach occurs in the French discussion on ergonomics. This approach was taken up by the recent initiative of UNESCO-UNEVOC on a ‘United TVET Network on Innovation and Professional Development’ and its Hangzhou Declaration which delineates twelve vocational disciplines in an international framework curriculum for TVET teachers and lecturers (United TVET Network on Innovation and Professional Development, 2005). So, in these ways, besides the fragmentation of profiles and functions, there are variations in the approach to initial vocational teacher preparation that reflect the institutional arrangements and practices in different countries.

5 Changing Mission—Changing Institutions Apart from the programmes of initial preparation of vocational teachers, the concrete circumstances within schools and colleges—the working environment of vocational teachers—also constitute an important factor influencing their professional performance. Given the huge variety of vocational learning traditions, it is difficult to generalize about the factors that shape their practice. Nevertheless, the work teachers are confronted with everywhere can be clustered into the following tasks:

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supporting students’ technical or professional learning processes, which demands that teachers convey knowledge about the content, as well as the appropriate methods and forms of learning; preparation of students for work through the support of learning processes leading to general work-related attitudes and competences, as well as their role within the society; assessment and evaluation of students’ learning processes; administrative tasks regarding the organization and the curriculum; counselling functions to students, but increasingly also to other target groups, such as employers, adult learners and so on (Bader, 1995).

These tasks are affected by a changing conception of the role and functions of education and learning in general and TVET in particular, as well as events on a global scale. Many of the contributions in this handbook illustrate what was coined as ‘megatrends’ by economists and social scientists, such as newly emerging technologies, a globalizing economy, and demographic and cultural changes. In a similar way, changes in labour markets and work organizations affect the practice of vocational education and learning on the very practical level of what is available and what can be enacted in VET institutions (Lipsmeier, 2001a, 2001b). Once again, regarding the question of the variety of repercussions of such megatrends for the everyday practices within TVET institutions, research is scarce.


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One general trend is that TVET institutions are increasingly ascribed new roles on the regional level, such as supporting sectoral innovation or managing regional learning provision, instead of being just an operative unit of higher-level educational administration (Rosenbaum, 2002; Rosenfeld, 1998a, 1998b). This also implies a change of the TVET teachers’ tasks, such as being responsible for making informed decisions about the relevance of certain curricular content (Santema, 1997). This freedom or responsibility for curricular decision-making also goes in line with increasing degrees of institutional autonomy. One of the main rationales behind the devolution of such competences to individual schools and teachers is the assumption that learning can be managed and administered best (effectively and efficiently) from levels that are as close to the practical needs as possible. For example, many, but not all, VET systems have given a considerable share of curricular decisionmaking to the level of individual schools to provide them with the possibility of adapting their programmes to specific local learning needs. This devolution has also led to new systems of quality assurance required to secure a common level of quality across different institutions. The need for quality assurance is, in addition, reinforced by an increasing awareness for public accountability. Lifelong learning builds another cluster of issues, which have to be reflected when discussing the new tasks of TVET institutions. An example is when TVET colleges provide continuing education to skilled workers in order to equip them for the competent use of new technologies. Schools and colleges are supposed to take on new tasks with regard to the new boundary spanning concepts of learning across time and space. Quality cannot be assessed unless there is a clear mission for an institution. Therefore, the constant revision, further development of and the commitment to an institution’s mission is fundamental to quality development of VET. As was found in recent projects on the re-design of vocational schools and colleges, there is still a considerable gap between the strategic level and the aspirations of managers in VET institutions and their real performance. Innovation in this regard is impeded mainly by structural barriers, closely associated with traditional conceptions of teaching and schools and, very importantly, by a lack of tools and instruments for achieving certain changes (Nieuwenhuis, 2003; Rosenfeld, 1998a, 1998b). In one of the few international comparative assessments of different types of TVET institutions and their evolution towards ‘regional centres of competence’, Kurz (2002) has described the different types on two axes—institutional autonomy and participation in regional processes of lifelong learning—through the integration of initial and continuing vocational education into the programmes of the colleges (see Figure 2). As the figure shows, it is Scotland and England (UK Flag) that rank relatively high on both dimensions. In fact, the college structure as a heritage of the specific United Kingdom VET innovation culture, with a high degree of institutional autonomy and a high degree of continuing and initial VET, can unfold as a particular strength within future development, given the trends described above. Similar institutional environments can be found in other countries, such as Canada or the United States, with their community colleges. In contrast, the ‘Germanic’ structure of schools as public institutions turns out to be a barrier to innovation (Gerds, 1995).

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Fig. 2 Mapping development perspectives for vocational schools and colleges for some European countries and regions Source: Figure adapted from Kurz, 2002

This weakness has, however, been addressed by some of the German Länder and also the Austrian vocational schools system, which have moved to grant greater autonomy for vocational teachers. Another type is the Italian configurations, where very innovative regional VET providers exist that are not integrated into initial education and, therefore, might be excluded from very important functions within VET (Rosenfeld, 1998a). The preceding sections have shown that there are huge variations as regards certain framework conditions of the practice of TVET teachers. Given classical criteria of professionalization, such as teacher preparation and education, vocational teachers in some European States have reached a relatively high degree of professionalization comparable to their colleagues in general education. However, when looking at some of the future challenges to the TVET profession, for example new functions that schools and colleges take on at the regional level or increasing autonomy, then institutions from Anglo-Saxon traditions but also in some Latin countries rank higher.

6 Professional Reality in an International Comparison As often happens within comparative research, there is a lack of data—in its wider sense—and of easily comparable bases to provide a comparative impression about the actual practices of TVET teachers in different contexts. However, such information could be very useful for decisions and policies on teacher recruitment, education, development and so on. It would allow for the comparison of the interrelationships between different structures and processes on the social level and concepts and practices on the individual level of professional practice in TVET (for this paradigm of comparative research, see Schriewer, 1986). The preceding section has


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identified some global tendencies and local practices that represent important factors shaping the professional practice of vocational teachers. However, this gives only a very superficial impression of the complex professional reality in which teachers are working. It was shown that the institutional dimension is at least as important as the question of teacher education when striving for professional quality and high professional performance. Often this institutional dimension has been overlooked and professionalization was mainly seen only as a function of the formal level of teacher education. In only a few cases has the everyday practice of vocational teachers been made the object of research (Camp, 2001; Camp & Heath-Camp, 1990; Holling & Bammé, 1982; Lempert, 1962). This is rooted in two different conceptualizations of professions in social sciences. At the commencement of research on the professions, research was mainly focusing on and developing indicators when a specific occupational group was to be called a ‘profession’ as opposed to an ordinary ‘occupation’. Subsequently, the focus of research has increasingly looked at the particularities of work in the professions (e.g. the interaction between the professional and the client) and the specific knowledge needed to perform in a professional situation (Oevermann, 1996, 2003). A promising strand of research now tries to combine methods from expertise and professionalization research in order to explore the professional knowledge that comes into play in the interaction between the professional and the client or more specifically between the teacher and the learner (Bromme, 1992; Gardner, 1984; Gardner, Csikszentmihaly & Damon, 2001; Gardner et al., 2001; Mieg, 2003; Shulman, 1986). Up to now, this approach has not been applied to vocational teachers, nor to the question of their professionalization in a comparative perspective. In a research project on the ‘professional reality’ of vocational teachers in three different countries (Grollmann, 2005), special attention was paid to the interplay of the knowledge of vocational teachers and the particular form of vocational education institutions. Interviews were conducted with teachers in German vocational schools, American high schools and community colleges, as well as in Danish vocational education colleges. These interviews dealt with teachers’ understanding of vocational education tasks, their biographical background and their conditions of work. Before discussing the empirical results of this research, it is necessary to make a few conceptual remarks.

7 Process Knowledge of Vocational Education and Professional Culture In order to provide a more ‘grounded’ perspective on the professional challenges and reality of TVET teachers’ work, it was conceptualized as a phenomenon consisting of subjective and objective elements (in accordance with the ‘Good work’ approach (Gardner et al., 2001)). It was reconstructed through the analysis of teachers’ process knowledge of vocational education and their professional cultures. The term ‘process knowledge’ of vocational education was introduced by Gerds (2001) in accordance with the term ‘work process knowledge’ (Fischer, Boreham & Samur-

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cay, 2002). It describes the domains of knowledge that must be taken into consideration in the fulfilment of the professional tasks of vocational teachers. Besides explicit knowledge (e.g. knowledge of educational methods, knowledge of and teaching about subjects) and the formal knowledge of the education system and the educational establishment, Gerds emphasizes the implicit knowledge of vocational teachers (practical experience in work and teaching, vocational pedagogical skills, etc.) and their ‘informal’ knowledge of the life world of the educational establishment. Therefore, alongside teacher training and the teachers’ vocational biographies, the form of institutionalization of vocational education takes on a particular significance in the explanation and description of the knowledge of vocational teachers. Meaningful aspects of investigation and indicators for the knowledge of vocational education processes were the teachers’ understanding of their tasks and their subjects, their learning experience and their attitude and motivation with regard to taking up the teaching profession. The term ‘professional culture’ refers to the social embeddedness of teachers’ knowledge and actions (Hargreaves, 1997; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001; Terhart, 1990), that is, on the one hand, to the social context of professional action and, on the other, to the fact that this context is determined by its members. It follows that the empirical investigation of different professional cultures in vocational education requires a focus on the following aspects: (a) the vocational biographies of the teachers; (b) the forms of co-operation among the teaching staff of an institution; (c) their participation in processes of school development and innovation; (d) quality assurance within vocational education, as well as the tasks assumed by vocational teachers; and (e) their co-operation with the world of work outside the educational establishment. Together, these represent a comprehensive way of accounting for the process knowledge required to understand teachers’ practice. The next section uses two instances to illustrate the different forms of process knowledge of vocational education and professional cultures which occur in practice.

8 Findings Regarding the Knowledge of Vocational Education Processes With regard to the teachers’ representation of teaching and learning processes, for instance, two lines of reasoning emerged from the interviews with teachers. One of these, referred to as the diagnostic perspective, places the pupils, students or trainees in the foreground. At the root of this argument are the specific problems that occur as result of the often heterogeneous background and abilities of the learners. The other perspective, which is referred to as the learning process perspective, is based more on a prospective perception and general statements on the organization of teaching and learning and its conditions. This perspective detaches itself from the concrete teaching and learning conditions and reasons with general statements and assumptions about methods, teaching and learning goals and the course of the learning processes. With regard to the contents of vocational education, two clearly different perspectives can be identified which, in analogy with the classical theories of education (Klafki, 1964, 1985, 1996), I shall describe as formal and


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material. The formal perspective reasons mainly with abstract, non-subject-related or methodical contents. Examples of this are lines of reasoning that place so-called meta-competences or key-qualifications in the foreground, as well as fundamental behavioural norms, that is, multidisciplinary or independent, more socializing learning contents. The material perspective is oriented towards the use context and the contents that are to be learned. Typical lines of reasoning are preparation for the tasks that have to be fulfilled later in employment, or ‘the requisites of technology’. As a rule, the material perspective perceives the subject and the pedagogical competence of the teacher as being directly connected with each other. To begin with, the results can be listed in the following matrix that has individual ideal-typical combinations (Table 1):

r r r r

Instructional design: concentration on the teaching ability of the teacher— contents are apparently interchangeable; Training: contents and ‘pedagogical relationships’ are defined in reciprocity— learning goals and processes outweigh observance of the students’ characteristics; Learning accompaniment: focuses strongly on the background conditions and characteristics of the learners and the content is not context-based; Mastership: capability linked to the subject-matter forms a whole with the pedagogical task and is authentic in terms of the respect that it is granted.

Using this matrix, it is possible to place the encountered real types of the conceptions which are inherent in the teachers’ statements in relation to the ideal types in the matrix.2 Examples for a pronounced formal perception are to be found especially among Danish and German teachers, who occupy a relatively high ranking in the school hierarchy. The conception of instructional design is most commonplace within the context of the German and Danish schools. The perspective of learning accompaniment is shared by German teachers who have to deal with difficult learner populations. Teaching as training is a conception which is encountered especially among American college instructors, and the mastership model is typical for highschool teachers—and sometimes for German teachers mainly involved in teaching practical applications. This shows that some of the universal trends identified above are carried out through a vast variety of local practices enacted by vocational teachers who have certain conceptions about their different pedagogical tasks and the means to achieve them. It clearly underlines the recursive relationship between the knowledge and Table 1 Ideal types of the conceptualization of vocational education core tasks Process oriented (attribute of learning) Diagnosis oriented (attribute of the learner)

Formal

Material

Instructional design

Training

Learning accompaniment

Mastership/mentor model

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attitudes (the process knowledge of vocational education) of vocational teachers and their professional cultures. Both are embedded into certain institutional arrangements of teacher education on the one hand and TVET practice on the other. In the preceding paragraphs this interdependency was analysed with a special look at the knowledge and attitudes of teachers. In the next section, it will be examined from the angle of the professional culture, and the institutional arrangement in which the practice of vocational teachers is enacted and constantly transforms it.

9 Transformation of Professional Cultures via Individual Strategies Statements were examined in which the interviewees reported on their own strategies for resolving particular tasks or problems encountered in the course of their everyday school activities. The ‘own’ is stressed because, throughout this analysis, I have paid particular attention to strategies that have their origin in individual teacher’s initiatives or ideas, rather than formalized descriptions of tasks. I have subsequently categorized these strategies into similar groups according to their content. With regard to individual strategies for creating connections to the world of work, the American high school vocational teachers are ahead from a quantitative viewpoint (see Figure 3 ‘link to work’). This can be explained due to their background, being recruited directly from the vocational field and their ‘task of mediation’ on the labour market—for example, finding ‘placements’ being part of their task. Nevertheless, it also has to do with the statutes of institutions and their strict reporting duties to the regional ‘community’ (in this case high-school or community college). It was found that, whereas the American vocational teachers interviewed in this study frequently report on their initiatives with regard to establishing and maintaining co-operation with enterprises located in their region, this is far less common in the case of the Danish and German teachers who were interviewed. Even though the two other systems of vocational education are so-called ‘dual systems’, it is usual in these contexts to differentiate the individual teacher’s role from that of the trainer/instructor in an enterprise. In the case of German teachers, they think especially of initiatives aimed at improving co-operation between the teaching staff and organizational strategies. To put it another way, the form of the organization and the culture of co-operation are seen to be the principal fields of need for school innovation. In contrast to this, many Danish teachers conceptualize learning processes much more strongly as a collective task belonging to the respective team. The main field of improvement is reorganization of the educational process with regard to the subjective learning paths of individual learners. At the time this analysis was being compiled, a large part of the pedagogical energy expended by Danish teachers was being spent on the attempt to adapt the learning paths to the needs of the learners.


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Fig. 3 Direction of individual strategies of vocational teachers

So, it is concluded from this study that the imperatives and arrangements on the level of the institution of each VET system had particular consequences for teachers’ practices, in terms of how they practice and the kinds of goals and purposes they engaged with in their practice.

10 Conclusion Globally, there is a diversity of models of teacher education, teaching profiles and TVET institutions. More than teaching in general education, TVET teaching has often failed to be sufficiently acknowledged in terms of its contribution to the welfare, maintenance and progress of society. In terms of the formal education necessary to teach in TVET, a tendency towards professionalization can now be observed in some countries. At the same time, the mission of TVET has changed fundamentally over the last decades. This has led to new ways of organizing learning and instruction, new types of institutional roles and governance within VET schools and colleges and new paradigms of co-operation of staff involved in TVET. Based on TVET teachers’ perspectives, the changes can be described as an intensification of

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the knowledge necessary to cope with those challenges, as well as extending the roles TVET professionals have to assume in their daily work. Based on this analysis, two different forms of professionalization are proposed: (a) an indicator-based professionalization, which leans primarily on the classical theories of professions and inherent criteria for their description; and (b) a grounded term of professionalization that orients itself to the current and future practical challenges faced by teachers. On the basis of this distinction, it is evident that vocational teachers in environments of high formal professionalization of TVET teaching can learn from the work of their colleagues in those countries whose level of professionalization, as regards the grounded perspective, is in many respects higher. Table 2 shows the relative position of TVET teaching profiles of some teachers in the United States, Germany and Denmark, based on the results of the study referred to with regard to this twofold meaning of professionalization. Much more than is usually apparent in vocational education programmes, it is the concrete conditions of work that primarily influence the understanding of vocational pedagogical tasks, the professional self-image, co-operation and so forth—that is, essential dimensions of the process knowledge of vocational education and the professional culture of vocational teachers. Therefore, formally highly professionalized models of teacher training (such as in Germany) come under considerable pressure to justify themselves. Many of the competences trained in the course of teacher training cannot be turned into practice in the reality of vocational colleges as long as they remain largely rigid and bureaucratized institutions. On the other hand, very flexible recruitment patterns in dynamic institutions might lead to innovative professional cultures. However, they might also fail to produce the knowledge base needed for a sustainable professionalization of teachers in TVET. Summarizing the situation, the professionalization strategy for TVET teachers has to balance policies that improve the individual learning of teachers, their education and preparation for their job, but needs to take into account at the same time the continuous reform of their institutions. The institutions are the environment that needs to allow for the teachers’ knowledge and skills to be enacted quite autonomously in the reality of everyday practice. Different paradigms of conceptualizing professions have often stressed the importance of formal indicators, such as the level of teacher education, and overlooked the importance of the concrete working conditions of teachers in TVET institutions. The comparative study of those concrete working conditions and the practices within TVET institutions could be of great interest for reflective practitioners in TVET. This could feed into a more grounded theory of professionalization of TVET teaching. However, formal pro-

Table 2 A comparison of professionalization levels of vocational teaching profiles Indicator-based approach for the description of professions Grounded professionalization

High Low

Low DK USA HS

High ‘TVET utopia?’ Germany USA CC


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fessionalization is a pre-condition for that, since it provides the disciplinary and infrastructural framework.

Notes 1. The author expresses his thanks to Stephen Billett, who provided some useful comments on this chapter. 2. Due to space restrictions, I have left out sample interview transcripts. The interested reader is referred to Grollmann, 2005.

References Bader, R. 1995. Lehrer an beruflichen Schulen. In: Arnold, R.; Lipsmeier, A., eds. Handbuch der Berufsbildung, pp. 319–33. Opladen, Germany: Leske & Budrich. Battezzati, L. et al. 2004. E-learning for teachers and trainers. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. (Innovative practices, skills and competences, vol. 49.) Bromme, R. 1992. Der Lehrer als Experte: zur Psychologie des professionellen Wissens, 1. Aufl. ed. Bern: Huber. Camp, W.G. 2001. Formulating and evaluating theoretical frameworks for career and technical education research. Journal of vocational education research, vol. 26, no. 1. Camp, W.G.; Heath-Camp, B. 1990. The teacher proximity continuum: a conceptual framework for the analysis of teacher-related phenomena. Washington, DC: United States Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education. Carnoy, M; DeAngelis, K. 2002. The teaching workforce: concerns and policy challenges. In: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, ed. Education policy analysis, Ch. 3. Paris: OECD. CEDEFOP. 1998. Vocational education and training: the European research field. Background report, 1998, Vols. 1 and 2. Thessaloniki, Greece: CEDEFOP. Central Institute for Vocational Technical Education of the People’s Republic of China. 2000. Vocational teacher standards and the formulating method. Beijing: CIVTE. (APEC Central Funding Project.) Etzioni, A., ed. 1969. The semi-professions and their organisation. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. European Commission. Directorate-General for Education and Culture; Working Group ‘Improving Education of Teachers and Trainers’. 2003. Implementation of ‘Education & Training, 2010’. Work Programme. Brussels: European Commission. European Ministers of Education. 1999. The Bologna Declaration: joint declaration of the European Ministers of Education. Geneva, Switzerland: CRE. Fischer, M.; Boreham, N.; Samurcay, R. 2002. Work process knowledge. London/New York: Routledge. Gardner, H. 1984. Frames of mind. London: Heinemann. Gardner, H.; Csikszentmihaly, M.; Damon, W. 2001. Good work: when excellence and ethics meet. New York, NY: Basic Books. Gardner, H. et al. 2001. The empirical basis of good work: methodological considerations, Vol. 3. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Project Zero. Gerds, P. 1995. Berufsschullehrerausbildung in den Bahnen des o¨ ffentlichen Dienstrechts— Hemmnisse für schulische Innovationen. In: Dybowski, G.; Pütz, H.; Rauner, F., eds. Berufsbildung und Organisationsentwicklung, pp. 373–86. Bremen, Germany: Donat. Gerds, P. 2001. Arbeitsprozesswissen für Berufspädagogen. Bremen. [Unpublished manuscript prepared for the EU Project ‘Euroframe’.]

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Grollmann, P. 2005. Berufspädagogen im internationalen Vergleich: eine empirische Studie anhand ausgewählter Fälle aus den USA, Dänemark und Deutschland. Bielefeld, Germany: Bertelsmann. Grollmann, P.; Rauner, F. 2006. International perspectives on teachers and trainers in technical and vocational education. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Hargreaves, A. 1997. Cultures of teaching and educational change. In: Biddle, B.J.; Good, T.L.; Goodson, I., eds. International handbook of teachers and teaching, Vol. 2, pp. 1297–319. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Holling, E.; Bammé, A. 1982. Die Alltagswirklichkeit des Berufsschullehrers. Frankfurt am Main, Germany/New York, NY: Campus. Hopkins, D.; Stern, D. 1996. Quality teachers, quality schools: international perspectives and policy implications. Teaching and teacher education, vol. 12, no. 5, pp. 501–17. International Labour Organization. 1964. Training vocational teachers. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. Klafki, W. 1964. Das pädagogische Problem des Elementaren und die Theorie der kategorialen Bildung, 4. durchges. Aufl. ed. Weinheim, Germany: Beltz. Klafki, W. 1985. Neue Studien zur Bildungstheorie und Didaktik: Beiträge zur kritischkonstruktiven Didaktik. Weinheim, Germany: Beltz. Klafki, W. 1996. Neue Studien zur Bildungstheorie und Didaktik: zeitgemäße Allgemeinbildung und kritisch-konstruktive Didaktik, 5. unveränd. Aufl. ed. Weinheim, Germany: Beltz. Kurz, S. 2002. Die Entwicklung berufsbildender Schulen zu beruflichen Kompetenzzentren, Vol. 41. Bremen, Germany: ITB. Lempert, W. 1962. Der Gewerbelehrer: eine soziologische Leitstudie. Stuttgart, Germany: Ferdinand Enke Verlag. Leney, T.; The Lisbon-to-Copenhagen-to-Maastricht Consortium Partners. 2005. Achieving the Lisbon goal: the contribution of VET. London: QCA [and elsewhere]. Lipsmeier, A. 2001a. Internationale Aspekte der Lehrerbildung für berufliche Schulen. Zeitschrift für Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik, vol. 97, no. 2, pp. 186–95. Lipsmeier, A. 2001b. Internationale Trends in der Curriculumentwicklung für die Berufsausbildung und in der Lehrerausbildung für diesen Bereich. In: Fischer, M. et al., eds. Gestalten statt Anpassen in Arbeit, Technik und Beruf: Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Felix Rauner. Bielefeld, Germany: Bertelsmann. McLaughlin, M.W.; Talbert, J.E. 2001. Professional communities and the work of high-school teaching. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Mieg, H. 2003. Professionelle Leistung—professional performance: Positionen der Professionssoziologie. Konstanz, Germany: UVK-Verl.-Ges. Nieuwenhuis, L.F.M. 2003. Prepared? New demands for preparing VET-colleges for lifelong learning. Lifelong learning in Europe, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 62–69. Oevermann, U. 1996. Skizze einer revidierten Theorie professionalisierten Handelns. In: Combe, A.; Helsper, W., eds. Pädagogische Professionalität: Untersuchungen zum Typus pädagogischen Handelns, pp. 70–182. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp. Oevermann, U. 2003. Brauchen wir heute noch eine gesetzliche Schulpflicht und welches wären die Vorzüge ihrer Abschaffung? Pädagogische Korrespondenz, vol. 30, pp. 54–70. Rauner, F. 1999. School-to-work transition: the example of Germany. In: Stern, D.; Wagner, D.A., eds. International perspectives on the school-to-work transition, pp. 237–72. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press Inc. Rosenbaum, J.E. 2002. Beyond empty promises: policies to improve transitions into college and jobs. Washington, DC: United States Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education. Rosenfeld, S.A. 1998a. Community college/cluster connections: specialization and competitiveness in the U.S. and Europe. New York, NY: Columbia University, Community College Research Centre. Rosenfeld, S.A. 1998b. Technical colleges, technology deployment, and regional development. (Paper presented at the International Conference ‘Building Competitive Regional Economies:


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Up-Grading Knowledge and Diffusing Technology to Small Firms’, Modena, Italy, May 1998.) Santema, M. 1997. Regional development and the tasks of vocational education and training professionals. Journal of European industrial training, vol. 21, nos. 6/7, pp. 229–37. Schriewer, J. 1986. Intermediale Instanzen, Selbstverwaltung und berufliche Ausbildungsstrukturen im historischen Vergleich. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, vol. 32, pp. 69–89. Shulman, L.S. 1986. Those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching. Educational researcher, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 3–13. Terhart, E. 1990. Professionen in Organisationen: Institutionelle Bedingungsfaktoren der Entwicklung von Professionswissen. In: Alisch, L.-M.; Baumert, J.; Beck, K., eds. Professionswissen und Professionalisierung, pp. 151–70. Braunschweig, Germany: Colmsee. Troger, V.; Hörner, W. 2006. Teachers of technical and vocational education in France. In: Grollmann, P.; Rauner, F., eds. International perspectives on teachers and trainers in technical and vocational education. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. UNESCO. 1973. Technical and vocational teacher education and training. Bristol, UK: John Wright & Son Ltd. UNESCO. Section for Technical and Vocational Education. 1997. Training of teachers/trainers in technical and vocational education. Paris: UNESCO. United TVET Network on Innovation and Professional Development. 2005. Welcome to UNIP. <www.unip-net.org>


Chapter VIII.3

Teachers, Instructors and Trainers: An Australian Focus Erica Smith

1 Introduction In Australia, the workforce in technical and vocational education and training (TVET) as compared to that in other sectors of education is not easy to describe or analyse. TVET practitioners work in a variety of institutions, locations and roles, and do not necessarily see themselves as a coherent body of professionals. This diversity makes it difficult to generalize about practitioners and, more importantly, for governments and practitioners’ employers to devise policies and practices that address their required qualifications and professional development. Arrangements among countries vary depending upon the way in which the TVET system is organized, but in general there is some commonality in the ways in which teachers, instructors and trainers can be classified. One way is by their working context (which we may call ‘site of training practice’) and another is by the extent to which the training they deliver is involved in some way with government-accredited qualifications (which we may call ‘formality of training’). A third way is by the extent to which training is a full part of the individual’s career (which we may call ‘role focus of trainer’). This chapter uses Australia as a case study to examine TVET teachers, trainers and instructors and the ways in which their skills are developed and certified, using these classifications as an organizing framework.

2 The Australian Context for Formal TVET The past fifteen years have seen significant changes to the nature and operation of the TVET sector or, as it is more usually known in Australia, the vocational education and training (VET) sector. The Australian VET sector has grown considerably over the past decade, from 1.2 million participants in 1995 to 1.7 million in 2003 (NCVER, 2004) with a slight decline to 1.6 million in 2004 (NCVER, 2005). Substantial changes in the system, known as training reforms, over the past fifteen years (Smith & Keating, 2003) have improved national consistency of qualifications and made competency-based training the norm. These changes have been accompanied R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VIII.3, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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by intensive marketing of VET qualifications to industry and considerable government investment in the system, including funding for some work-based delivery by enterprises (Smith et al., 2005). To a certain extent, there has also been a movement away from a strong focus on up-front and entry-level training to an increased emphasis on in-service training for existing workers. Central to the reforms has been a consolidation of thousands of existing state-based qualifications into a national system of around eighty competency-based ‘training packages’, each package containing a number of qualifications at different levels. Such qualifications, and the competency standards of which they are composed, are known as ‘nationally recognized training’. A strict quality control system, the Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF), was introduced in 2002 to monitor all organizations delivering nationally-recognized training. From 1994 until 2005, the VET system was overseen by the Australian National Training Authority (ANTA), although state and territory systems actually managed training delivery processes. In mid-2005 ANTA was disbanded and its functions subsumed under the federal Department of Education, Science and Training. In terms of provision of VET, there has been a movement away from a near monopoly by the Technical and Further Education System (TAFE), the public provider, to one in which over 4,000 registered training organizations (RTOs) exist (Smith & Keating, 2003).1 Private RTOs can access government funding for certain programmes, particularly, but not only, for training of apprentices and trainees. There is therefore a shift in the balance of public funding from public to private training providers. Some private RTOs are not-for-profit; they may, for example, be local adult and community education (ACE) colleges which offer formal VET qualifications alongside hobby courses or access courses for people returning to study, or from disadvantaged backgrounds. Firms can become RTOs and award qualifications to their workers themselves, or they may work in partnership with TAFE or another RTO. Around 200 companies have become what is known as ‘enterprise RTOs’, able to deliver and award national qualifications; these include some of the largest employers in Australia such as Coles-Myer, the largest retail chain, and McDonalds Australia, the fast-food chain. Much government funding for VET relates to the apprenticeship system. There are almost 400,000 apprentices and trainees in training in Australia (Walters, 2003), of whom a proportion are newly-recruited workers including school-leavers, but of whom a large number are existing workers who have been offered the opportunity to gain an employment-based qualification through in-service training, often on-thejob with no day release to college.

3 VET Practitioners The previous section outlined the range and diversity of VET practice, together with substantial changes that have taken place in the sector over the past fifteen years. It is not surprising that these factors have influenced both the nature of VET practitioners and their qualifications and training.

VIII.3 Teachers, Instructors and Trainers: An Australian Focus

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It is difficult to establish the size of the teaching workforce in formal VET, but it is thought that there are around 40,000 full-time TAFE teachers and perhaps 300,000 other people involved in VET teaching and training (Guthrie, 2003). The larger figure involves assessors and others involved in workplace delivery of VET, for whom training might only be a small part of their job, as well as part-time TAFE teachers. TAFE systems are administered by each of Australia’s eight state and territory governments, so the nature and conditions of teachers’ work vary quite widely.

3.1 Site of Training Practice In Australia, VET practitioners may work in a range of contexts, which include the following (arranged in what might be considered the order of ‘closeness to industry’):

r r r r r

trainers in firms or non-profit/government enterprises; trainers in industry skill centres; trainers working for private consultancy firms or employer associations; trainers in public or private technical or further education colleges; VET teachers in secondary schools.

In firms or other enterprises, people work in a variety of training roles. These may range from those who coach people on-the-job (Harris, Simons & Bone, 2000) to those who are responsible for human-resource development (HRD) functions for large organizations. This type of VET practitioner may have one of a variety of job titles, such as training officer, HRD officer or learning and development manager. Industry skill-centres offer off-the-job training to a range of firms in an industry area, as do private consultancy firms or employer associations. Sometimes, skill centres are managed by employer associations. Trainers in these types of companies may spend much of their time delivering face-to-face training or may undertake other roles as well. The largest number of VET practitioners is employed by TAFE—the public further education system—and comprises a core of full-time teachers augmented by a considerable number of part-time staff who generally teach as an addition to their ‘day’ jobs in trades and professions. For example, the teachers may be plumbers or accountants who teach plumbing or accounting in the evening. Students who are studying as apprentices attend in the daytime, so are generally taught by full-time teachers. There are also some part-timers whose only work is in TAFE. This traditional pattern of TAFE teaching persists, although there has been an extension of casual and temporary contract staff (Forward, 2004). The TAFE workforce is relatively old, with many teachers in their 40s and 50s. TAFE is becoming increasingly feminized, with many female teachers being appointed to teach relatively new teaching areas such as hospitality, retail and community services, while the more traditional TAFE areas such as engineering and construction, where most of the teachers are male, are in relative—although not absolute—decline (Guthrie, 2003).

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Part-time and casual VET teachers are more likely to be female than male, as in the workforce as a whole (Harris et al., 2001). In the private sector, with over 4,000 RTOs now registered—of whom only a few hundred are in the public sector—the non-TAFE VET workforce is much larger than it used to be. Non-TAFE practitioners have some different characteristics from TAFE teachers: for example, private RTOs often recruit younger staff early in their careers who are willing to accept a relatively low rate of pay (Guthrie, 2003). These practitioners are more likely to be involved in selling training to companies, in assessment and in administrative work rather than in teaching. This is because the most typical client group for non-TAFE RTOs is on-the-job or work-based trainees. With these students, teachers travel to the trainee organization’s premises to plan training and assess the trainee’s performance rather than the student attending the RTO for face-to-face teaching. This makes the job quite different from that of the traditional TAFE teacher, who is more likely to deliver training to a group of students in a classroom or workshop, although TAFE teachers are increasingly involved in such ‘non-standard’ work. Moreover, non-TAFE RTOs are heavy users of nationally developed learning materials in their teaching and assessment; so their staff are less likely than TAFE teachers to be involved in programming or writing learning materials. The rapid growth of VET in schools (Polesol et al., 2004) has led to many schoolteachers becoming qualified to deliver accredited VET qualifications through the curriculum based on ‘training packages’. Teachers of VET in secondary schools are, however, outside the scope of this chapter, which focuses only on the VET sector. The qualifications of VET teachers in schools fall in a complex arena (Green, 2004), which incorporates an added level of regulatory requirements to do with state and territory school-teacher accreditation bodies. Many teachers of VET in schools teach traditional school subjects as well as VET subjects, and teachers of VET in schools generally identify themselves as school-teachers rather than as VET teachers. Thus, these teachers are quite different from VET teachers and are best discussed separately.

3.2 Formality of Training Another way of looking at VET practitioners is to consider the extent to which they are involved in delivering formal qualifications. In Australia, this normally means whether they are delivering qualifications from ‘training packages’ or, to a lesser extent, some other nationally recognized qualifications that are outside the training-package system. Practitioners who work for an RTO, whether TAFE or a private RTO, are likely to spend most of their time delivering and/or assessing formal qualifications, or sometimes short courses that are called ‘statements of attainment’ and consist of single or multiple units of competency. Such practitioners need a particular skill set that relates to competency-based training and assessment, and requires compliance with the Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF). Teachers may also be involved with other formal accredited courses, such as those


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relating to proprietary training for computer software, for example, and this may require additional qualifications or certification for the teachers. However, particularly in ACE providers, there are many teachers who are involved in the delivery of courses that do not have a qualification outcome. Traditionally, training in enterprises, skill centres and the like has not involved formality; while companies have offered off-the-job training courses or sent employees to courses offered externally, courses did not normally attract qualifications and the performance of trainees was not formally assessed. With the increasing adoption of nationally recognized training in enterprises, however, this has changed. Sometimes trainers in enterprises deliver such training, or sometimes they work closely with other RTOs who deliver the training, with staff in the enterprise perhaps assisting with assessment (Smith et al., 2005). These developments have led to a new breed of enterprise training staff, very familiar with the VET system, and who know how to use it to the benefit of their organizations (Chappell & Johnston, 2003). As enterprises have increased their use of nationally-recognized training and their involvement with the VET system, they have also learned how this form of training can be integrated more effectively with recruitment, selection, career progression and organization change processes (Smith et al., 2005). It is the administration of the integration of enterprise-level training with the national training system that is becoming the unique feature of enterprise-based training staff in Australia. However there are still companies and therefore training staff who are not closely engaged with the national training system, and these practitioners would identify more closely with ‘traditional HRD’ as a field of practice (Koornheef, Oostvogel & Poell, 2005).

3.3 Role Focus of Trainer In many cases TVET practitioners have roles apart from their training roles. In firms they may have roles in other fields of activity within the human resourcemanagement function, working as a manager or supervisor, or simply performing some training activities while contributing mainly as an operational or shop-floor worker. Even staff who identify primarily as trainers may spend much of their time planning or brokering training rather than delivering training. In some RTO contexts, the RTO is part of a fuller range of services within which the practitioner works. For example, many not-for-profit RTOs (as well as some for-profit RTOs) offer employment services or counselling services to clients, particularly disadvantaged clients, as well as providing training. This has happened since the Australian federal government has progressively over the past two decades put out many such services to tender. A prime example of this type of RTO is Mission Australia,2 which delivers over 100 national qualifications in every state and territory, as well as non-accredited training. Its staff may move between employment services and training activities.

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Even in those RTOs that are primarily training providers, there are large numbers of VET practitioners who have a number of roles as individuals. Trainers in public and private RTOs may only be part-time. They may spend much of their working week in industry, or may work across a range of RTOs. Their commitment to each RTO and their understanding of organizational culture and norms may be quite low, and they may be disadvantaged in terms of access to staff development activities.

