NN38, February 2007
Technical and Vocational Skills Development
SKILLS: A PRIORITY IN THE WORLD?S GLOBAL EFA AGENDA?
By Kenneth King, CERC, The University of Hong Kong (and Edinburgh)
KeywordsSkills, EFA, EFA Global Monitoring Report
Summary
?Skills training, apprenticeships, and formal and non-formal education programmes?, the author notes, were part of the declaration at the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien in 1990 - and yet they have not featured substantially as a core element of the global agenda of education since that time. The article goes on to argue the case that skills should be a subject of an EFA Global Monitoring Report.
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A Word of History on Skills Training in the Global Education Agenda
Even though ?skills training, apprenticeships, and formal and non-formal education programmes? were seen as being a component of the expanded vision of basic education at the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien in March 1990 [Declaration Article 5], they have not featured substantially as a core element of the global agenda of education since that time. The Framework for Action at Jomtien (p.3) had actually suggested the following: ?Expansion of provisions of basic education and training in other essential skills required by youth and adults, with programme effectiveness assessed in terms of behavioural changes and impacts on health, employment and productivity.? Perhaps understandably, many donor agencies focused on the Jomtien challenge of delivering universal access to and completion of primary education as their priority, and this was re-enforced by the construction of the International Development Targets in 1996, with one target being universal primary education. And this in turn was re-emphasised by the Millennium Development Goal on this same sub-sector of education in 2000.
In fact, there had been a very powerful report by the World Bank on Vocational and Technical Education and Training just a year after Jomtien (in 1991). But this was widely interpreted (and also widely misinterpreted) to say that a good basic primary education was the best preparation for technical and vocational education, that school-based technical education was not a sound investment, and that publicly provided vocational training was a poor substitute for training by employers on the job. It had less influence than it deserved partly because of these various interpretations, but also because it came a year after Jomtien, and also after the Bank?s Primary Education policy paper.
Making Skills the subject of an EFA Global Monitoring Report (GMR)?
Goal 3 in the Dakar World Forum of 2000 had urged ?Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes?. With the benefit of hindsight, it is probably unfortunate that the ?other essential skills required by youth and adults? mentioned in Jomtien was changed into ?life skills programmes? ten years later in Dakar. Life skills has a very different feel from ?work skills?. The former, as we argued earlier, in the article on the World Development Report, can cover all kinds of capacities, from literacy and numeracy to behavioural skills or communication skills. Be that as it may, the world of skills development, or technical and vocational education and training (TVET), seems to be bouncing back into prominence. Atchoarena of IIEP (in NN38) argues that ?Worldwide, many governments are renewing efforts to promote vocational education.? In the same vein, King and Palmer (in NN38) claim that ?Technical and Vocational Skills Development is once again moving up the agendas of governments and of donor agencies?. Levesque indicates (also in NN38) just how widespread within the 10 year development plans of governments in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the determination substantially to expand technical and vocational education.
Yet there seem to be so many different targets for skills! Skills for productivity; skills for competitiveness; skills for poverty reduction; skills for the informal sector; skills for rural migrants; skills for disadvantaged youth. Not to mention, skills for the knowledge economy; skills for enterprise development; skills for inclusiveness; skills for local economic development; skills for priority sectors; skills as security; and skills for sustainable livelihoods.
All of these, and many more, are touched on in this special issue of NN38. But what, then, is the case for making Skills the theme of an EFA Global Monitoring Report? The strongest reason is that skills (whether essential skills or life skills) was one of the 6 targets of Jomtien and of Dakar. But beyond this argument for equitable treatment amongst the 6 Dakar Goals, there is a compelling case for bringing together, as the GMRs have done so successfully for the other Goals (www.efareport.unesco.org), the evidence from across the world about the roles and potential of skills development.
Since the World Bank?s policy paper in 1991, there has not been a global assessment of skills. There has been an excellent paper on Skills Development in SSA (World Bank, 2004) [See McGrath in NN38], and there are a number of country and regional studies available, such as Skills Development in India (also by the World Bank). But there is no overview of this critically important area. A number of people thought the World Development Report 2007, with its emphasis on the potential of youth, might make a major contribution to this theme of skills. Certainly, one or two of the background papers for the WDR are relevant to the theme of skills, such as Van Adams?s (which is summarised in NN38). But the approach of the WDR to skills is not at all comprehensive (see King in NN38), though it does stress that there is a particular window of opportunity now for action, given the bulge of young people in certain regions (see Ward in NN38).
So, a volume on Skills for Young People, with the status and reach of the EFA Global Monitoring Reports, would be an enormous advantage to the field. But much more importantly, the sheer quantities of young people who have been encouraged by the commitment of their governments and the donor agencies to acquire basic education, over these last 16 years since Jomtien, have been building up enormous pressures on the existing post-primary education and training systems. Arguably, universal primary education will prove to be unsustainable without coherent pathways to further education and to skills for employment and self-employment.
References
UNESCO for EFA Global Monitoring Reports, see www.efareport.unesco.org/
World Conference on Education for All (1990) Declaration and Framework for Action, 1990, UNESCO, Paris.
World Bank (1991) Vocational and technical education and training: a World Bank Policy Paper, World Bank: Washington
World Bank (2004) Skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa, World Bank: Washington.
World Bank (2006) World Development Report 2007: Development and the next generation, World Bank: Washington.
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