Vocational Education and Training for Sustainable Development

Vocational Education and Training (VET) is an important tool for a country’s social and economic advancement. It offers an alternative educational path for youths and adults who wish to grow professionally, and at the same time provides qualified manpower needed across all sectors of the economy. 

VET has a prominent place in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Equal access to affordable, high quality VET is a target of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), together with a commitment to substantially increase the number of youths and adults with the relevant skills for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship by 2030.

VET programmes will be key to achieving both the 4^th SDG, on quality education, and the 8^th, on good jobs and economic growth. But the latter is not straightforward. “An important question is to what extent interventions in VET on their own can do something about the economy,” said Kenneth King, professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh and editor of NORRAG News.

“If a project is focused only on how the Ministry of Labour or the Ministry of Education and VET institutions can create new VET graduates and there is no attention to the technology and migration policy of the country, to infrastructure development and foreign investment, those VET graduates may just walk out of the country,” said King. 

Credit: ILO via Creative Commons

In Europe, VET has experienced periods of intense policy innovation. Over the last decade, almost all European countries have introduced a national qualification framework and quality assurance systems.

Germany, Austria and Switzerland are well-known for their successful VET models, which are supported both by the private sector and by the government. The dual education system practiced in these countries combines an apprenticeship in a company with education in a vocational school in one single course.

These successful VET models are hard to export, as they are embedded in their specific economic and cultural context. European countries where traditional apprenticeship schemes have died out “are trying much less successfully to create a new apprenticeship system, which is very difficult to do,” said King.

Formal and informal

In developing countries, policymakers looking at reforming VET systems face very different challenges. In most developing countries formal VET systems coexist with education and training outside the formal system, in work settings and in diverse socio-economic contexts. South Asian and Sub-Saharan African countries, for example, largely rely on traditional apprenticeships to equip people with vocational skills in small, micro and medium scale industries.

According to King, “in many Sub-Saharan countries, the size of the population in education opting for a vocational secondary school is about 5% of the total, which may make sense because there is only a very small formal sector of the economy.”

Non formal and informal learning are part of each country’s tradition and culture and are easily understood by young people, their parents and the labour market. In West Africa, it is still common for young men to go and live with the “master” and his family. At the master’s, young men learn more than a trade: they take in how to work with customers, how to treat senior members of the community, where to get spare parts and, gradually, how to make them.

This type of apprenticeship can be lengthy and concludes with a big celebration. Interfering in arrangements of this kind, for example to regulate wages, is complicated. As King notes, “it is difficult to be sensitive enough to do anything that will not fail.”

Education to employment

A lack of integration between the formal economy and VET systems makes the transition from learning to work much harder. In Nairobi, for example, the formal industrial area is largely owned by Kenyans of Indian origin who have developed their own system for training people. Finding work in a small engineering firm in Nairobi after attending a government vocational secondary school is not an easy task.

Formal VET often does not adequately prepare young people for work or for the fast-changing nature of modern economies. This is especially noticeable in developing countries, where the formal VET system is still strongly supply-driven. Private sector contributions are growing only slowly, due to a lack of trust between public and private stakeholders.

As a consequence of these challenges, reforming VET curricula is expensive and risky.  According to King, being critical of “the modern way of constructing a VET project,” and analysing and building on the country’s context is crucial to developing locally viable projects.

Investment gap

In developing countries, VET tends to be an underfinanced sector characterised by piecemeal, fragmented interventions. In most African countries, in spite of the importance attributed to VET in government policies, only 2-6% of educational budgets are allocated to technical and vocational skills development.

One of the reasons behind this is the difficulty in designing VET programmes that are attractive to financial and technical partners. As independent researcher Dr. Salim Akoojee explains, “the private sector needs to feel more effectively part of the solution rather than the problem.” This way, “decisions that are made in the boardroom will be responsible ones.”

Another issue is VET’s lack of popularity among young people and their families. Many individuals perceive VET as leading to less successful careers than general secondary education or academic tertiary education.

The EU is active in the VET sector, prioritising inclusive and sustainable growth for human development in its policies in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. DEVCO’s approach for international cooperation on VET projects and reforms relies on labour market intelligence, public-private partnerships and good governance of the involved institutions.

The following video interview with Dr Salim Akoojee and Elizabeth Hughes-Chulu, former project officer in the EU Delegation to South Africa, explores VET in South Africa. Dr Akoojee reflects on the need for a harmonious relationship between public sector institutions and the private sector in advancing VET systems in emerging contexts. Ms Hughes-Chulu explains how the EU Delegation to South Africa is facilitating the transition from learning to work and improving the quality of VET in South Africa.

Groups

• Public Group on Employment, VET and Social Protection
• Public Group: Education & Development
• Public Group: Youth in Development

Further Reading                

TVET Reform Promotes Social Inclusion and Skills for Bangladesh

This collaborative piece was drafted by Valentina Marassi with input from Donatella Gobbi and Jean-Paul Heerschap from DEVCO, with support from the capacity4dev.eu Coordination Team.