4 Common Challenges in Australian VET Practice While the VET workforce is diverse, there are some common challenges that all practitioners are facing; as well as groups of challenges particular to certain types of practitioners. A challenge related to all training is the increasing use of flexible delivery in both institutional and enterprise settings. E-learning is the most obvious example, although delivery may be flexible in time or place as well as mode (Smith & Keating, 2003, p. 129). Research has shown (e.g. Brennan, 2003) that e-learning does not suit all learners, and many providers, both in enterprises and in RTOs, are reasonably cautious about the extent to which they use it; however, in such a large country like Australia with a small population, there are obvious advantages to learning methods that do not rely on teacher and student being at the same location at the same time. An example of an enterprise that uses e-learning extensively, but not at a sophisticated level is Coles-Myer.3 This company uses on-line recruitment and selection processes which have recently extended to on-line induction modules, as well as, for example, some skills training which can be delivered to check-out operators at their check-outs. Coles-Myer’s uptake of such systems was preceded by a study into attitudes of managers and employees (Elkner, 2001). In the public domain, TAFE in New South Wales has a delivery unit—the Open Education and Training Network (OTEN)4 —which, over the past decade, has been increasingly moving from traditional distance learning materials to e-learning. VET practitioners involved with such developments have needed to develop new skills, both in the technological and pedagogical field. A national professional development programme, Learnscope,5 has been running for nearly ten years to assist with this process. The remainder of the challenges discussed in this section relate primarily to nationally-recognized training and may be faced by practitioners involved with the national VET system working either in RTOs or in enterprise settings. Many practitioners have found it difficult moving to a competency-based system. VET has always been closely linked to industry, but before the adoption of competency-based training (CBT) in the late 1980s as the future direction of the VET system, VET training was not necessarily outcomes-focused. A shift to CBT meant that the emphasis moved from curriculum inputs to outcomes that are expressed in student competency. Assessment became as important as teaching or training. Many teachers, particularly in TAFE, resisted these changes (Smith &


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Keating, 2003). While CBT has now become accepted as the norm, many practitioners still experience difficulty in implementing CBT and working with ‘training packages’. The implementation of the AQTF, introduced in 2002 to ensure quality in the VET system, created challenges for both RTOs and for the teachers working in them. RTOs were required to document a number of procedures and practices, including the teaching and assessment strategies used in their courses (ANTA, 2005). This created much concern although the majority of reputable training providers seemed to welcome the need to examine and improve their processes; however, individual practitioners have sometimes experienced the change as burdensome (Brennan & Smith, 2002; Grace, 2005). The use of ‘training packages’ in enterprises has led to challenges both for the enterprises and for RTOs working in partnership with them. Enterprise practitioners have needed to consider the issue of AQTF compliance, discussed in the previous paragraph. Practitioners in RTOs working with enterprises have needed to negotiate with enterprise issues, such as the extent of customization that enterprises would like to see in national ‘training packages’ (Callan & Ashworth, 2004), and, where traineeships are delivered on the job, the learning opportunities that are available for trainees (Wood, 2004) so that trainees’ learning can be, as Unwin and Fuller (2003) describe it in the English context, expansive rather than restricted.

5 Qualifications and Professional Development for VET Practitioners The professional development of teachers and trainers in the VET sector is a complex matter. As discussed above, there are many different types of settings in which they work, and the educational qualifications required to work in those settings vary greatly. As well as their teaching or training qualifications, VET practitioners working within the formal system must have a qualification in the vocational area in which they teach. It cannot therefore be assumed—as it can, for example, for school-teachers—that all practitioners have the same base level of qualification. For this reason, there is less of a clear-cut division between ‘initial teacher education’ and ‘continuing development’ than there is for school-teachers: a VET practitioner undertaking an initial course in VET may already have many years’ experience as a VET teacher.

5.1 ‘Up-Front’ Teacher Training for VET Staff Traditionally, universities have offered initial teacher training for full-time TAFE teachers; initially this consisted of diplomas and later full degrees, or graduate diplomas for teachers who were already graduates in another discipline, such as

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management or social work. All new TAFE full-time teachers, unless they were already trained teachers, would undergo this teacher training. Commonly, similar courses were offered for instructors in the armed services or other public-sector training roles. This ‘front-end’ training was augmented by short staff-development courses in specific skills or issues. Generally, staff development was overseen by central staff-training units in TAFE systems. Prior to the early 1990s, part-time TAFE teachers were often offered a variety of short courses in instructional techniques. For example, New South Wales TAFE offered the Basic Methods of Instruction (BMI) course, and other providers offered similar short courses to their teachers. Industry trainers sometimes studied humanresource management or human-resource development at university, or were sent by their employers on short ‘train-the-trainer’-styled courses. Since the mid-1990s the scene has changed quite considerably. Few TAFE teachers are now sponsored by their employers to undertake full teacher-training courses—New South Wales TAFE being a notable exception. There have been three major reasons for this. The first is that budgetary constraints caused TAFE systems to consider whether they could actually afford to sponsor their teachers through teacher-training courses. The major cost of the sponsorship has been not the course fees but the fact that sponsored teachers have traditionally been released from teaching duties, and casual teachers have needed to be employed to replace them. The second reason is that, with increased autonomy being accorded to TAFE institutes in every state and territory, decisions about teacher training are now made at the institute level and sometimes at department level. Some institutes might be able to afford to send their teachers to teacher training, or might value such education more highly, while others might not. The third reason is that there is now an alternative, albeit lower-level, qualification, the Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training, which was introduced in 1998 and has recently been superseded by the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. The AQTF has cemented the place of this qualification as a requirement to teach in accredited VET courses, so that now more parity exists between part-time teachers, private RTO staff, workplace trainers and full-time TAFE teachers. For VET providers, then, it is easy and cheap to insist on a Certificate IV as a pre-entry qualification, and there is apparent legitimacy in so doing. The qualification has therefore become not only the minimum qualification required to teach in VET, but in some cases also the maximum required (Harris et al., 2001). However, the qualification is extremely problematic and some of the issues associated with the Certificate IV are discussed in the next section.

5.2 Certificate IV Qualifications for VET Practitioners During the early 1990s, competency standards were developed in Australia for workplace training and assessing. The original workplace-trainer standards divided workplace trainers into two categories: Category 1 trainers were considered to be those who occasionally undertook training tasks as part of their salaried work; Category 2 trainers had training as their main earning activity. The standards for


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Category 2 trainers were, therefore, more rigorous and detailed than those for Category 1. A Certificate IV in workplace training met the Category 2 standards (NAWT, 2001). In addition, workplace assessor standards were developed in 1993. Training for workplace assessors was aimed primarily at people who carried out assessment in the workplace, generally as part of formal training programmes, but was sometimes undertaken also by people who taught in VET institutions. In the second half of the 1990s, these standards were gathered together into the Training Package in Assessment and Workplace Training, endorsed in 1998. Although the title of the package suggests that it is designed for people who work in a workplace rather than an institutional setting, the Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training that was one of the qualifications in the new training package became widely adopted in TAFE colleges and other RTOs. There were some serious problems with the training package itself, its delivery and its application. The following list of problems is partly based upon the report of Stage 1 of the training package review (NAWT, 2001).

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Content of the Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training. The units of competence were written in words that reflected the work of workplace trainers and not teachers in an RTO setting. They contained no reference to learning theory or teaching approaches. It has been noted that teachers who only have a Certificate IV have a very different approach to teaching from those who have a degree-level qualification (Lowrie, Smith & Hill, 1999). Delivery of the qualification. The Certificate IV was notorious among training package qualifications for the poor quality of delivery. Many RTOs delivered this qualification in well below the nominal hours (one-weekend courses were not unknown) and full recognition of prior learning (RPL) was commonly granted in the qualification. RTOs often awarded the qualification to their own staff, to meet AQTF requirements, which could be interpreted as a potential conflict of interest. Application of the qualification. While the Certificate IV may have been suitable for those who perform a limited range of teaching and assessment tasks in a limited range of settings, a problem is that it has been viewed, or at least utilized, as though it was suitable for the full range of VET teaching activities.

Dissatisfaction with the Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training has been well documented (e.g. NAWT, 2001) and the subject of much discussion among VET personnel. State TAFE systems were worried about the drop in teaching standards which could ensue if their teaching workforce came to consist predominantly of people with only a Certificate IV-level teaching qualification. But states were also concerned about keeping costs of teacher development down. Most of them, therefore, looked at options where teacher training could be delivered at least partly in-house rather than at universities. Teachers’ unions, however, prefer teachers to obtain qualifications outside their own systems, partly to contain the power which employers have over teaching staff and partly to ensure that teachers gain a much broader view of VET and have transferable skills.

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5.3 The New Training and Assessment Training Package The review of the Training Package in Assessment and Workplace Training was a lengthy process, taking place between 1999 and 2004, and was managed by National Assessors and Workplace Trainers (NAWT), the national body overseeing trainer qualifications which is now part of the Business Services Skills Council, Innovation and Business Skills Australia.6 The review involved wide-ranging and successive consultation across Australia with various stakeholders. The revised training package was endorsed in late 2004, and has a new name—training and assessment—to reflect an increased emphasis upon teaching rather than assessment. There are a number of major changes embodied in the new Certificate IV qualification:

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It is a ‘bigger’ qualification with fourteen rather than eight units of competency; Greater emphasis upon pedagogical theory; Some provision for specialization and electives; and Tightening of regulation about assessment of the units of competency, ensuring higher-quality graduates.

The new Certificate IV has twelve core units and two electives. It is intended that it should take about 300 hours to deliver. The core units are:


Work effectively in VET; Foster and promote an inclusive learning culture; Ensure a healthy and safe learning environment; Use training packages to meet client needs; Design and develop learning programmes; Plan and organize group-based delivery; Facilitate work-based learning; Facilitate individual learning; Plan and organize assessment; Assess competence; Develop assessment tools; and Participate in assessment validation.

The proposed revisions are likely to go some way to meeting various shortcomings of the package, but criticisms will remain. There is little mechanism within the training-package framework to address problems of low-quality delivery practices. A recent study of the old Certificate IV (Simons, Harris & Smith, 2006) indicated substantial knowledge gaps among those delivering the qualification, and in the theory base acquired by learners enrolled in the qualification, which indicated the need for careful scrutiny of the quality of delivery. Also, there remains the problem that the Certificate IV could be regarded as a sufficient (rather than base-level) qualification for VET teachers. A further difficulty has been transition arrangements, especially the desire of people with the old Certificate IV (of whom there are a great number) to upgrade to the new qualification. The practices that are emerging show that many people wish to gain the new qualification through recognition of


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prior learning rather than through new learning, despite the radically different nature of the new qualification—and unfortunately there are many RTOs willing to grant this wish! Universities offering VET teacher training, of which there are around twenty, have been working in a consultative way (Brennan-Kemmis & Smith, 2004) to manage articulation into university teacher-training qualifications, as well as embedding of the qualification within university awards, but this process has not been straightforward. For example, it is difficult (although not impossible) to reconcile VET-sector approaches to assessment with university expectations and regulations (Bush & Smith, 2004).

5.4 Continuing Education and Staff Development Beyond the acquisition of qualifications, further staff development for VET teachers and trainers can take place at one or more of the following levels: 1. National level: because of the importance of skill formation of the workforce to the nation, there is a strong impetus for a national perspective to VET teachers’ and trainers’ development. 2. State level: state training authorities have an interest in ensuring that VET practitioners deliver high-quality training. 3. Provider level: Most VET providers offer staff development of some sort. When we look at TAFE systems, this can be on a very large scale. 5.4.1 National-Level Staff Development During the past fifteen years there has been a succession of national programmes that have operated in a similar way; national funding is made available to groups of VET practitioners for specific types of staff development activities. The most important national initiative has been the ‘Framing the Future’ programme, now entitled ‘Reframing the Future’.7 This programme was given a large annual budget by the Australian National Training Authority and is now funded by the Department of Education, Science and Training. Framing the Future began by funding action-learning groups primarily to assist with the introduction of training packages, but the revised version post-2000 has been much broader and involves programmes for managers as well as practitioners. The 2005 programme has five areas of activity, which change each year. Programmes that are funded are required to submit summaries of their activities, which are published on the website. 5.4.2 State-Level Staff Development State training authorities (STAs) offer short staff-development programmes, which are open to staff from any type of RTO. States have been increasingly concerned with helping RTO staff, particularly those from non-TAFE providers, to deliver good-quality training and assessment and to cope with changes in the VET system.

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Such staff development programmes recognize STAs’ responsibilities in relation to quality, and the fact that private RTOs are much more likely than TAFE systems to expect teachers to join them with all their skills ready-made rather than having to offer training for them (Harris et al., 2001). Many STAs offered extensive training programmes around the time of the introduction of the AQTF; and some states, for example South Australia, offer regular briefing sessions which RTOs can attend to keep up with VET development. In addition, training may be offered in specific topics related to training and assessment. 5.4.3 Provider-Level Staff Development Staff development usually occurs as a result of the need for new skills or new approaches to teachers’ and trainers’ work. A study of staff development in VET found that most stakeholders believed that half of VET teachers did not have most of the skills and knowledge that they identified as being important in the near future (Harris et al., 2001). Part-time, older and casual staff were perceived to possess the necessary skills and knowledge to a lesser extent than were full-time and younger staff (Harris et al., 2001, p. vii). A special need for VET teachers, as compared, for instance, to school-teachers, is to keep up to date with trends in the industry for which they prepare students. Teachers need to find out what new technology is being used in their industry, what new skills are emerging and how the organization of work is changing. Maintaining technical currency is an important driver for staff development (Holland & Holland, 1998) and has become particularly important both with the implementation of the AQTF, which contains requirements about vocational competency, and with the introduction of new training-package qualifications which people have not taught before. Most VET providers have some type of ‘return-to-industry’ scheme, although available opportunities are not always well-utilized. The requirement for VET teachers to search for ‘business’ out in industry has not yet been systematically addressed by many TAFE providers: in some TAFE systems this activity is officially left to specialized consulting staff, although individual teachers may already be carrying out the activity, while private RTOs are generally more focused on this sort of activity. Some TAFE systems maintain central staff development units, whilst others have decentralized this function to institutes or colleges. There is normally, however, some sort of central unit which sets directions and policy. Private RTOs utilize a range of staff-development processes and all RTOs are required, through the AQTF, to document the ways in which they develop their teaching and training staff.

5.5 Industry Trainers With the major national focus upon formal training that is part of the VET system, industry trainers have become sidelined. While the new Certificate IV qualification has substantial applicability to industry-trainers delivering national qualifications,


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it is not of great relevance to trainers who are outside the VET system. Comparison of human-resource development competencies, such as that developed by the American Society for Training and Development (Rothwell, Sanders & Soper, 1999), reveals a large gap between the field of practice implied by these competencies and those available through the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. The process of review of the training package was dominated by VET-sector personnel and hence industry training as a field of practice was not really considered (Smith, 2005). While the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment is nevertheless likely to be a requirement for most industry training jobs, in looking for more highly-qualified staff, enterprises are likely to look at business or humanresource management qualifications than higher-level VET qualifications (Smith, 2005).

6 Final Commentary This chapter has examined the nature of VET teachers, trainers and instructors in Australia and shown that they are a very diverse collection of practitioners. They vary in the site of their training practice, the extent to which they are involved with the formal VET system, and the degree to which training is the focus of their working week. Because of the diversity of working practices, there has not been, and probably cannot be, universal agreement on the skills needed for such work nor the qualifications that are required for practitioners. The competency-based qualification, the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, while an improvement on its predecessor, is nevertheless flawed. Training providers and enterprises that recruit trainers may find that their employees are not as skilled as they would like. Hence many practitioners seek university-level qualifications. Despite new quality regulations in the VET system, it is ultimately the responsibility of the teachers, trainers and instructors themselves to maintain their instructional and technical capabilities and to seek further training, especially when changes in the VET system require extra skills from practitioners. The quality of the VET system depends upon the quality of teachers, trainers and instructors, and hence relies heavily on the professionalism of these individuals.

Notes 1. Altogether, 4,214 RTOs were recorded in January 2006 on the National Training Information Service at <www.ntis.gov.au> 2. Mission Australia is an organization which was originally, and remains, a charity, but which now provides many employment and training services, see: <www.missionaustralia.com.au> 3. In 2006, there were over 2,500 Coles-Meyer outlets in Australia for its various brand names, employing 170,000 people, see <www.colesmyer.com> 4. OTEN uses only flexible delivery for its 37,000 students: <www.oten.edu.au>

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5. <www.flexiblelearning.net.au> 6. <www.ibsa.org.au> 7. The Reframing the Future website provides information about all programmes, as well as descriptions and evaluations of them:

References Australian National Training Authority. 2005. Standards for registered training organisations, 2nd ed. Melbourne, Australia: ANTA. Brennan, R. 2003. One size doesn’t fit all: pedagogy in the online environment. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER. Brennan, R.; Smith, E. 2002. AQTF: impact of provisions relating to teaching and teacher qualifications. Australian vocational education review, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 8–23. Brennan-Kemmis, R.; Smith, E. 2004. Report of workshop: implementing the training and assessment training package across the sectors. Melbourne, Australia: AVTEC. <education.curtin.edu.au/avtec/meetings/workshop2004-rept.html> Bush, A.; Smith, E. 2004. Articulation and embedding. (Paper presented at the twelfth Annual International Conference on Post-Compulsory Education and Training, Griffith University Centre for Learning Research, Surfers Paradise, Australia, 6–9 December 2004.) Callan, V.; Ashworth, P. 2004. Working together: industry and VET provider training partnerships. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER. Chappell, C.; Johnston, R. 2003. Changing work: changing roles for vocational education and training teachers and trainers. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER. Elkner, B. 2001. Building flexAbility, getting connected: measuring e-readiness at Coles Supermarkets. TAFE frontiers and VISTA forum. Melbourne, Australia: TAFE Frontiers. Forward, P. 2004. Profession and identity. Australian TAFE teacher, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 16–17. Grace, L. 2005. Training packages and the AQTF: freedom to move or components of a compliance-driven straitjacket? (Paper presented at the eighth Australian VET Research Association (AVETRA) Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 13–15 April 2005.) Green, A. 2004. Bridging two worlds: an alternative pathway to teaching. (Paper presented at the Forum for the Advancement of Continuing Education Conference, University of Stirling, United Kingdom, 2–4 July 2004.) Guthrie, H. 2003. VET managers’ and practitioners’ work: how is it changing? (Kit compiled for AVETRA conference workshop, Sydney, Australia, 9–11 April 2003.) Harris, R.; Simons, M.; Bone, J. 2000. More than meets the eye? Rethinking the role of workplace trainer. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER. Harris, R. et al. 2001. The changing role of staff development for teachers and trainers in vocational education and training. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER. Holland, A.; Holland, L. 1998. Maintaining the technical currency of vocational educators. (Paper presented to the European Educational Research Association Conference, Ljubljana, Slovenia, September 1998.) Koornheef, M.; Oostvogel, K.; Poell, R. 2005. Between ideal and tradition: the roles of HRD practitioners in South Australian organisations. Journal of European industrial training, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 356–68. Lowrie, T.; Smith, E.; Hill, D. 1999. Competency-based training: a staff development perspective. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER. National Assessors and Workplace Trainers—NAWT. 2001. Review of the Training Package for Assessment and Workplace Training, Final Report Stage 1. Melbourne, Australia: ANTA. National Centre for Vocational Education Research. 2004. Australian VET statistics: students and courses, 2003. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER.


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National Centre for Vocational Education Research. 2005. Pocket guide: Australian VET statistics 2004. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER. Polesol, J. et al. 2004. VET in schools: a post-compulsory perspective. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER. Rothwell, W.; Sanders, E.; Soper, J. 1999. ASTD models for workplace learning and performance: roles, competencies and outputs. Alexandria, VA: ASTD. Simons, M.; Harris, R.; Smith, E. 2006. The Certificate IV in assessment and workplace training: understanding learners and learning. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER. Smith, E. 2005. Getting down and dirty down under: battling over trainer qualifications in Australia. (Paper presented at the sixth International Conference on HRD Research and Practice across Europe, Leeds Metropolitan University, United Kingdom, 25–27 May 2005.) Smith, E.; Keating, J. 2003. From training reform to training packages. Tuggerah Lakes, Australia: Social Science Press. Smith, E. et al. 2005. Enterprises’ commitment to nationally recognised training for existing workers. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER. Unwin, L.; Fuller, A. 2003. Expanding learning in the workplace. Leicester, UK: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education. Wood, S. 2004. Fully on-the-job training: experiences and steps ahead. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER. Walters, C. 2003. Keynote address to the changing face of VET. (Paper presented to the sixth Annual Conference of the Australian VET Research Association, Sydney, Australia, 9–11 April 2003.)


Chapter VIII.4

TVET Teacher-Training Requirements in the Russian Federation Vasiliy P. Kosyrev, Petr F. Kubrushko and Andrei N. Kouznetsov

1 Introduction The qualifications and educational level of teachers and trainers are reflected in their professional activity. The training of Russian teachers of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is carried out in accordance with the various levels of professional activities: instructors with post-secondary training; professionals with higher qualifications (e.g. bachelor’s and master’s degrees); and professionals with doctoral degrees. The TVET structure includes institutions of primary, secondary and tertiary education, post-graduate education, and in-service institutions for retraining and further qualification. These types of TVET institutions require teachers, instructors, trainers, supervisors and professors with specific kinds of professional expertise. According to the data available in January 2006 (Kubrushko, 2006), in the Russian Federation (hereafter Russia) there were 6,026 primary and secondary TVET institutions, 338 in-service training and qualification advancement establishments and 1,386 higher learning institutions. Some 3,890 primary vocational training centres make up the bulk of TVET institutions in Russia. There is currently a crisis in the number of suitably qualified teachers in these institutions, with a little over 78.7% of teaching and administrative positions currently occupied, which means that there is a shortage of some 50,000 TVET professionals, including 32,000 trade instructors. In the year 2000, the TVET system lost over 22,800 managers and trainers to industry. Taking into account the fact that some 13.9% of those employed are part-time teachers, the true shortage of TVET professionals probably exceeds 70,000. This shortage is aggravated by the inadequate qualifications of those employed. On average, only some 88.2% of school principals and superintendents and 82.5% of teaching staff hold university degrees, and of these less than 20% have TVET as their major subject. Only 26.4% of trade instructors hold degrees, while 16.2% of instructors were found to be formally less qualified than their graduates! Our research revealed that TVET school principals and trainers are mostly professionals with engineering or other non-teacher qualifications, and they have no relevant teaching skills or psychological preparation required to carry out teaching successfully. It

R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VIII.4, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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is evident that the pedagogical component of teacher education has not received sufficient attention.

2 Professional and Pedagogical Education (PPE) In Russia, TVET staff are trained within a specialized system of professional and pedagogical education (PPE). PPE is aimed at the development of a professional capacity for efficient functioning in primary, secondary, higher and in-service training, and for carrying out all the necessary functions of a complex educational task. These characteristics make the PPE system different from conventional teacher training intended to supply general schools with teachers. PPE also differs from the engineering training system, which is aimed at training professionals for industry and services. Secondary PPE is carried out in accordance with eighteen minor subject fields within the TVET major, which is regulated by the State Educational Requirements issued in 1997 (Kubrushko, 2006). Graduates can serve as vocational trainers and junior college instructors. Higher (tertiary) PPE is carried out according to nineteen minor subject fields regulated by the State Educational Requirements issued in 2000 (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education, 2000). Graduates from higher PPE receive their university degree in TVET and can teach at all educational levels. The subjects taught at secondary and higher schools form part of the principle TVET majors corresponding to the List of Secondary TVET Fields for Russia (Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation, 8 December 1999, no. 1362) (Kubrushko, 2006). In 2002, Russian secondary and tertiary institutions issued some 1,700 TVET teachers with university degrees after five years of study and over 6,200 vocational education instructors with technical school diplomas. The latter are somewhat similar to bachelor degree graduates, but such graduates are not allowed to teach theoretical subjects and they mostly assist teachers in conducting laboratory classes and field training. Even if all of these nearly 8,000 graduates joined TVET schools, this would have covered only 19% of existing TVET vacancies and 30% of annual vacancies that became available due to the loss of TVET teachers. It is this shortage of trained TVET teachers that has obliged many vocational schools to employ unqualified professionals. At present, the Russian PPE system incorporates eighty-three tertiary and eightythree secondary schools. These include two specialized universities, eleven regular universities, eighteen technical universities, twenty agricultural universities and twenty-six teacher-training universities. In addition, vocational teachers are also trained in thirty-seven non-specialized colleges and training centres. The contents of PPE training are unique. PPE syllabi are based on an analysis of TVET teacher activity, which involves various professional fields. Three basic components make up the bulk of training: (a) specialized training (e.g. technical, biological, architectural, etc.); (b) vocational (trade) training; and (a) psychology and

VIII.4 TVET Teacher-Training Requirements in the Russian Federation

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teaching methods. These three fields are so finely integrated and co-ordinated that the course can be compared neither to a specialized technical field (such as engineering, medicine, agriculture, etc.), nor pure teacher training. These requirements are laid down in the State Educational Requirements for Secondary and Tertiary Schools (Zhuchenko, Romantsev & Tkachenko, 1999). This feature of PPE provides a solid basis for competitive training, and to a great extent it promotes the future job-market placement and mobility of PPE graduates and, through them, their TVET students. According to the State Educational Requirements, a graduate from the TVET teacher-training course should be ready to undertake the following activities (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education, 2000):

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TVET training: the teaching of general and special vocational subjects in various TVET institutions. Production and technological work: TVET teachers should be qualified as professionals who possess the competences required for the performance of particular job-related operations forming the contents of teaching. Methodological work: teachers are required to develop their own teaching aids and materials to meet the specific requirements of TVET training at a particular type and level of educational institution. Managerial and administrative activities: TVET teachers are expected to possess the skills of school administration and efficient resource management, inasmuch as these skills are required for class organization, curriculum development, career advancement and the utilization of often limited school resources. Research: the search for, careful selection, interpretation and skilful introduction into actual teaching practice of TVET related data; Moral educational: teachers are also responsible for the upbringing of their students and the fostering of personal characteristics (accuracy, leadership, industriousness, diligence, etc.) that would be required for graduates to successfully perform job-related tasks.

Since 1988, PPE has been integrated into a unified education scheme that is based on the close co-ordination and sequence of secondary and tertiary schooling. This embodies the concept of continuous mastery of teaching skills and educational theories by future TVET teachers, thus reducing both the time and effort required for teaching the standard syllabi. These integrated experiments are supplemented with more complex research in the co-ordination of primary (pre-professional, trade-oriented), secondary, tertiary and post-graduate TVET teacher training. However, the absence of the relevant legislation is understood to be a considerable limiting factor. This is particularly true concerning schools of different types and under the auspices of different ministries (Kubrushko, 2006). As will be indicated further on, continuous PPE is now based on rather contradictory legislation, which is particularly true regarding the contents and requirements of subject training and their adaptability for secondary and tertiary TVET training, which results in rather eclectic TVET teacher training in Russia and other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

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3 Eclectic TVET Teacher Training Today, there are further obligations on the professional competence of TVET teachers—their teaching ability being one of the most questioned areas. At the current advanced level of TVET, teachers and instructors are required to demonstrate adequate teaching competence. Those trainers who are considered to lack adequate mastery of educational theory and practice are deemed to be inefficient, leading to stress and discouragement among their students. As mentioned above, TVET psychological awareness and teacher training in most developed countries usually takes place at the university level. The required periods and fields of training are established according to the anticipated duties and responsibilities of graduates. However, there are other forms of TVET psychological and teacher training that are gaining in popularity today. These are mainly carried out through continuous education and professional re-training systems. This means that, apart from the PPE system, there are eclectic (non-specialized) TVET teachertraining schemes based on the primitive ‘additive principle’, i.e. subject (say, technical, biological, architectural, etc.) training supplemented by further teacher training, or vice versa. Another—and much more common—form of TVET teacher training is the so-called ‘on-the-job training’, where unskilled teachers are taught TVET educational procedures and start accumulating relevant experience through actual teaching practice. Among the advantages of this system is that senior and more experienced teachers can share their skills and methodological tools with young professionals. This form of training is very closely associated with the actual working situation in any given school. The disadvantages of this type of training include its eclectic and sporadic nature, its low level of educational and psychological theoretical background, and a certain level of uncertainty in terms of the professional teaching competence that most young teachers exhibit when in class. This form of training is also considered to be a barrier to the introduction of standardized TVET teacher-training requirements, as those teachers who are currently employed by the TVET system may actively resist the process of standardization. The introduction of up-to-date requirements leads to the inevitable questioning of professional competences already acquired by ‘experienced’ and locally ‘reputable’ teachers—and even teacher trainers. Thus, this on-the-job training may hardly be accepted as an efficient method. Part-time and/or short-term TVET teacher-training courses are increasingly offered by many universities. These courses are highly favoured by TVET professionals, as they mean that graduates have more flexible competences and still acquire the basic advantages of the regular (full-time) university professional training. Thousands of TVET teachers prefer taking summer or other seasonal training courses that build up and, in time, constitute the core of their professional—mainly educational and psychological—competence. The relevant experience of the European Union may be noted in this context. Member countries agreed on setting standards for psychological and teacher train-


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ing for TVET instructors. Engineering school teacher education and lifelong retraining and competence advancement are typical of this form of training. Particularly, it led to the establishment of a professional association, the International Society for Engineering Education (IGIP), which is now the most recognized institution in this field. Established in 1972 with UNESCO and UNIDO consultative status, IGIP brings together over sixty countries. Its activities are focused on the advancement of the educational competence of engineering school trainers, so as to meet the growing requirements of both the professional community and TVET students. IGIP monitors the performance of TVET teacher-training centres and, subsequently, accredits them; it co-ordinates and sponsors international research on TVET quality and curricular development, as well as inter-institutional professional consulting and the administration of TVET conferences (Kubrushko, 2006). IGIP-certified TVET teacher-training centres are being established in Russia too—typically based on well-established technical schools—and many TVET professionals are undertaking their in-service training courses there. The courses are typically flexible and TVET practice-relevant, and a module system and continuous education elements are employed. However, most of these schemes have proved to be rather ineffective compared to full-time PPE programmes, and they also require higher amounts of finance and time, apart from which the quality of such training courses is not always up to the required standards. Despite these disadvantages, some of the schemes are still running in full accordance with State requirements. These types of training are recommended under the current social and economic conditions where there is an evident shortage of qualified TVET trainers. This provides an opportunity to support the development of TVET systems in countries with transitional economies that are experiencing a shortage of teachers in vocational schools. It also facilitates the mobility of TVET professional, as well as their adaptability to job-market requirements.

4 Secondary PPE: Contradictions and Development Factors Modern PPE is heavily dependent on social and economic processes. The latter are understood to be those associated with the job market, chambers of commerce, private enterprise, a fragmentation of industries and loose administrative control over education, and so on. In other words, it consists of all of those phenomena that were not previously found under a centralized economy. This situation led to a certain confusion in the requirements that are to be met by TVET teachers and graduates, for example who to train, how to train, what to teach, who/what to refer to for requirements, syllabi, methodology and so on. Some TVET professionals argue that all of these parameters are the responsibility of local educational authorities, but this provokes a cluster of problems, including the following:

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1. The widespread insufficient qualifications for TVET teachers and local educational administrators results in a contrast between the current educational freedom and the poor skills of TVET professionals. 2. The rapid development of industries and services aggravates the shortcomings in graduate qualifications. Above all, there are serious discrepancies between the State, industrial and public requirements for TVET teacher training and the relatively poor professional levels of currently employed TVET teaching staff. Moreover, in direct contradiction with the present-day State requirements, teachers also face pressures from outside the domain of vocational training that might be encountered by any professional, for example, mobility, personal development, communicative skills, private enterprise and so on. 3. There is a widening gap between the number of TVET professionals required and the training capacity of PPE as the most reputable TVET teacher-training system. 4. There is also a gulf between the publicly-recognized importance of certain vocational fields and their lack of attractiveness to Russian youth. This affects the job market as a whole, as well as TVET teacher placement. A certain amount of State support is needed in this sphere in order to improve the image of these professions in the public’s mind. 5. The regional distribution of formerly national education has been poorly administered and has created major discrepancies between federal and local educational policies, which further hamper the application of State regulations in this field. 6. The rapid evolution of the job market stands in contrast to the predominantly conservative nature of the TVET system. 7. There is a clear need for the promotion of professional competence and qualifications among secondary TVET teachers. At the same time, most fields of training are so specific and diverse that secondary and tertiary programmes are hard to integrate, because they do not form a logical succession of educational stages. This is attributed to the lack of certain universal contents in training programmes—both in a specialty and in teaching skills—that could lead to the articulation of different stages. 8. It is still possible to observe a somewhat eclectic range of requirements for TVET teacher competence; the formally promulgated introduction of the competencebased approach to teaching contents selection has failed in practice, as even today the advantages of this approach are not always appreciated by educational officials and, thus, are slow in being accepted in schools. 9. There are other complex contradictions existing within the structure of TVET, such as its organizational forms, the methods used and the contents taught. The entire PPE paradigm has changed in recent years, and it now implies the orientation of TVET in accordance with humanitarian considerations and taking public requirements into account to a greater degree. This necessitates a thorough revision of teaching contents and technology (Kosyrev, 1998; Kubrushko, 2006; Zhuchenko, Romantsev & Tkachenko, 1999; Kosyrev, Kiva & Kuznetsov, 2005).


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5 TVET Teacher-Training Personnel: Key Competences TVET teacher-training personnel employed by secondary and tertiary schools should meet some basic requirements in terms of their professional and teaching competences. These should include:

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comprehension of and belief in fundamental PPE concepts; understanding PPE objectives and the strategies for their realization; competent and skilful choice of teaching contents; complete mastery in up-to-date teaching techniques and educational strategy design leading to an adequate realization of teachers’ personal and professional characteristics; educational managerial skills; mastery of the theory and practice of moral education and the career guidance of youth; mastery in pedagogical and psychological diagnostic techniques to improve TVET processes; and a grasp of recent developments in both the professional field and the educational sciences; this implies competence in continuous self-training strategies and the development of individual resourcefulness.

These requirements may only be met through thorough and well-planned TVET teacher training and the development of professional competence, as well as the continuous perfection of these competences in the actual exercise of professional dayto-day activity by teachers. As was identified through relevant research (Kosyrev, 1998; Kubrushko, 2006), regular professional testing and certification of TVET teacher-training personnel is the best way to guarantee the successful embodiment of these key requirements.

6 TVET Teacher-Training Requirements: Mapping The complete list of professional requirements for TVET teacher competence is presented in the State Educational Requirements for Tertiary PPE (Kosyrev, 1998; Kubrushko, 2006; Zhuchenko, Romantsev & Tkachenko, 1999; Kosyrev, Kiva & Kuznetsov, 2005), which are issued and circulated in Russia and some other former-Soviet countries. There are two major clusters of such requirements— general requirements and professional (subject field) requirements. The latter are then subdivided into general professional (including general teaching competence) and specialized professional requirements (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education, 2000).

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6.1 General Requirements A TVET teacher should:

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have overall mastery in major humanitarian, social and economic theories, the analysis of complex social and environmental processes, the mastery of key scientific research methods and self-training strategies (including resourcefulness) for research and the development of TVET; exercise ethical and legal norms in his/her professional activity, including the development of educational, research, social, engineering and environmental projects; possess an intellectual culture and presentation skills (both written and oral); have mastery of the application of computer skills to the educational, social and engineering fields; be flexible and adaptable to the ever-changing professional, technological, social, scientific and economic environment; possess self-assessment and self-regulation skills; realize and accept the social importance of TVET as his/her chosen profession; be creative and capable of anticipating activity in his/her professional field; be ready to conduct personal and professional co-operation and be open to professional (special field and educational) innovations, and to act as a team-player and a group-leader.

There are also certain fundamental requirements for the humanitarian and economic competence of TVET professionals (i.e. an interest in philosophy, history, arts, sociology, economics, general management, law, politics, linguistics and sports), as well as competence in mathematics and science. These fundamental requirements are typical of any secondary or tertiary teacher training, and they are present in the State requirements for any level of education.

6.2 Professional (Subject) Requirements Professional (subject) requirements are subdivided into general professional obligations (including general teaching competence) and specialized ones. Some of the key TVET teacher competences are listed below. 6.2.1 Competences in Physiology, Psycho-Physiology and Psychology

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basic knowledge of the functioning and development of the human body; adequate knowledge (according to the teaching specialization) of psychological processes (i.e. perception, cognition, imagination, attention, memory, speech, emotions, feelings and self-regulation) and the laws of their development and use in education, as well as that of psychological testing and educational research and diagnostics; essential knowledge about hygiene and healthy work practices;


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adequate first-aid skills, and mastery of terror- and trauma-prevention strategies; mastery of team-building and leadership-development skills.

6.2.2 Competences in the Educational Sciences

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mastery of efficient teaching methods and the ability to select teaching contents for primary, secondary, tertiary and further vocational education; basic knowledge of key philosophical, social and psychological theories that make up the foundation of educational practice; mastery of research methods applicable to educational practice; mastery of key components and rules of educational processes; comprehension of social functions and roles of a TVET teacher; basic mastery of analysis and forecasting TVET graduates’ professional activity; educational design skills, including objective and task setting, syllabi and curricular development and mapping, class planning and analysis; development and maintenance of efficient feedback and professional co-operation with students and alumni; development and efficient and safe use of teaching aids (including engineering and computer-based support).

6.2.3 Specialized Professional (Subject) Requirements Specialized professional (subject) requirements are established in accordance with the particular professional field that a given group of TVET teacher-training students are to major in at their undergraduate, graduate or further education level. In Russia, these fields may range from medicine and biology to agriculture and engineering, from chemical plating to architecture and costume design. These requirements are laid down by law with separate (for individual subject fields) State Educational Requirements that are issued by the Ministry of Education of Russia and some other CIS countries. However, local educational authorities and individual schools are authorized to amend and expand these national requirements with extra subjects to a maximum of 5 to 10% of the total timetable. These amendments are usually connected with specific regional requirements for TVET and TVET teacher training. Another sound reason for such alterations arises from the shortage of particular categories of teacher trainers, which makes it quite impossible to educate future teaching professionals in certain subjects. It is now quite common to substitute some subjects in order to overcome the absence of some temporarily less-required teacher trainers.

7 Conclusion Taking the situation in TVET teacher training in Russia and other CIS countries as a whole, it should be noted that there are still a number of concerns and problems. Principal among these, experts have indicated the apparent shortage of qualified

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TVET teacher trainers, the current low level of teachers’ professional status in the community and the reluctance of young people to obtain vocational qualifications in fields that are considered as low-paid and neglected. These are the problems that require immediate attention on the part of TVET professionals, experts, researchers and administrators. As was shown above, professional and pedagogical education (PPE) is a very powerful institution that provides integrated and finely balanced secondary, tertiary, post-graduate and further training for TVET teachers and instructors. The PPE system has been developed in detail to meet basic TVET requirements; further studies that would allow TVET teacher-training experts and practitioners to perfect this sphere of education are still being conducted in Russia and elsewhere internationally. This chapter has paid particular attention to the State and public requirements for the procedures, contents and quality of TVET teacher training. The existing educational standards are being amended and adjusted to conform to the modern demands and needs of national and international communities, including professional associations, trade unions and local administrations. And it is here that the somewhat challenged and considerably amended TVET teacher-training requirements are needed. As a carefully planned and sound way of advancing into the future, it is worth underlining that the system of TVET teacher training will soon be publicly recognized as something integral to—and vital for—the sustainable development of national education, as well as a key element in the advancement of any country’s economy.

