NN46, September 2011
Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark
Editorial: Now that TVET has the Floor – What is the Storyline?
By Kenneth King, NORRAG
Email: Kenneth.King@ed.ac.uk
Within 12 months, there will be a further two global reports available, this time on TVET and skills development (see NN43: A World of Reports). The Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report (GMR) 2012 has said it will focus on skills development which might expand opportunities for marginalised groups. The World TVET Report which will be discussed at the Third International Congress on TVET in Shanghai on 14-16 May 2012 will doubtless look back to the Second Congress in Seoul in 1999, and reflect on what has remained crucial since then as well as what are new contexts and challenges in which TVET is expected to play some role (see Tang, this issue). The fact that the Third Congress is being located in a country that has become the ‘factory of the world’ is not insignificant. Equally, the EFA GMR 2012 outline has emphasised the importance of the emerging donors such as China and India, and has mentioned that: ‘It will look at the contributions being made by new donor countries, including those that have experienced significant economic growth themselves in recent years partly thanks to the attention they have paid to skills training.’
The last time we dedicated a special issue of NN to skills development was in the spring of 2007, NN38. Only 7 of the 37 contributors to NN37 have contributed this time, and they are joined by some 40 others, making this one of the larger special issues we have developed. This has of course been greatly helped by most of the paper-givers in the skills section of the UKFIET Oxford Conference of September 2011 also contributing to NN46. Despite this, there are as many donor- and/or government agency individuals contributing to this issue (18) as there are academics and researchers. The remaining contributors are from consultancy firms and from NGOs.
Because of this diversity, there is no single storyline being taken by this special issue. Nor is there a single line taken in any of our past 45 issues. But beyond the four main thematic sections of this issue, there are a number of generative themes that can be identified amongst several contributors.
Not a predominant aid-agency perspective on TVET
In the past, special issues of NORRAG News (NN) have focused from time to time on major reports such as the World Bank’s 1991 TVET policy paper, or the World Declaration on EFA in 1990. Doubtless there will be a special issue of NN (48) around May/June 2012 looking at the two major reports on skills, associated with the 3rd Congress and with the GMR 2012. In this issue, there are contributions from bilateral and multilateral agencies on several different dimensions of skills development, and it is clear from several other contributions that aid agencies are crucially involved in the support of TVET reform, but the sheer variety of TVET reform possibilities means that agencies in one country may not all be singing from the same hymnal. In other words, the Paris and Accra agendas for aid harmonisation are perhaps easier to find in respect of basic education than in skills development.
Beyond a labour market justification for TVET
Several of the papers in this issue look at TVET through a much broader lens than the labour market. In addition to any continuing concern with employment opportunities, TVET is acknowledged for its relevance to many other dimensions of human development, including creativity and design, art and craft. Skills development is certainly not only to do with technical or job-specific skills, but also with a whole range of generic skills and soft skills that are felt to be crucial to both work and leisure. TVET is often concerned with socialization and empowerment and not just with job preparation.
Beyond demand-led TVET?
Although TVET analysts remain keenly aware of the adage: ‘No demand; no training’, they continue to be conscious of the dilemma of contexts and economic environments where there is little or no labour market demand. But equally there is a serious need to question the notion of demand-led skills development. There are many distortions in patterns of employer demand, for example for casualisation and informalisation of skills, for fragmented skills rather than holistic expertise. Indeed it could be argued for many countries that it is precisely the employers’ demand for using casual labour and minimum on-the-job training that has made it so difficult to place more fully trained candidates. So the mantra of demand-led training needs itself to be carefully analysed in different kinds of enabling and disabling environments.
Tempting targets
Despite this, politicians continue to find skill targets extremely seductive. 2 million artisans by next year, or 5 million by 2015 sound like serious politics. In this genre none can be more ambitious than India’s plan to create 500 million skilled workers by its 75 anniversary of independence, 2022. What is often unclear in this politics of targets is who exactly the targets are! Are they already working, are they already semi-skilled, or are they new skilled?
Questioning ‘best practice’
Readers will recall the special issue on ‘best practice’ (NN39). In TVET too there is a good deal of what passes as best practice that still needs to be carefully interrogated. Here policy learning is a higher priority than policy copying. Some of these ‘best practices’ have become extremely popular, e.g. national vocational qualification frameworks, competency-based training, or demand-led training, just mentioned, but they still lack a rigorous evidence base.
Researching TVET
One of the consequences of the two global reports on TVET in early 2012 is that there will have been a large quantity of commissioned research associated with them. Certainly this will cover not only the ‘old chestnuts’ of TVET research, but also some of the new ‘low-hanging fruits’ of current TVET analysis. These new fruits might include analysis of public private partnerships in TVET, the extraordinary diversity of secondary vocational education, world-wide, and the analysis of countries where school or institution-based TVET is of very high prestige as in Scandinavia. Hopefully also, there will be detailed accounts of what the so-called new donors are doing in support of TVET. There is really no mention of this in NN46, except in passing.
The particularity of cultures and traditions of TVET
Another of the messages to come out of this special issue of NN is that the cultures and traditions of TVET are hugely different at the country or even regional level. Thus, most of Latin America has its own ‘dual system’ of school-based technical education as well as institution-based training beyond schools. Informal apprenticeship is not very different from Francophone to Anglophone West Africa but both are light years away from ‘systems’ in Eastern and Southern Africa. The training on-the-job of casual labour to become skilled is very widespread across much of South Asia. Every commentator on TVET in South Africa makes the point that there are exceptional challenges to understanding skills development in that country. And so on.
The consequence of these diverse cultures and traditions of TVET for those framing global reports is quite challenging.
But I’m sure that the TVET community worldwide will be looking forward enormously to engaging with these two major reports of 2012.
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Cite article as: King, K, (2011) ‘Now that TVET has the Floor – What is the Storyline?’, in NORRAG NEWS, Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark, No.46, September 2011, pp. 10-12, available: http://www.norrag.org
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