NN38, February 2007
Technical and Vocational Skills Development
POLICIES? AND SOCIETY?S IMPACT ON VOCATIONAL EDUCATION: PATTERNS OF REFORM IN CHILE IN THE LAST QUARTER CENTURY
By Cristián Cox, Universidad Católica de Chile
KeywordsChile, vocational education, technical school, reform
Summary
This article describes the various changes that Chile?s vocational education system has witnessed since the 1980s.
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Vocational education in Chile experienced radical de-regulation during the 1980s, in the context of decentralizing and privatizing reforms implemented by a military government which in 1981 inaugurated, by imposition, choice-regulated models in Latin American education. These demanded each secondary technical school to reform its curriculum in close connection to local industries and businesses. With no government support for carrying out what, for a traditionally centralized and state-led system, was a major re-orientation, together with a decrease of public expenditure in education of a third in real terms between 1982 and 1990, diversification of specializations exploded (to more than 400). These were propelled more by needs of differentiation in the market and protection of teachers? employment in each school, than any real answer to skills requirements by local industries, or, much less, assessments of the national economy?s needs. In addition to this, the government made key national associations of enterprises take responsibility for administering (with public resources) a small set of technical schools (70 out of more than 500 at the time); this helped produce a commitment to education among representative leaders of the productive sector that a decade later, in a quite different political context, proved highly instrumental in producing a constructive dialogue and cooperation with educators in the definition of the curriculum reform of the 1990s.
In spite of diminished resources and a probable drop in quality, technical education enrolments increased both in absolute and relative terms during the 1980s, pushed by the demand of lower income groups having access to secondary education for the first time. Enrolments expanded from close to 180,000 students in 1981, representing 29% of total secondary education, to 255,396 in 1990, (35.5% of the total). Secondary education?s coverage for the 14-18 year age group increased from 77 per cent in 1990 to 93 percent in 2003. Its total enrolment going up from 719,819 in 1990 to 1,029,366 in 2005, whilst its technical modality expanded from 255,396 to 397,673 during the same period (Miranda, 2003; Cox, 2006; www.mineduc.cl).
Transition to a democratic regime in 1990, followed by three government periods of the same centre-left political alliance, meant the recuperation of a leadership role for the state (without abandoning market-based regulation mechanisms), dramatic increases in public resources, comprehensive state-led programs to improve both the quality and equity of secondary education, and an ambitious curriculum reform. At the same time expansion of enrolments continued unabated.
Without altering institutional features, i.e., the existence of two types of liceos [secondary schools], general and vocational, the curriculum reform in Chile (1998) moved the start of a vocational education of 2 years to high school (from grade 9 to grade 11) narrowing the difference between the two modes from four to two years and increasing the academic content of vocational education to a third of the total teaching time. Specialised courses were also added to the general curriculum for students in the academic strand to choose from, while vocational specialities were streamlined, their content and practices redesigned to give students flexible skills.
Regarding the combination and balancing of three fundamental variables of secondary education curriculum policy?selection and specialization, academic-vocational balance, and the disciplinary or non disciplinary nature of curriculum design and development?the Chilean case matches most of the features described by a recent World Bank study of world-wide trends in secondary education reform as an example of the mix that combines: Specialization and selection deferred to the end of the lower secondary level. System of elective subjects as a device to introduce limited internal differentiation. Vocational education pushed to the upper secondary level. Some emphasis on introducing vocational elements in the common curriculum. Cross-curricular issues and interdisciplinary approaches are considered, but traditional areas continue to frame the secondary curriculum (World Bank 2005: p. 93).
The 1990-2005 evolution of enrolments of technical education show a pattern of relative growth and decline: from 35.5 per cent of total secondary enrolment in 1990, it rose to an historic high of 45.1 per cent in 1998, to decline yearly afterwards, reaching 38.6 per cent in 2005 (www.mineduc.cl). Both education?s and society?s trends converge here. The former saw access to higher education ease substantially (in hand with its institutional expansion and diversification), while the latter experienced economic growth affecting lower income families? expectations regarding the employment versus higher education choice of their offspring. Thus, in spite of the fact that by 2005 more than a third of technical education leavers made it into higher education, showing that the modality is less than ever a dead-end, it is apparent that many lower income families? evaluation of the paths facilitated by the two modalities of secondary education is changing in favour of general or academic secondary education, in contrast to what this same evaluation was 8 years ago.
A strategic and unsolved issue for Chilean vocational education nowadays is the vertical integration of its secondary and tertiary level technical education. The latter more often than not repeats contents of the former in the weakest of three tiers of higher education institutions (Centros de Formación Técnica), directly impeding a much needed social valuing of tertiary level technical education and a coherent training system of higher level technicians.
References
Cox, C. (2006) Policy formation and implementation in secondary education reform: the case of Chile at the turn of the Century. The World Bank, Education Working Paper Series, nº 3, Washington.
Miranda, M. (2003) Transformación de la Educación Media Técnico-Profesional. In Políticas educacionales en el cambio de siglo: La reforma del sistema escolar de Chile<, ed. C. Cox. Santiago: Editorial Universitaria.
World Bank (2005) Expanding Opportunities and Building Competencies for Young People. A New Agenda for Secondary Education. Washington, D.C.
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