References Kosyrev, V.P. 1998. [Methodical training of TVET teachers.] Moscow. [In Russian.] ISBN 5-20114389-x. Kosyrev, V.P.; Kiva, A.A.; Kuznetsov, A.N. 2005. [Didactic design based on the competence approach.] Moscow: TVET Academy. [In Russian.]. ISBN 5-9559-0120-5. Kubrushko, P.F. 2006. [Contents of professional and pedagogical education.] Moscow: Gardariky. [In Russian.] ISBN 5-8297-0286-x. Russian Federation. Ministry of Education. 2000. [State Educational Standard of Higher Professional Education: Major 030500 – Professional Training (TVET).] Moscow. [In Russian.] Zhuchenko, A.A.; Romantsev, G.M.; Tkachenko, E.V. 1999. [Professional and teacher education in Russia: contents and organization.] Ekaterinburg, Russian Federation: Urals State Professional and Pedagogical University. [In Russian.] ISBN 5-8050-0016-4.

Chapter VIII.5

TVET Teachers and Their Professionalization in China: A Problem Analysis Zhiqun Zhao and Lianwei Lu

1 The Development of the TVET Teachers’ Profession in China Handicrafts have a long history in China, but a proper apprenticeship training tradition has never been set up. China’s vocational education system came into being during the Westernization Movement (yang wu yun dong) in the 1860s, when the royal government of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) began to develop modern industries. In 1904, the Qing Government issued the Constitution of Imperial Schools (zou ding xue tang zhang cheng), which brought industrial education into line with formal education. This was a landmark in the establishment of the vocational education system in China. Concerning the professional development of TVET teachers, Huang Yanpei (1878–1961), an outstanding social activist and educator, and the National Association of Vocational Education of China established on Huang’s initiative,1 played an important role. He and the association advocated ‘widespread vocational education’ (da zhi ye jiao yu zhu yi), including a reform of the traditional education style, which was separated from practice and social activities. He demanded that TVET teachers should take part in the political reform movement and pay more attention to the needs and interests of working people. This went beyond the mere teaching of knowledge and skills and broadened the activity of the TVET teachers’ profession (Li, 1994). A higher expectation was placed upon TVET teachers, namely to engage themselves more in technological and social development. Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (henceforth China) in 1949, the development of TVET teaching as a profession has gone through a number of changes. In 1958 an educational reform was promulgated stating that education should be combined with production. This reform put forward the quality principle of simultaneous development of both State-run schools and those run by enterprises, which broke the unified pattern of formal education. As a result, TVET teachers were required to combine their professional practice with ‘socialized production’. Since China’s reform and open-door policy in the 1980s, the government has issued numerous policies and regulations with respect to increasing TVET teaching capacity in line with the development in the whole TVET field. ‘The Teacher Law of the P.R. of China’ (1993, Article 1) and ‘The Vocational Education Law of the P.R. of China’ (1996, Article 36) provide the legal guidelines on capacity-building R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VIII.5, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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and the qualifications of TVET teachers. It can be concluded that the government’s policy on teachers and the development of schools are vital elements in accelerating (or hindering) the process of promoting the profession of TVET teacher. The Teacher Law, Article 3, provides that: ‘Teachers are the professionals who undertake the duties to educate, teach and train their students in terms of knowledge, competence and morality to be the builders and successors of the socialist cause and to enhance the national qualities’. Thus, teachers are defined as teaching specialists. Furthermore, the Teacher Law provides that ‘The State [. . .] improves their working and living conditions and raises their social position’. The TVET teachers, as an important part of the whole teaching body, ‘are the professionals who are specially qualified and trained’. They are thus capable of teaching vocational knowledge, skills and moral behaviour in order to enable students to acquire ethics, vocational skills and good living habits (Zhang, Li & Kiel, 1998, p. 8). But there are some elements that have impeded the development of TVET teachers as a profession:

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The traditional lower status of TVET in society; Unreasonable and changeable policy-making affecting TVET; and The lack of any TVET teachers’ organizations with political influence.

In China, the Confucian ideal that ‘Those who do manual labour are ruled by those who do mental labour’ (i.e. the mental workers govern the physical workers) has had a profound influence on the knowledge-orientated educational tradition. Even today, practical occupations are generally looked down upon. TVET is considered merely as an educational provision for those who have failed university entrance examinations, and not as an effective way of studying or of fulfilling one’s role in society. Most high-school students—in keeping with the wishes of their parents—only want to study at university immediately upon completion of secondary education, rather than obtaining any vocational education or training. In the market-oriented Chinese society, TVET teachers and the profession do not receive much respect. At present, in terms of income and living standards, TVET teachers belong to the lower middle class in China. The employment and promotion of TVET teachers are regulated almost exactly in the same way as those of general education teachers, but TVET teachers are perceived to be legally inferior to their counterparts in general education. Some teachers have had to take on temporary jobs in their spare time each day or during their holidays to make ends meet. There is no doubt that, in the pursuit of societal progress and economic growth, not enough attention has been paid to the development of TVET teachers as a profession. Another consideration is that, due to the low social status and poor salaries, some young teachers are not ready to become involved in TVET, which is one of the features impeding the steady professional development of this sector. As a result, the visible and invisible flow of TVET teachers leaving the profession is becoming more and more serious. Furthermore, large numbers of senior teachers will be retiring in the coming years (Zheng, 1998). According to the Teacher Law, it is necessary to implement a teacher qualification system. Article 34 stipulates that: ‘the State conducts the employment system

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by signing a contract with a teacher according to his/her qualification. It also intends to upgrade their skills and to reinforce the capacity of the teaching force by means of the assessment of professional proficiency, rewarding higher qualifications and offering teacher-training provisions.’ Article 10 describes the specific categories of teacher qualification; the main components refer to nationality, ethnic background, educational requirements and instructional competence. The teachers’ qualification certificates must be recognized by the appropriate legal authorities entrusted by the government. While great importance is attached to the academic diploma that a teacher candidate holds, there are no definite regulations concerning teachers’ professional competencies. Those teachers who have not yet acquired teaching diplomas are expected to try hard to obtain them. Since the law failed to stipulate the coherence between the teacher’s major and what he/she is allowed to teach, some teachers have been given or are attempting to obtain a teaching diploma that does not require passing a difficult test—although it may have nothing to do with the current subject that they are teaching. In respect of career promotion, the law has adopted the same criteria for teachers of general and vocational education. Almost no attention has been paid to the fact that vocational education is different from general education, the former being focused on the development of practical competence, such as operational skills and experience in industry. TVET teachers, who normally have proficiency in practical subjects, have perceived these criteria as putting them in an unfavourable position. Therefore, the regulations on career promotion have had a negative impact on the professional development of TVET teachers. The Chinese Government has recognized the situation described above and is trying to remedy it by means of policies, regulations and favourable measures to improve TVET teachers’ social status and working and living conditions. These measures include offering a housing property subsidy and other social welfare advantages. In the more-developed areas, such measures are having a satisfactory impact, but in the less-developed regions many difficulties remain in adopting these policies.

2 TVET Teachers’ Qualifications Taking into consideration regional differences in economic development and educational attendance patterns, the Chinese Government is trying to establish a ‘dual’ TVET system that guarantees simultaneous training in an educational institution and in an enterprise. At present China has a three-level vocational education system:

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Elementary vocational education (where lower secondary schools enrol primary school graduates and aim to train skilled workers and farmers at the junior level; such schools only exist in the underdeveloped rural areas); Secondary vocational education—the main part—takes place at senior highschool level, including specialized secondary schools, vocational senior high

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schools and skilled-worker schools. (The existence of these three kinds of schools is due to historical reasons—overlapping between the Ministry of Education and Labour.) At present, there is not much difference among them. Therefore, a new school name—secondary technical vocational school—is gradually replacing these three former school names; Higher vocational education, which enrols graduates from general senior schools and secondary vocational schools. Schooling is generally for two to three years.

In China, full-time teachers in public vocational schools are considered as government employees. (There are only a small number of private vocational schools in China. Teachers in these schools account for only a tiny proportion of the total number of teachers; they are considered as employees in an enterprise.) Types of teachers differ according to the functions of vocational schools. In general, there are two main types in vocational schools: general-knowledge teachers and specialized teachers. The latter are usually divided into specialized theory teachers and practical instructors (see Figure 1). In reality, the structures of teachers in vocational schools are more complicated than this simplified description. To cope with the rapid development of vocational schools in China, teachers need to be produced at a greater rate. In 2003, there were nearly 560,000 full-time teachers engaged in secondary vocational schools, but only 66.5% of them had completed four years of study at the bachelor degree level or above and had received the teaching diploma required by law (China. Ministry of Education (MoE), 2003a). Particularly, a large proportion of specialized teachers had not yet gained the required diplomas. The lack of infrastructures is the main defect for TVET teachers, which is primarily manifested in the following ways:

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There are more than enough general-knowledge teachers, but inadequate numbers of specialized teachers and even fewer practical instructors in vocational schools. In 2004, the percentage of specialized teachers (including practical instructors) in secondary vocational schools was less than 50%. The shortage of specialized teachers is becoming more serious in the new specialties that have been introduced in accordance with economic restructuring and the development of new technologies (China. MoE, 2003b).

TVET teachers

Specialized teachers

Specialized theory teachers

Fig. 1 Types of TVET teachers

Practical instructors

General-knowledge teachers

Double-qualified teachers


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In the last two decades, there have been two structural re-organizations of the Chinese TVET system. Firstly, quite a number of general education secondary schools that had been unsuccessful in enabling graduates to enter university were re-organized into vocational schools; secondly, a number of good vocational schools were upgraded into vocational education colleges. During the organizational transformation, teachers in these schools may have found themselves unqualified for their new tasks. Many teachers who taught academic subjects— e.g. Chinese or physics—in the former general education schools were now compelled to teach specialized courses in vocational schools—e.g. secretarial studies or electronics. Even worse was the situation of those teachers who were not capable of teaching theoretical subjects; they were assigned to practical courses. In the case of institutional upgrading, vocational school-teachers became college lecturers and they too did not receive any corresponding preparation. The great shortage of qualified teachers has meant that many experienced skilled workers or technicians have accepted vacancies as teachers in vocational schools. Some vocational schools recruit their own ‘best graduates’ to act as instructors, which for many schools has become a permanent ‘temporary’ measure.

Based on these different situations, it can be concluded that TVET teachers’ needs for professional training are very different. These can be categorized as follows:

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The former general-knowledge teachers may have acquired experience in teaching but lack vocation-related knowledge and experience in industry. They need to acquire qualifications in different aspects, such as training in practical skills or upgrading of related specialized knowledge. The skilled workers and technicians from enterprises and public institutions who have now become teachers are often skilled in occupational tasks, but deficient in both the subject theory and in pedagogical qualifications. The ‘best’ graduates from vocational schools usually have neither practical experience nor vocation-related knowledge. They are not qualified in pedagogical skills either. A qualification in instructional aspects is the most urgent need for them. Due to the deficiency in experience, specialized knowledge and in teaching competence in practical subjects, many teachers are only capable of performing administrative and support tasks when they are assigned to practical internships in companies and enterprises.

In addition, there are a large number of part-time teachers engaged in vocational schools. As experienced workers, technicians or engineers, they are invited to teach specialized or practical courses, especially for the newly established subjects—this is the so-called short-term training provisions. Employing part-time specialists from industry has become quite common in many vocational schools that co-operate with enterprises to provide training programmes that are needed urgently. It has been reported that 10% of teaching posts in secondary vocational schools are filled by part-time teachers (China. MoE, 2003b).

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Specialists from industry who are engaged as part-time teachers in vocational schools pose a challenge to the development of the TVET teacher as a profession. It tends to suggest that full-time TVET teachers should only devote themselves to theoretical subjects, and that there is no need for schools to build up a full-time teaching staff for practical training, since this can be undertaken by external specialists employed part-time.

3 The Education and Training of TVET Teachers Before the first Opium War (1840–1842), the procedure for selecting teachers was an integral part of the imperial examination system, which was aimed at recruiting royal officers. In 1897, Nanyang Public Teachers’ Institute (gong xue shi fan yuan) was established, which is now recognized as the birthplace of modern teacher education in China. After the founding of modern China, teacher education was reformed according to the former Russian model, and a triple teacher education system was established, as shown in Figure 2. The following institutions are responsible for teacher education:

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Normal (teacher-training) universities/colleges with a four-year study period towards a bachelor’s degree, where teacher-candidates for schools at senior high level are qualified, including those for secondary vocational schools. The

Normal universities/colleges (four-year) Teachers’ universities or colleges

Teachersí education & training institutions

Secondary teachers’ schools

Other education and training institutions

Teachers’ colleges, TVET teacher colleges (three-year)

Secondary teachers’ schools

Teachers’/TVET teachers’ training institutes in universities/colleges

Correspondence education institutions and TVET universities

Fig. 2 Teacher education systems in China Source: China, MoE, 1998


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entrance requirements are completion of K–12 education and success in the national examination for higher education, which includes a general-knowledge test and an interview relating to personality assessment; Teachers’ colleges, with three-year study towards an academic diploma, responsible for qualifying junior high-school teachers (including those for elementary vocational schools). The entrance requirements are the same as those for normal universities; however, entrance is reserved for those who scored lower scores in the national higher education examination; Secondary teachers’ schools educate primary school-teachers. At present, such schools only continue to exist in the under-developed regions.

In 2005, China had 188 teachers’ colleges or universities, including those for TVET. Compared with teacher education for K–12 schools, TVET teacher education is confronted with fragile development, which is mainly demonstrated in the smaller number of specialized institutions for TVET teacher education and their limited capacity for student enrolment. There are only ten teacher-education institutions separately established for TVET and a further seventeen similar institutions attached to other universities (not all the graduates will go to work in vocational schools). The annual graduates from both kinds of institutions mentioned above, including those who did not major in teacher education, can meet only about half of the requirement for new teachers in TVET institutions (Huang, 2000). Thus, vocational schools have to seek other ways to satisfy their need for new teachers. Universities and colleges (and not teacher colleges) in fact have become the major suppliers of TVET teachers. Because TVET teacher education has not been included in the Category of Higher Education Specialties, issued by China’s Ministry of Education, TVET teacher colleges have had to set up study programmes according to their own understanding of teachers’ qualifications for TVET. There is a lack of scientific research and systemic arrangement in relation to study programmes for TVET teacher education, which can be illustrated in the following way:

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The study programme fails to cover all of the necessary specialties or vocational fields available in TVET schools; Most learning content of the study programme is derived from the corresponding arrangements of engineering faculties; however, such a transfer lacks empirical proof; Some specialties are more focused on practical skills, such as cooking, and neglect basic academic requirements.

According to the framework curricula recommended by the MoE, the course study programme for teacher education in China mainly consists of categories of learning modules on basic courses, specialized courses, psychology and pedagogy. The total study time in the four-year course amounts to about 2,600 hours, approximately twenty-five hours per week. It is clear that almost half of the courses are zweckfrei (i.e. without reference to a specific vocation) (Rauner, 1996). This indicates that the curriculum developers do not intend to connect teacher training with the practical

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requirements of a particular vocational speciality. To foster intellectual development and to transfer knowledge are the guiding principles in developing the curricula in terms of the structure and contents. It can be said that:

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There is no clear connection between the specialized courses and the requirements of the world of work; It is difficult for students to have a clear idea of their work in the future (Zhao, 2003).

The investigation shows that the majority of TVET teachers in China understand their role as ‘semi-engineering’. However, the requirement that TVET teacher education should be closely combined with the work process lays bare the great contradictions between the ideal and reality. The development of didactic theory combining work and learning, practice and knowledge, will demand the development of vocationally specialized programmes—‘vocational discipline’ (Gerds, Heidegger & Rauner, 1998). In recent years, great efforts have been made in TVET teacher colleges to set up specialized study programmes. Relevant research institutions have been established, such as the Higher TVET Teacher Education Committee within the purview of the China Vocational Education Association. It has also been decided to set up national centres of excellence for TVET teacher education and training. All of these measures have laid important institutional foundations for the development of TVET as a specialty in its own right and the ultimate realization of TVET teachers as an independent profession. In practice, in accordance with the principles of a focus on the vocational process, transferability and practicality, TVET teacher colleges have started reforming the curricula in order to set up high-quality and competitive specialties at the level of higher education, though the reform is still in its initial stage.

r

r

The reform in curriculum development is limited to selecting, adjusting and reintegrating relevant content taught in the corresponding engineering specialties. Many colleges have realized the problems caused by following the engineering education system, because it has not gone far enough in developing teaching/learning concepts directed at the work process (Benner, 1997). The term ‘orientation to vocational process’ is often interpreted as a desire to reinforce practical skills training rather than making vocational work as a discipline in its own right, because no signs have been identified of a new educational concept based on a vocational discipline. Among the endeavours to reform study contents in accordance with the principle of ‘transferability’, a proposition has been made in an indirect way that a TVET teacher qualification should include work-process knowledge. But, in reality, the curriculum is still dominated by autonomous technology. It is too much focused on abstract abilities that are expected to be needed in specialized vocational work. However, little content related to work and work organization has been taken into consideration. There is almost no way to guarantee effectively the transferability of study contents.


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In terms of instructional process reform, quite a few institutions have attempted to reinforce practical qualifications by requiring students to be trained for an occupational certificate. Practical qualification is simplified as skills training. The TVET student-teachers have no way of obtaining essential experience to analyse and evaluate work and technology. All these reflect the current condition about how experiential learning and learning related to work processes are conducted within the traditional TVET education system (Dehnbostel, 2000).

In China, the experienced teachers without pedagogic and didactical qualifications are being trained in further training institutions affiliated to universities/colleges or run by private companies. These training institutions provide off-the-job and on-thejob programmes for practical instructors or double-qualified teachers. According to incomplete statistics, there are about 350 institutions engaged in the further education and training of TVET teachers, among which two-thirds are at the higher education level offering training provisions for specialized teachers, and one-third at the secondary education level or run by companies engaged in the training of practical instructors (China. MoE, 2003b). As stated in China’s Action Plan to vitalize education in the 21st century, the MoE supports the development of fifty-six national key bases for TVET teacher education.

4 TVET Teachers’ Work Activities In 1998, the Central Institute of Vocational and Technical Education (CIVTE) organized an international APEC research project on TVET teachers’ working (professional) activities in secondary vocational education.2 Based on teachers’ reports, the following statements can be made:

r

r

r

The main activities of TVET teachers are preparing for and performing instruction. Over 70% of the teachers undertake demonstrations and experiments. Since the percentage of practical instructors is well below 70%, it is logical to assume that almost all the TVET teachers participate in practical teaching activities and, thus, there is not a real functional difference between specialized teachers and practical instructors. More and more TVET teachers have undertaken duties that were not previously foreseen for their professions before. For example, 47% of teachers take part in labour-market investigation in any year, and over 50% conduct work analysis. This shows that labour-market analysis has become one of their main duties.3 Nearly half of the TVET teachers state that they have rarely been involved in school management and administration. This is due to the greater number of school management personnel. However, according to the government’s requirement, management personnel will gradually be decreased. Thus, more teachers can be expected to engage in school management and administration in the

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future, while still conducting their routine teaching tasks. The transfer of teachers’ duties from pure instruction to management will be a challenge for them. Ethical, political and social education and instruction are considered as part of the main tasks of TVET teachers; however, they seldom take part in career guidance. Some 28% of the teachers help gather employment and further education information for their students, but few teachers analyse the information and use it in their work. In respect of social relations, teachers are more concerned about their relationship with colleagues and students’ parents than with enterprises or communities. Less than half of them took part in activities to promote co-operation between their schools and enterprises, communities and social organizations. What teachers really desire is to have more opportunities for further education and academic activities. Nearly 44% of the teachers reported lack of such opportunities. Therefore, the shortcomings of the teacher-training system are a major factor hindering vocational education development (Liu, Liu & Zhao, 2000).

Table 1 is a DACUM-chart of China’s TVET teachers’ profession and is one of the outcomes of the APEC project. Based on this table, CIVTE defined a profile of the TVET teachers’ profession in China. A TVET teacher should be qualified in the following aspects:

r r r r r r r

Mastery of basic theoretical and specialized knowledge in the specialty, especially those aspects directly connected with vocational practice; Able to correctly analyse and evaluate vocational activities and work processes in order to develop new curricula; Mastery of practical vocational abilities related to the specialty and acquisition of related practical experience; Qualified in the basic theories of vocational education and able to analyse, evaluate, plan and implement the instructional process; Capable of involvement in school management and public relations; Able to educate and instruct students according to all the requirements so that they can fulfil their vocational choice; and Capable of managing one’s own career.

But, in practice, it is still difficult to realize the above aspects due to the existing conditions in policies and practices.

5 Summary and Prospects In a review of teachers’ professional development over the last ten years, we can draw the optimistic conclusion that the TVET teaching body is playing an increasingly important role in China’s education system and more attention is being paid to its influence on the whole of educational development. China’s MoE issued a document in 2000, which emphasized that building a high-quality teaching body is the guarantee of developing vocational education and speeding up the process of

TASKS

1

1.1

1.2

1.3

1.4

1.5

1.6

Curriculum development

Analysis of labour market

Analysis of work process

Analysis of teaching contents

Compiling textbooks

Instructional experimenting

Curriculum evaluation

2 Teaching design

2.1 Understanding students

2.2 Study teaching contents

2.3 Produce aims of teaching units

2.4 Produce delivery procedures

2.5 Select and produce teaching media

2.6 Design and select facilities

3

3.1

3.2

3.3

3.4

Implementation of teaching

Classroom delivery

Practical teaching in school

Organizing simultaneous teaching

Practice teaching in company

4

4.1

4.2

4.3

4.4

4.5

4.6

Management

Participate in producing school development plan

Teaching and teaching files management

Teacher management

Student management

Management of teaching courses and facilities

Management of practice workshops


Table 1 DACUM-chart on China’s TVET teachers UNITS

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Table 1 (continued) UNITS

TASKS

5

5.1

5.2

Student guidance

Help students to establish moral integrity

Provide career guidance

6 Teaching evaluation

6.1 Evaluation of students’ knowledge level

6.2 Evaluation of students’ skills level

6.3 Evaluation of one’s own teaching

7.1

7.2

7.3

7.4

7.5

Planning of public relation activities

Produce publicity materials

Implementation of public relation activities

Demonstrate teaching achievement to society

Promoting cooperation with relevant departments and personnel

8

8.1

8.2

Professional development

Enhancing one’s knowledge and skills

Guide and help peers’ professional activities

Z. Zhao, L. Lu

7 Public relations


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achieving quality education. Furthermore, by means of ‘the Teacher Law’ and ‘the Regulations on Teachers’ Duties’, better legal and social environments for TVET teachers’ professionalization are being created. On the other hand, TVET teachers’ professionalization is still influenced by different factors, which may accelerate or hinder the process of professionalization: To create a reasonable structure of the teaching body in order to promote quality education, the capacity-building of TVET teachers at present needs to combine the efforts of full-time and part-time teaching staffs. This means that TVET schools should employ a certain proportion of part-time teachers; nevertheless, this may be viewed by the full-time TVET teachers as a challenge to their professionalization. There are still problems to be solved with respect to practice-orientation and the qualification of double-qualified teachers. Furthermore, the poor teaching and academic capacity of TVET teacher education institutions has become an obstacle to the development of specialties, for example in terms of study programmes, curricula and teaching contents.

Notes 1. The National Association of Vocational Education of China (zhong hua zhi jiao she), founded in 1917, was the first vocational education organization in China consisting of people from education and economy. Nowadays, it has developed into twenty-six organizations located all over China, which are having some influence on China’s TVET policy. 2. This APEC Central Funding Project focused on TVET teachers’ standards and their development. The participants in this project came from Brunei Darussalam, China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Republic of Korea, Chinese Taipei and the United States of America. 3. Though a centralized State, China allows its schools a certain amount of freedom to make their own decisions on teaching. The teaching plans and programmes made by the State Ministry of Education or local provincial commissions are generally instructive documents. The school can arrange its own subjects according to labour-market demand and develop its own specialized courses on a level that is no lower than the basic teaching requirements of the State and local governments.

References Benner, P. 1997. Stufen zur Pflegekompetenz. From novice to expert, 2nd edition. Berne: Huber. China. Ministry of Education. 2003a. China education statistics yearbook, 2003. Beijing: People’s Education Press. China. Ministry of Education. 2003b. China education yearbook, 2003. Beijing: People’s Education Press. China. Ministry of Education. Teacher Education Department. 1998. China’s teachers’ education. Shanghai, China: Shanghai Science and Technology Press. Dehnbostel, P. 2000. Lernkonzepte zur Verknüpfung von Arbeitserfahrung und beruflicher Bildung. In: Dehnbostel, P.; Novak, H., eds. Arbeits- und erfahrungsorientierte Lernkonzepte, pp. 115–27. Bielefeld, Germany: Bertelsmann. Gerds, P.; Heidegger, G.; Rauner, F. 1998. Berufsfelder von Auszubildenden und Bedarfe in den Fachrichtungen der Berufsschullehrinnen und –lehrer zu Beginn des nächsten Jahrtausends in Norddeutschland. Bremen, Germany: Institut Technik und Bildung.

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Huang, Y. 2000. Reinforcing the building of TVET teaching body and building a high-quality TVET teaching body. Journal of China’s TVET, vol. 10, pp. 11–14. Li, L. 1994. History of China’s TVET. Beijing: Higher Education Press. Liu, J.; Liu, Y.; Zhao, Z. 2000. The project to reinforce education and training of the secondary vocational school teachers. Beijing: CIVTE. Rauner, F. 1996. Zweckfreie Berufsbildung in der Berufsschule. In: Dedering, H., ed. Handbuch zur arbeitsorientierten Bildung, pp. 431–50. Munich and Vienna: Oldenbourg. Zhang, C.; Li, W.; Kiel, H., eds. 1998. Handbook of vocational education teacher. Shenyang, China: Liaohai Press. Zhao, Z. 2003. Berufspädagogen auf dem Weg zur Professionalität. Bielefeld, Germany: Bertelsmann. Zheng, X. 1998. On the teachers’ social and legal positions. Education research and practice, vol. 1, pp. 35–40.

Chapter VIII.6

The Development of Training Modules for Instructors Fred Beven

1 Introduction An increasingly common phenomenon within technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is the use of a modularized curriculum approach and the production of training modules that prescribe the learning objectives, content and assessment requirements. This phenomenon is often associated with top-down curriculum planning and a desire by central agencies to carefully manage the teaching, learning and assessment processes. Such management is motivated by the increasingly important role that skill formation and its further development play in modern economies. Yet, although the importance of vocational education to national interests is amplified through these arrangements, such approaches to the curriculum may not always effectively engage those who are supposed to implement them (i.e. vocational teachers), nor those who are subject to them (i.e. learners). This chapter seeks to elaborate the kinds of considerations and conditions required for the effective development of a modularized vocational educational curriculum. It proposes that it is necessary to consider curriculum documents and resources as intents only, and extend a consideration of curriculum as something that is enacted by vocational educators and grant them autonomy in doing so. However, ultimately, the curriculum is something experienced by those who are seeking to learn vocational knowledge— the students. Vocational educators usually bring particular sets of experiences and expertise to the teaching and learning process, which extends to how they teach and use units of modularized curriculum. Vocational learners also have their own needs and interests, which shape in what ways they engage with the curriculum as enacted by teachers. In this way, modularized approaches to curriculum and the production of training modules need to take into account not only the intents and interests of central agencies, but also the contributions and purposes of teachers and the needs and aspirations of vocational learners.


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2 Modularized Approaches to the Curriculum Across many advanced Western countries, and increasingly in developing economies such as those in Africa and Asia, there is a common and a growing phenomenon within vocational education associated with a modularized approach to the curriculum. That is, it is the use of a modularized approach to organizing the curriculum and the production of training modules that prescribe the objectives for learning, the content to be taught and the assessment requirements. These are often associated with ‘top-down’ curriculum planning in which the intents, content and approach to assessment are prescribed by central agencies and given to teachers to implement. These prescriptive measures are often associated with a desire by central agencies to carefully manage the teaching, learning and assessment processes. Such management is motivated by the increasingly important role that skill formation and further development plays in modern and emerging economies. It seems that in advanced economies, the concern is to direct and carefully manage the activities of vocational educators to assist them in faithfully enacting nationally consistent approaches to curriculum and assessment practices and standards. In Australia, for instance, there is often an attempt to make the curriculum ‘teacher proof’ through carefully specifying what is to be taught and learned and under what conditions. Certainly, there is a need to guide teachers who are enacting vocational education programmes in order that the content is based on concerns that are wider than the particular interests of teachers. But, beyond the need to provide close guidance for inexperienced educators, there is also a concern to direct the efforts of experienced vocational educators in ways intended to secure the national goals for vocational education favoured by governments and informed by industry representatives. Elsewhere, in Laos (Sisoutha, 1998) and Botswana (Ntshebe, 2004), for instance, economic development was seen to be premised on an effective and carefully managed vocational education system, with centrally-developed curriculum materials that can be used to mitigate against teachers who may lack competence in terms of content to be taught and teaching skills. A key device to secure fidelity to the intents of sponsors in both advanced and emerging economies has been the development and use of modularized curriculum documents. Such measures are seen as those required to meet the requirements of global agencies for effective and auditable human resource development and are sometimes required to secure further developmental funds. Yet, although the importance of vocational education to national interests is being demonstrated through these kinds of measures, they may not always effectively engage those who are supposed to implement them (i.e. the vocational teachers), nor those who are subject to them (i.e. the learners), because what is prescribed may not meet their needs. The prior concern with administering vocational education may come at a cost to the quality of its provision. For instance, vocational educators usually bring particular sets of experiences and expertise to the teaching and learning process that can enrich the curriculum process through contextualizing experiences and selecting appropriate content (Billett et al., 1999). Moreover, unless educators are committed to the educational content and processes that others wish them to teach, they are unlikely to implement them with any enthusiasm or careful

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consideration of their intents (Fullan, 1982). So, within the relatively private domain of vocational educators’ practice, they will give preference and energy to those practices and content that they believe meet students’ needs and that they believe should be taught (Hall & Loucks, 1978). Similarly, students participating in vocational education also have their own needs, priorities and interests, which may be distinct from those proposed by industry and government (Billett, 2000). These needs and aspirations are not knowable to curriculum development methods that are top-down and centralized. Nevertheless, it is these needs and interests that shape how these learners engage with what is enacted in vocational education. Consequently, modularized approaches to curriculum and the production of training modules need to take into account not only the intents of central agencies but also the contributions of teachers and the needs and aspirations of vocational learners. Therefore, this chapter seeks to elaborate the kinds of considerations and conditions that are required for the effective development of a modularized vocational educational curriculum. It proposes that it is necessary to consider not only modularized curriculum documents and resources as intents, but also what is enacted by vocational educators and experienced and engaged with by those who are seeking to learn vocational knowledge. This chapter is structured as follows. Firstly, some consideration is given to the totality of what constitutes the curriculum as a means to evaluate the modular approach. It is proposed that the curriculum can be considered in terms of its intents, enactment and experience. In the following sections, considerations for modularization are discussed in terms of each of these considerations. Following these sections, some guidelines for the development of modularized curriculum material are proposed.

3 Considerations Across the Curriculum As a starting point, it is necessary to emphasize that the provision of curriculum documents is helpful for guiding the kinds of experiences that are provided for students in technical and vocational education. It is not sufficient for the initiative and interest of teachers to be the sole determinant of selecting the kinds of experiences and content students need (Skilbeck, 1984). Instead, the input from others is required to guide the support for learning. A modularized approach to curriculum is that which seeks to identify clusters of skills and knowledge associated with particular areas of vocational practice and seeks to secure their development. Often, this approach is seen as being akin to building blocks of knowledge that come together as a whole. That is, students can secure the knowledge from different modules and build up a repertoire of knowledge, and then apply this knowledge as with tools from a toolkit (Dawkins, 1988). However, the impetus for a modularized curriculum often arises from a desire by the originators to secure particular educational goals that have been identified and prescribed centrally. Therefore, a modular approach to the curriculum is likely to have a detailed set of documents that state the educational intents to be achieved, the means by which

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these outcomes are secured, including the content, and how the outcomes will be assessed. These prescriptions are provided in the document called the syllabus, course outlines or some other title, such as ‘training packages’ in Australia. Accompanying and seeking to secure these intents are associated materials in the form of hardcopy or electronic resources for either students or instructors. In many instances, both the documents articulating the intended curriculum (e.g. the syllabus) and the accompanying material are developed centrally because of the concern to secure the outcomes desired by central agencies. In Australia, for instance, this is justified in terms of attempting to secure nationally consistent outcomes (Dawkins, 1988; National Training Board, 1992). Elsewhere, it might be argued that a centre of technical excellence has the capacity to advise other institutions with less expertise in how a vocational provision might be organized. Nevertheless, either way, such a centralized top-down process may not be able to account for the needs, competence and particular understanding of the individual vocational teachers who have to implement them, nor the circumstances of where implementation will occur. This includes the readiness, capacities and interests of the students who are supposed to engage with these intents and materials. As mentioned earlier, the case for the teacher-led curriculum development process may be flawed, perhaps no more so than in vocational education where there will be important perspectives about practice (e.g. enterprises, industry) that need to inform the curriculum. There are very few instances where teachers have come together principally to organize educational institutions or experiences. Instead, in the vast majority of instances, teachers and, in particular, vocational and technology educators practice their profession within the institutions that employ them (Skilbeck, 1984). This is not to suggest that teachers should not have a role in the formulation and enactment of the curriculum, including the purposes, form and construction of curriculum material as in modularization. However, the purposes of the enterprises in which students will work and the communities they serve also warrant legitimate inclusion. So, the process of curriculum development needs to include the interests and concerns of the community, including industry and enterprises, and often needs to be enacted through the government to secure a balance amongst various interests. But it is also necessary to engage with the interests and expertise of those who will ultimately implement it—teachers. Consequently, while there is a need for curriculum goals and content to be developed by people other than those who teach them, it is important to involve teachers in discussions about how best they might be implemented (Billett, 1995). Central here is to understand and realise the kind of outcomes that students need. So, the teachers’ role might include negotiating on behalf of the students. One of the key points for this negotiation is the degree to which vocational education should be more or less focused on the development of either specific skills or whether it should be a more general, but vocationally oriented, form of education. Certainly, Australian students seem to value vocational education in terms of how it can assist them to secure their vocational goals (Billett, 2000). Both current students and graduates made judgements about the quality of teaching and the worth of the educational provision in terms of how it assists them


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to secure the kind of paid employment that they seek. However, those purposes are not always aligned with the tight descriptions of industry competence requirements. Certainly, students participating in vocational education and seeking to enter the workforce look to vocational education to acquire the specific kinds of skills that will secure them employment and progress in paid employment. Yet, the same study found that older vocational education students also had concerns about personal development that were not wholly accommodated within industry-specific curriculum intents. So, from a teacher’s perspective there are two worlds of vocational curriculum. The first is the rhetorical world in which members of commissions, educational authorities, the government and others determine what should be taught and how. This world is driven by education and employment policy, the goals of industry, and national frameworks and mandates. The other world is the experiential world in which the teacher is required to enact such a curriculum and work with students in pursuing their goals of constructing knowledge and meanings to engage in both life and work. These multiple goals can be described in terms of: the intended curriculum; the enacted curriculum; and the experienced curriculum. In order to propose what should constitute a modular TVET curriculum, the following set of questions are posed and discussed within the framework of the three kinds of curriculum identified above. The intended curriculum:

r r

What degree of prescription is required in terms of educational intents (e.g. aims, goals and objectives)? What should be the focus of the educational intents and content of the modularized vocational curriculum?

The enacted curriculum:

r r

What level of detailing of content should occur at the centre and what should be left for those who enact the curriculum? To what degree should the methods of teaching and assessment be pre-specified and prescribed at the centre and what should be left for those enacting the curriculum?

The experienced curriculum:

r

To what degree should the enactment of the curriculum be considerate of the interests, needs and readiness of learners?

4 The Intended Curriculum This section examines the notion of the intended curriculum through addressing the two questions proposed above:

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What degree of prescription is required in terms of educational intents (e.g. aims, goals and objectives)? What should be the focus of the educational intents and content of a modularized vocational curriculum?

The intended curriculum refers to such policy tools as curriculum standards, frameworks, or guidelines that outline the curriculum teachers are expected to deliver and the outcomes that are intended to be achieved. These policy tools vary significantly across nations and to a lesser extent within nations. Over the last twenty-five years, the Western world has seen the vocational curriculum increasingly shaped by government policy aimed at achieving national uniformity of vocational education provision in countries such as Australia. This push for uniformity appears to underpin many policies that link vocational education to both economic development and global competitiveness. Such an approach to curriculum development is that which comprises the adoption and implementation of a competency-based approach to training (CBT) by governments in a number of countries. The CBT curriculum model has been described as ‘technicist’ in nature, meaning that it is externally prescribed, behavioural in format (Blachford, 1986) and ‘top down’ in its implementation (Billett et al, 1999). Being technicist in approach, it is responsive to powerful external interests (i.e. the government and industry). Being psychologically behaviourist in its approach means that the focus is on observable and specific (narrow) industry skill sets and often favours ‘doing’ over ‘knowing’, because the latter cannot be observed. Being ‘top down’ in its implementation means that it requires a regularity framework for its design and delivery.

