NORRAG is a focus and a forum for the analysis of aid and international policy development in education and training. Its current membership is over 4,000 individuals based in over 160 countries. Registration is free. The network is active and visible through four instruments:
NORRAG News is a digital newsletter focusing on policy implications of research findings and on the practical impact of new policies formulated by development agencies, foundations and NGOs. A shorter version is also available in French and Spanish.
Blog: NORRAG has a blog to give the opportunity to its members to comment on the discussions taking place in the field of international education and development.
Events: NORRAG organises workshops and conferences; it also participates in many events each year in collaboration with other partners.
Networking Tool: Registered members have access to a tool allowing them to find other members by searching for their country of residence, and their countries and fields of expertise.
NORRAG carried out an analysis of what looked like the gathering storm of proposals around education and skills in the post-2015 development agendas back in August 2012 (King and Palmer, 2012). In the last seven months, there really has been a hurricane of activity. In a new working paper, we revisit the architecture of the post-2015 movement, paying particular attention to the role of the South in post-2015 debates; and the role of ‘Skills Development’ or ‘TVET’ in the Education and Skills debate. But with a battery of different levels of meetings and consultations, from local, to national, regional to international, how is it possible to contribute effectively to the debate? So another dimension of the paper analyses the route map itself, and explores the process whereby any goals or targets for new development agendas might be established, and what are the key meetings that could determine this process.
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The UNESCO World TVET Report
Amidst the current wave of international reports on skills, the most striking aspect of the Shanghai preview of the UNESCO WTR is the emphasis on a human development perspective on skills that stands in clear contrast to the economistic rationale of most of the reports. It must be acknowledged that the skills GMR does attempt to marry the economic and a human rights perspective. Like the GMR, the WTR has a strong emphasis on equity, and here the influence of Tomasevski’s work as UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education is very apparent (see my piece in NORRAG NEWS 46 for more on this). However, the WTR goes further by explicitly looking backwards to a longstanding UNESCO tradition of thinking about learning, best represented in the Delors and Faure Reports, and about broad human development. At the same time, it is also influenced by the human development and capability approach and by more radical notions of work. Whilst these threads are also important to the thinking of other UN specialised agencies such as UNDP (human development) and ILO (work), the WTR is unique in its combination of such positions.
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