Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and the Informal economy: A review of their status in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

References to TVET were scarce or insufficient in previous international recommendations or declarations such as Education for All (2000) or the Millennium Development Goals (2000). The new agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has given more room to TVET but there is still no reference to the informal economy except through entrepreneurship, micro-enterprises and formalisation and the author is wondering whether “formalisation is now going to submerge all issues about the informal economy”.

The author encourages us to recognise that there is a lot of skills that are provided through informal apprenticeship, not only in the informal micro-enterprises of the informal sector, but also through informal on the job processes within the formal sector. It provides us with food for thought about what remains the main source of training for most poor people.

Jacques Charmes