4.1 What Degree of Prescription is Required? Therefore, the question of ‘what degree of prescription is required’ in a CBT curriculum model largely depends upon whose interests are served. The CBT model of curriculum in Australia and in other countries has been successful in meeting the economic and developmental needs of the government and the specific skills needs of industry. However, the current CBT models provide little or no provision for engaging with and understanding the needs of learners. That is, they render the vocational curriculum as sets of specific learning outcomes (i.e. describe assessment) that are both qualifiable and quantifiable in terms of their industry requirements. Any focus on the learner is restricted to the extent to which they already meet these requirements, and not on the development of the learner as either an individual or as a member of a vocational community of practice. This stands as a serious shortcoming that has only been partially addressed through the more recent introduction of the notion of employability skills. The shortcomings of the CBT approach in focusing only on the specific industrybased skill-set became apparent to governments during the 1990s and, in their attempts to rectify this, they have attempted to modify it rather than rejecting it. One approach has been the identification of more generic sets of employability skills that


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could be adopted across the CBT curriculum. These employability skills are seen as critical to a learner’s capacity to work more independently, to become more multiskilled and to work effectively with others. Table 1 outlines the various renditions of such a skill-set as adopted by a number of Western governments. In Australian curriculum documents these generic or key competencies, while focusing on the kind of attributes that employers want, sit uncomfortably in curriculum documents and processes that seek to tightly specify and highlight performance, because they lack substance and specificity. Yet, the interest in these kinds of outcomes continues. More recently, Australian employers also have identified the importance of what have been termed ‘personal attributes that contribute to employability’ (Table 2) and indicate that these are required as part of the set of employability skills. Therefore, as an intended curriculum, CBT curricula are outcome focused, psychologically behaviourist in design, place a great deal of emphasis on assessment and being assessable. They also focus on describing the specific skill sets that make up an occupation. So, in seeking to make the educational provision more responsive to workplace and learner needs, another set of prescriptions has been offered, rather making the approach more open to adaptation to such attributes. Moreover, within this approach to the curriculum there has been a preference to adopt a modularized design approach that enables these curricula to be used in a variety of both institutional and workplace settings, with the intent of managing the provision of the vocational curriculum. Within these modules is a focus on a rich description of the assessment tasks associated with an occupation skill-set, which tends to privilege the ‘doing’ of over the ‘knowing’ about these tasks.

4.2 What Should be the Focus? So, what should be the focus of the educational intents and content of a modularized vocational curriculum? In answering this question it is first important to acknowledge the strengths of the current CBT curriculum models. It is also important to seek to improve the current models by refining them by taking account of what recent research has told us about these models. As noted, the introduction of modular materials into the Australian vocational education system was initially motivated as a way of controlling the work of vocational educators, and to direct their efforts towards those objectives that the government thought were important. In addition, there were concerns that in the different states and territories of Australia quite different content was being taught, which meant that there was no coherent national approach or certification of vocational skills. Hence, the introduction of national approaches to vocational curricula have led to facility in the portability of qualifications and give greater certainty to employers about the skills individuals initially learned through vocational programmes. Moreover, as the provision of vocational education has extended far beyond the nation’s technical and further education colleges, and into schools, workplaces and private providers of vocational

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Table 1 Comparative table of generic employability skills by country Australian key competencies (Mayer Key Competencies)

United Kingdom (NCVQ) core skills

Canada employability skills profile

United States (SCANS) workplace know-how

Collecting, analysing and organizing information Communicating ideas and information

Communication

Thinking skills Communication skills

Information Foundation skills: basic skills Information

Planning and organizing activities Working with others and in teams

Personal skills: improving own performance and learning Personal skills: working with others

Responsibility skills Thinking skills Positive attitudes and behaviour

Foundation skills: basic skills Resources foundation skills: personal qualities Interpersonal skills

Using mathematical ideas and techniques Solving problems

Numeracy: application of numbers Problem-solving

Using technology

Information technology

Post-Mayer additions: cultural understandings

Modern foreign language

Work with others Adaptability Understand and solve problems using mathematics Problem-solving and decision-making skills Learning skills Use technology Communication skills Manage information Use numbers. Work safely Participate in projects and tasks

Foundation skills: basic skills Foundation skills: thinking

Technology systems

Source: Australia. DEST, 2002. F. Beven


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Table 2 Employability skills framework

Personal attributes that contribute to overall employability

Loyalty Commitment Honesty and integrity Reliability Enthusiasm Personal presentation Common-sense

Positive self-esteem Sense of humour Ability to deal with pressure Motivation Balanced attitude to work and home life Adaptability

Source: Australia. DEST, 2002.

education, this approach and its modularized materials have become central to managing a far more widely dispersed and national vocational education system. So, the current models seem to be overly prescriptive with respect to their occupational skill-sets, sometimes to the detriment of the skill-sets themselves. However, it has some virtues in terms of the administration of a vocational education system across the widely dispersed and different institutions that provide vocational education. Yet, the CBT curricula, while focusing essentially on occupational skills in this way and because of their prescriptive nature, take little account of the situation of the learning or of the range of needs of learner themselves. A focus only on those aspects of an occupational skill-set that are both observable and measurable is overly simplistic, because the thinking and acting required for such performance may not remain the focus of teaching or assessment. For example, it is one thing for a worker/learner in the metal trades to demonstrate their competence at undertaking a series of different welds. It is quite another for them to demonstrate a capacity to construct an object that requires them not only to undertake the same series of welds, but to do so in the context of the job. The context, among other things, might require them to:

r r r

Work in a safe manner (by undertaking the welds in an order that makes the job safe during construction); Minimizes material wastage (by undertaking the welds in a way that minimizes material usage or loss); and Take account of correct construction methods (by undertaking the welds in a way that makes the final assembly feasible).

That is, undertaking each kind of weld correctly in isolation (a feature of a modularized curriculum), while being critically important, is not enough because a number of distinct performance requirements need to be brought together in performing the work task. The point here is that successfully developing and undertaking sets of skills (the doing) in isolation, while important, will not by themselves develop the application skills (the knowing: how to apply those skill in a purposeful way in practice). A modular curriculum tends to be taught in modularized ways (Billett et al., 1999), particularly when being delivered in flexible learning settings. This renders both the teaching and assessment of vocational skills in an atomistic way. Teachers reported frustration with this approach as they sensed the gaps and overlaps

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in a modular curriculum and often had to intervene to assist students develop capacities that would permit them to use the specific skills in the context of work-related tasks. This shortcoming of the modular curriculum as a set of highly described curriculum intents needs to be addressed. The current practice of vocational curriculum development that relies on an industry-driven and centralized approach to specifying content and assessment specifications needs to be augmented by the inclusion of the contributions of educators whose expertise in learning can provide the basis for a more holistic CBT curriculum. That is, providing a situational perspective about how the particular sets of educational goals and content meet students’ needs and local requirements. Moreover, the educators’ input into the CBT curriculum may assist in addressing the imbalance of privileging ‘doing’ over ‘knowing’ and ensure that attention is paid to the needs of learners as individuals. In this way, there needs to be scope within a modularized approach to the curriculum that permits teachers to adapt and modify the descriptions and modules to suit the circumstances in which they are being taught.

5 The Enacted Curriculum The enacted curriculum refers to the actual curricular content that students engage in the classroom or practice setting. The enacted curriculum is what is implemented and what is shaped by the particular situation (e.g. facilities and resources in the learning setting); the capacities, experiences and other attributes of those who deliver the course (e.g. teachers); and by the specific demands of the situation (e.g. organizational requirements). Thus, the enacted curriculum is the operationalized interpretation of the intended curriculum. The intended and the experienced curriculum are important components of the educational delivery system, but most learning is expected to occur within the enacted curriculum. As such, the enacted curriculum is the single most important feature of any curriculum. The questions examined in this section about the enacted curriculum are:

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What level of detailing of content should occur at the centre and what should be left for those who enact the curriculum? To what degree should the methods of teaching and assessment be pre-specified and prescribed at the centre and what should be left for those enacting the curriculum?

Billett et al (1999) reported that, following the adoption of CBT in Australia, there were changes in teachers’ practice that shaped their enactment of it. Teachers reported that they felt that the changes had seen a reduction in the emphasis on pedagogy and much more emphasis on assessment and record keeping. They also claimed that a shift towards a more individualized focus for curriculum arrangements came from self-paced approaches to modularized curriculum delivery, which eroded opportunities for group activities and placed greater demands on


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teachers to manage the individual learning trajectories of students as they engaged individually with self-paced modules. So, the individual pathways of learning demanded by the modularized curriculum resources have seen teachers focusing on self-paced approaches to learning, the customizing of programmes and resourcebased approaches to instruction. Moreover, while assessment had always been an important part of their teaching practice, they reported that delivering a CBT curriculum had increased the amount of assessment. Further, the teachers reported that the CBT curriculum required them to keep assessment records at a greater level of specificity than previously. Yet, the focus on the learner, on meeting their individual needs, and on opportunities for them to learn in groups had all been diminished in this curriculum approach. Instead, what was emphasized was students’ engagement with sets of experiences organized through modularized materials that required extensive management and administrative effort on the part of teachers. It is clear that the intended CBT modularized curriculum in Australia has impacted on the enacted curriculum by bringing pressure towards greater uniformity concerning industry standards and a very substantial increase in testing, recordkeeping and auditing. Assessment has become more workplace orientated, but also more dominant and more focused on once-off performance of disaggregated skills (Billett et al., 1999). So, while this overly prescriptive approach to vocational curriculum in Australia has brought about greater uniformity in outcomes, it has also inhibited the capacity of teachers to deliver to students the kinds of opportunities, experiences and guidance they often need in their learning. Vocational teachers need to be more than just implementers of the curriculum developed; they need to be able to apply both their vocational and pedagogic expertise in order to best meet local needs, including those of their students. The value of their pedagogic expertise needs to be acknowledged and should not be wholly compromised by a centralized description. The intended curriculum has the critical role in identifying content. However, it should not be so prescriptive as to deny teachers some discretion. As noted, a national prescribed curriculum, such as that deployed in Australia, cannot account for local needs and these local needs are often central to the key purposes of vocational education: what individuals want to learn and what enterprises want learned. Therefore, within the enacted curriculum teachers need to be able to make judgements about the best integration of content so as to provide both routine and non-routine experiences for the learner. Further, teachers need to make judgements about the best combinations of independent, group and teacher-led experiences. This will allow teachers to better determine and to respond to individuals’ needs, as a way to guide their learning and skill development. Moreover, within the enacted curriculum, assessment practices need to focus on more than just the set of disaggregated skills generally found in the intended curriculum. Teachers need to develop assessment tasks that are more authentic and holistic and that relate to both the local conditions and to the level of development of learners. These needs are not and possibly cannot be prescribed centrally; rather, they ought to be developed locally and be both routine and non-routine in nature.

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In sum, within the enacted modularized approach to the vocational education curriculum, there is a need to acknowledge the role of the educational process that is enacted by teachers taking into account the needs, resources and capacities that are located centrally. The focus ought to be on the activities and roles of teachers and the kinds of activities and guidance that learners engage in. The evidence within Australia (Angus et al. in Billett et al., 1999) is that approaches to curriculum and assessment need to be transformed to recognize the critical role of teachers in achieving appropriate outcomes for both learners and industry.

6 The Experienced Curriculum The experienced curriculum is what students experience when they engage in a learning setting and programme. It comprises the actual learning that arises from their engagement in the activities provided by the enacted curriculum. What the learners experience and how they interpret that experience is central to how they make sense or meaning from the encounters. Constructivists argue that individuals are ‘meaning makers’ and when they engage with learning activities and others they attempt to ‘make sense’ of their world. So the focus is on the actual learning that arises from engagement in the activities provided for them. The question posed in this section about the experienced curriculum is: to what degree should the enactment of the curriculum be considerate of the interests, needs and readiness of learners? This question is an important one, as illustrated by Wertsch’s (1998) use of the terms ‘mastery’ and ‘appropriation’. Wertsch refers to ‘mastery’ as learning associated with the superficial compliance to what individuals are supposed to learn, because others are pressing them to learn this content. Whereas, ‘appropriation’ is what learners take ‘onto themselves’ in a more full-bodied way, because they believe it to be true and consistent with their beliefs and interests. Learning activities that are only curriculum-driven are much more likely to be ‘mastered’ and not ‘appropriated’ in Wertsch’s terms. Modularized learning, particularly that which is delivered in individual ways (e.g. self-paced, resources based and customized programmes), often lacks the fidelity and capacity to be ‘appropriated’ unless careful guidance is provided. This fidelity and capacity is more generally provided through the engagement with the expert other (i.e. the teacher). It is teachers that make the educational worth of the learning accessible to the learner and guide that learning. With competent teaching, this is often provided in ad-hoc and spontaneous ways, attributes rarely encountered in highly prescriptive or resource-based individualized learning that is more about administrative compliance than meeting individual learners’ needs. Again, drawing from the Australian study (Billett et al., 1999), it was found that adaptability and skilfulness in learners is more likely to be secured in the kinds of experiences that learners access in both learning settings and workplace. It was consistently reported that a combination of experiences (e.g. project work, group


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activities, teacher-guided activities and self-managed activities) centred on authentic activities secure ‘appropriated’ knowledge. Further, and importantly, however, it was the experiences provided by an expert teacher that permitted the bridging of the contributions of both kinds of learning settings. Even when students were engaged in college-based programmes only, it was found that the capacity of teachers to use instances from the workplace to make content applicable to the students assisted bridging their learning from the college to the workplace. From the learning literature, we know that learners construct new knowledge by anchoring it to and building upon existing knowledge. Therefore consideration of the learner’s current knowledge is central to constructing new knowledge. For instance, consider the differences in learning experiences between high-school students and apprentices on a vocational task. Apprentices have had periods in workplaces, in some cases undertaking the tasks they are learning about, observing and listening to more experienced workers. With respect to task performance, the apprentice may have developed clear goals for the performance of work tasks as a result of this experience, whereas the high-school learner may never have engaged in any kind of workplace practice. As a result, their bases for engaging with and responding to the content will be quite different. Clearly, the interests, needs and readiness of the learner are critical success factors in any learning they undertake, and in particular challenging demands associated with learning new knowledge. What teachers need to do is to ensure that, in the enacted curriculum, they employ learning strategies that enable learners to draw upon their existing resources. Further, they need also to provide the cognitive scaffolding necessary to enable them to do this.

7 Conclusions I conclude this chapter by responding to the following question: What ought to be the basis for developing a TVET modular curriculum (e.g. what kinds of outcomes, what kinds of processes to achieve these outcomes, what kinds of methods)? In short, the answer is to adopt a curriculum development model that accommodates the needs all of the participants involved. For nations wishing to compete in the global economy and who need to carefully manage the economic development necessary, there are clear imperatives to centrally manage their vocational education systems with a centrally developed modular curriculum (the intended curriculum). However, in an increasingly more diverse delivery system of both public and private providers, top-down management and nationally-endorsed modularized materials tend to become key management tools. That is, not only are these materials the curriculum, but they are also tools with which to manage, monitor and audit the vocational education system, as well as to guard against teachers who may lack content and pedagogical competence. These are not the most salient purposes for the development of the modular curriculum. The purpose needs to be more about managing the learning, rather than managing the learning system.

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The purpose of this chapter has been to argue that current approaches to developing a modular curriculum (the intended curriculum) can only be partially successful if account is not also taken of both the pedagogy (the enacted curriculum) and the needs of learners (the experienced curriculum). The research reviewed in this chapter indicates that, while the modular curriculum may appear to be serving the national interest, its success relies upon the fidelity with which it is implemented. Where the interests of both the teachers and learners are not served, it is unlikely that implementation will live up to intent. Such a top-down approach is unable to account for the needs, competence and particular understanding of vocational teachers, nor the readiness, capacities and interests of the learners. The process of modular curriculum development needs to include the interests of all legitimate participants. This means that it requires the legitimate inclusion of teachers to provide advice as to how modular curriculum content might best be implemented and enacted. Further, teachers can also negotiate on behalf of students. Vocational educators bring sets of experiences and expertise to the teaching and learning process that can enrich the curriculum process by contextualizing these experiences and selecting appropriate content. Unless vocational educators are committed to the educational content and processes that others decide they ought to teach, they are unlikely to give preference to them. Finally, the modular curriculum needs to be more than just prescriptions of content; it needs also to be pedagogically robust. From a learning context, a focus only on those aspects of an occupational skill-set that are both observable and measurable is overly simplistic. This is because an absence of the thinking and acting required to enable those skills as workplace performance will render them invisible to the teaching and assessment practices of vocational educators. It will be input from vocational educators that can address the imbalance of the current practice of privileging ‘doing’ over ‘knowing’.

References Australia. Department of Education, Science and Technology. 2002. Key findings: employability skills framework. In: Employability skills for the future, pp. 35–50. Canberra: DEST. <www.dest.gov.au/archive/ty/publications/employability skills/final report.pdf> Billett, S. 1995. Constructing the curricula: national curricula, teachers’ practice and change. New horizons in education, vol. 92, pp. 30–45. Billett, S. 2000. Defining the demand side of VET: industry, enterprises, individuals and regions. Journal of vocational education and training, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 5–30. Billett, S. et al. 1999. The CBT Decade: teaching for flexibility and adaptability. Adelaide, Australia: National Centre for Vocational Education Research. Blachford, K. 1986. Orientations to curriculum in TAFE. Melbourne, Australia: Hawthorn Institute of Education. Dawkins, J. 1988. Industry training in Australia: the need for change. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Fullan, M. 1982. The meaning of educational change. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Hall, G.E.; Loucks, S. 1978. Teacher concern as a basis for facilitating and personalizing staff development. Teachers college record, vol. 80, no. 1, pp. 36–53.


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National Training Board. 1992. National competency standards: policy and guidelines. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Services. Ntshebe, F. 2004. Workplace skill acquisition challenges for Botswana engineering fields. [Unpublished master’s thesis, Faculty of Education, Griffith University, Australia.] Sisoutha, K. 1998. Developing vocational skills in the workplace. [Unpublished honour’s thesis, Faculty of Education, Griffith University, Australia.] Skilbeck, M. 1984. School-based curriculum development. London: Harper & Row. Wertsch, J.W. 1998. Mind as action. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.


Chapter VIII.7

Literacy and Learning: Are TVET Professionals Facilitators of Learning or Deliverers of Knowledge and Skills? Jean Searle

1 Introduction If you were to ask a range of people what they think literacy is, you are likely to find that they respond in a number of different ways. It may be that they equate literacy with being able to read and write—but read and write what? The answer will vary with the individual: it may be the ability to read a street map, read a book to a child, read the sports pages in a newspaper, or the label on a bottle of medicine. From this point of view, literacy is seen as a set of social practices. However, if you ask the same question of governments, the response will either be in terms of literacy levels of the population or in relation to employment and training. From this perspective, literacy is perceived to be a set of desirable skills or technologies required by individuals to gain employment or engage in training. In other words an ‘autonomous’ view of literacy is held (Street, 1984). It has been this aspect of literacy that, in the past, governments and agencies have been at pains to quantify, in order to explain and remedy the problem of ‘illiteracy’. For example, in the 1970s UNESCO and the World Bank focused on measuring the extent of adult illiteracy by gathering statistics on access to schooling, and implementing mass literacy campaigns in developing and underdeveloped countries (Arnove & Graff, 1987; Freebody, 1994). More recently, the concern, particularly in countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), has been to compare national literacy levels against international benchmarks (Statistics Canada; OECD, 2000; 2005). The International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) used a five-point scale, level 3 of which is deemed to be the level which represents ‘the ability to cope with a varied range of materials found in daily life and work [though not always] with a high level of proficiency’ (Skinner, 1997, p. x). Thus, as will be shown later in this chapter, the ‘magical’ level 3 has become the benchmark for entry-level training. In recent years, adult literacy has come to be seen as crucial to the economic performance of industrialized nations. Literacy is no longer defined merely in terms of a basic threshold of reading ability, mastered by almost all those growing up in developed countries. Rather, literacy is now being seen as how adults use written information to function in society. Today, adults need a higher level of literacy to function well; society has become more complex and low-skill jobs are disappearing. Therefore, inadequate levels of literacy among R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VIII.7, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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a broad section of the population potentially threatens the strength of economies and the social cohesion of nations (OECD, 1995, p. 13) [Emphasis added].

2 What is Literacy: ‘Being Literate’? As we have seen, the concept of literacy is not value-free—it has social, cultural, political, economic and educational implications. Venezky (1990, p. 2) argues that ‘[it] is one of that class of auto-positive terms, like liberty, justice, and happiness, that we assume contain simple, primal qualities [. . .] but that under scrutiny become vastly more complex and often elusive, yielding no simple characterization or definition’. As a result, what is regarded as being literate depends on the definition of literacy that is adopted, at a particular time in history and in a particular context. Literacy is a socially contested term. We can choose to use this word in any of several different ways. Each such choice incorporates a tacit or overt ideological theory about the distribution of social goods and has important social and moral consequences (Gee, 1990, p. 27).

Further, there is no universally accepted definition of literacy. In fact, literacy may be viewed in relation to learning—as a cognitive or thinking skill, as a social practice, or in relation to power struggles as an emancipatory act. Moreover, as will be argued later, literacy is not a unitary construct, but there are rather multiple literacies.

2.1 Assumptions or Master Myths: What is Expected of Literacy? The autonomous model suggests that literacy is a cognitive skill that individuals may or may not possess. Associated with this view are a number of theories that depict literacy learning as being a set of basic skills that are generally learnt in primary school and prepare a person for the rest of their lives. These decontextualized skills are often constructed as being generic in nature and so are able to be standardized, assessed, reported and audited. Such theories give rise to a deficit model of literacy in which individuals who do not reach the given standard are expected to attend remedial classes. Not only does this simplistic definition ignore the fact that: ‘Read is a transitive verb, so literacy must have something to do with being able to read something’ (Gee, 1990, p. 42). It also unfairly blames the individual for the problems of society, as indicated in the earlier quotation from the OECD (1995). Hence, lack of literacy has been linked to poverty, poor health and criminal behaviour (Venezky, 1990). By being labelled illiterate, individuals are ‘taken to be incapable of logic, scientific thought, literary appreciation, democratic processes, informed judgement, and, in many cases, [as will be shown in the next section] incapable of being employed or of contributing to the maintenance and development of social well-being’ (Freebody, 1994, p. 2). As a result, data representing literacy or illiteracy rates have often been used to push certain social and political agendas and have given rise to

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what Graff (1986) referred to as the ‘literacy myth’—increased literacy results in increased social cohesion, wellness and productivity. In contrast, an ideological view of literacy takes as its central premise that ‘the social and political significance of literacy [. . .] derives largely from its role in creating and reproducing—or failing to reproduce—the social distribution of knowledge’ (Levine, 1986, p. 46). Reading, writing and enumerating are viewed as cultural practices, learnt in specific cultural contexts and ‘imbued with epistemological significance’ (Baker & Street, 1991, p. 2). That is, uses of literacy and numeracy are meaningful, cannot be generalized across cultures, cannot be isolated or treated either as neutral, generic or as technical and so have implications for power relations. In other words, how literacy is used depends on the context and the relationships among participants. Gee (1990, 1996) discusses such social practices or ‘discourses’ as ways of talking, interacting, thinking, valuing and believing, all of which are socially and historically constructed, so that people have to be socialized into the practice of reading text ‘A’ in way ‘B’. In this sense, Gee is building on Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of ‘expanded competence’ or language as praxis, which introduces concepts of language as being functional and strategic—it is not just knowing how to produce grammatically coherent sentences but knowing about ‘appropriateness’— ‘when to speak, keep silent, speak in this or that style’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 646). In fact, given that the meaning of literacy depends upon the social context in which it is embedded, and that the particular reading and writing practices involved depend upon social structures and the institutions of education or training, there cannot be a single, autonomous literacy. It would be more appropriate to refer to multiple literacies as will be discussed in the next section.

3 From Theory to Practice Internationally, literacy studies as an area of research came of age in 1990, given the prominence of literacy during the International Literacy Year. Prior to this time, empirical research came from the disciplines of cognitive psychology and linguistics, and focused on how people learn to read and write (Goodman, 1967; Smith, 1971; Sticht, 1975). Later studies (Scribner & Cole, 1981; Heath, 1983; Street, 1984; Gowen, 1994; Hull, 1997; Barton & Hamilton, 1998) used ethnographic methods to study individuals at work and in their communities, and highlighted the range of literacies used in the social practices in which people engage. A number of issues have emerged from these studies, which have implications for the TVET practitioner.

3.1 Literacy at Work One of the first issues was raised by Diehl and Mikulecky (1980) who found that the level of reading ability required for successful work performance varied according to the job and, moreover, that reading practices also varied with context.

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Mikulecky (1982) also demonstrated that the reading skills learnt in school were mainly ‘reading-to-learn’ and these did not neatly transfer to out-of-school and work contexts. In these situations reading is used as an aid to performance, ‘reading-todo’, ‘[which] is severely limited by differences in format, social support networks and required background information’ (Mikulecky, 1990, p. 25). Subsequently, other researchers (Gee, 1994; Gee & Lankshear, 1997; Luke, 1992) have argued that the emergence of ‘fast capitalist’ economies has seen an increase in the tertiary or service sectors and also in information technologies. Jobs that traditionally required minimal basic skills are becoming more complex, demanding higher-level reading and computational skills. At the same time that the jobs themselves have been restructured, the nature of work has also been changing, with the introduction of new work practices and new technologies (Cope & Kalantzis, 1995; Jackson, 2000; Searle & Kelly, 2001) all of which make new demands on the workforce. Many individuals who have inadequate control of the ‘institutional literacies’ (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Castleton & McDonald, 2000) essential for work and living independent lives, become increasingly dispossessed—particularly in times of decreasing social and welfare provision by the State (Lankshear, 1993). In Australia, under the principle of ‘mutual obligation’, the long-term unemployed who are assessed as being below the magic level 3 in literacy and numeracy (mentioned earlier) are required to attend adult literacy or numeracy classes (as a pre-requisite for training or employment) or lose their welfare payments. This brings us to the second issue, regarding ‘whose literacy?’

3.2 Whose Literacy: Institutional or Local? It has been argued in an earlier section that governments generally promote an autonomous model of literacy. This is a narrow, culturally specific view of literacy that is premised on the assumption that the skills of reading and writing are contextfree, are universal in time and space and have consequences for social progress and individual achievement. In practice, this can lead to discrimination in terms of cultural domination and equity of access to training. It also negates the immense social capital that individuals can bring to learning and work. These issues are explored by Prinsloo and Breier (1996) in relation to literacy as part of national adult basic education and training (ABET) in South Africa. The literacy that is valued and imposed is a culturally-bound, school literacy in the dominant languages, which then marginalizes the local languages and literacies of factory or farm workers and can lead to oppression. Thus, literacy is tied up with values, which indicates a third issue—literacy as a right for social transformation.

3.3 Literacy as a Right for Social Transformation In 1975, the UNESCO-sponsored International Symposium for Literacy, held at Persepolis, Iran, stated that literacy is ‘not just the process of learning skills of


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reading, writing and arithmetic, but a contribution to the liberation of man and his [sic] full development. [. . .] Literacy is a fundamental human right’ (cited in Nelson, 1989, p. 18). The educational philosophy of this time revolved around a student-centred curriculum, goal setting, negotiation, individualized programmes, personal growth and the development of student self-confidence. Thus, the educator was seen as a facilitator and supporter of learning. Further, the philosophy also acknowledged the central role of language in learning which, translated into pedagogical terms, meant starting with the student’s own language. In some countries, Australia included, this has led to debates about two-way learning; starting literacy learning in the student’s first language and then learning the dominant language. However, concerns are often expressed about the ‘colonization’ of local languages and the disempowerment of individuals that often ensues. This issue was addressed by the emancipatory discourses of Paulo Freire. To Freire, education was the means to bring about radical social and political change. He gave recognition to techniques related to empowerment through dialogue and through problematizing, for which he coined the term ‘conscientization’. Through the process of literacy education, Freire and his followers redesigned experiential situations so that learners developed their own texts and reflected on their own understanding of themselves, as they exist with society. Freire referred to this combination of action and reflection as ‘praxis’ (Freire, 1972). Importance is placed on the role of the educator, not as a teacher but as a facilitator of learning, one who enables reflection and who transmits cultural knowledge. In this way, learning is participatory; it centres on student motivation and involves social action. Similar initiatives, in which literacy learning has been linked to social action, have been reported more recently in New Guinea in which a critical literacy approach is taken to facilitate community-controlled social transformation (Faracalas, 1997), in promoting critical awareness and education to assist female waste-rag pickers to transform their lives in India (Narayan & Chikarmane, 2000), and with Xhosa farm labourers, the ‘literate illiterates’, in South Africa (Williams, 2000). Other initiatives are the ‘multiliteracies’ projects, which focus on designing social futures and which are underway in a number of developing countries. Multiliteracies relate to the increasing multiplicity and integration of significant modes of meaning-making, where textual is also related to the visual, the audio, the spatial, the behavioural [. . .] ‘multimedia’ and in electronic ‘hypermedia’ [. . .] to focus on the realities of increasing local diversity and global connectedness (Cope & Kalantzis, 1995, p. 6)

In some respects, these have responded to the challenge of the OECD, presented earlier in the chapter, in terms of ‘productive diversity’, developing civic pluralism and designing pedagogies that address cultural and linguistic diversity, as well as the changing realities and ‘multilayered life-worlds’ of the future. But what does all this mean in practice? The next section will start by briefly addressing literacy and literacy learning. It will then lead into implications for TVET professionals.

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3.4 Literacy and Literacy Learning In relation to literacy, Gee makes a distinction between ‘acquisition’ and ‘learning’ (others refer to informal and formal learning). For Gee (1990, p. 146), acquisition is ‘the process of acquiring something (usually subconsciously) by exposure to models, a process of trial and error, and practice within social groups, without formal training’. This is the way that most people acquire language as a primary discourse. However, the secondary discourse associated with schooling involves learning, ‘conscious knowledge gained through teaching or through certain life experiences that trigger conscious reflection. This teaching involves explanation and analysis’ (ibid.). Of course, learning is not restricted to schooling, but the point here is that certain forms of knowledge are valued or privileged over others. For example, schooling which occurs in the dominant language(s) is given more status than knowledge acquired using local languages and literacies. Similarly, formal training in the workplace, often related to technical skills and competencies and linked to men’s work, is privileged over the acquired knowledge of the social practices of the workplace, the so-called ‘soft skills’ often associated with women’s work (Daune-Richard, 2000; Jackson, 1991), which may be gained through a period of socialization or informal learning. It is to a discussion of what this means for TVET professionals that we now turn.

4 The Implications for TVET Professionals 4.1 Facilitators of Learning or Deliverers of Knowledge and Skills When it comes to an appropriate pedagogy, it is not as simple as either being a facilitator of learning or a deliverer of knowledge and skills. Many practitioners, who espouse a student-centred curriculum that focuses on the individual and encourages self-directed learning, would also recognize that there are times when it is appropriate to step in and teach a particular skill or to show a way of approaching a task. Similarly, workers in many workplaces, who may be hired on the basis of formal technical qualifications, may find that to operate successfully requires the acquisition of context-specific ways of working through informal learning on-the-job. In fact, many workplaces, which are developing as learning organizations, expect their employees to mentor new workers. Further, the informal acquisition of local literacies in the community has been described by Prinsloo and Breier (1996) as ‘apprenticeship learning’, while they also report collaborative learning activities in terms of ‘mediated learning’. Malan (1996) in South Africa and Castleton and Macdonald (2000) in Australia have also reported on the role of the magistrates clerk, sales person, adult literacy practitioner or other trusted member of the community as a mediator or ‘literacy broker’; one who can ‘code-switch’ between local literacies and institutional literacies. What is apparent from this research is that there are many ways of gaining knowledge and learners may require a repertoire


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of approaches to assist with their learning. For example, in an attempt to cut across debates about the teaching of literacy, Freebody and Luke (1990) argue that readers take on four roles: text de-coder, text user, text participant and text analyst. In any one activity, the learner might have to literally de-code text, understand the purpose for reading the text, use a number of reading strategies, and consider issues such as efficiency, time, cost or politeness. So, what does this mean for the teacher or trainer?

4.2 Principles for Curriculum Design and Pedagogy The adoption of competency-based training in many countries has changed significantly the way that education and training is conceptualized, planned, delivered and assessed. More than ever before, teachers and trainers are being called upon to interpret sets of competencies and related performance criteria in ways that are, firstly, responsive to industry and workplace environments and, secondly, legislatively, financially and morally accountable. For TVET professionals this means teaching the technical skills related to units of competence. However, as we have seen, there is some debate over the transfer of these skills and how they relate to the specific social practices of the workplace. So, using literacy as an example, the following general principles are proposed. Firstly, it is imperative that curriculum designers and instructors have an understanding of the discourses that operate within the specific sites in which teachers and trainers are operating. As social practices, or ways of interacting, valuing and being in the world vary across domains (schooling, vocational institutions and individual workplaces), so instructors need to understand the site-specific organizational systems, work practices and underpinning values. This is partly for pragmatic reasons (training is organized to suit project needs, climatic or economic conditions) and partly in order to contextualize the learning and build a rapport or positive learning environment. Further, as learning in the workplace is highly contextualized, the teacher or trainer requires an in-depth knowledge of the site-specific texts and tasks. With the move towards developing learning cultures within the workplace, there is a necessity for all workers to engage in a range of communicative activities and learn new literacy practices. This requires training not only in relation to industry competencies but also the acquisition of those literacies required to participate in workplace activities. Secondly, the literacies that underpin competencies should be perceived by curriculum designers and instructors as embedded within those competencies and not as additions or pre-requisites to the competencies. There is a view that workers should possess generic literacy skills that are transferable, or, if they have inadequate skills, they should be ‘fixed up’ first, prior to training. However, evidence presented earlier suggests that literacies are highly situated and cannot be generalized in this way. Therefore, in developing a curriculum, attention should be given to those technical literacies that are required to achieve the stated competence, and these should be

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taught alongside the technical competence using the relevant workplace texts. In addition, we have seen how the changing nature of work has led to increased employee accountability and a consequent increase in the use of paperwork, as an audit trail, in the workplace. As a result, there is a need for appropriate training so that all workers have the skills and understandings to undertake different literacy roles. For example, a worker could be a text de-coder and text user when completing a form or checklist correctly, but could also become a text analyst in understanding the significance of compliance or non-compliance with continuous improvement systems or in becoming a critical participant in decision-making processes. In summary, educators and trainers should strive to provide integrated training programmes in which the technical and social literacies of the workplace are embedded with the training. The next section suggests some approaches that could be taken.

4.3 Instructional Practices The starting point for this section is to unpack the concept of an ‘integrated training programme’. Vocational education and training programmes that integrate language, literacy and numeracy within them have four key characteristics. Firstly, they identify the language, literacy and numeracy competencies (or learning outcomes) essential for work performance or for community programmes and address these competencies as part of the curriculum. They should also identify the social literacies of the workplace or the community, as often these are not made explicit. Secondly, they take into account the language, literacy and numeracy competence and needs of the learner and develop these as part of, not separate from, vocational competence. Thirdly, they ensure that the language of instruction and assessment used in the vocational programme is consistent with that required for work, or training or in the community and is appropriate for the learner. Finally, they assess language, literacy and numeracy outcomes in terms of successful performance of relevant and authentic tasks. Integrated training programmes should address the relevant literacies in all three phases of learning: orientating, enhancing and synthesizing. Orientation introduces the competence or learning outcome, the tasks involved and the criteria for assessment. This is the time when the learner’s prior knowledge of the literacies involved may be assessed or learners could self-assess their own facility with the relevant texts. Questions should be used to access the learner’s prior knowledge of the topic so the learning process is likely to be successful. Also, demonstrations may be necessary to show learners how to use workshop manuals, how to look up specific standards or how to use new technology. At the same time, any new language, such as specific technical terms, everyday words used in a technical way and colloquialisms, needs to be introduced. Also, the language of instruction and assessment should be presented. The enhancing phase of instruction is all about mastering new technical or vocational knowledge and the associated literacies. This may take place on-site in the workplace or community, or in a training room using authentic texts and tasks,


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simulations and role-play. It may require moving from the traditional classroom to a training room set up as a workplace with the requisite furniture and equipment. As far as possible, the environment should simulate actual work conditions in order that learners experience the need to develop skills in prioritizing work, coping with interruptions and developing the social literacies so essential for high performance workplaces. In addition, not all instruction should be teacher driven. Opportunities should be given for learners to work independently, with assistance (which could be computer-aided assistance) or in collaborative groups. If this training takes place on-the-job, new employees could observe and work with experienced workers in a mentoring situation. In this way they will learn the communication patterns of the workplace, including the use of insider terminology. They will also learn to use sitespecific documents and technologies, while at the same time becoming socialized into the workplace culture. Finally comes the synthesizing phase in which learners bring together the new knowledges and literacies to form part of their conceptual framework, as a basis for further thought and action. Activities associated with this phase include reflection on what has been learnt and/or summative assessment.

4.4 Principles of Assessment The previous discussion has mentioned two forms of assessment—initial assessment and summative assessment. Initial assessment, as part of the orientation phase of learning, is concerned with making a judgement about the current literacy skills of learners in relation to training and work or community texts and tasks. Summative assessment comes at the end of a programme of training and indicates if the learner is competent or has achieved the required standard of performance. The following principles apply in either situation. Firstly, assessment should be holistic. That is, rather than concentrating on the performance of discrete, often decontextualized skills or individual competencies, it should be possible to address a range of competencies or learning outcomes through a more holistic approach, through completion of an authentic task. This could be writing a letter of complaint, or baking a cake or erecting scaffolding, all of which require specific literacies. Secondly, assessment should be appropriate to the context. The validity of performance-based assessment depends on the extent to which the assessment measures what it is intended to measure. Therefore, standardized tests are usually inappropriate and should be discarded in favour of using relevant workplace texts and tasks for assessment purposes. Moreover, assessment should be reliable and fair. This means that the instructions for assessment tasks should be clear, explicit and ordered. The learner should know what is expected, including the time allowed and the criteria on which their performance will be measured. The language of assessment should reflect the language of instruction. If the learner does not have a good understanding of the official language or has inadequate literacy for the task, decisions need to be made about alternative assessment processes. These may include assessment in the first language and use of oral assessment.

