NN38, February 2007
Technical and Vocational Skills Development
SKILLS DEVELOPMENT AND POVERTY REDUCTION STRATEGIES
By Josiane Capt, ILO, Geneva
KeywordsSkills development, poverty reduction, PRSP, ILO
Summary
For the ILO, productive employment is a major route out of poverty and social exclusion. And skills development is itself a key element of a comprehensive strategy for the promotion of employment-intensive growth and decent work. This article briefly examines these issues.
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Poverty is multidimensional both in its causes and its effects. Lack of education, low skills and low productivity are recognised as major causes of poverty. Poverty is associated with lack of decent work, low and insecure incomes, vulnerability, poor health, lack of social protection, lack of voice and representation. Poverty affects a majority of people in many developing countries, with a wide range of situations - landless rural workers, informal economy workers, women heads of households, youth, older workers, migrants, ethnic minorities, persons with disabilities, etc.
In many developing countries, poverty reduction strategies have been put in place in an effort towards an integrated approach to fight against poverty. Primary education has been assigned a high priority in these strategies. Such has generally not been the case for vocational education and training. Skills development strategies have rarely been integrated into comprehensive employment policies. In fact, up until recently, many PRSPs did not make explicit reference to employment policies.
For the ILO, productive employment is a major route out of poverty and social exclusion (ILO, 2003). And skills development is itself a key element of a comprehensive strategy for the promotion of employment-intensive growth and decent work. From an equity viewpoint, skills development may be an instrument to enhance equal opportunity to participate in the economy and contribute to women's empowerment.
A comprehensive strategy implies not only a pro-poor training policy but also mainstreaming education and training into all pro-poor development strategies, both at national and local levels. A pro-poor training policy does not mean ignoring the needs of the modern sectors of the economy but finding mechanisms, including through public-private partnerships, to combine skills development of the poor and economic growth.
At the system level, the strategy calls for the re-orientation of training systems and building their capacity to become more reactive to the needs of the economy by offering relevant training while ensuring equal access to training for the poor as well as quality training. The poor need not only conventional vocational training but also other skills essential to reducing their vulnerability such as basic skills (literacy, numeracy, learning skills, problem-solving skills, etc.), empowerment skills (negotiation, organisational skills, etc.) and entrepreneurial skills (small business management, marketing skills, etc.). In parallel, it calls for the up-grading of non-formal training offerings, including traditional apprenticeship. While mainstreaming is crucial, targeted programmes are still needed to reach out to the most vulnerable groups and ensure their faster access to skills and employment. Lastly, the strategy calls for extensive post-training support ? including access to micro-finance, marketing support, assistance in organising, etc. - to ensure that the skills acquired are actually translated into jobs and the creation of sustainable businesses.
Such a comprehensive strategy has been initiated in the context of a Sida-funded technical cooperation project entitled "Operationalising pro-poor growth" in Madagascar. The strategy uses a combination of bottom up and top down approaches: i) at the policy level, the National Employment Action Plan of Madagascar has been developed by national stakeholders, including representatives of employers' and workers' organisations, with ILO support. This Action Plan includes skills development and other strategies that address the needs of the poor, in particular, employment-friendly investment policies. The Plan has been integrated into the PRSP, thus recognising the role of employment promotion and skills development in the strategy; ii) a number of employment promotion strategies are being tested in an integrated manner in two communities, in line with their local development plans. These include skills and micro-enterprise development, post-training support, value chain upgrading in selected sectors and employment-based infrastructure development.
References
ILO (2003) Working out of Poverty, ILO Director-General Report to the International Labour Conference, ILO: Geneva.
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