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In summary, assessment tasks should be contextualized and reflect what learners/workers are required to do. Assessment should be reliable and fair.

5 Conclusion It has been argued that it is necessary to recognize the situatedness and pluralities of literacy, as well as the ideological nature of language and the uses of literacy for reasons of power and control. As a result, TVET practitioners need to acknowledge different ways of knowing and meaning making. This might be through collaborative learning in groups, assisted learning (with text, technology or mentor support) or independent learning. At the same time, educators must recognize that learners may operate in a range of domains—at work, in the community, at home or on-line—and increasingly there are no firm borders between them. In each of these domains the learner may be using texts and undertaking tasks related to themselves (as a worker, citizen or family member), which focus on interacting in groups (at work, in the community or family), or as part of systems communication within an organization, or communication with the broader community. Each of these forms of communication requires a different set of literacies: personal/local, co-operative, systems, procedural, institutional or technical. This is very different from the unitary, autonomous, often ethnocentric, view of literacy held by many governments. So, in conceptualizing a multi-literacies model of learning, there is recognition of the dominant influence of socio-cultural contexts and multiple sites of literacy activity, which cannot be ‘neutral’ as they are constituted by social and power relations. Thus, learning requires both the explicit teaching of specific skills, as well as opportunities for an informal acquisition of knowledge and social practices. The TVET professional needs the ability to use his or her professional judgement to identify key learning moments when they will actively intervene to deliver essential knowledge and skills. At other times, the teacher or trainer may take a back seat to allow the learners to become more self-directed or engage in collaborative learning with their peers. Further, there may be times when the teacher, trainer or work colleague acts as a mentor, facilitating informal learning, usually on-the-job. It is the professionalism of the teacher or trainer that allows judgements to be made about the type of pedagogical practices and the timing of learning activities and events, which is crucial to the success of the learner. To be a professional requires a sense of ‘vocation’, as well as a depth of knowledge of a particular field of learning from which to ‘profess’ (Beare, 1992). ‘Practice’ then becomes the application of that knowledge and learning to the benefit of others.

References Arnove, R.F.; Graff, H.J., eds. 1987. National literacy campaigns: historical and comparative perspectives. New York, NY: Plenum Press.


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Baker, D.A.; Street, B. 1991. Literacy and numeracy: concepts and definitions. In: Husen, T.; Postlethwaite, T.N., eds. The international encyclopaedia of education, vol. 6, 2nd ed., pp. 3453–59. Oxford, UK: Pergamon Press. Barton, D.; Hamilton, M. 1998. Local literacies: reading and writing in one community. London: Routledge. Beare, H. 1992. What does it mean to be professional? A commentary about teacher professionalism. Unicorn, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 65–72. Bourdieu, P. 1977. The economies of linguistic exchange. Social science information, vol. 6, pp. 645–68. Castleton, G.; McDonald, M. 2000. Multiple literacies and social transformation. Melbourne, Australia: Language Australia. Cope, B.; Kalantzis, M. 1995. Designing social futures. Education Australia, vol. 30, no. 6. Diehl, W.; Mikulecky, L. 1980. The nature of reading at work. Journal of reading, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 221–27. Daune-Richard, A-M. 2000. The social construction of skill. In: Jenson, J.; Laufer, J.; Maruani, M., eds. The gendering of inequalities: women, men and work, pp. 111–23. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Faracalas, N. 1997. Critical literacy and control in the new world order. In: Muspratt, S.; Luke, A.; Freebody, P., eds. Constructing critical literacies, pp. 141–72. St Leonards, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Freebody, P. 1994. Research in literacy education: the changing interfaces of research, policy and practice. (Inaugural lecture, 16 September 1994, Faculty of Education, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.) Freebody, P.; Luke, A. 1990. ‘Literacies’ programs: debates and demands in cultural context. Prospect, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 7–16. Freire, P. 1972. Pedagogy of the oppressed. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Education. Gee, J.P. 1990. Social linguistics and literacies: ideologies in discourses. London: The Falmer Press. Gee, J.P. 1994. New alignments and old literacies: critical literacy, post-modernism and fast capitalism. In: O’Connor, P., ed. Thinking work. Vol. 1: Theoretical perspectives on workers’ literacies, pp. 82–104. Sydney, Australia: ALBSAC. Gee, J.P. 1996. Social linguistics and literacies: ideologies in discourses, 2nd ed. London: Taylor & Francis. Gee, J.P.; Lankshear, C. 1997. Language, literacy and the new work order. In: Lankshear, C. et al., eds. Changing literacies, pp. 83–102. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Goodman, K. 1967. Reading: a psycholinguistic guessing game. Journal of the reading specialist, vol. 6, pp. 126–35. Gowen, S. 1994. ‘I’m no fool’: reconsidering American workers and their literacies. In: O’Connor, P., ed. Thinking work. Vol. 1: Theoretical perspectives on workers’ literacies, pp. 123–35. Sydney, Australia: ALBSAC. Graff, H. 1986. The legacies of literacy: continuities and contradictions in western society and culture. In: Castell, S. de; Luke, A.; Egans, K., eds. Literacy, society, and schooling: a reader, pp. 82–91. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Heath, S.B. 1983. Ways with words. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hull, G. 1997. Changing work, changing workers: critical perspectives on language, literacy and skills. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Jackson, N. 1991. Skills formation and gender relations: the politics of who knows what. Geelong, Australia: Deakin University Press. Jackson, N. 2000. Writing-up people at work: investigations of workplace literacy. Literacy and numeracy studies, vol. 10, nos. 1–2, pp. 5–22. (Proceedings of the Working Knowledge Conference, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia.) Lankshear, C. 1993. Curriculum as literacy: reading and writing in ‘New Times’. In: Green, B., ed. The insistence of the letter: literacy studies and curriculum theorizing, pp. 154–74. London: The Falmer Press.

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Levine, K. 1986. The social context of literacy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Luke, A. 1992. Literacy and work in ‘New Times’. Open letter, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 3–15. Malan, L. 1996. Literacy mediation and social identity in Newtown, Eastern Cape. In: Prinsloo, M.; Breier M., eds. The social uses of literacy: theory and practice in contemporary South Africa, pp. 105–22. Cape Town, South Africa: Sached Books. Mikulecky, L. 1982. Job literacy: the relationship between school preparation and workplace actuality. Reading research quarterly, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 400–19. Mikulecky, L. 1990. Basic skills impediments to communication between management and hourly employees. Management communication quarterly, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 452–73. Narayan, L.; Chikarmane, P. 2000. Beyond literacy: education for empowerment. Literacy and numeracy studies, vol. 10, nos. 1–2, pp. 99–116. (Proceedings of the Australian Council for Adult Literacy Conference, 21–23 September 2000, Perth, Western Australia.) Nelson, A.J.A. 1989. My dear ministers. Armidale, Australia: Department of Continuing Education, University of New England. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 1995. Literacy, economy and society. Paris: OECD/Canadian Ministry of Industry. Prinsloo, M.; Breier, M., eds. 1996. The social uses of literacy: theory and practice in contemporary South Africa. Cape Town, South Africa: Sached Books. Scribner, S.; Cole, M. 1981. The psychology of literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Searle, J.; Kelly, A. 2001. Acting smart: an investigation of assumptions and principles which underpin training and assessment within one civil construction company. Melbourne, Australia: Language Australia. Skinner, T.J. 1997. Aspects of literacy: assessed skill levels, Australia 1996. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. Smith, F. 1971. Understanding reading. Toronto, Canada: Holt. Statistics Canada; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2000. Literacy in the information age: final report of the International Adult Literacy Survey. Ottawa: Statistics Canada/OECD. Statistics Canada; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2005. Learning a living: first results of the adult literacy and life-skills survey. Ottawa: Statistics Canada; Paris: OECD. Sticht, T. 1975. Reading for working: a functional literacy anthology. Alexandria, VA: Human Resources Research Organisation. Street, B.V. 1984. Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Venezky, R.L. 1990. Definitions of literacy. In: Venezky, R.L.; Wagner, D.A.; Ciliberti, B.S., eds. Toward defining literacy, pp. 2–16. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Williams, H. 2000. The literate ‘illiterates’ of the Northern Cape Province of South Africa: an empirical account. Literacy and numeracy studies, vol. 10, nos. 1–2, pp. 85–97. (Proceedings of the Australian Council for Adult Literacy Conference, 21–23 September 2000, Perth, Western Australia.)

Chapter VIII.8

Vocational Education in the Private Sector in Brazil Elenice Monteiro Leite, Marinilzes Moradillo Mello and Nacim Walter Chieco

1 Introduction This chapter has the objective of presenting a panorama of the range, management and financing of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in Brazil, highlighting the participation of the private sector. It starts from an analysis of TVET adapted to the socio-economic context of the country and called, for the purposes of this study, the ‘non-invisible system’. To give an idea of its size, data obtained from several sources, official and non-official, are considered. The main agencies described and summarized are: the S-System; technical schools; independent education schools; public and private universities and colleges; government schools for civil and military employees; workers’ trade unions and professional associations; non-governmental organizations (NGOs); universities, schools and training centres in private companies; suppliers; and consultants.

2 Concepts and Context In the traditional approach, based on European models, TVET is concerned with educational, technical and technological courses offered by traditional institutions of vocational training, and can be clearly distinguished from programmes of initial training and in-service training. In Brazil, however, the universe of TVET includes not only these programmes (educational, technical and technological courses), but also any training action of short, average or long duration, and also seminars, meetings, lectures, consultancies, capable of contributing to the development and the improvement of abilities, attitudes, knowledge or other requisites, desired or even indispensable for work and for life in modern societies. This broad concept of TVET is based on three characteristics of the Brazilian economically active population (EAP) that affect the demand for education and capacity-building: (a) the informal sector: around 55% of the EAP’s work is not legally registered and does not benefit from any kind of social protection; (b) the low level of education: 60% of the EAP do not complete eight years of study, equivalent R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VIII.8, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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to primary education; and (c) there are delays or interruptions in the trajectory for the acquisition of secondary and higher education. Under these circumstances, traditional differences between the initial and continuous skills training tend to be less important, because many people are always ‘launching’ careers in the work market in different sectors or jobs. For many Brazilian students, the only way of reaching or going beyond secondary education is to study while working. This means that many of those who enter higher education are, in general, more than 25 years old. At this age in many countries most people are already engaged in in-service education programmes. For the majority of Brazilian worker-students, a higher education degree can be a means of achieving stability and progress in their career, but it can also be the pathway to a diploma and better jobs, for example in the public service. The fact is that TVET in Brazil is provided by a great variety of agencies that cater to the formal and informal sectors of the economy, to employed or unemployed workers, in big and small companies in various activities and occupations. This vocational education market, constituted by public and private institutions, is frequently informal in terms of certification or educational requisites, does not form part of formal education and can be disseminated by television, videos, magazines, newspapers and now also the Internet. This major market for TVET functions as a ‘non-invisible system’ (de Moura Castro, 2002b, 2002c): ‘invisible’ in official statistics and public policies; and ‘non-invisible’ since, while it does not have a central co-ordinating body, specific co-ordination exists among its main parts. Serving a total population close to 200 million and an EAP of more than 80 million people, the Brazilian TVET market is similar to that of many other countries in the Latin American and Caribbean Region. But it has its particularities, which has a significant impact on public and private provision: (a) the federal government has played a decisive role in the creation of funds and mechanisms to stimulate the development of vocational education since the 1940s; and (b) there are a combination of public sector initiatives in its management and financing. Among the incentives and mechanisms, at least two are particularly important for the development of TVET: (a) since the 1940s, compulsory contributions (CC) have been the main source of financing of the S-System—the expression used for the national education apprenticeship services; and (b) the Worker Support Fund (FAT), functioning since the 1990s, with an estimated worth of US$14 billion and an annual budget of US$4 billion, managed by the tripartite equal representation council. In the period 1995–2002, FAT financed the capacity-building of some 15 million people with funds in the order of US$1.1 billion by means of the Worker Qualification National Plan (PLANFOR) of the Ministry of Labour. For a long period of time, such public interventions led to important advances in terms of financing and incentives for TVET in the different sectors of the economy, including the constitution of an ample infrastructure (schools, workshops, equipment), the development of human resources, technology and methodologies, and the creation of a ‘TVET culture’ within public and private corporations, which spread to society as a whole.

VIII.8 Vocational Education in the Private Sector in Brazil

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3 The Offer of TVET in Brazil: Public Versus Private The major part of the TVET segment in Brazil works through a ‘non-invisible’ system, not covered by official statistics, which only reflect the formal courses of schooling in secondary and higher education, in other words, only technical TVET at technological and secondary education level. Therefore, in order to estimate and describe the provision of this market, it is necessary to work with estimates, combining information from different studies and databases. In this chapter, the following sources were mainly used:

r r r r r r r

TVET census of the Ministry of Education, 1999–2000; Vocational Education Unit Catalogue of the Ministry of Labour, 1998–2000; SIGAE: the Labour and Management Information System of the Ministry of Labour, 1998–2000; RAIS: Social Information Annual Record, 2000; Educational Census, Ministry of Education, 2000; Non-formal initiatives of education and work with adolescents, as prepared by GIFE (1998); and The annual S-System report.

3.1 Dimensioning of the TVET Offer Based on these sources, it is estimated that the TVET market in Brazil comprises around 35,000 schools and training centres, with 32 million students enrolled covered by an annual budget of approximately US$13 billion. For analytical purposes, and including the participation of the private sector, the profile of the TVET market in Brazil can be classified into three groups as set out in Table 1 below, combining different forms of management and sources of financing: (a) public financing and management; (b) public financing with private management; and (c) private financing and management. In this field, it is possible to identify at least ten groups of agencies with different modes of financing and management: (a) public and (b) private universities and colleges; (c) public and (d) private technical schools; (e) government schools; (f) the S-System; (g) NGOs; (h) trade unions; (i) independent vocational education; and (j) autonomous consultants. By means of this network, programmes of short, average and long duration are offered with or without certification for all economic sectors covering all commercial and industrial activities in urban areas. Global expenditure for TVET is equally divided among the public sector—taxes, compulsory contributions, public funds—and the private sector—fees, other contributions, donations, services and product sales. Historically, however, public finance has massively subsidized private investments in the TVET market. It may be concluded that around half of this market has private management and financing. However, if all forms of private management are taken into consideration, then more than two-thirds of this market is under private control. This is a peculiarity

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Table 1 The TVET market in Brazil: 1999–2000: estimate of schools, students and budget of the main agencies∗ Agencies or ‘System’

Enrolments (millions)

Annual budget∗∗ US$ millions

190

0.8

2,400

480

0.2

65

1,000 15,050

0.4 2.7

480 945

15,240 (43%)

4.1 (13%)

3,890 (30%)

Schools/centres

A – PUBLIC FINANCING AND MANAGEMENT Universities and colleges: federal, state and city Technical schools/secondary education schools: federal and state∗∗∗ • Initial training and continued courses; • Technical courses; • Adults and juvenile education courses (EJA). SUB-TOTAL A

B – PUBLIC FINANCING, PRIVATE MANAGEMENT S-System and participative federations Unions and professional associations

2,700

6.0

2,500

500

1.6

130

SUB-TOTAL B

3,200 (9%)

7.6 (24%)

2,630 (20%)

905

1.6

3,600

1,120

1.0

320

1,000 2,250

0.3 0.3

360 105

4,200 3,000 5,000

5.0 3.0 5.0

800 240 800

1,500 —

2.6 1.3

210 104

SUB-TOTAL C

16,855 (48%)

20.1 (63%)

6,540 (50%)

TOTAL (A + B + C) = 100%

35,295

31.8

13,060

C – PRIVATE FINANCING AND MANAGEMENT Universities and colleges Technical schools/secondary education schools: federal and state∗∗∗ • Initial formation and continued courses; • Technical courses; • Adults and juvenile education courses (EJA). Schools in private companies NGOs Schools and independent education Suppliers Consultants

∗

= Names of courses and programmes according to Decree no. 5154/04. = The estimates do not include investment in infrastructures. ∗∗∗ = The sub-total of technical schools/secondary education schools is inferior to the sum of the parts, because the same school can offer different types of courses; in other words, capacitybuilding, technical and EJA. According to statistics of Brazil, MEC/INEP (2000a, 2000b), the total number of units offering EJA beyond the modalities of TVET is 15,050 public schools and 2,250 private schools. Sources: see the list in the text (plus estimates according to World Bank, 2003, and Leite, 2003b). ∗∗


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of the Brazilian context, because it reflects the S-System’s overall power—the main and most important provider of TVET in the country’s private sector—financed by public funds but with private management.

4 The Main Agencies The non-S-System part of TVET in Brazil is composed in great part of institutions with long histories of action in the country. For a long time, however, several of these agencies only managed to survive by not functioning or by functioning in another area of TVET, by occupying a secondary position behind the quasi-monopoly provided by the traditional TVET institutions. Only recent research can measure the coverage, diversity and importance in the Brazilian TVET market.

4.1 The S-System Private in management, public in financing, the S-System is not, in fact, organized into a system at all. The expression is used only for convenience, being frequently used by the media because of the similar abbreviations, all beginning with the letter S for ‘service’. This includes different national social services for apprenticeship: SENAI/SESI for industry; SENAC/SESC for commerce and services; SENAT/SEST for transportation; SENAR for agriculture; SEBRAE for technical assistance to micro and small companies; and SESCOOP for urban co-operatives. Excluding SENAR, SEBRAE and SESCOOP, there is a trio concerned with apprenticeship for TVET—SENAI, SENAC and SENAT, and another for the socio-cultural activities—SESI, SESC and SEST. The older S are SENAI/SESI and SESC/SENAC, created in the 1940s. SEBRAE and SENAR were created in the 1980s, SEST/SEAT in the 1990s, and SESCOOP, the youngest branch, in 1999.1 Business people organized into state and national federations, as well as local chambers of commerce, are responsible for the S-System and offer capacitybuilding programmes—not necessarily in the system’s schools. Although they are ‘apprenticeship services’, the S-System offers mainly shortterm courses of capacity-building (usually twenty to eighty hours), representing around 80% of the total enrolments in the system. They also offer technical secondary TVET, and SENAC and SENAI have started offering higher education. The traditional apprenticeship courses have been in decline since the 1980s, surviving mainly in the states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. From 1999, SENAI has been revitalizing its training strategy. Recently, the Federal Law n◦ 10097/00 authorized the provision of apprenticeship courses for institutions that are not part of the S-System. Since then, the reintroduction of apprenticeship courses by the S has been occurring. The S-System is financed by the collection of compulsory contributions (CC) and taxes paid by students in certain programmes and courses. The CC were instituted in 1942 by the creation of SENAI in the period known as the ‘New State’, a euphemism used to designate the dictatorship of President Getúlio Vargas.

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Contributions to the S-System vary between 0.3% and 2.5% of the payroll of private companies. The collection is carried out by the National Social Security Institute (INSS), which passes on the funds collected, keeping 3.5% for administrative purposes. There are particular features for each S:

r r r

r r

SENAR offers TVET as well as social services and its levy, according to the Law n◦ 10,256/01, is 0.25% of the gross earnings of the agro-industry and 0.20% of the earnings of rural producers; The levy of SEBRAE is 0.3% collected in all sectors of the economy; SENAI benefits from two types of contributions paid by the industrial sector: the ‘general’ (1%) and the ‘additional’ (+0.5%, paid by companies with more than 500 employees). This additional contribution is destined to finance research and scholarships in Brazil and abroad for management positions in companies and of SENAI personnel. SESI is financed by 1.5% from industrial salaries; The levy from SEST/SENAT is 1.5% collected from transport companies and 1% from the autonomous workers (drivers), which constitute the majority of the sector; SENAI has another particularity compared to the other institutions of the S-System: co-operation agreements with big industrial companies—which can be totally or partially exempt from the ‘general’ contribution—permit the CC to be used for the maintenance of courses or TVET schools, promoting and sustaining the creation of schools inside companies.

The CC scheme exists in other Latin American and the Caribbean countries, many of which were inspired by the Brazilian model (CINTERFOR/OIT, 1990, 2002a, 2002b). However, the Brazilian scheme must be considered unique for the following reasons:

r r r

it is the oldest in the region, with more than seventy years of service, and has resisted several attempts for its cutback or suppression; it is the only model of public financing with private management in the region; almost exclusively, it is administered by representatives of the private business sector.

Although their usefulness has been questioned, the CC have been maintained thanks largely to the results and the image of quality and efficiency associated with the S-System, which receives considerable approval from various segments of the concerned population: politicians, trade unionists, business people and, above all, the workers who benefit from the courses. In effect, the S-System has developed the biggest and most modern infrastructure of TVET in the country and even in the Latin American and Caribbean Region. There are 2,700 schools and high-quality centres, with 6 million students enrolled and an annual budget of US$2 billion in vocational capacity-building alone, apart from investments in other teaching, culture, health and sports. It has also been responsible for innovations in technology, methodologies and didactic material in the field of TVET.


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The future of the payment of the CC and of the whole S-System is the object of present discussions and analysis. It is expected that these will result in the upgrading of the financing, management and functioning mechanisms, in view of the contribution of the system to the economy and to Brazilian society.

4.2 Technical Schools/Secondary Education Schools This group includes not only the regular technical courses, but also all types of initial and continuing training and adult and juvenile education courses (EJA) offered by the technical schools network and of primary education in the country. The schools and their enrolments are predominantly private, but the most typical and complete element within this group is the network of federal technical schools, managed and financed by the Ministry of Education, with around 100 highquality schools spread across twenty-seven Brazilian states, the majority created in the 1930s and 1940s. By the end of the 1970s, some federal technical schools changed themselves into federal centres of technological education (CEFETs) providing technological graduate courses, as well as technical courses. Other well-known networks are the state technical schools found in the more developed states, such as Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. Sao Paulo, for example, has around 100 technical schools like the State Technological Education Centre Paula Souza, linked to the State University ‘Julio de Mesquita Filho’ (UNESP). These schools were introduced in the 1930s and 1940s, and expanded during the 1970s and 1980s following Law 5,692/72, which required secondary education schools (high schools) to offer vocational capacitybuilding courses. This law did not have a great impact on the existing public and private technical schools, but ended up setting in motion an increase in the registration of ‘technical courses’ in the secondary education schools, in order to respond to the administrative imperatives of the law. This strongly contributed to a reduction in the quality of the education system since that time (Cunha, 2000b). By means of the 1997 decree, following the new general law on national education of 1996, the curricular independence of secondary education in relation to technical education was permitted. In 2004, a new decree re-established the possibility of the combination of technical and secondary education. Today, to obtain the technical diploma, students can attend the integrated technical course, at the same time as or after secondary education. Since secondary education has almost become a requisite in order to find employment, young people and adults are returning even more to the EJA (old ‘night studies’), including the patronage of public and private workers. The raising of the basic level of schooling for workers by means of the EJA can be considered a function of TVET in the Brazilian context.

4.3 Independent Education Schools Exclusively a private group in management and financing, independent education schools provide a varied range of short-term courses—without official curricular

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regulation—in, for example: information technology, foreign languages, mechanics, electronics, dressmaking, cookery, hairdressing and technical design. For more than sixty years, some of these schools have been pioneers in distance-education courses, initially by post and now via the Internet. The Monitor Institute and the Universal Brazilian Institute were created respectively in 1939 and 1940 and continue to function to this day offering courses in electronics, information technology, telecommunications, business administration and secretarial skills—by post and via the Internet. This sector is practically unknown in official documentation, even though the schools have been registered in the national list of legal entities. There is evidence of expansion in the last ten years, mainly due to the franchising system and also thanks to the public opportunities of credit for micro and small businesses. It is estimated that the franchised English schools, for example, are worth around US$800 million (de Moura Castro, 2002b). Many schools today offer non-formal courses and also the EJA and technical secondary education.

4.4 Public and Private Universities and Colleges Similar to technical education, enrolments in these courses are also predominantly private, but the focuses are the public, federal and state universities. It is considered, as mentioned earlier, that higher TVET education in Brazil, after the foundation courses in technology, lasts two to three years. At the same time, the majority of universities and colleges today offer a wide range of specializations and extension services in TVET. The public agencies are mainly federal or state universities. There is at least one in most Brazilian states. Besides this, there is usually a considerable network of colleges in the large and medium-sized cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Some of the federal institutions have existed since the imperial period during the nineteenth century, but the last two education laws introduced in 1971 and 1996 promoted the expansion of higher education, mainly private education institutions. From 2001 to 2003, the number of private colleges grew some 45% in Brazil, with 544 new higher education institutions (Folha de São Paulo, 2003).

4.5 Government Schools for Civil and Military Employees The public sector schools do not provide as much TVET, although they represent some of the oldest institutions in the country financed and managed by federal organizations, such as the Ministry of Administration, which maintains the National Public Administration School (ENAP), and the Ministry of Economy, responsible for the Higher School of Financial Management (ESAF). The most developed states and cities also subsidize schools and foundations, with the objective of building capacity and enhancing the capacities of public employees.


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These government schools have started to be more proactive in the field of TVET, thanks to the modernization of the public services and the emergence of the equality and human rights policies. In this new context, demand has grown for the capacity-building of public employees in more fields, such as information technology, foreign languages, entrepreneurship, leadership and client servicing—besides the EJA. There was a time when the greater part of public employees had low levels of education. It should be noted that the Armed Forces—Navy, Army and Air Force—also benefited from the CC instituted in the 1940s in ways similar to the S-System. This CC is directed to the financing of military academies and training centres. Little is known about these contributions, however, because it is very difficult to find reports or data about these activities.

4.6 Workers’ Trade Unions and Professional Associations The offer of TVET and other services by trade unions in Brazil is maintained thanks to a special tax corresponding to one-day’s salary per year of each worker, which is collected by the Federal Government and distributed to the unions, who manage it. The unions maintain schools and capacity-building centres offering courses to their members and associates. Today, the most important agencies are linked to the great trade unions: Unique Worker Centre (CUT); Agricultural Workers Confederation (CONTAG); and the Social Union Democracy (SDS). The Without Land Movement (MST) also provides some TVET, particularly in the mainly rural areas in the south of the country. This is possibly a Brazilian peculiarity in the Latin-American context. Here, contrary to what has happened in the majority of the countries in the region, the trade unions have expanded and gained strength since the 1970s, despite the military dictatorship. They created large and powerful national federations, which became proactive in political and social arenas. Recently, in the 1990s, they faced a crisis of reduced employment levels which affected the union taxes that financed their activities. Despite this, they became more proactive in the field of vocational formation using public funds (FAT).

4.7 Non-Governmental Organizations Formed almost totally by non-profit-making institutions, but with private management, this group includes a vast range of religious, political and social institutions with a long history of offering initial and in-service training to poor and vulnerable groups (Cunha, 2000a). Many of them have existed for more than a century and receive considerable finance from foreign sources, such as the European Union, and from religious, ecological and human rights organizations. These institutions compose what is called the ‘third sector’, whose dynamism is another particularity

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in Brazil in the Latin American context. It is estimated that NGOs invest around US $1.7 billion in the country, involving 30 million volunteers. Half of this money is devoted to projects in the area of education (de Moura Castro, 2002a). This sector has become increasingly visible and proactive in the TVET market since the 1990s due to the new opportunities provided by the Adolescent and Child Statute (ECA), by the National Education Bases and Guidelines Law and by the new Apprenticeship Statute, which permitted NGOs to carry out TVET, including apprenticeships. Public programmes financed by the FAT, such as the PLANFOR (1995–2002), and also social initiatives by private companies, have contributed to making the NGOs more visible and active in the TVET market. Today, practically every church, neighbourhood association and social club offers some kind of training—literacy classes for the young and adults; EJA courses and capacity building courses—mainly for the poorer populations living in the suburbs of the big Brazilian cities.

4.8 Schools and Training Centres in Private Companies Big companies and technological innovation companies maintain schools, training centres, cultural foundations and corporate universities for their employees and their families. Before the Second World War, many schools were set up in the industrial sector, followed by a great expansion in the 1970s and 1980s stimulated by new demands and sources of financing, as well as the fiscal incentives and international co-operation agreements, such as those of SENAI. Today, a good number of the companies do not manage the schools directly, but subcontract capacitybuilding courses or delegate the task to foundations. Since the 1990s, this activity has been expanding due to the ‘social responsibility’ role assumed by the private sector. In 1995, these foundations formed an association called GIFE—Grupo de Institutos Fundaço˜ es e Empresas—consisting of more than sixty of the biggest and the richest private companies in the country and investing about US$250 million per year in social projects. GIFE declares itself to be the first Latin American association that draws together representatives of private organizations to invest in or run social, cultural and environmental projects in the public interest (GIFE, 1998).

4.9 Suppliers Large and average-sized companies that produce or sell equipment, systems, machines and raw material offer training to their clients, whether workers or managers (Leite, 1996). For security reasons, as in the case of selling oil or gas, this type of training is compulsory by law, but for the majority of the companies, even for the small ones, such a strategy may be designed to increase competitiveness.


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4.10 Consultants Individuals and small companies that offer specialized consultancy services in diverse areas have also been expanding since the 1980s, in response to the demand for quality programmes, ISO certificates, human resources development and new management techniques. Beyond this, downsizing processes have led to the withdrawal from the market of specialized professionals—engineers, economists, and administrators—who become consultants, providing services to their former employees and clients.

5 Conclusion The non-invisible system of TVET in Brazil represents an indispensable support for the economic and social development of the country. It consists of a diverse network of institutions that make it difficult to quantify—except by estimates—and control although it has operated in the country for decades. It can be said that the ‘non-invisible system’ constitutes a solid base for the training of human resources, with sufficient flexibility to respond to labour-market demands. The provision of public and private TVET in the country would probably be sufficient to train 40% of the total EAP annually, in other words, about 32 million enrolments for a total EAP of 80 million people. Considering the number and diversity of institutions, this provision could be considered as a ‘first world’ service in a ‘third world’ society. Its weakness, however, is the low level of initial schooling of the Brazilian EAP, the shortcomings of which— in reading, writing, maths and even socialization—frequently end up having to be compensated by TVET. The TVET market in Brazil is maintained by an annual investment in the order of US$3 billion, representing 2% of the total gross national product (GNP) and 40% of the total expenses on education (5% of GNP). Of this total, 50% comes from private sources, among which the participation of universities and colleges, technical schools and companies—including consultants and suppliers, and independent education—should be pointed out. Individual expenditure on TVET reached around US$5.2 billion—invested mainly in secondary, higher and independent education courses—which represents 75% of the total private funds spent on the TVET market—in other words for a total of US$6.5 billion, and 40% of the total investment in TVET. This converts to a considerable investment for a country whose per capita income is around US$2,500 and with an average wage in the formal urban sector—which pays the highest salaries by Brazilian standards—of approximately US$250 per month, or three minimum salaries. There is evidence that individual investment is supplemented by scholarships funded by public organizations. These are education credits coming from public banks, professional education agencies and large companies that motivate their employees to enrol in colleges or to take continuing education courses (Leite, 1996;

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World Bank, 2003; Revista da Folha, 2003). In any case, these numbers demonstrate the importance of TVET for Brazilian society, whose poor families cannot afford to pay capacity-building courses for their children (Leite, 2003a). The high volume of company investment in schools and courses maintained by themselves (including suppliers) has been pointed out, beyond their contribution to the S-System: around US$1.1 billion, representing 27% of the private investment in TVET in the country. This investment would correspond to around twenty annual hours of capacity-building per worker from the formal urban sector, or close to 1% of the annual hours worked. This is a standard above European indexes. As is the case of many other services in Brazil, TVET is not well distributed across the population. Most of the time, it caters to workers with higher levels of education. These people may be identified as young, white males who are already well placed in the formal urban labour market. Those older than 40 years, female, of Afro-Brazilian origin and already with a low level of education are frequently left aside, except in programmes explicitly oriented to equity opportunities. What stands out is that the TVET market reflects the inequality existing in Brazilian society, and tends to be intensified by being managed predominantly by private initiative, despite being financed equally with public and private funds. For this reason, although it works and is able to respond to the demand, the TVET market in the country deserves to be better known and articulated to public policies of education, work and development. Quality evaluation mechanisms of equality and access promotion are fundamental, as it is in any other market, to guide and preserve the interest of consumers, as well as to guide public investments.

Note 1. SENAI is the Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Industrial—National Service for Industrial Apprenticeship (<www.senai.dn.br>); SESI is the Serviço Social da Industria—Social Service for Industry (www.sesi.org.br); SENAC is the Serviço Nacional de Aprendizaje Comercial— National Service for Commercial Apprenticeship (<www.senac.br>); SESC is the Serviço Social do Comércio—Social Service for Commerce and Services; SENAT is the Confederación Nacional de Transporte—National Confederation of Transport (<www.cnt.org.br); SEST is the Serviço Social do Transporte—Social Service for Transport; SENAR is the Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Rural—National Service for Agricultural Apprenticeship (<www.senar.org.br>); SEBRAE is the Serviço Brasileiro de Apoio ao Empreendedor e Pequeno Empresário— Brazilian Service of Technical Support to Micro and Small Companies(<www.sebrae.com.br>); and SESCOOP is the Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem do Cooperativismo—National Service for Urban Co-operatives (<www.brasilcooperativo. com.br>).

References Brazil. Ministry of Education. Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais An´ısio Teixeira. 2000a. Censo da educaça˜ o no Brasil. Brasilia: MEC/INEP. Brazil. Ministry of Education. Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais An´ısio Teixeira. 2000b. Números da educaça˜ o no Brasil. Brasilia: MEC/INEP.


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CINTERFOR/OIT. 1990. La formación profesional en el umbral de los 90; un estudio de los cambios e innovaciones en las instituciones especializadas de América Latina. Montevideo: IRDB/IRDC/GTZ/BID. CINTERFOR/OIT. 2002a. Pol´ıticas innovadoras y reformas de gestión para la promoción del desarrollo de conocimientos y habilidades de los trabajadores. Montevideo: CINTERFOR. (Documentos de referencia, 1, Seminario Interamericano Tripartito sobre Formación Profesional, Productividad y Trabajo Decente, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 15–17 May 2002.) CINTERFOR/OIT. 2002b. Financiamento de la formación; el papel de los actores sociales. Montevideo: CINTERFOR. (Documentos de referencia, 2, Seminario Interamericano Tripartito sobre Formación Profesional, Productividad y Trabajo Decente, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 15–17 May 2002.) Cunha, L.A. 2000a. O ensino de of´ıcios artesanais e manufatureiros no Brazil escravocrata. Sao Paulo/Brasilia: UNESP/MTE/FAT. Cunha, L.A. 2000b. O ensino profissional na irradiaça˜ o do industrialismo. Sao Paulo/Brasilia: UNESP/MTE/FAT. de Moura Castro, C. 2002a. Formación profesional en el cambio del siglo. Montevideo: CINTERFOR. de Moura Castro, C. 2002b. Comments on the Brazilian case study: mapping the invisible lifelong learning (LLL) non-system. Washington, DC: World Bank. de Moura Castro, C. 2002c. A educaça˜ o invis´ıvel. Veja, no. 1,756, p. 20. Folha de São Paulo. 2003. Número de faculdades privadas cresce 45%. 3 August 2003, p. C1–3. Grupo de Institutos Fundaço˜ es e Empresas. 1998. Iniciativas não formais de educaça˜ o e trabalho com adolescentes. Sao Paulo, Brazil: GIFE. <www.odb.org.br> <www.gife.org.br> Leite, E.M. 1996. El rescate de la calificación. Montevideo: CINTERFOR. Leite, E.M. 2003a. Mudanças de vida e trabalho de jovens metropolitanos. In: Desemprego: abordagem institucional e biográfica: uma comparaça˜ o Brasil, França e Japão. Sao Paulo, Brazil: USP/CEM/SEADE/CEBRAP. <www.fflch.usp.br/sociologia/nadya> Leite, E.M. 2003b. Brazilian VET market: public financing and private management—peculiarities and perspectives. Montevideo: OIT/CINTERFOR. Revista da Folha. 2003. Caça ao canudo. 26 October 2003, pp. 8–22. World Bank. 2003. The Brazilian case study: mapping the ‘invisible lifelong learning (LLL) non-system’. Washington, DC: World Bank. <siteresources. worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/278200-1126210664195/1636971-1126210694253/ LLL Brazil Final Synthesis.pdf>


Chapter VIII.9

TVET and Teacher-Training Curricula: A Developed National Perspective Vasiliy P. Kosyrev, Petr F. Kubrushko and Andrei N. Kouznetsov

1 Introduction The theory of teacher training for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) cannot provide practising educationalists with a water-tight answer to one of the most vital and crucial questions: how much time is required to educate a TVET professional? Unlike most other training fields, TVET teacher training is double-targeted, as two majors (teacher training and a specific vocational training) are to be mastered equally. It could be concluded that this type of training would require twice the time and twice the effort compared to singlefield training. However, this is not commonly observed in TVET teacher training, which can be attributed to the limited training periods followed by most students who are in search of full-time employment—and preferably as soon as possible. Russian university TVET teacher training is carried out according to the State Educational Standard, which provides an obligatory framework and content for training and is worded and issued by the Ministry of Education (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education, 2000). The standard training periods are four and five years, and graduates obtain their bachelor’s or advanced professional TVET teaching degrees respectively. In order to understand the Russian TVET teacher training system better, it is thought appropriate to resort to a comparative analysis here. Therefore, to provide the maximum coverage, it is reasonable to compare Russian and American systems in this chapter. The basic principles of academic subject clustering and sequencing are relatively similar in the Russian Federation (hereafter Russia/Russian) and the United States of America (hereafter USA/American). General science and mathematics are studied during the first and second years of training, and general and specialized vocational subjects are studied during the third and fourth years; the fifth year is for achieving a degree of mastery of the chosen major. A noteworthy difference in schooling is the fact that Russian universities start humanities, psychological and teacher training during the first stage (from the first university year), whereas in American universities these subject clusters are typically postponed to the senior (graduate) stage.


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2 Research Methodology Until very recently the ‘trial-and-error’ method was employed for the selection of criteria for TVET teacher-training curriculum design and further development (Zhuchenko, Romantsev & Tkachenko, 1999). Research methodologies of this type are still found in many educational systems throughout the world. According to this method, TVET professionals conduct field research in several stages: (a) direct observation of actual activities carried out by a number of more or less typical TVET teachers; (b) there is an analysis on points of quality; (c) a preliminary trial of a working model is arranged; and (d) lastly comes the analysis of test results and inference of place-and-time appropriate recommendations for TVET teacher-training curriculum design. Among the key disadvantages of this trial-and-error method are the chaotic and limited nature of the research results and specific limitations attributable to subjective differences in the interpretation of research data by different experts (see Zhuchenko, Romantsev & Tkachenko, 1999). Comparative analysis is another efficient method for carrying out research on TVET teacher-training curricula. As opposed to the trial-and-error method, this method is recognized as more relevant to the issue considered in this chapter as it does not have the disadvantages of the former. Thus, comparative analysis of Russian and American curricula was carried out on the principle of academic subject clustering (Curriculum Development at Agricultural Universities, 1997). Subjects were grouped in the way typically used in Russian State educational standards; that is to say, there are clusters grouping humanities, social and economic studies, general mathematical and science studies, general and specialized vocational studies, and educational and psychological studies. American university curricula were analysed in accordance with Russian subject names and contents, and then regrouped into these same clusters. For research purposes, the total number of hours for each subject was measured in credit hours (Table 1). This is not typical of Russia, but is common in American education. Table 1 Comparison of Russian and American credit hours in TVET teacher training Academic subject clusters Humanities, social and economic studies General mathematical and science studies General vocational studies Educational and psychological studies (including practical field training, probationary periods, etc.) Specialized vocational studies (including practical field training, probationary periods, etc.) Total: ∗

Russia∗

Texas

Indiana

Pennsylvania

34 31 38 41

40 20 23 31

30 28 32 33

25 26 24 41

54

32

16

34

197

146

139

150

= The Russian standard considered here is for the five-year TVET teacher training with minor in agricultural mechanical engineering; it is compared to similar American curricular characteristics.

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3 General Mathematical and Science Studies For some minors within TVET teacher training, the general mathematical and science cluster is the same as that used for general engineering training. In this case, specific features of this cluster are understood to pre-determine the structure, contents and objectives of the entire training-course curriculum. To a considerable degree this corresponds to professional engineering training, which may be described as ‘human/machine’ interaction. Machinery has traditionally been understood as the central element in this interaction: humans—with all their personal and professional traits—come second. American university TVET teacher-training curricula feature a radically different approach. Here, human beings are the primary concern, with particular consideration for their efficient interaction with the production environment (i.e. industrial, agricultural, teaching, etc.). Machinery and its characteristics and environmental links come second in this approach. Thus, the American curricula format and contents are radically different from those in Russia. Universities in the USA offer much more extensive courses in biology, chemistry, natural science and general mathematics. This prevailing characteristic of general mathematical and science studies in American curricula may be attributed to both the minor of vocational training and to general philosophical concepts, particularly the predominant importance of human interaction with the environment.

4 Humanities, Social and Economic Studies The current social, economic and political processes taking place in Russia and in other transition economies determine the modifications and amendments affecting the format and content of university training for the humanities, social sciences and economics. The strong positive influence of the Russian educational standard (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education, 2000) for TVET teacher training means that the requirements for such training are firmly established, especially in terms of the content and time allocation. This standard lays down the contents, structure and time allocation for each academic subject forming part of the curriculum structure. Modern humanities and humanist-orientated education tends to influence the key requirements for this aspect of professional training. In our opinion, however, the subjects presented—and their characteristics, that is, the framework, contents and time-budget—are rather inadequate to the needs for professional personality development. If compared to American curricula, mother tongue and arts studies receive less emphasis. An advantage of Russian TVET teacher-training curricula is the inclusion of such fundamental humanities and economic subjects as philosophy, law, economics, foreign languages and physical training. However, humanities and economic subjects are considerably more practical and profession-oriented in American curricula, where a large number of these subjects are marked as electives. Such diverse courses

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as university history, efficient project writing, national politics, debating, environmental ethics, presentation of strategy design, international professional communication, youth leadership development and team building and so on are also included on the list in the USA. The humanities and economic subject clusters are much more diverse, practical, flexible, electives-rich and study-motivating in American curricula. These characteristics stimulate students to achieve professional mastery and contribute in a greater degree to graduate mobility.

5 General Vocational Studies TVET teacher training at the higher-education level differs from the secondary level in a rather marked way in terms of general vocational studies. The in-depth study of TVET-relevant subjects that is characteristic of university training is not found in TVET teacher-training colleges, as secondary vocational training is somewhat limited in terms of the amount of information passed on to the students and the depth of this information. General vocational studies in the framework of American curricula feature the structure and contents that allow the training of a broadly qualified TVET professional. These studies provide a solid background for further specialized studies and, at the same time, motivate students for in-depth studies of issues associated with their major. Having mastered these academic subjects, students advance their competences and obtain more intellectual power for the accumulation of information related to TVET teaching. This subject cluster in American curricula incorporates a large economics component. Among these subjects are ‘introduction to agricultural activity and economics’ (Purdue, Indiana) and ‘introduction to agricultural economics’ (Texas A&M and Penn State, Pennsylvania). This inclusion of extensive economics subjects is grounded on the educational philosophy and the special features of economic life typical of the USA, as well as publicly shared pragmatism and the prevailing spirit of private enterprise that is not common in Russia or any other transitional country. Modern communication technologies applied in the USA are based on the extensive use of computers. Profound mastery of computer skills for professional purposes is integrated into the cluster of general vocational studies. The relevant subjects here are ‘computer systems in agriculture’ (Penn State), ‘agricultural planning and business programs’ (Purdue), and ‘computer literacy in agriculture’ (Texas). The general vocational studies cluster in Russian curricula predominantly contains general engineering subjects, which make up the basis for the students’ mastery of engineering during subsequent training stages. We consider this curricular parameter to be the key advantage of TVET teacher training in Russia—both in terms of content and the logic of a vocation-oriented curricular design. A key disadvantage of such engineering-oriented general professional studies clusters in the Russian curricula is the heavily practical design component of these studies.


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That is, an excessive amount of time is devoted to in-depth engineering training, including technical drawing and monotonous and repetitive calculations. The mission of the general vocational studies cluster is to provide students with a fundamental background in the philosophy of machinery use, technical service management and design theory. From the point of view of TVET teacher training, Russian curricula should incorporate the general vocational studies cluster that contains not only pure engineering, but general pedagogical and scientific components as well. This is needed because its inclusion will probably help teacher trainers to mould the kind of TVET professionals who would possess the competencies required by the challenges of the present-day job market—both in terms of TVET student training and more successful teacher placement. Among such additional courses, there may be some of those found in American curricula, for example, ‘introduction to agricultural activity and economics’, ‘computer application to agriculture and TVET’, and so on. The need for such courses is attributed to the expanding professional field and requirements for the professional mobility of TVET teacher-training graduates.

6 Educational and Psychological Studies The educational and psychological studies cluster within TVET teacher-training curricula incorporates the following components: 1. The psychological component, including physiology, general and TVET psychology, and practical psychology; the key purpose of these courses is to provide students with the background competence in human behaviour, physiology and psychological characteristics. 2. Teacher-training courses, including ‘introduction to TVET’, ‘theory and practice of teaching’ and ‘field TVET teacher training’. The key mission of these courses is to provide students with background competence in TVET elements; 3. TVET practice applicable to general engineering courses and relevant teaching methodology; the key mission of these courses is to provide students with the background competence in teaching TVET courses. To illustrate the specific contents and curriculum design of the educational and psychological studies that are current for the Russian system of TVET teacher education, it is thought appropriate to quote an extract from the Russian State Educational Standard (Russian Federation. Ministry of Education, 2000) for students majoring in TVET issues.

r

Introduction to TVET (70 hours). General characteristic of TVET; variety of TVET institutions, majors and minors; TVET perspectives; mission, contents, methods and structure of TVET teaching; the professional requirements of TVET teachers (competences, personal traits, abilities, etc.); TVET teacher personal development; competence-oriented and personality-oriented approaches; TVET teacher career prospects.

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r

r

r

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Human physiology and psycho-physiology (100 hours). The human being as an integral biological system; ontogenesis; key stages concerning the development of the human organism; age characteristics of physiological processes; psycho-physiological functions and their development in ontogenesis; psychophysiological characteristics of perception, attention, memory, speech, consciousness; physical and mental activities at different levels of ontogenesis; professional adaptation; physical and psychological load tolerance; biological rhythms; hygiene; physiological practicum. General psychology (120 hours). Psychology as a science and practice; objects of psychology; the history of psychology; Russian and international psychological schools; psychological methods (research, diagnosis, correction, therapy); ontology and psychology of human life; psychology of an individual; personality and its development; interpersonal interaction; psychology of human activity; verbal and non-verbal communication; emotions and will; individual traits; motivation development; practicum on general psychology. The psychology of vocational education (100 hours). Subjects of psychology of vocational education; Russian and international schools of psychology for vocational education; age features of personality development; role of the social situation and professional and learning activities in personality development; TVET student psychological activities; special characteristics of TVET; professional development of a TVET student; the psychological features of a TVET teacher; practicum on the psychology of vocational education. History of teaching and philosophy of education (90 hours). Fundamentals of pedagogical genealogy; role of folk teaching and religions in the development of the educational sciences; organizational forms of moral education and pedagogical skills in primitive societies; early educational research and the development of education systems; education as a science; mediaeval European education (theories and practice); the development of the educational sciences and philosophy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Russian education (pre-history: seventeenth century, eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, the Soviet period, the democratic development period); education in the present-day world (role, driving forces, tendencies); the complex global educational crisis; comparative international education as a means of resolving the global educational crisis; human development—factors and concepts; mission and targets of the present-day educational sciences; national and international educational sciences; liberty and social requirements as pedagogical phenomena. General and TVET educational sciences (150 hours). The essence, elements, institutions, driving forces, general tendencies, mission, principles, contents, methods and means of the TVET teaching process; TVET teaching design; current vital issues of TVET; the individual style of the TVET teacher; the TVET teacher’s professional development. Moral education methods (80 hours). The technology of moral education within TVET; strategies and techniques for solving situations of educational conflict; functions and strategies of educational influence; moral education design and


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management; general characteristics of innovative moral education systems within TVET. Educational technologies (80 hours). Educational models; general characteristics of present-day innovative educational technologies; TVET system design; educational situations modelling; efficient educational management. TVET methodology (280 hours). General characteristics of the key components and stages of TVET processes; mission and strategies of TVET; taxonomy of didactic objectives; TVET contents (national, regional and institutional components of the State educational standards; principles for the selection of contents, curriculum design factors); essence, objectives and key characteristics of general, polytechnic and special field education; scientific and methodological fundamentals of TVET contents analysis and selection; methods, means and forms of theoretical education and practical training (notions, essence and characteristics); didactic activities of the TVET teacher (essence, functions, structure and contents); didactic design of objectives, contents and technology; general characteristics of TVET teacher technological activities; vocational orientation, motivation and educational stimulation of TVET students; formation of vocational knowledge and skills within TVET; technological optimization of efficient TVET; control and activity and competence correction within TVET (structure, methods, requirements, efficient forms, means, tools); research on professional competence; practicum on TVET methodology.

The particular features of the pedagogical and psychological studies cluster within American curricula are as follows: 1. The contents of psychological courses within the structure of the cluster are based on the behaviourist theory, that is, the strict application of the ‘stimulusreaction’ scheme; 2. This cluster emphasizes social and philosophical aspects of TVET in the USA, that is, American TVET teacher trainers do not consider in depth the general trends and tendencies of world educational theories, which are thought to be fundamental in Russian universities (Curriculum Development at Agricultural Universities, 1997).

7 Specialized Vocational Studies In Russian TVET teacher-training curricula this cluster is made up of a long and rather diverse list of courses that are selected according to a student’s major. These courses are comparatively extensive, having generous time-budgets, amounting to as much as 1,280 contact hours. The chief disadvantage of this cluster in Russia— compared to similar American curricula—is in the lack of elective courses, which are demanded by students who would like to make their own choice of a minor. Such choice opportunities are recognized as vital for the future professional mobility of TVET teacher-training graduates.

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Curricula in the USA feature this cluster as being made up mostly of elective courses (except for Texas A&M). This is certainly the result of the unique opportunity offered to university alumni: they can take additional vocational courses even after their formal graduation from the university.

8 Conclusion Russian universities provide four-year (bachelor’s degree) and five-year (advanced vocational degree) TVET teacher training. This training is rather specialized, providing Russian students with narrow minors. Graduates with the TVET advanced vocational degree may be employed in any teaching position, including those of junior professors at university. In comparison, American universities provide TVET teacher training that entitles course graduates to be employed in high schools. In this way, American studies are designed to prepare students for teaching in a wider range of school subjects. The main emphasis here is placed on the training of a wellrounded teaching professional who would be capable of resourceful data selection and accumulation, and further efficient self-education. On the whole, TVET teacher-training curricula are considerably different in Russian and American universities. This basic difference concerns certain course contents, course cluster design and a general discrepancy in qualification levels between the two countries. At the same time, the course objectives and the educational technologies utilized are relatively similar. This factor provides a solid background for further co-operation in mutually beneficial TVET teacher training and other aspects of Russian-American vocational education. In order to advance the quality of the TVET teacher-training curricula to meet the ever-growing domestic and international requirements in this field of training, we have established a specialized Department of Education Systems and Technologies, which operates under the auspices of the International Centre of Education Systems. This department is currently working as a link between the Russian Association of Professional and Pedagogical Education (Ekaterinburg, Urals Region) and both the Russian National UNEVOC Centre, Moscow, and the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre, Bonn. Although this institution is relatively young (established in mid-2005), the practical outcomes of international co-operation in the field of TVET teacher training are underway and the perspectives are extremely promising.

References Curriculum development at agricultural universities. 1997. (Proceedings of the Russian-American Workshop. Moscow State University of Agricultural Engineering.) Russian Federation. Ministry of Education. 2000. State Educational Standard of Higher Professional Education: Major 030500 - Professional Training (TVET). Moscow. [In Russian.] Zhuchenko, A.A.; Romantsev, G.M.; Tkachenko, E.V. 1999. Professional and pedagogical education in Russia: contents and organization. Ekaterinburg, Russian Federation: Urals State Professional and Pedagogical University. [In Russian.] ISBN 5-8050-0016-4.

Chapter VIII.10

Vocational Qualifications: The Role of Trade Unions as Negotiation Fora Antônio Almerico Biondi Lima and Fernando Augusto Moreira Lopes

1 The Participants in Vocational Qualification want to be Heard The purpose of this chapter is to discuss, in the light of historical experience and of recent actions taken by trade unions in the field of vocational qualification, the advantages of social dialogue and collective negotiations (both bipartite and tripartite) aimed at the universalization and social effectiveness of public policies on vocational qualifications and education in developing countries, especially in Latin America. Our starting point is the relative failure of vocational education policies in several developing countries, and even in some developed countries, following from the fact that these policies were not connected with those on employment, development and education. The incapacity of crossing the gap between the market perspective (in which the market is the only important variable) and the compensatory perspective (in which the market is a variable of secondary importance) has led, among other consequences, to problems not being addressed, and to contents and methods being divorced from reality, as well as to slow progress in the average qualification level of workers in the countries under study. These policies on vocational qualification and education, within both the private sector and in the sphere of government action, tend to ignore or to treat as objects, those who are the true subjects of such policies—the workers themselves. Therefore, a hypothesis can be formulated: could it be that the non-participation of workers in the formulation of policies (guidelines, contents, methods, etc.) and in assessment is one of the important causes of such failure? If the answer is ‘yes’, would the traditional trade unions be the most efficient participation mechanisms? Would it not be the case that a new type of labour representation is necessary, one that goes beyond the limits of being tied to a particular industry and towards a ‘citizen’s trade union’ (Lima, 1999)? In order to answer these questions, starting with the definition of qualifications and vocational education, we will resort to an analysis of labour relations and of concrete practices in vocational qualifications carried out by the workers, so as to subsequently discuss the possibility of trade unions acting as negotiation fora for the said qualifications.


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A.A.B. Lima, F.A.M. Lopes

2 Qualifications and Vocational Education Nowadays, the terms vocational qualification, vocational education, vocational capacity-building and vocational training are often used as synonyms. In the present chapter, however, we distinguish qualification (a social relation built upon the interaction of the social agents of work around the ownership, meaning and use of the knowledge built within and through the work process) from education (a systemized process of acquiring both general and specific knowledge, that presupposes the existence of a set of relations among the social agents of education, particularly between the educator and the student, concerning the appropriation, the meaning and the use of the knowledge built up by mankind). The notion of qualification is not new—and neither is the controversy that surrounds it. For decades, it has been viewed as a key concept, and also as the meeting point between work economy, work sociology and educational sociology. More recently, pedagogy, as the science of education, has also been incorporated in the concept, based on debates on the relations between work and education (see Gómez et al., 1989). Therefore, in a spatially and temporally discontinuous manner, work and educational economy have generated the ‘human capital theory’; work sociology has reformulated itself based on the three-phased ‘qualification-disqualificationrequalification’ scheme, and on ‘qualification as a social construct’, and a certain type of educational sociology and work pedagogy have developed upon the paradigm of ‘work as an educational principle’. These different traditions, each seeking some degree of confluence, have generated, besides the polysemy observed by Manfredi (1996), a false identity between education and qualification, as if the latter were nothing but a modality of the former. This usage, in addition to its connection with the different theoretical conceptions of work and education, reveals the intentional demarcation of territory by social agents using concepts for their own ends. Within the scope of work sociology, Littler (in Castro, 1993), discerns three main concepts of qualification: 1. One that understands qualification as a set of characteristics of working routines, empirically expressed as in-job apprenticeship time, or as skills acquirable through training. Therefore, the qualification for the job position and that of the worker are equivalent. 2. One that relates qualification to the worker’s degree of autonomy, and is therefore opposed to management control, which would imply skills acquirable through ‘training’ in and for work. 3. One that perceives qualification as a complex, contradictory and multi-determined social construct. The authors of this chapter choose to assume this third perspective, following in the footsteps of Castro (1992, 1993) who, in keeping with his conception of the work process, states that qualification includes: 1. Conflicts of interests and motivation of three types: inter- (capital and workers), intra- (different segments of the working class, such as engineers, technicians

VIII.10 Vocational Qualifications

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and labourers), and extra- (transversal interactions according to gender, ethnicity, generation, etc.) social classes; 2. The relation between power and different types of knowledge in the workplace, where it becomes important: (a) to verify the construction of classifications and categorizations of qualification; (b) to consider to what extent the definition of qualification is dependent on tradition and mores; (c) to observe the pertinence of the characteristics of the acquired type (length of schooling, for instance) and of the qualities of the inherent type (sex, colour, age) in the construction of the classification of workers and of the tasks performed by them; 3. Skills acquirable through training, transmissible through language, duly distinguishing between the qualification demanded by the job position and the qualification of the worker himself/herself; 4. Tacit qualifications, built in the daily life of the workplace, and not transmissible through language. As to education, the authors start from a broad concept that perceives it: 1. As a modality of non-material work, linked to the production and reproduction of knowledge on the whole of human production (Saviani, 1991). 2. Under the form of several processes, that may be grouped (Torres, 1993) as: (a) formal, characterized by structured curricula and well-defined intentions, being linked to the chronological age of the students, and issuing certificates recognized by society de facto and de jure, being, therefore, ‘official’; (b) nonformal (for example, continuous and lifelong education, liberating education, popular education and adult education), not characterized by a particular period of time, and that can happen at any moment in the life of the student and leading to special certification processes; and (c) informal, those that are casual, and occur anywhere and at any moment of time, having no structured curricula or any clearly discernible purposes. 3. Beyond school and/or official (formal) institutions and experiences, also taking into account: (a) the teaching/learning processes occurring throughout people’s lifetimes; (b) reading, interpretation and assimilation of facts and events experienced either individually or collectively; (c) the absorption, modification and internalization of the existing culture; (d) the appropriation of social knowledge, a heritage of mankind, in the quest for its own emancipation (Adorno, 1995). 4. As a possibility to be organized around: (a) the combination of education with material production, adopting work as an educational principle that would allow not only the transmission of a new ethics, but, more importantly, whose objective would be the elimination of the historical split between manual and intellectual work; (b) a school organization that is public, free of charge, mandatory and unique, and that would actually unite general, technical and cultural learning, abolishing the cultural and knowledge monopolies now existing in society; (c) the integral development of a person, imagined as an individual capable of participating in all spheres of social life; and (d) a transformation regarding the separation between school and community and the competition that occurs within the school.

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5. The possibilities described above can be observed in the educational practices developed by the disadvantaged segments of the population, with a view to their cultural and political emancipation, consisting in what we call popular education (non-formal educational practices, of an autonomous nature, carried out under the control or influence of popular organizations) (cf. Brandão, 1980; Guerrieri, 1994). Therefore, educational experiences organized by trade-union movements, of a unionist and/or vocational nature, would fall under this category. An analysis of the work/education relationship, starting from the assumptions listed above, leads us to discuss the way in which educational processes are influenced by the needs of production, particularly when significant changes are under way in the work process. Therefore, qualification, as a complex social construct, and closely linked to the production and reproduction of the workforce, would play an important role in the individual’s capacity to enter, remain in or be excluded from the productive process (although these relations can extrapolate the sphere of production proper). This means that qualifications cannot be viewed as belonging exclusively to the world of work or to the world of education. It is necessary to perceive them as an intersecting points, where several approaches and contributions must meet—one of them being that of the worker-subjects.

3 From the Corporation Trade Union to the Citizen’s Trade Union Immediately after the end of the Second World War, the reconstruction and redemocratization processes launched a new cycle of worldwide growth in the European countries and in Japan, in which the workers and their organizations exerted considerable influence. It was at this time that the major recommendations and conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO) sprang up, based on the principles of social dialogue, and of tripartite and collective negotiations. In the national sphere, the adoption of these instruments, particularly those referring to the freedom and autonomy of trade unions (ILO, Convention 87, 1948) and the right to join unions and participate in collective bargaining (ILO, Convention 98, 1949), permitted and consolidated the involvement of trade unions in the formulation and enforcement of public policies dealing with qualification (Barbagelata, 2000). In Latin American countries, however, the maintenance of authoritarian regimes, interspersed with brief democratic intervals, prevented the very existence of autonomous trade unions, creating to some extent a participation void. In Brazil, for instance, the Vargas regime (in the 1930s and 1940s) established a model of corporation trade unions based on the ‘Carta del Lavoro’ of Italian Fascism. Although strongly opposed by the workers for decades, particularly during the 1960s and 1980s, this model has survived until the present. At this moment, new perspectives are opening up in terms of the democratization of labour relations in the country. The administration that took office in 2003 immediately established the National Labour Forum, a tripartite meeting place based on equal representation, with the task of formulating proposals for reforms that, later on, would be transformed by


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the government into proposed amendments to the Constitution, and subsequently forwarded to the National Congress for debate and approval. Consequently, lacking the right to organize free trade unions, and with collective bargaining controlled by the State, the majority of the countries in the region did not develop a culture of full social dialogue. The workers, both men and women, were major players in the struggle for democracy that cannot be dissociated from the demand for the freedom and autonomy of trade unions and the building of a democratic system of labour relations. The advances attained were curtailed by new periods of dictatorship, although it could be expected that the region’s present democratic stability will speed up and lead to some progress. Nevertheless, since economic crisis and unemployment weakened the trade unions, an opportunity then opened up for the winds of deregulation to come from the developed countries, as well as for the hegemony of the ideology of the end of history and the single thought. One of the axes in this process was—and still is—the questioning of the role to be played in social dialogue by tripartite and collective negotiations, as well as the role of trade unions. However, the old institutionality remains, and also the old culture, disguised as what could be called neo-corporativism, that is, trade-union action based on a narrow vision of gains for a specific group, to the detriment of the working class as a whole and of society in general (Lima, 2000). At the other extreme, both the workers’ reflection and practice indicate a new type of organization, the ‘citizen’s trade union’ that seeks to build a collective contract that takes into account the interests of segments of the population and of the workers who have previously been ‘excluded’ from several aspects of social life: housing, social security, minimum income, education, health, transport, etc. The citizen’s trade union may imply (Nascimento, 1998): (a) trade-union action that goes beyond the limits of corporations; (b) a new form of trade-union organization based on diversity and on territory; (c) changes in the concept of representativeness and in the construction of alliances; (d) new strategies for the creation of jobs and a new agenda of demands; (e) a new political culture, including the politicization of daily life; and (f) a new plan for education. In this case, the discussions concerning vocational education and the new rights that will allow work qualification, control over the training processes within companies and the questioning of the present education system acquire strategic value.

4 Recent Experiences in Brazil 4.1 The Integrar Programme Established in 1992, the National Confederation of Metallurgy Workers of the Cen´ tral Union of Workers (Central Unica dos Trabalhadores—CUT) started to concern itself with the issue of vocational training in 1994. The motivating factors were the profound transformations that had been taking place within the industry. These modifications, resulting from technological and organizational modernization, required

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new skills and capacities from the workers, which were reflected on the job market by the new profiles required by entrepreneurs. During the fourth Congress of the CUT Metallurgy Workers, held in 1995, a resolution was passed establishing the qualification issue as a priority, requesting that the National Confederation of Metallurgy (CNM) should ‘include the vocational training issue on its agenda’, and ‘develop a pilot experiment to serve as a guide for its actions’. The project, based on guidance from CUT and supported by universities, had the explicit aim of ‘developing and planning vocational training and establishing relations between trade unions and unemployed workers’ (CNM, 1998a). This resolution was the starting point of the Integrar Project, which was developed along three lines: (a) vocational qualification for unemployed workers (PID); (b) vocational qualification for employed workers (PIE); and (c) qualifications for trade-union leaders (PIFD). From the very start, the Integrar Programme was conceived (see Box 1) as a qualification and integral education programme, in response to the reality of the low-level of schooling among Brazilian workers. Therefore, besides vocational and social qualification, educational actions aimed at improving the workers’ schooling (basic and secondary education), following an interdisciplinary approach, and bringing regular and vocational education closer together, as well as technical knowledge and general culture. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the CNM only developed the Integrar Programme as an educational experiment, since ‘it would be the task of CUT to develop a complete project for the training and requalification of workers in Brazil, in as much as the solution to the unemployment problem does not lie in vocational training’ (CNM, 1998b). The process of the formulation of the programme itself has strengthened this premise: During two months, the co-ordinators of the Programme held an informal survey among unemployed workers who were concentrated in several locations in the city of São Paulo, in order to verify the expectations of this segment as to vocational training courses. The issues raised by the workers led to three basic premises that served as guidance for the Integrar Programme: the value of the knowledge already amassed by the workers during the course of their lives; technical training should be associated with basic education; and a debate on the issue of employment and income generation—since one of the issues raised was: why qualify, if there are no jobs? (CNM, 1998b) [Emphasis added.]

The Integrar Programme appeared as an innovative move not only because it introduced new themes, methods and strategies, but also because it placed back on the agenda former educational experiences acquired by the working class that had slipped from the collective, unionist and academic memory (or rather, had been completely forgotten), or that were not thought of as being relevant to the vocational education processes. Moreover, the Integrar Programme became, within the post-1964 trade-union movement, ‘the first experience of autonomous vocational education to be conducted in a systematic manner, with unemployed workers, within a trade-union strategy directed towards this public’ (CNM, 2001). Since 1996, the various activities conducted by the Integrar Programme have reached out to 21,000 people in nine Brazilian states. At present, the possibility of the programme being introduced in Mozambique is being discussed with local unions.


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Box 1. The Integrar Programme: main characteristics 1.

2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

Concepts: (i) the concept of vocational training – integrate technical knowledge and basic education, ‘with the aim of developing the skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary to reinsert the unemployed worker within the work market and/or qualify him to join projects for employment and income generation’ (CNM, 1997) as a fundamental part of the education of the worker citizen; (ii) the concept of active citizenship (the action of the unemployed themselves creates tension within the institutions); (iii) the concept of a citizen’s trade union, one that participates and acts in the multiple social dimensions, moving about social space and time (cf. Nascimento, 1998). Target public: (i) unemployed workers; (ii) employed workers at risk of being dismissed (downsizing); (iii) union leaders; and (iv) educators. Contents: (i) starting from a central theme (‘core curriculum’), in the present case, the productive restructuring, within which several fields of general and technical knowledge are integrated; (ii) the integration of this knowledge with that brought by the students is also viewed as content; (iii) emphasis on the development of cognitive, affective and social skills, with the technical knowledge placed in perspective; and (iv) incorporation of contents linked to social practices (citizenship, development, employment and income generation, co-operativism, the struggle against unemployment, etc.), through concrete extracurricular activities. Method: (i) application of the principles of popular education to regular education; (ii) collective construction of knowledge; (iii) dynamic integration of the workers’ knowledge with academic knowledge (that of the educators); (iv) the same type of integration between the educators of the ‘pedagogic pair’ (teacher and ‘instructor’); (v) psycho-social diagnosis (recovery of self-esteem, assistance in cases of alcoholism and drug-use, support in becoming a permanent member of the course, family involvement). Institutional integration and democratic management, preserving autonomy. (i) relations with the university; (ii) relations with the public authorities (municipal administrations, secretariats of labour); (iii) relations with the trade unions and popular movements. Relation among qualification, workers’ organization and tradeunion action: (i) the possibility of establishing organizations of students and former students, expanding trade-union action to reach the whole city, rendering the ‘trade union/society relation’ real and concrete; (ii) expansion of the actual capacity for intervention in the productive restructuring, through negotiation and collective contracts.

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Although initially directed at the productive sector, the general principles developed by the Integrar Programme were the starting point for other nationwide projects within CUT’s scope of action. These programmes were of a general scope (Programa Formaça˜ o Integral—Integral Training Programme; and Programa Integraça˜ o—Integration Programme), of regional scope (Programa Vento Norte— North-Wind Programme; Programa Brasil Central—Central Brazil Programme, and Programa Flor de Mandacaru—Mandacaru Flower Programme, etc.), and also related to specific productive sectors (such as the Programa Terra Solidária— Solidarity Land Programme, the Programa Ra´ızes—Roots Programme, and the Programa Semear—Sowing Programme, directed to rural workers). Within the Integrar Programme, we intend to analyse specifically the sub-programme aimed at employed workers, both men and women (PIE), which has, at its core, the collective bipartite negotiation (employer company/trade union). The methodology of vocational training negotiated was developed by the CNM, in partnership with a public university, the Co-ordination of Graduate Programmes in Engineering at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (COPPE/UFRJ). The method necessarily includes a participative survey to be held in each company of the metal-mechanical sector participating in the programme (Zamberlan, Thiollent & Perrotta, 2002), which is organized according to the following stages: 1. Negotiation and contracting of the PIE between trade union and company consisting of the presentation of the project to the company management by the CNM/local trade union and COPPE/UFRJ, starting the formal negotiation process with a view to conducting the survey. 2. Carrying out the field survey: A survey team formed by two union leaders (employed in the company) and a trade-union assistant, all qualified for the job and assisted by the COPPE/UFRJ, developed the survey of primary and secondary data on the company (technology, organization of production and of work, products and market development, major competitors and suppliers, vocational profiles existing within the company, human resources and vocational training policies, etc.). 3. Preparation of a diagnostic report on the company. The trade-union teams, jointly with the COPPE/UFRJ team, prepared a specific report for each participating company. This report will be discussed with the representatives of each one of them, and also with the specific trade union, so as to come to an agreement regarding the information/interpretations and to prepare a final report. 4. Preparation of the proposal for vocational training. Based on the consolidated report, the proposal for vocational education will be prepared, with the aim of: (a) raising the level of quality of the personal and vocational life of the workers; (b) improving the existing labour relations; and (c) expanding the effectiveness and efficiency of the company’s productive process; 5. Negotiation of the vocational training proposal between trade union and company. At this stage, the training course to be introduced in the company is negotiated with the management, and the process of implementing the necessary actions is formalized through the signing of a legal agreement by both parties.


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6. Implementation of the vocational training project within the company. Based on the results of the diagnostic survey as presented in the report, the project is formatted, including the following aspects: (a) basic training, bringing together basic and secondary education; (b) general technical training, dealing with changes in the technological actions employed in the company’s productive sector; and (c) focused technical training, directed at the needs of specific sectors or positions in the company. The authoritarian and anti-consensus culture has hindered the contracting of vocational qualification in Brazil. In the case of the PIE, despite the initial receptiveness shown by the entrepreneurs, most of the experiences have not gone beyond Stage 5. However, the results were rather significant, whether or not the cycle was completed.

4.2 The National Qualifications Plan Since its establishment in 1937, the Brazilian Ministry of Labour and Employment has been either directly or indirectly active in vocational qualifications. The present administration (inaugurated in 2003), starting from the diagnosis that the National Plan for Workers Qualification (PLANFOR, in force from 1994 to 2003) was on the point of collapse, drew up the Social and Vocational Qualification Programme (PQSP) to be in force from 2004 to 2007. The Ministry adopted the concept of qualification as a central notion in public policies. The most relevant aspects of this concept are defined in Box 2. Box 2. The definition of qualification adopted by the Ministry of Labour and Employment Qualification is: a) an indissoluble part of Labour, Employment and Income Policies, both urban and rural; public or private, and regardless of whether they result in wageearning employment, individual entrepreneurship or solidarity action; b) a form of vocational education (initial and continuing education) that should form part of the education of youth and adults, rural education and vocational education at the technical and technological level; c) a process for constructing affirmative policies regarding gender, ethnicity and generation, insofar as it acknowledges the diversity of work and demonstrates its multiple capacities, both individual and collective; d) a form of social recognition of the workers’ knowledge, namely, of vocational and occupational certification, that should be an integral part of the classifications of occupations, professions, careers and skills; a necessity for youth and adults, both men and women, in terms of vocational orientation concerning their insertion into the world of work; whenever there is a dispute over hegemony, the collective negotiation of vocational qualification and certification should be part of a democratic system of work relations.

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Concerning what is actually expected of public policies on vocational qualification, the ministry states that: (a) these policies, when integrated with other public policies, particularly those dealing with employment and income generation, increase the chances of inserting the more vulnerable populations into the working world; (b) when integrated into educational policy, it contributes to restoring the right to education of young people and adults, and also of meeting one of the most important requisites in society and in the world of work—schooling; (c) when integrated into development policies, especially at the local level, these more vulnerable populations should participate in and enjoy the results of the local industry, and the support and solidarity of local development; (d) in times of economic growth, if it has previously been associated with employment generating sectors of the economy, it affords a greater homogenization of the work market in terms of access and income, and also reduces the costs and the time spent in the contractual process with a more rapid impact upon unemployment; (e) it allows a greater level of survival for individual and collective enterprises, based on the principles of the solidarity economy; and (f) in order to integrate work, education and development, the PQSP must have social effectiveness (to serve those who need it the most—the unemployed workers and the more vulnerable groups—at the right moment) and educational quality (class hours and contents compatible to the requirements of the working world). The general objective of the PQSP is to plan, integrate and finance the implementation of qualification, certification and vocational guidance efforts, together with employment, educational and development policies, thus contributing to the progress and consolidation of the National Vocational Training System, the Public System of Employment and the National Education System (Brazil. Ministry of Labour and Employment, 2003). Based on these premises, the PQSP proposes to co-ordinate the development of actions focused on the social and vocational qualification of workers, with emphasis on social impact, educational quality, efficiency, territoriality and empowerment, jointly with actions aiming at employment and income generation, certification and vocational guidance. These proposals are consistent with the concept of quality adopted, insofar as the ministry views qualification as a set of policies situated on the intersection of work and education, and intrinsically linked to an inclusive and income-distributing development process that aims at reducing regional inequalities. The PQSP is subdivided into four types of action: the National Qualification Plan—PNQ (launched in July 2003); the sectoral qualification plans; the vocational certification; and vocational orientation. During 2003 and 2004, over 280,000 individuals were qualified by these programmes, representing an investment of approximately US$50 million. The notion of quality adopted by the Ministry of Labour and Employment necessarily implies mutual agreement, which has actually occurred in practice, at least concerning three areas: 1. The National Qualification Plan (PNQ). At the state and municipal levels, the implementation of qualification actions in specific areas, through territorial


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qualification plans (PLANTEQs), requires the discussion, approval and monitoring by the employment committees, standing tripartite organisms with equal representation. 2. The implementation of pilot experiments of vocational certification (metalmechanical and civil construction) led to the establishment of tripartite monitoring committees. 3. In the establishment of Sectoral Qualification Plans, where the possibilities of mutual agreement are more evident, since these plans are defined as: a participative space [. . .] a strategy complementary to the PLANTEQs, aimed at meeting emergency demands for qualification, both general and sectoral, identified through corporate, social or governmental initiatives [. . .] structured according to the principles of: (a) integration of the policies on development, employment (particularly work intermediation), qualification and vocational certification; (b) agreement among governmental, private and social agents, special attention being given to tripartite dialogue; and (c) co-financing according to the size and the economic capacity of each party [. . .] with participative debate on the project and organization of the public, private and social agents involved, in the form of an Agreement Committee, with equal representation, and tripartite at the least (Brazil. Ministry of Labour and Employment, 2004).

Emphasis should also be placed on the debate concerning vocational qualification and certification within the scope of MERCOSUR (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay), since these debates occur in Sub-group 10, with the participation of governments, businessmen and workers. The political guidelines, however, are validated by the Socio-Labour Committee of MERCOSUR, a standing organism of a tripartite nature.

5 Possible Bipartite and Tripartite Negotiations Recent experiences linking vocational qualification and collective negotiations, originating in the European Union and in several individual European countries, such as Spain, Italy, Portugal and France, demonstrate the feasibility of an agreement in that area (Uriarte & R´ımolo, 1998). Likewise, experiments that took place in Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Panama, although limited, also demonstrate the concrete possibilities of this course of action in developing countries. The international recognition of social dialogue and collective negotiations aiming at vocational qualification is summarized in Recommendation 195 (Human Resources Development) of the ILO, adopted at the ninety-second International Labour Conference (2004). Within MERCOSUR, the Socio-Labour Declaration also points to the need for negotiated agreements in the field of vocational qualifications. In Brazil, the above-mentioned experiences (Integrar Program, PQSP/PNQ and MERCOSUR’s Socio-Labour Committee), although in the early stages, are auspicious in terms of overcoming models that exclude workers’ participation. Negotiated vocational qualifications open up new possibilities for the inclusion of interests, namely, a negotiation process capable of detecting elements in the intersection between the company’s and the trade union’s conceptions regarding the

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development of the vocational qualification of workers. This statement is based on the belief that modern industrialization with social justice and democratic work relations presupposes the active and negotiated participation of all social players. Vocational qualification is capable of becoming a link between the new demands brought about by the problems of a mutating production world and possible new solutions, constructed with the active participation of all stakeholders. In this context, vocational qualification assumes a strategic position, both for entrepreneurs and workers and for the countries that exert social and political regulation over the growing exchanges that take place within a globalized economy. Therefore, a negotiated vocational qualification presupposes (Nascimento, 1998) the acknowledgement of the fact that its locus is the intersection among at least three different fields: that of production (work), that of the State (public policies and citizenship), and that of education (educational action). Moreover, as a public concerted action, qualification must be part of a broader agenda, associated with social and economic development, with social inclusion and with the democratization of labour relations, insofar as it is not an isolated activity, and cannot be implemented only from an educational perspective. In that manner, we can view it as a social and vocational qualification, whose actions must be implemented along the following lines: (a) democratization of the labour relations, particularly concerning the strengthening of organization in the workplace and of collective negotiations and contracting; (b) democratization of the State, acknowledging the role of social movements in the formulation and management of public policies, and ensuring their participation in the framing of employment policies; and (c) the democratization of education, overcoming both the work/school duality and the notion of occupational or merely instrumental training. These changes presuppose a deep and joint reformulation of the labour relations systems, of the public systems of employment and of education systems, whose principles are expressed in Box 3 (CUT, 1995; Lima, 1999; Brazil. Ministry of Labour and Employment, 2003). The challenge of building national and regional systems of vocational training can only be faced through concerted action, where trade unions, as this chapter has tried to demonstrate, have much to say.

Box 3. Principles for a democratic system of vocational education 1. Unemployment is a political and economic issue that results from development models based on exclusion. It is not a personal problem derived from the worker’s lack of qualification/education. 2. It is the duty of the State to guarantee public, free-of-charge education of good quality for all, including vocational education. 3. Qualification is a field where different agencies and policies interact, such as labour, employment and income, and education and development. Therefore, social dialogue, tripartite agreement and collective negotiation and contracting should be guaranteed.


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4. The dynamic integration between training and citizenship-building contributes to the development of society, in its social and economic aspects, to the democratization of the State, to the increase of the productivity of private enterprises and to the strengthening of social movements and civil society. 5. Public resources, besides being used ethically, must give priority to actions that meet the needs of unemployed workers and vulnerable populations. 6. Social and vocational qualification actions must be carried out together with actions aiming at development, social inclusion and education, and must include vocational certification and guidance. 7. The integration between social and vocational qualification and the increase in schooling, insofar as it establishes complementarity among alternative and official modalities of education, contributes to the rescuing of a fundamental aspect of the social debt—the right to education. 8. Workers, both men and women, must be viewed as individuals, and their subjective, social and political dimensions must be respected and taken into account. 9. The process of knowledge-construction must systematically restore and confer value on the knowledge held by the workers, acquired from the experiences, work and struggles of their lives, and must also take into account socio-cultural diversity, implying the rescue of popular experiences of vocational qualification and education. 10. Vocational qualification must not be restricted to the technical sphere, and it must be combined with general knowledge, culture and education for citizenship, with a view to the complete education of the worker. 11. Educational processes must be developed within an interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary perspective, and oriented along a central axis associated with the socio-cultural context and the demands of the world of work and of society. 12. Insofar as the above-mentioned principles are observed, the plurality and creativity of all educational agents must be respected, whether they represent the State, private enterprises or trade unions and other social movements. 13. Vocational qualification and educational actions should, whenever financed with public money, be free of charge, broadly publicized and subjected to permanent planning and evaluation, through mechanisms of social control.

The recognition of the vocational qualifications and educational experiences amassed by trade unions and other social movements is the starting point for the democratization and reformulation of public policies on work and education. However, the major challenge is to abandon the authoritarian culture, the obsession and

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blindness of a certain intellectual elite who, mistrusting the wisdom of their own people, still opt to import or to adopt solutions when social movements have so much to offer.

References Adorno, T.W. 1995. Educaça˜ o e emancipaça˜ o. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Paz e Terra. Barbagelata, H.H., ed. 2000. El derecho a la formación vocational y las normas internacionales. Montevideo: CINTERFOR. Brandão, C.R. 1980. Da educaça˜ o fundamental ao fundamental da educaça˜ o. Caderno do CEDES, vol. 1, no. 1. Brazil. Ministry of Work and Employment. 2003. Plano Nacional de Qualificaça˜ o, 2003–2007. Brasilia: MTE. Brazil. Ministry of Work and Employment. 2004. Planos Setoriais de Qualificaça˜ o: PlanSeqs. Brasilia: MTE. (Nota Técnica N◦ 04/04, CGCOP/DEQ/SPPE.) Castro, N.A. 1992. Organizaça˜ o do trabalho, qualificaça˜ o e controle na indústria moderna. In: Machado, L. et al., eds. Trabalho e educaça˜ o. Campinas, Brazil: Papirus. (Coletânea CBE.) Castro, N.A. 1993. Qualificaça˜ o, qualidades e classificaço˜ es. Revista educaça˜ o e sociedade, vol. 14, no. 45. Confederaça˜ o Nacional dos Metalúrgicos. 1997. Formaça˜ o em reestruturaça˜ o produtiva e aça˜ o sindical. Sao Paulo, Brazil: CNM. Confederaça˜ o Nacional dos Metalúrgicos. 1998a. Programa Integrar: formaça˜ o e qualificaça˜ o para o trabalho. Sao Paulo, Brazil: CNM. Confederaça˜ o Nacional dos Metalúrgicos. 1998b. Resoluço˜ es do 4 o congresso dos metalúrgicos. Sao Paulo Brazil: CNM. Confederaça˜ o Nacional dos Metalúrgicos. 2001. Programa Integrar 1996–2001. Sao Paulo, Brazil: CNM. ´ Central Unica dos Trabalhadores. 1995. Resoluço˜ es da 7a Plenária Nacional: zumbi dos palmares. InformaCUT, no. 257, setembro. Gómez, C.M. et al. 1989. Trabalho e conhecimento: dilemmas na educaça˜ o do trabalhador, 2nd ed. Sao Paulo, Brazil: Cortez. Guerrieri, M.A. 1994. A dialética como método e sua apropriaça˜ o pela educaça˜ o popular no Brasil. [Unpublished master’s dissertation, Espirito Santo University, Vitória, Brazil.] Lima, A.A.B. 1999. Rumo ao sindicato cidadão? qualificaça˜ o profissional e pol´ıticas públicas em tempos de reestruturaça˜ o produtiva. [Unpublished master’s degree dissertation, Salvador University, Brazil.] Lima, A.A.B. 2000. Qualificaça˜ o profissional e sindicalismo Brasileiro na virada do Século XXI: momento de decisão? In: Núcleo Temático Educaça˜ o do Trabalhador/Escola Sindical São Paulo, ed. Portugal, Holanda e Brasil: sindicatos, formaça˜ o profissional e formaça˜ o sindical. Sao Paulo, Brazil: ES-SP. (Formaça˜ o sindical em debate, no. 4.) Manfredi, S.M. 1996. Formaça˜ o sindical no Brasil: história de uma prática cultural. Sao Paulo, Brazil: Escrituras. Nascimento, C. 1998. Sindicalismo cidadão e formaça˜ o para cidadania. Programa Formaça˜ o ´ Integral: Caderno Educaça˜ o e Sindicalismo. Florianopolis, Brazil: Central Unica dos Trabalhadores/CUT. Saviani, D. 1991. Pedagogia histórico-cr´ıtica: primeiras aproximaço˜ es. Sao Paulo, Brazil: Cortez. Torres, C.A. 1993. Sociologia pol´ıtica da educaça˜ o. Sao Paulo, Brazil: Cortez. Uriarte, O.E.; R´ımolo, J.R. 1998. Formación vocational en la negociación colectiva. Montevideo: CINTERFOR. Zamberlan, F.L.; Thiollent, M.J.M.; Perrotta, C. 2002. El Programa INTEGRAR y la formación vocational negociada en el sector metalmecânico brasileño In: Posthuma, A.C., ed. Diálogo social, formación vocational e institucionalidad. Montevideo: CINTERFOR.

Chapter VIII.11

Vocational Education and Development Gaudêncio Frigotto, Maria Ciavatta and Marise N. Ramos

1 Introduction We start from the premise that unified basic education (primary and secondary) and vocational (occupational) education,1 both being a right for all citizens, are basic necessities for all aspects of life in societies where justice, citizenship and democracy function. Therefore, access to good-quality basic education and occupational training leads to people’s active and self-sufficient insertion into the working world, especially in view of recent advances in science and technology. (Since we believe that basic education and vocational education, in spite of their specific characteristics, are organically related, we will treat them as such throughout this chapter. We believe that, wherever basic education is of poor quality, vocational education will be of poor quality too.) In this chapter, we attempt to emphasize, first, that the mainstream approaches to the linear relationship between education, vocational training and development do not take into account the structures of power in a society that has created and neutralized the dualism existing in the educational field, nor the asymmetrical relations among developed countries and those developing countries that are ‘peripheral’ and ‘semi-peripheral’ (Arrighi, 1998) to capitalist societies. Secondly, we will try to draw attention to the single or reductionist vision of development, to the historical contexts in which the theory of human capital was formulated, as well as to the notions of the knowledge society, competence-based learning and employability. We will emphasize the fact that the thesis stating that the ‘developing’ and ‘under-developed’, peripheral or semi-peripheral countries and the socially excluded, poor and low-income groups find themselves in their present situation because they have been receiving poor schooling and precarious vocational education—which has been predominant and recurrent ever since the 1950s—is not only false, but the opposite of the truth. It is the opposite of the truth because it masks the asymmetrical power relations among nations and among social classes in the international division of labour. Although education and development are always viewed as correlated, basic and vocational education are not the fundamental determining factors that explain the backwardness and penury of poor countries and populations. On the contrary, their poverty is related to the historical inheritance of colonization and their constant R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VIII.11, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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subordination to the hegemonic centres of capitalism that still prevent these countries from developing autonomously and attaining universal basic education, as well as providing vocational education of good quality. To put it another way, the positive correlation between education, vocational education and development does not warrant the conclusion that the former are fundamental prerequisites for the latter—as the commonly accepted tenet of economics has claimed for the last fifty years. In the final considerations in this chapter, we will indicate some of the challenges, in terms of external and internal relations, that must be faced in order to produce effective changes in the scenario under analysis, regarding the possibilities of development and of redeeming the debt in terms of effective democratic basic and vocational education.

2 Structural Duality and Asymmetrical Relations We affirm, from the start, that occupational education of good quality is not possible without the support of basic education of good quality. A historical interpretation of these relationships, as well as their association with development, proves to be problematic (see Ramos, 1995, for an analysis of the contradictory relationship between development plans and programmes and policies for technical and technological education in Brazil from the 1950s to the 1990s). Indeed, the historical genesis of the school took place during the eighteenth century, during the same sequence of events that brought about the emergence of modern science and the bourgeoisie as the hegemonic social class. The school plays an important role in the consolidation of the hegemony of the ruling classes in relation to a feudal society and to the power of the Church and of the centralized State. The school arises as a lay public institution, free of charge and universal, having, simultaneously, the function of developing a new culture, of teaching new generations the body of ideas required in modern society, and of systematically socializing scientific knowledge. It is important to emphasize the fact that, in its classic form, the school is characterized as an environment for different systematic modalities of learning: the values, the attitudes, the symbols and the concepts are just as important acquisitions as the development of knowledge and cognitive skills. On the other hand, it is the lay school (i.e. not belonging to the Church, not belonging to the capitalist landlord, and not belonging to the business world), public, free of charge and universal that synthesizes the ideas of the French Revolution, the effective beginning of modernity, and of the ideas of an egalitarian, just and fraternal society. From the start, however, there was an obvious and insoluble contradiction among the economic and political structure, the social relations within the incipient society and the need for a dual education: a classic school teaching general education, with an ample scientific basis, aimed at the ruling classes, and another school, practical and instrumental, for the occupational training of workers. The school has the function of teaching, training, coaching or educating, according to the role to be played in the workforce according to a specific conception devised by the ruling classes. An

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education distributed in homeopathic doses, according to Adam Smith, that prepares only for ‘what is useful’ for the economy, since everything that is in excess, in the words of John Stuart Mill, is superfluous and expensive. With no dissimulation, Desttut de Tracy, in the early nineteenth century, clearly expressed that which history has subsequently proved to be correct: Men of the working class, from very early on, need the labour of their children. These children must soon acquire the skills and, most of all, the habits and the tradition of hard work for which they are destined. They cannot, therefore, waste time in schools. [. . .] The children of the learned classes, on the contrary, can dedicate a much longer time to studies. They have much to learn in order to attain what is expected of them in the future (Desttut de Tracy, 1801, in Frigotto, 1987).

This same approach gave rise to the development of specific systems of education, training or qualification, or, using our present designation, vocational (occupational) education, at the same time or subsequent to basic school education, but more directly linked to the world of work. Both this duality of the education system and the dynamic relation between basic education and vocational training assume different forms in different societies, depending on their historical origins and on the power relations among groups, classes and class segments, both internally and according to their position in international relations. It is by no means difficult to perceive the differences between the (approximately twenty) countries that developed, mainly during the twentieth century, as the hegemonic centres of the capitalist world, and the great majority of countries that were relegated to the periphery or semi-periphery of that same world. In the first case, one can observe the consolidation of the right to basic education as a universal right, leading to articulated systems of education or training, managed jointly by the public authorities, the private sector and the workers’ trade unions. In the case of the countries on the periphery, what is evident is a deep inequality in terms of access to and in the quality of basic education, with high illiteracy rates, and an economically active population often with less than five years of schooling. The occupational education policies, in this latter case, develop independently from the workers they intend to train, under the almost exclusive control of the owner classes. Ciavatta (2002) illustrates this situation in a comparative study of vocational training in Brazil, Italy and Mexico. In the case of Latin American societies, the recent history of several countries indicates that, in spite of specific characteristics, the education systems are all fragile, and the vocational training policies are prompted by crises or are focused on teaching specific skills for a specific industry. In Brazil, particularly, the historical legacy of the ‘coronéis e bacharéis’ (political powers and college-educated elites) culture, with its strong slave-owning heritage and its philanthropic view of vocational education, still has a strong influence upon the present situation. Concerning educational management, Brazil constitutes a singular case of an almost monopolistic control of vocational education by the patrons of the ‘S’-System.2 A synthesis of this historical process—which prevents linear analyses of the relation between education and development since the 1950s, as we will see in the next section—has been made by Arrighi (1998). After taking stock of the international

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scenario in this present century, the author concludes that there is a group of countries that forms the organic core of capitalist economies, where the research activities are performed that lead to innovations involving new productive methods, new sources of inputs and new forms of organization. The peripheral and semi-peripheral countries, on the other hand, perform predominantly physical activities, and are condemned to receiving very few innovations and inadequate investments in education, science and technology.

3 From Human Capital to the Knowledge Society Since the 1950s, the relationship established between basic education/vocational education and development has been based on an understanding of development as synonymous with economic growth, and within a linear perspective, where the power relations and the limits of the environment are not taken into account. Even the most contemporary debates on sustainable development, for the most part, are not free from being influenced by this perspective. The idea of a linear and limitless development is now fiercely contested by historical evidence to the contrary. As pointed out by Altvater (1995), the intense industrialization that took place under this model of social regulation was not universal—it could not possibly be. The distance between the countries that want to become fit and the societies that are already fat, that is, rich, has not diminished. Frederich List formulated the rule of cunningness, according to which ‘after getting to the top, destroy the ladder that took you there, so that nobody else can follow you there’. [. . .] The model of capitalist industrialization is clearly not capable of universalization. The successful exceptions to this rule are not enough to invalidate it. The affluent capitalist society has an orderly side in the North, and a disorderly or chaotic side in the South (Altvater, 1995, pp. 22 & 25).

Paradoxically, the notion of human capital, based on the research of Theodore Schultz (1973) on the inequality of economic development among countries in the 1950s, and the notions of the knowledge society, competence-based methods and employability formulated since the late 1980s, established an increasingly disguised common meaning regarding the linear vision mentioned above. This common meaning, widespread in international organizations, such as the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the Inter-American Development Bank, eventually succeeded in inculcating in the governments and poor populations of peripheral and semi-peripheral countries the development illusion mentioned by Arrighi (1998). Analyses of the historical process, mainly in the twentieth century, such as those provided by Hobsbawm (1990, 1995) and Arrighi (1996), allow us to affirm that the notions of human capital and of the knowledge society explain, in a back-tofront way, two historical contexts of redefinition of capitalist relations and their consequences, especially in regard to the working classes (Frigotto, 1987). Indeed, the notion of human capital seeks to answer the disturbing question of why economic and social inequality among nations and groups of individuals within the same nation persisted or grew worse in the post-Second World War period. The assumption, turned into a statement, arrived at from the study of statistical


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correlations, was that this inequality was primarily due to differences in investment in human capital, consisting of investments in schooling, training and health for the working class. From the educational point of view, the question that must be asked is: what are the knowledge, attitudes and values that must be developed in school and in vocational education that are functional in the world of labour and production? Economists, managers, technocrats and planners tend to emphasize skills and cognitive dimensions, while sociologists and psychologists underscore attitudes, values, symbols and ideological dimensions (Finkel, 1977). This reverse understanding of the historical process is due to the fact that, as pointed out by Hobsbawm as early as the 1950s, the globalization of markets and the movement of capital annulled the power of national States, mainly in developing countries, over the planning of their economies and the control of their currencies. This scenario marked the beginning of a progressive and mounting ‘vengeance of capital’ against the external processes that, since the 1930s, were adopted as a remedy in an attempt to regulate the cyclical crises of capitalism. We are referring to Keynesian policies, to the Fordist system of social regulation and to welfare-state policies originating in the contradictions of the capitalist system, in the organized fights of workers of many countries, appearing as a strategy to confront the expansion of the Soviet bloc. These policies were concerned with eliminating the restrictions on the exploitation rates, leading to the maximization of profits. The breaking of the barriers to profit rates, especially in societies where the capital/labour relationship was more balanced, was conducted, at first, by means of strategies adopted by multinational enterprises and, later on, through transnational enterprises and the growing dominance of financial capital. In parallel, there were increasing signs that the ‘really existing socialism’, to quote Hobsbawm, was about to collapse. The polarization between rich and poor countries began to become evident and, consequently, the growing inequality among nations, and the increase in the numbers of poor and extremely poor population groups, especially in the Southern Hemisphere (see Fitousi & Rosavallon, 1997, regarding the increase of inequality in Latin American countries). In Latin America, the social movements demanding structural changes in order to include the great disadvantaged majorities were restricted by the dictatorship cycle. It was predominantly within the context of dictatorships that educational reforms based on the ideas of human capital were introduced in Latin America. In developing countries, therefore, the vicious circle of mounting internal and external debts and dependency, and the diminishing of investment capacity, especially in the social area, were reaffirmed. In spite of the dominant discourse to the contrary, health, education and occupational training, all of them components of the human capital formula, were receiving less and less of the available resources. It must be stressed that, given the situation at that time, policies in the fields of basic education, vocational training and health were being developed within a society that, although united, was unequal. It was a matter of producing and reproducing

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a labour force adequate to the demands of the development processes, and to assign to education and vocational training the role of rescuing the developing countries from their present situation and bringing them up to the level of the core countries. Likewise, this same model promised social mobility through better-paid jobs. In the context of labour relations, the idea of regulating social justice through collective bargaining mediated by public institutions, the private sector and workers’ trade unions, although weakened, still remained valid. From the mid-1980s onwards, several processes began to accelerate the process of globalization of markets and of capital. Emphasis was placed on the importance of financial capital, the consolidation of new and qualitatively different information and communication technologies, and new forms of business organization and management. These brought about major changes in the productive process. The economy could now increase productivity by decreasing (streamlining) the number of workers. The structural unemployment crisis that had been spreading for almost two decades showed no signs of resolving itself. At the same time, with the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the domination of a single economic model, capital’s vengeance against labour was complete. The growing unemployment of the last decades was not merely cyclic, but rather structural. The jobs lost in the bad times would not return when times grew better: they would never return [. . .] The historic tragedy of the crisis decades was that production could now clearly dispense with human beings at a faster rate than the market economy could generate new jobs for them. Moreover, this process was accelerated by global competition, by the financial squeeze affecting governments, which—either directly or indirectly—were the largest individual employers, and not the least, after the 80’s, by the then predominant free-market theology that pressed for the transfer of jobs to the entrepreneurial forms of profit maximization, primarily for private enterprises which, by definition, had no interests in mind other than their own pecuniary concerns. This meant, among other things, that governments and other public entities were no longer what was called last-resort employers (Hobsbawm, 1995, pp. 403–04).

It is in this context that the Washington Consensus was formulated, whose prescription for developing countries was that of fiscal adjustments, deregulation of markets, making labour legislation flexible and selling off public assets. The aim is to remove the legacy of centralized social policies and to liberate the mechanisms for the regulation of markets and of capital. The institutional bases that regulate both international law and the domestic sphere are shifted to genuine market organizations. The World Trade Organization becomes the forum where the free-market rules are decided upon, regardless of national interests. Monetarist and pro-fiscal adjustment neo-conservatism assumes the lead. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank prepare the conditions for economic and social policy adjustments, and negotiate these reforms with the elites that, either because they want to or because they have to, proceed with their implementation. In Brazil, in terms of basic, higher and vocational education, we have shifted from civil-military dictatorship to the dictatorship of the market. A new cycle of educational reform has begun, both in the educational and in the organizational


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spheres. A growing process of privatization of institutions has been established. It is not by chance that, in 2000, the WTO pointed out that one of the most prosperous markets for private investments is the ‘educational market’. The educational reforms in Chile, Argentina and Brazil that took place during the 1990s are emblematic of this new direction. The analyses conducted by Céa (2003) and Grabowski (2004) demonstrate unequivocally how the reforms of vocational education took place in the move towards privatization. In this new materiality of social relations, under the exclusive discourse of the sovereignty of the market and the private rule of the great economic groups controlling wealth, science, technology and information networks, the human capital theory, in the terms it was formulated from the 1950s until the 1980s, was no longer relevant as a basis for educational ideas. That notion preserved traits of an integrative and contractual society. We are now in the era of the post-contractual society, to quote Boaventura Santos (1999). ‘Who is society? There is no such thing,’ as Margaret Thatcher proclaimed. ‘There are individual men and women and there are families.’ The central notion in this move towards capitalist social relations is that of the knowledge society, derived from technological determinism, meaning that science and technology are now seen as autonomous entities, independent of social relations—or from class relations and, consequently, from the power relations that order and direct them. According to this determinism, the notion of the knowledge society allows the single discourse to proclaim what Bourdieu and Wacquant (2000) have named the new planetary vulgate: post-industrial and post-classist society, a society no longer belonging to the proletariat, but rather to the cognitariat. At the same time, emphasis is placed on the notion that we find ourselves in a rapidly changing society, a society of discontinuity and, most of all, of uncertainty. In the field of basic and vocational education, the knowledge society—where there are no more classes, only individuals, constantly marked by rapid change, discontinuity and uncertainty—which conception, which organization and which educational practices can resolve economic problems? The answer given by the educational reforms of the 1990s is the competence-based approaches and flexible educational structures that no longer prepare the individual for employment, but rather for employability. It is not by chance that the notion of competence arises in the business milieu and is incorporated into education, with a view to linking it to the challenges posed by labour-market instability. Moraes (1998) provides us with an exemplary synthesis of the body of ideas about the knowledge society and of the role assigned to vocational education: (un)preparing for the society of uncertainty. Employability is a concept that goes beyond the search for employment or job security. It means a set of skills which you demonstrably have mastered or are able to develop—within or without the firm. It is the necessary condition for you to feel alive, capable and productive. It concerns you as an individual, and no longer the company’s situation, good or bad, or the situation of the country. It is the opposite of the old dream of a lifelong relation to the company. Nowadays, the only lifelong relation is with the content of what you know how

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to do and can do. The best a company can offer you is the following: let’s work together and let it benefit us both, while it lasts; the break-up may happen for reasons beyond our control. [. . . Employability] is the new name for security (Moraes, 1998).

The new body of educational ideas that now guides basic and vocational education expresses a more radical inversion, in a context of regression of the capitalist social relations. It is not a society of uncertainty, but rather a society of insecurity. The globalization of capital has increased both the concentration of wealth and structural unemployment, as well as the extreme poverty in developing countries, as shown in Chossudvsky’s analysis (1999). We are facing a situation in which, as demonstrated by István Mészaros (2002), capitalist activities destroy, one by one, the rights attained during the twentieth century, including the right to work, besides degrading the environment and jeopardizing the bases of human life. The promise of employability, when confronted with this reality, not only reveals its own deceitful nature, but also a high degree of cynicism. a beautiful word that sounds new and seems to be destined to a great future: ‘employability’. It soon reveals itself as a close relative of flexibility, and even as one of its forms. For the wage-earner, it means to be available to all changes, all whims of fate, meaning of the employers. He should be ready to change jobs constantly (as one changes one’s shirt, Ama Beppa would say) (Forrester, 1997, p. 118).

These ideas of the knowledge society and competence-based learning for employability, as Beluzzo pointed out, were already presented to us in the 1960s and 1970s as the ‘human capital theory’. Recycled, it now returns to explain, or to try to explain, the worsening of inequalities in contemporary capitalism. In this manner, it is now easier to lay on the individual the blame for his disgrace and his failure: ‘I am poor because I am incompetent and without qualifications’ (Beluzzo, 2001, p. 1). In fact, the logic of competence incorporates relevant traits of the human capital theory, rephrased according to the ‘new’ capitalist sociability. It finds support in the competitive market capitalism. The increase in marginal productivity is considered as a function of the adequate development and use of the workers’ competence; individual investment in competence development is both a consequence and a presupposition of the capacity for adaptation to the instability of life. In the neo-liberal manner, it is believed that this would result in well-being for all, since everyone would have autonomy and freedom to make their own choices according to their skills (Ramos, 2001).

4 Final Considerations The overview we have presented leads us to stress the fact that one of the first tasks facing us is the deconstruction of the relationship—dominant up until now— between education, vocational education and development. It is a relationship that maintains the colonialist manifesto of subservience and alienation. It should be emphasized that the situation of inequality, either between regions (North/South), among central and developing/least-developed countries, or among social groups


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within each country cannot be explained first and foremost by their education or occupational training, but rather by power and strength relations that have been built up throughout history. ‘Contrary to the commandments and to the jabbering of the single thought, the majority of them are not poor because they have not received good education, but rather they have not received a good education because they are poor’ (Beluzzo, 2001, p. 2). It is therefore of fundamental importance to clearly grasp that the contributions of the human capital theory, and also of the concepts of the knowledge society, competence-based learning and employability, to the understanding of the relationship between education and development do not succeed in explaining the historical processes that generate inequality among and within nations. On the contrary, these approaches lead us astray and away from such understanding, misinforming us as to the role of basic and vocational education as social practices that mediate social economic and cultural relations. As indicated above, concerning the approach used by Mészários and Beluzzo, poverty keeps people away from a quality education that would contribute to their development. And, without access to a quality education, they are unable to participate effectively in the necessary social, political, cultural and economic changes. The establishment of new and different bases for understanding the relationship between vocational education and development requires from developing countries a body of decisions and policies to be adopted concomitantly and jointly, in an attempt to meet both the criteria of social justice and those of the demands of the productive system. A first condition that will determine and guide all others would be to build social forces and movements capable of leading to a cultural change within the elites of developing countries. Such a change would necessarily break away from all existing forms of colonization and submission in relations with international organizations and with the core countries. Without substantial changes concerning the payment of external and internal debts, developing and least-developed countries will never break free from this vicious circle, and the quest for greater equality and development will remain an illusion. What would these structural changes be? In the Brazilian case, the following measures can no longer be postponed: (a) agrarian reform and the taxation of large fortunes, with a view to eliminating excessively large rural estates; (b) tax reform, with the aim of reversing the regressive logic of taxation, according to which wage earners and the poor populations pay more, in order to set right the enormous and unjustifiable income inequality; and (c) social and legal reforms, instituting a public sphere that guarantees social and individual rights. These conditions, along with the strengthening of an active democracy and a new conception of development—socially just, economically viable, solid and participative—will bring about the financial, political and cultural changes that are necessary to break away from the vicious circle of poverty and low investments in education and in science and technology, so as to give a chance to those who are doomed to perform nothing but ‘physical’ tasks within the international division of labour.

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For the future, there are crucial and dramatic problems to be resolved that imply urgently needed distributive policies. It is in this context that the minimum income policies are situated, such as family school-grants (bolsa-fam´ılia) and so on, that must be associated with the education of their beneficiaries. These policies must be under public social control, so as not to degenerate into favouritism (the undue favouring of political associates and protégés) and paternalism, both strong traits in Brazilian political culture and, likewise, must not be permanent. For that reason, efforts must target the adoption of emancipatory policies that guarantee employment or work, as well as income, in order to improve the schooling of populations who, due to the penury of their living conditions, tend to be satisfied with very little. Lastly, we must reaffirm that it is imperative to abandon the body of ideas that served as a basis for educational reforms adopted, at first, during the Latin American military dictatorships, and which consisted in the notion of human capital and, at present, under the dictatorship of the market, with the notions of the knowledge society, competence-based learning and employability. The aim of all these conceptions is the education of an ‘alienated productive citizen’ (Frigotto & Ciavatta, 2002), a marginalized citizen who will end up blaming his/her lack of schooling as the reason for unemployment or underemployment. The vocational education associated with a different perspective of development, therefore, needs to be combined with basic education and with income- and employment-generating policies. The broader social expectations consist of advancing towards a non-dualistic basic education that unites into a dynamic process of culture, knowledge, technology and work, which is seen as a right for all citizens and a prerequisite for any kind of citizenship and for an effective democracy; an education that produces subjects who are culturally, politically and scientifically prepared for the changes indicated here and who, most of all, possess the non-negotiable conviction that, as historian Hobsbawm (2000) explains, ‘people come first, and cannot be sacrificed’ in the name of mere ‘economic commitments’. The great challenge of the twenty-first century does not concern production, but the social capacity for democratic access to the outcomes of production. What is needed is the construction of an effectively democratic public sphere, capable of ensuring that all individuals have the right to work, health, education, dwelling, security, welfare, culture and leisure. This issue, in essence, is not of an economic, but rather of an ethical-political nature.

Notes 1. In Brazil, the semantic variations for designating educational processes aimed at the workers are not neutral. Act no. 5,692/71, in establishing mandatory vocationalization in secondary education, introduced the term educaça˜ o profissionalizante (vocationalizing education), in an attempt to overcome the negative cachet suggested by the term ensino profissional (vocational education), which connotes education directed to working-class youth. The terms formaça˜ o profissional or técnico-profissional (vocational or techno-vocational training) defined training directly related to the labour market. Its contents and purposes, however, were the subject of disputes between the organized workers and the entrepreneurial class. Starting from 1995, the Ministry of Labour and Employment developed the National Plan for Vocational


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Education (PLANFOR), using the term educaça˜ o profissional, which was consolidated by Act no. 9,394/96. Beyond semantic variations, it is important to know to what extent the Brazilian model of vocational education or training is committed to reality and to the needs of the working classes. Under this principle, we will use, in this chapter, the term educaça˜ o profissional (vocational education), not in order to conform to the formal aspects of legislation, but rather because we understand that, nowadays, this term covers the multiple, contradictory and problematic processes of education for work. 2. For a systematic historical understanding of the conceptions and policies of vocational education in Brazil, from the times of slavery to the present, see Cunha (2000a, 2000b, 2000c). The ‘S’-System comprises institutions created since 1942 with a view to promoting the vocational training of workers from the different productive sectors: industry (SENAI), commerce (SENAC), agriculture (SENAR), transportation (SENAT) and entrepreneurship (SEBRAE). Concerning the educational approach adopted by the Industrial Apprenticeship Service (SENAI), the major institution of specific vocational training, see Frigotto (1983).

References Altvater, E. 1995. O preço da riqueza: pilhagem ambiental e a nova (des)ordem mundial. Sao Paulo, Brazil: UNESP. Arrighi, G. 1996. O longo século XX. Sao Paulo, Brazil: UNESP. Arrighi, G. 1998. A ilusão do desenvolvimento. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Vozes. Beluzzo, L. G. de M. 2001. Jornal Valor, 1◦ Caderno, 16/18 de fevereiro, A. 13 Bourdieu, P.; Wacquant, L. 2000. A nova b´ıblia do Tio Sam. Le Monde diplomatique (Brazilian edition), year 1, no. 4. Céa, G.S. dos S. 2003. A qualificaça˜ o profissional entre fios invis´ıveis: uma análise cr´ıtica do Plano Nacional de Qualificaça˜ o do Trabalhador—PLANFOR. Sao Paulo, Brazil: PUC. [Doctoral thesis.] Chossudvsky, M. 1999. A globalizaça˜ o da pobreza: impacto das reformas do FMI e do Banco Mundial. Sao Paulo, Brazil: Moderna. Ciavatta, M. 2002. Formaça˜ o profissional para o trabalho incerto: um estudo comparativo Brasil, Itália e México. In: Frigotto, G., ed. Educaça˜ o e crise do trabalho: perspectivas de final de século, 6th ed., pp. 100–37. Petropolis, Brazil: Editora Vozes. Cunha, L.A. 2000a. O ensino de of´ıcios artesanais nos primórdios da industrializaça˜ o, vols 1, 2 & 3. Sao Paulo, Brazil: UNESP. Cunha, L.A. 2000b. O ensino de of´ıcios artesanais e manufatureiros no Brazil escravocrata. Sao Paulo/Brasilia: UNESP/MTE/FAT. Cunha, L.A. 2000c. O ensino profissional na irradiaça˜ o do industrialismo. Sao Paulo/Brasilia: UNESP/MTE/FAT. Finkel, S. 1977. Capital humano: concepto ideológico. In: Labarca, G. et al., eds. La educación burguesa. Mexico: Nueva Imagen. Fitousi, J.P.; Rosavallon, P. 1997. La nueva era de las desigualdades. Buenos Aires: Ed. Manantial. Forrester, V. 1997. O horror econômico. Sao Paulo, Brazil: UNESP. Frigotto, G. 1983. Del´ırios da razão: crise do capital e metamorfose conceitual no campo educacional. Cadernos de pesquisa, no. 47, pp. 38–45. (Special edition edited by G. Frigotto entitled: Fazendo a cabeça pelas mãos a cabeça do trabalhador: o trabalho como elemento pedagógico na formaça˜ o profissional.) Frigotto, G. 1987. Trabalho, conhecimento, consciência e a educaça˜ o do trabalhador: impasses teóricos e práticos. In: Gomes, C.M., ed. Trabalho e conhecimento: dilemas na educaça˜ o do trabalhador, pp. 13–26. Sao Paulo, Brazil: Cortez. Frigotto, G.; Ciavatta, M. 2002. Educar o trabalhador cidadão produtivo ou o ser humano emancipado. Revista trabalho, educaça˜ o e saúde, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 45–60.

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Grabowski, G. 2004. Outra educaça˜ o profissional e´ (im)poss´ıvel? Projetos e pol´ıticas em disputa. Porto Alegre, Brazil: UFRGS. [Master’s dissertation.] Hobsbawm, E. 1990. Naço˜ es e nacionalismos desde 1760. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Paz e Terra. Hobsbawm, E. 1995. A era dos extremos: o breve século XX (1914–1991). Sao Paulo, Brazil: Companhia das Letras. (English version: Hobsbawm, E. 1994. The age of extremes, 1914–1991. London: Michael Joseph.) Hobsbawm, E. 2000. O novo século (Entrevista a Antônio Polito). Sao Paulo, Brazil: Companhia das Letras. Mészáros, I. 2002. Para além do capital. Campinas, Brazil: Boitempo. ´ Moraes, C. 1998. Emprego ou empregabilidade. Revista Icaro Brasil, no. 171, pp. 53–57. Ramos, M.N. 1995. Do ensino técnico a` educaça˜ o tecnológica: (a)-historicidade das pol´ıticas públicas dos anos 90. Niterói, Brazil: UFF. [Master’s dissertation.] Ramos, M.N. 2001. A pedagogia das competências: autonomia ou adaptaça˜ o? Sao Paulo, Brazil: Cortez. Santos, B. de S. 1999. Reinventar a democracia: entre o pré-contratualismo e o pós-contratualismo. In: Heller, A. et al., eds. A crise dos paradigmas em ciências sociais e os desafios para o século XXI. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Contraponto-CORECON. Schultz, T. 1973. Capital humano. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Zahar. (English version: Schultz, T. 1972. Human resources (human capital: policy issues and research opportunities). New York, NY: National Bureau of Economic Research.)

Chapter VIII.12

A Technical and Vocational Teacher-Training Curriculum Bonaventure W. Kerre

1 Introduction Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) are fundamental human rights, as articulated in Articles 23 and 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948) which relate to the right to work and education. The State is, thus, obligated to ensure that all learners have access to TVET, albeit in the formal school system, which is its most likely source in African countries. However, the introduction of technical and vocational education (TVE) in the school curriculum has a chequered past, which shapes current provisions of access and quality. In the developed world, it has been a long struggle along class lines to convince the wider society that vocational education could be both academically challenging and more so, rewarding, in an individual’s life. In these countries, for example the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, early forms of TVET were apprenticeship schemes aimed at producing artisans and craftsmen. Nowadays, in countries such as these, TVET has been transformed into educational support for disciplines that are taught alongside others from kindergarten to university level and that culminate in the award of various certificates, diplomas and degrees. The traditional views and approaches to TVE in Europe, America and other parts of the world have, to a great extent, changed and continue to evolve as TVE is brought into mainstream general education (AAAS, 1989; Kerre, 2006; Lasonen, 1996). In the United Kingdom, for example, ‘design and technology education’ is an innovation in which technical education has been reintroduced into the secondary school curriculum to ensure technological literacy for all (Kimbell et al., 1991). In the United States of America, what was previously called ‘industrial education’ has now been transformed into ‘technology education’ and is recommended for all learners from kindergarten to grade 12. This is undertaken with the aim of making all Americans technologically literate in the twenty-first century (AAAS, 1989). In both countries, technology is also a subject of study at university level, with particular emphasis on teacher education to build a strong foundation for learning. Indeed, most European countries are now offering or beginning to offer qualifications at the post-secondary education level with a dual orientation towards R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VIII.12, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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employment and higher education. A recent study across some thirteen European countries, as observed by Manning (2000), revealed that such a focus is seen as preparing learners for lifelong learning. On the other hand, in most developing countries there is not enough capacity to guarantee free access to these educational provisions. Therefore, it is still necessary to train individuals for occupations and trades that exist in the prevailing economy. Traditional trade subjects, such as agriculture, woodwork, metalwork, tailoring, motor-vehicle mechanics, home economics and so on are still taught in schools in an effort to vocationalize the curriculum. Quite often, the intent is to ensure that those who will not be able to proceed with further education will be meaningfully deployed in the labour market. Yet, in effect, this is an erroneous assumption, as will be discussed here. The purpose of vocationalization of the school curriculum is to provide exposure to all students to assist them in understanding the requirements for work and working life and not merely to train them as artisans and craftsmen. In an effort to accommodate TVET subjects in the formal school curriculum, the issue of teacher education has often been ignored or dismissed. Yet, it is now apparent that teachers are the determinants of the quality of the graduates of such programmes, and therefore it is necessary to pay particular attention to teacher education for the provision of TVET in schools. This chapter examines the type and nature of the curriculum that should be in place to prepare TVET teachers for countries where vocational education and vocational training may be necessary at the same time. The preparation of the TVET teacher presupposes, first and foremost, an understanding of the type and nature of knowledge and skills that will be demanded of these graduates in the workplace or at the next level of education and training. This will, in essence, shape the TVET curriculum at the student and student-teacher levels. A case study of a TVET teacher education programme at undergraduate and post-graduate levels, currently offered at Moi University, Kenya, is used here to suggest what might constitute such a preparatory programme for African countries. A renewed call is made for a balanced school curriculum in which the liberal arts, the sciences and technical and vocational subjects all form part of the core curriculum.

2 The Need for a Balanced School Curriculum There is an urgent need for Africa to build and nurture a school curriculum that integrates technical and vocational education into the mainstream general curriculum so that all have access to it. This need was well articulated in the early days of independence as follows: the African countries, in a century characterized by technological progress, should embark on a very broad expansion of technical and vocational education and specialized training in the interests of their own development and especially for their industrialization (ECAUNESCO, 1961, p. 37).

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Africa’s new vision, as articulated at the second International Congress on TVET in Seoul, Republic of Korea, in May 1999, is to have a policy dimension that sets ‘learning to do’ as parallel to the other pillars of learning and a curriculum dimension that systematically builds TVET in early forms of learning (see Figure 1). At primary level, TVET should aim at awareness-raising. This will introduce children to the world of work and the occupations that most adults engage in. At secondary level, children will have opportunities to explore these vocations. They will learn

SPECIALIZATION

Tertiary level

EXPLORATION

Secondary level

AWARENESSRAISING Primary level KEY: LAE: liberal arts ed. SCE: science ed. TVE: tech. & voc. ed.

Fig. 1 An integrated school curriculum for the twenty-first century Source: Kerre, 2006.

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POSTGRAD

HIGHER

TVT

WORLD

OF AG

(Post-secondary) University/ College/ Tech. Inst. Level SPECIALIZATION

WORK HE

TECH

BUS

POSTSECONDARY

HSC

TVT

WORLD

OF

WORK Secondary Level EXPLORATION

AG BUS TECH HSC

HE

POSTPRIMARY WORLD

TVT OF

WORK

Primary Level AWARENESS

AG TECH BUS

TVE TRACK

TVT TRACK

Legend: AG-Agriculture BUS-Business HE- Health HSC- Home science TECH-Technology

Fig. 2 The technical and vocational education and training cluster in Kenya

about the need for work and why it is important for national development and selffulfilment for individuals to engage in and develop competence in their preferred vocation. At the post-secondary level, they will have opportunities to specialize in areas of their own choice. Within the TVE cluster is found technology, the study that is fundamental to all other TVE domains (see Figure 2). Following this scheme, a TVET teacher at both primary and secondary level will prepare learners for two important pursuits: further education and entry into the


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world of work. It will be a dual approach in order to achieve the goals of orientation for lifelong learning, to cope with changes in technology and to adopt new lifestyles in the fast-paced twenty-first century. In the context of the above curricular goals, the TVET teacher curriculum will assist teacher-education students to secure the philosophical, sociological and psychological foundations of TVET. It will also assist them to acquire the necessary technological knowledge and practical skills in specific technology disciplines required to prepare their students for the world of work. What curriculum, then, should we consider for such students?

3 The TVET Teacher-Education Curriculum It follows from what has been proposed above, that a successful initial preparation programme for TVET teachers should be multi-faceted and offer opportunities for upgrading both subject area and pedagogical knowledge and skills. The aim of TVET teacher education is to equip the teacher with the necessary knowledge and skills to guide the learning process. This will entail pedagogy and discipline content. At present, there are no set guidelines for preparing such TVET teachers for elementary and secondary levels of learning.

3.1 Preparing Teachers of TVET Subjects 3.1.1 Aim The aim for initial TVET teacher preparation is as follows. The introduction of technical and vocational subjects in the school curriculum is aimed at providing an opportunity for all learners to acquire relevant knowledge and skills in technical and vocational occupations and to impart positive attitudes toward the world of work in school students. A TVET teacher must have both technical skills and pedagogical/teaching methodology to effectively prepare students for TVET. 3.1.2 Goals The goals of a TVET curriculum, which by UNESCO’s standards (Atchoarena & Delluc, 2002) ought to be an integral aspect of the general school curriculum, should include:

r r r

The introduction and initiation of learners to the world of work and the world of technology; The acquisition of knowledge, skills and attitudes desirable for career development and productive engagement in the world of work; and The preparation of learners for further studies at an advanced level in a chosen occupational field.

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Unlike the training of a technology teacher, which focuses on the broad technological domain to impart technological competence, the training of a TVET teacher will focus on the preparation of people who can impart knowledge about the world of work and also provide specific skills for occupational entry. 3.1.3 Content Traditionally, TVET subjects in Africa have been based on the following broad areas: agricultural education, business studies education, health education, home science education and technical education. Technical education has, over time, been augmented with specific subject areas, such as: building and construction technology, electrical/electronics technology, mechanical technology, power mechanics technology, and information and communications technology. These subjects can be introduced at the secondary level for exploratory purposes in the perspective of subsequent specialization at the post-secondary level. In this way, they build upon the exploratory study of the world of work begun in primary education. The demand for more practical experience by teachers is high at this level because it aims at providing the kinds of specific skills that prepare students for job entry. Consequently, an equal level of competence will be expected of the teacher trainer. Similarly, the TVET teacher curriculum content will include technical competence offered at a higher level, preferably at undergraduate level, if graduates are to teach at the secondary and post-secondary levels and develop appropriate pedagogical skills.

3.2 Preparing Teachers of Technology Education A more recent option prepares teachers of technology education—those who will teach technology as a subject in the school curriculum. Examples of those schemes already in practice include the United Kingdom’s model of ‘design and technology’ for primary and secondary levels and the American version of technology education for all from kindergarten to grade 12. 3.2.1 Aim The principal aim of introducing technology education as a subject of study in the school curriculum is ‘to impart technological literacy and capability’. Technological literacy means having the ability to use and manage, assess and understand technological products and systems. Technological capability means having the know-how to produce, use and manage technological products and systems. 3.2.2 Goals The main goals of a well-delineated technology education curriculum for all should thus include:


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1. Developing an understanding of the nature of technology and how it relates to modern society. The content should cover:

r r r r

The meaning, scope and characteristics of technology; The relationships among technologies and the connections with other fields; The influences of technology on society; The role of society in the development and utilization of technology.

2. Developing an understanding of and the ability to create a design. Such content would be:

r r

The role and attributes of design; The roles and attributes of trouble-shooting, research and development, invention and innovation and experimentation in problem-solving.

3. Developing an understanding of, and abilities for, a technological world. In this case, the content would cover:

r r r

Application of the design process; Selection, production, use and maintenance of technological products and systems; Assessment of the impacts of technological products and systems.

A proper grounding in these three foundational domains of technology education will develop the understanding and capabilities required for individuals who are technologically competent and capable of shaping and influencing the course of their life and that of others in the twenty-first century. The subject content for teachers of technology education will, besides teaching skills, include a wide coverage in the above content areas at the post-secondary or university levels.

4 TVET Teacher-Education Curriculum at Moi University The School of Education at Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya, established in 1994, offers a TVET teacher-education programme within the country and also for students coming from the Sub-Saharan region. The Department of Technology Education has been offering a four-year B.Ed. programme designed to produce competent teachers of TVET subjects in secondary schools and post-secondary TVET institutions in Kenya. Because of the practical nature of the subjects taught to the graduates of this programme, the courses have been designed with a practical ‘hands-on’ orientation. Therefore, considerable time is spent in workshops as part of the scheduled teaching. Project work, problem-solving techniques, industrial attachment and teaching practice in real-life environments form important components of the programme. The Department of Technology Education at Moi University, therefore, offers a model of technology teacher education that is particularly attractive to the developing countries of Africa because such teachers will, in turn, produce the

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required middle-level manpower for economies that is, today, a priority. Specific domains of learning in technology education lie in the following areas:

r r r r r

Building construction technology: encompassing the use of a variety of materials to produce buildings, furniture, dams, farm structures, roads and so on. Mechanical technology: entails machine-work, fabrication and other manufacturing processes. Electrical and electronics technology. Power mechanics technology (automotive and aviation technology). Information and communications technology (proposed).

The above courses constitute a rich combination of scientific and technological knowledge, skills and processes that will prepare young people for the scientific and technological millennium in which they will spend their future. Besides studying in the above areas, the students take common university-wide and school-based professional teacher-education courses. Graduates of this programme are also competent to teach mathematics, physics and technical drawing in secondary schools and higher-education TVET institutions. The courses offered in each option per year of study are shown in Table 1. Table 1 Course descriptions in each option at the Department of Technology Education at Moi University Course code

Course description

Course code

Course description

TED

Technology education (common to all tech-ed students)

IRD100

Communication skills I

MPT

IRD102 IRD103

Communication skills II Development concepts

IRD104

Quantitative skills

IRD200 IRD305

MET ELT COT MAT PHY

Metal & power technology (common to MET & PMT students) Building construction technology Teaching practice Power mechanics technology Mechanical technology Electrical technology Computer technology Engineering mathematics Basic physics

IRD400 EDU110 EDU111 COM205 MPT221

CHE EDF ECT

Basic chemistry Educational foundations Teaching methods

PAC210 PAC410 PAC411

State, society and development Entrepreneurship for small business Project development appraisal Introduction to education I Introduction to education II Computer programming Solid and structural mechanics I Curriculum development Environmental education Educational administration and management

PSY

Educational psychology

BCT TP PMT

PAC412 IA

Industrial attachment

Educational planning and economics


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The programme offers common courses taken by all teacher-education students in the School of Education. Each academic year has two semesters. Core and required courses are allocated as shown in the table, which also gives the codes and descriptions of the courses taken.

5 Post-Graduate Studies 5.1 M.Phil. in Technology Education The department also offers a master of philosophy degree in technology education following course work and a thesis option. The programme is designed to produce high-level personnel to meet the needs of industry, government departments, research and training institutions. It offers enough flexibility for students to specialize in field-related aspects of technology education. The programme takes four semesters for full-time students and eight semesters for part-time students (Table 2). Core, required and elective courses are selected from those shown in Table 3. Table 2 M.Phil. degree in technology education course design Semester 1

Units Semester 2

Units Semester 3

Units

TED 805C Statistics

3

TED 899C Thesis research

3

TED 898C Thesis research proposal

3

Total

3

3

3 Required technology courses

9

Semester 4

6

1 Elective educational course

3

TED 899C Thesis research 1 Elective educational course Total

TED 801C Foundations 3 of technology education TED 802C Research 3 methods TED 808C Curriculum design & development in tech. ed. 2 Required technology courses 1 Elective technology course Total

3 18

Total

18

6 3 9

5.2 D.Phil. in Technology Education Because of a growing demand for higher levels of understanding, the department has also proposed to offer a post-graduate programme leading to the degree of doctor of philosophy in technology education. The programme is designed to provide the highest level of scholarship and research in technology education and its graduates are expected to be competent researchers and trainers of trainers at high levels of learning and industry.

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Table 3 Core, required and elective courses for an M.Phil. degree in technology education Common courses

Construction technology option

Electrical and electronics technology option

Mechanical and automotive options

Computer technology option

TED 801C Foundations of technology education TED 802C Research methods TED 805C Statistics

TED 812R Advanced surveying TED 823R Estimating and costing in construction TED 824R Appropriate technology and construction of structures TED 831R Site investigation, exploration, sampling environment and terrain evaluation TED 825R Construction management & organization

TED 810R Numerical analysis TED 848R Systems analysis and design TED 849R Control systems

TED 863R Advanced thermodynamics TED 864R Advanced fluid mechanics TED 865R Advanced solid mechanics

TED 881R Computer education tools TED 882R Computer in education TED 883R Multimedia in technology applications

TED 850R Filter signals and digital processing

TED 866R Advanced mechanics of machines

TED 884R Computer graphics for mediated communications

TED 851R Solid-state devices and integrated circuits

TED 867R Advanced engineering design

TED 828E Building and maintenance technology

TED 852E Power systems protection

TED 861E Industrial processing engineering

TED 885R Computer applications for educational administration TED 886E Wireless communications

TED 808C Curriculum design & development in tech. ed.

TED 803E Entrepreneurship education TED 804E Seminar on trends and issues in technology education

B.W. Kerre

Common courses

Construction technology option

Electrical and electronics technology option

Mechanical and automotive options

Computer technology option

TED 806E Educational planning and management TED 807E Educational finance

TED 829E Advanced furniture technology

TED 854R Power system operation and control

TED 862E Engineering material

TED 834E Interior design, planning and decoration

TED 842E Television

TED 868E Welding technology

TED 887E Building Internet information services TED 888E Ethical, legal and professional issues in computing

TED 835E Advanced structural design

TED 847E Microprocessor techniques

TED 869E Automotive electrical systems

TED 836E Foundation and pavement engineering

TED 853E Neural networks applications engineering systems TED 855E AC DC Conversion and AC load control TED 856E Force communication and electrical control and machines

TED 870E Internal combustion engines

TED 809E Instructional methods and material for technology education TED 811E Evaluation in technology education TED 812E Computer application

TED 871E Industrial organizations and management TED 872E Industrial engineering and law


Table 3 (continued)

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B.W. Kerre Table 4 D. Phil. degree in technology education course design

Year 1

Year 2

Semester I

TED 900

Code

Title

TED 901

Advanced research methods

6

TED 902

Seminar: technology education

3

TED 903

Trends in science & technology

3

TED 904

Data analysis

3

Total

15

Semester II

15

Research/thesis writing

15

Year 3 TED 900

TED 905

Research proposal

3

TED 906

Seminars: technology & society 2 electives

3

Total

Research

Units

6 12

Grand total units

57

The D.Phil. degree in technology education takes three to five years for full-time students and four to seven years for part-time students, as shown in Table 4. Elective courses are taken in various areas of specialization, as shown in Table 5.

6 Conclusion Generally, the teacher-education curriculum is multi-faceted in nature because it offers the opportunity for upgrading both the subject area and pedagogical knowledge and skills, since the aims of TVET teacher education are to provide the knowledge and skills to guide the learning process and the ability to develop teaching, taking into account the graduate’s professional life and career. These aims are realized in a curriculum that deals with all issues of a teacher’s work, facilitating learning (learning procedure instead of teaching) and the development of the educational environment and methodology. In the case presented here, the TVET teacher-education curriculum skills have been woven into the curriculum in an integrated fashion, since they are important elements in helping people adapt to workplace changes and they provide them with a foundation to learn other skills. At Moi University, the TVET teacher-education programme has a uniquely structured curriculum with a strong dual approach. It has a strong technical and practical component in the technical subject area. It is equally complemented with a strong teacher-education component. The end result is a well-balanced, trained TVET teacher capable of imparting technical and vocational skills in a more professional way.

BCT

MPT

COT

TVET: Curriculum, planning and administration

TED 910 Digital communication systems

TED 920 Structural engineering

TED 930 Manufacturing technology

TED 911 Networking & web management

TED 921 Surveying & photogrammetry

TED 931 Computer-aided design

TED 991 Computer networks for educational environments TED 992 Telecommunication

TED 912 Renewable energy

TED 922 Building services engineering TED 923 Construction project management TED 924 Public health engineering

TED 932 Auto test and design TED 933 Design of modern automobiles TED 934 Modern mechanical design

TED 960 A review of TVET programmes in the country TED 961 Policy formulation and planning in TVET TED 962 Evaluation of TVET TED 963 Training and development TED 964 Supervision of instruction

TED 925 Fluid mechanics

TED 935 Flexible automatic machinery

TED 936 Dynamic of automobile

TED 997 Productivity tools

TED 998 Intelligent systems

TED 967 Effective management of TVET

TED 913 Technology enterprise TED 914 Advanced software programming TED 916 Microprocessor interface techniques

TED 993 Technology-based training systems TED 994 Philosophy of computing in education TED 995 Creating technology based learning environments TED 996 Analysis of research in educational computing TED 966 Advanced topics in management of change in curriculum

TED 965 Advanced topics in curriculum development


Table 5 Elective courses for the D.Phil. degree in technology education ELT

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References American Association for the Advancement of Science. 1989. Project 2001: science for all Americans. Washington, DC: AAAS. Atchoarena, D.; Delluc, A. 2002. Revisiting technical and vocational education in Sub-Saharan Africa: an update on trends, innovations and challenges. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP. Economic Commission for Africa; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. 1961. Report of African Leaders Conference on Education in Africa. Addis Ababa: ECA-UNESCO. Kerre, B.W. 2006. The study of technology: an imperative in Africa’s school curriculum. The educator: a journal of the school of education, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 201–12. Kimbell, R.A., et al. 1991. The assessment of performance in design and technology. London: School Examination and Assessment Council, Evaluation and Monitoring Unit. Lasonen, J., ed. 1996. Reforming upper secondary education in Europe. Jyväskylä, Finland: University of Jyväskylä, Institute for Educational Research. Manning, S. 2000. Qualifications with a dual orientation towards employment and higher education: a summary of the results of the partnership projects INTEQUAL/DUOQUAL. In: Stenstrom, M-L.; Lasonen, J., eds. Strategies for reforming initial vocational education and training in Europe, pp. 283–89. Jyväskylä, Finland: University of Jyväskylä, Institute for Educational Research. United Nations. 1948. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New York, NY: UN. <www.un.org/Overview/rights.html>

Chapter VIII.13

Transforming Teachers’ Practice Through Action Learning Stephen Billett

1 Introduction This chapter critically appraises the potential of action learning as a professional development strategy for teachers. Using the case of a professional development programme that prepared vocational teachers to become industry consultants, the chapter examines the potential and the impediments of this approach to managing change in technical and vocational education. The chapter commences with a brief commentary on individual change or learning from cognitive and social constructivist and change-theory perspectives. Next, the case study is described and findings from an evaluation of the programme are discussed. Finally, some conclusions are drawn about how the action learning-based approaches to educational change might be best enacted and evaluated.

2 Teachers and Change Technical and vocational educators are being asked to confront and adapt to change in order to find new ways of preparing their students for the world of work. That world it is characterized by change in the kinds of work to be undertaken, the requirements for the work, and those who are working (Billett, 2006). There are also changes brought about by governments who want vocational and technology education to achieve their policy goals, such as economic competitiveness and efficiencies, in particular ways. Consequently, the change that teachers are requested to undertake and implement often has its origins elsewhere. Yet, it is frequently expected that teachers will implement these changes with enthusiasm while being faithful to their sponsors’ intent. Moreover, there appears to be a belief among government and industry stakeholders that teachers will implement innovations as directed. Such a view denies how teachers, like other workers, think, act and decide how to deploy their energies in the effortful activity of learning and changing their practice (Billett, 1995). Individuals’ motivation and interest play a key role in their engagement in effortful activities, such as learning new practice (Billett & Pavlova, 2005). Unless they hold a belief about the potential accrual of benefits from such R. Maclean, D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-5281-1 VIII.13, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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activity, their engagement in and learning of these new tasks is likely to be superficial at best. Furthermore, because technical and vocational educators often practise within the privacy of their own classroom or workshop, even superficial compliance to the requests of government and industry may well be restricted to the public aspects of practice (Logan, 1988). Therefore, and given the relative autonomy of teachers’ practice and their control over their learning, this raises important questions about how educational change can best be managed to engage teachers in effective learning and becoming committed to new practices, such as those required to assist students to make a successful transition to the world of work. This chapter discusses a case study in which an action learning-based programme was used to develop vocational educators’ skills to work as industry consultants. It is claimed that management of change in teachers is not just about getting them to adopt faithfully the changes in practice arising from imperatives derived elsewhere. Instead, the management change should be about developing teachers’ capacities and dispositions to implement these innovations successfully and, through success with that implementation, gain commitment to them. Therefore, processes that aim to foster change in teachers (i.e. professional development initiatives) should be primarily focused on teacher learning and development. The assumption within this chapter is that the innovations teachers are asked to adopt are worthwhile and justifiable. However, this may not always be the case. Teachers are sometimes asked to implement initiatives that they view as lacking credibility and utility, which makes it even more difficult to secure the kind of commitment required for the enthusiastic enactment of these initiatives that their sponsors desire. What is advanced here is that gaining teachers’ commitment to educational change is premised on their ability to implement the innovation successfully, thereby resulting in the adoption of the innovation as part of their practice and becoming committed to it. Commitment here is more than enthusiasm for a particular innovation. Instead, it includes a belief on the part of teachers that the innovation is worthwhile and can assist with the effectiveness of their practice (McLaughlin & Marsh, 1978) and that the individual has appropriated the worth of this innovation (Luria, 1976). Underpinning this commitment or appropriation is the development of the knowledge required for the successful implementation of the innovation. It is these attributes that provide the ability for teachers to function in the changed circumstances (Guskey, 1986). Hence, the management of change requires more than briefing sessions about the virtues of a new initiative: it requires the provision of opportunities for teachers to learn the knowledge required for successful performance with the innovation. So, approaches to managing change need to include the learning required to effectively implement that change. Moreover, as adopting changed practices is the product of individuals’ learning and development, even innovations aimed at transforming institutions need to view this form of change as an intimate and personal process involving individuals’ competence and well-being (Fullan, 1985). Change has been described as ‘little deaths’ (Kindler, 1979), with transformational change causing the greatest concerns to those affected by it. This is because it might take away or threaten to take away

VIII.13 Transforming Teachers’ Practice Through Action Learning

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from individuals the very circumstances with which their confidence is embedded. Therefore, deliberations about the management of change at both educational innovation and institutional transformational level must view individuals’ learning and development as the primary source of change. The focus in this chapter is therefore on the management of individual change through learning and development.

3 Teachers’ Learning and Development As foreshadowed, the process of securing effective change in teachers is seen as a process of individual learning and development. In particular, the need for teachers to develop the capacities required to implement a new initiative or practice with success, thereby developing commitment to it, is seen as essential. These capacities are premised on securing the dispositions (i.e. values, attitudes and beliefs) appropriate for the change. Knowledge which comprises levels of propositional (knowledge that) and procedural knowledge (knowledge how) are also primary elements within this framework (Anderson, 1982). Propositional knowledge comprises information, facts, assertions and propositions, whereas procedural knowledge comprises techniques, skills and ability to secure goals (Evans, 1991). Procedural knowledge has a hierarchy from specific autonomous procedures to higher orders of procedural knowledge, which are postulated to have an executive role in organizing and transferring knowledge and understandings (Evans, 1991). The role of ‘non-cognitive’ dispositions, such as values and beliefs, is being increasingly acknowledged in understandings of individuals’ learning (Perkins, Jay & Tishman, 1993). Values determine the quality of individuals’ actions, for instance, shaping the degree and focus of their efforts when engaged in a goal-directed activity, such as learning a new task. As Goodnow (1990) reminds us, people learn not only to solve problems, but also what problems are worth solving. It is through their engagement in active conscious thinking and acting that both learning and the commitment to what has been learnt arise. It follows that learning is held to be a constructive process with individuals actively acquiring knowledge and understanding through interaction with the world they experience (von Glasersfeld, 1987). This constructive process is initially idiosyncratic, being founded on the unique personal history (ontogeny) of the individual (Rogoff, 1995). However, through social mediation knowledge becomes more commonly understood and communicable (Newman, Griffin & Cole, 1989). That is, there is a movement towards inter-subjectivity or shared meaning. Learning is therefore conceptualized as a process of constructing meaning and making knowledge viable through a process of engaging in activities within social practice. As Piaget (1968) would say, individuals make sense of what they experience by either assimilating it into their existing knowledge (i.e. refining and reinforcing what they already know) or by extending those structures to accommodate new stimuli and experiences (i.e. forming new learning). This suggests that to learn something new requires processes that extend individuals’ existing knowledge. If the learning

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process encourages only assimilation type of learning, the outcomes are likely to be weaker than if accommodation is achieved by pressing the individual into generating new knowledge and knowledge structures. Yet, generating new knowledge is far more effortful and demanding than reinforcing what we know, as in assimilation. Therefore, learning to adopt new practices is unlikely to occur if teachers remain unconvinced and lack the ability to successfully implement the initiative, and therefore will not exercise the effort required to secure that new knowledge. Views that suggest learning is a matter of construction, rather than instruction, propose the need to guide individuals’ learning rather than directly teach them. Innovations in approaches to instruction, such as reciprocal teaching of comprehension (Palinscar & Brown, 1984), cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown & Newman, 1989), apprenticeship instruction for real-world tasks (Gott, 1989), apprenticeships in thinking (Rogoff, 1990), legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and guided participation (Rogoff, 1995), all emphasize the importance of close guidance, rather than direct teaching, in supporting learners’ construction of knowledge. They also emphasize the importance of placing learners in roles in which they are pressed to take responsibility for and expend effort in constructing the knowledge they need to learn, albeit guided by more expert others. Consequently, the instructional role becomes one of organizing and guiding the learners’ experiences to permit them to construct appropriate knowledge and understanding. Such a proposition extends the concept of good teaching practice of ‘making sure the learners are doing the thinking’, to making sure that their thinking is guided towards the effective organization of viable knowledge, through social mediation. This change in emphasis of the instructional role is underpinned by von Glasersfeld’s (1987) notion of reinforcement. Reinforcement is usually associated with external statements of endorsement or rewards by teachers or experts, as characterized within behaviourism. However, now it needs to be equated with learners achieving a satisfactory organization of knowledge—ontological security—a viable way of dealing with experiences that are novel and securing a fit with or extending the individual’s knowledge. This does not negate the value of extrinsic rewards, such as verbal reinforcement, but suggests that this is secondary to the inherent rewards that the learner enjoys from reinforcing and extending their viable knowledge base: the exercise of their personal agency and epistemology (Smith, 2005). Given these views about learning and cognitive development, a useful way to describe and evaluate instructional processes is to consider them in terms of engagement and support. Activities are what learners engage in, and support is that derived from either direct or indirect guidance provided to learners, and that they elect to engage with.

4 Action Learning: A Professional Development Method Action learning is commonly used as a professional development method for teachers. It is seen as an active learning process in which the learners engage in projects with peer-learning support arrangements—referred to as ‘sets’—and, in some cases,


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external facilitators or content experts. The aim of the process is for the individual to secure particular kinds of learning through engaging in project work. Importantly, the intent is for them also to reflect upon the learning process through which they extend their knowledge further. Action learning has been defined as ‘a means by which people learn with and from each other by attempting to identify and then implement solutions to their problems/issues/opportunities’ (Revans, 1982, p. 65). This model of learning was developed after the Second World War when British industries were short of experienced managers. Revans had recognized the ability of people to work and learn together productively and effectively in times of common concern. Consequently, he developed a method to support learning based on the development of ‘responsible risk-takers’, who asked themselves and their peers a series of questions about the problems they faced in their workplace. The questions were used to clarify problems and to determine likely solutions that were not bound by existing expertise or theory. In this way, the method is proposed as a practical strategy that values practice-based learning. It is primarily concerned with pragmatic and instrumental goals associated with improving practice by assisting learners to engage in, learn through and examine their practice through reflection on that practice. This reflection process seems important because it has the capacity to press learners into constructing new knowledge (i.e. accommodation rather than assimilation). Significantly, many earlier theories about adult learning (e.g. Knowles, 1984) emphasized the assimilatory aspects of adult learning with a primary concern to protect learners’ self-concept. This concern arose out of clinical-based approaches to development that sought to protect the learners’ self-esteem and minimize the impact of change by finding meaning within their existing knowledge. This approach guarded against transforming individual knowledge, which it saw as being a psychologically risky undertaking. However, contemporary approaches suggest that it is important to extend individuals’ knowledge through their own efforts and construction, albeit guided by more expert partners. Hence, both guidance and critical reflection are held to be important approaches that can extend and transform individuals’ knowledge when securing particular kinds of knowledge in response to a practical requirement (e.g. that required for successfully implementing a new practice). The process of reflection or questioning insight, as Revans (1982) called it, is central to action learning. It aims at assisting to convert a specific learning experience into one that extends understandings and efficacy of practice. In doing so, the action-learning approach places considerable responsibility on the learner to engage in the kinds of activities required to secure their goals, albeit with their activities as learners being mediated by peers, experts and the requirements of the project tasks. This mediation will likely also provide a form of indirect guidance which is often under-acknowledged. However, learning theories recognize that much of the knowledge that needs to be learnt has a social and cultural genesis, and does not arise from within individuals. It needs to be accessed through interaction with the social world. In relations between trades workers and apprentices, for instance, there is an acknowledgement that the more experienced counterpart provides access to knowledge that the individuals could not learn through discovery alone (Rogoff, 1990). However, action learning

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as a method does not have as a key element this access to expertise. Instead, it uses a facilitative approach and relies to a great extent on the agency and personal epistemology of the learner. Consequently, in seeking to evaluate action learning it is necessary to identify whether this lack of access to expertise represents an impediment to learning.

5 Managing Teacher Change: Activity and Mediation The interaction between individuals’ engagement in activities and the support they can access from social sources is a central consideration for developmental processes. Dewey (1916/1970) suggested that the most central significant events in learning and performance are mediated experiences and events related to their adaptive function. This suggests that internal mental processes interacting with tangible purposes or functions are central to effective learning. Or, put more succinctly, the activities individuals engage in organize their thinking (Rogoff & Lave, 1984). Learning arrangements which place the participants in the active role of initiating, planning and managing their learning are conducive of developing these attributes. It is proposed that when learners are pressed into taking responsibility for their learning they develop and organize knowledge effectively, and learn to manage the use of that knowledge. If activities structure cognition, then the quality of the activities becomes important. In developing competence in an area of vocational practice it is highly desirable for staff to access authentic activities, that is, those that are the same as those in which the targeted knowledge is deployed, not substituted or simulated activities. Consequently, projects that provide the participant with an authentic activity in which they can develop procedures that are authentic are likely to be purposeful for constructing knowledge associated with that activity (Billett, 2001). Moreover, the knowledge that individuals need to learn often has a social genesis. This is particularly true of knowledge arising from the social world, such as educational initiatives. It is becoming increasingly accepted that the activities are embedded in socio-cultural practice (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff & Lave, 1984). Indeed, one of the problems with learning arrangements that are substituted (e.g. training-room or school-based activities) is that they tend to generate knowledge and understandings based on the requirements of the trainingroom or school rather than practice, and as such may not transfer to practice (Billett, 2001; Raizen, 1991). That is, forms of knowledge are shaped by particular circumstances and do not readily transfer to circumstances and situations that are remote from those in which the knowledge was acquired. Access to authentic activities may reduce this transfer problem (Billett, 2001); however, activity alone is not sufficient. The mediation of the learners’ experiences by others, expert others and the context is an essential ingredient of learning arrangements (Collins et al., 1989). It is becoming widely accepted that there are social bases of cognition (Goodnow, 1990). This implies that guidance of a direct nature (others and expert others) and an


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indirect nature (the social and physical context) are important for the construction of knowledge. Recent research and theorizing has increasingly focused on the role of external factors and, particularly, the social and cultural contributions to learning (Brown et al., 1989; Collins et al., 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1995). Rather than being solely the product of internal mental activity, the development and organization of these cognitive processes and structures are influenced by external factors, such as social interaction and cultural practices. Within action learning, social mediation is evident in the contributions of others in the learning set, expert others external to the set and the facilitative actions of set advisers. So, in summary, constructivist views of learning which emphasize the importance and authenticity of activity, social mediation, engagement in social practice and reflection appear to be partially addressed by action learning, although it tends to emphasize the agency of the participant over securing access to experts required from whom the knowledge to be learned can be accessed and learned. Therefore, on its own terms, the action-learning approach to learning and development appears to offer an array of attributes by which teachers’ knowledge can be extended to accommodate and implement innovations. A case study of teachers’ participation in an action-learning programme is described and evaluated in the next section. The evaluation provides a basis for considering the efficacy of this approach to learning and how its potential might be fully realized.

6 Managing Change: Industry Consultant Training Programme The Industry Consultant Training Programme was used to prepare practising vocational teachers for a role as industry consultants working in a fee-for-service role, providing educational services to enterprises. The programme commenced with an induction phase, comprising a two-week workshop. This was designed to prepare participants by providing information about their role and the industrial environment and to introduce them to the action-learning methodology that was to support their change to become consultants. In addition, information about the procedures that the participants would have to acquire to become effective consultants was stated as goals for their self-development. These procedures included project management, costing a project, presentation of a project and business planning. The arrangements for teacher-consultant development, beyond the induction phase, were based on group action-learning processes, or sets, organized by regional locations. These groups, the project, support from mentors and senior consultants, and the support arrangements provided by the teacher-consultants’ host vocational colleges were the core components of the change management strategy. Beyond these was the agency of the participants. The participants’ roles included: (a) attending weekly meetings with their support group; (b) participation in activities determined by the group; (c) completing a learning contract; (d) working on a designated project for two days a week; and (e) liaising with the college mentor. When the programme commenced

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there were few experts available to mentor participants because consultancy was relatively new within the vocational education system. However, some later groups had access to colleagues or mentors who had enjoyed success in the programme, and had gone on to successfully manage industry-training projects. Participants were selected by their host college. During their participation, they were released from normal work duties for three days a week, over a period of twenty weeks. On one of these three days the participants met as an action-learning group to discuss issues and arrange access to expert advice; this advice was usually provided by a content specialist external to the group and each group was given a budget to secure these services. The other two days were taken up working within projects. During the later part of their release, the participants were intended to be working for the entire three days per week on a project. However, not all participants were able secure complete release and some reported having to balance a range of commitments, particularly teaching duties, with their participation in the programme. Some participants also reported that projects were not readily available or provided. These participants sometimes had to canvass for and locate their own projects within industry. Support was available at two levels during the twenty-week programme. Each participant was under the guidance of a senior consultant who had a ‘regional’ responsibility for a group of participants from a number of colleges. The senior consultants’ role included: (a) monitoring the total group and individuals within the group; (b) bringing in extra (specialist) assistance; (c) being a point of reference; and (d) meeting with the group one day per

International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work: Bridging Academic and Vocational Learning (Editorial Advisory Board: Unesco-Unevoc Handbooks and Book Series)(6 volume set)

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International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work: Bridging Academic and Vocational Learning (Editorial Advisory Board: Unesco-Unevoc Handbooks and Book Series)(6 volume set)

International Handbook of Research in Arts Education 2-volume set (Springer International Handbooks of Education)

International Handbook of Urban Education (Springer International Handbooks of Education)

OECD Reviews of Vocational Education and Training Learning for Jobs

Changing Vocational Education and Training: International Comparative Approaches

International Handbook of Career Guidance (Springer International Handbooks of Education)

Handbook of Technical and Vocational Education and Training Research

The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education (Routledge International Handbooks of Education)

International Handbook of Inter-religious Education (International Handbooks of Religion and Education)

International Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education (Springer International Handbooks of Education)

International Handbook of Education for Spirituality, Care and Wellbeing Part One (International Handbooks of Religion and Education)

International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement: Review, Reflection and Reframing (Springer International Handbooks of Education)

International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments (Springer International Handbooks of Education)

Handbook of Experiential Learning and Management Education

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Handbook of Experiential Learning and Management Education

International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments (Springer International Handbooks of Education)

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International Handbook of Work and Health Psychology

International Handbook of the Religious, Moral and Spiritual Dimensions in Education (International Handbooks of Religion and Education)

International Handbook of Research on Teachers and Teaching (Springer International Handbooks of Education)

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