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NN46, September 2011

Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark

Capability as Well as Employability in TVET Approaches in Secondary Schools

By David Levesque, DFID, London [1]

Email: d-levesque@dfid.gov.uk

 

Keywords:  vocational education; effectiveness; value for money.

Summary: Not everything in vocational education can be directly measured in terms of economic growth.  Let’s learn to value all the skills that vocational education can bring.

The debates around the effectiveness and efficiency of vocational and skills development in schools have a long history.  Donors, particularly the World Bank and Germany, have invested heavily in vocational education in schools in developing countries but from Forster (1965) onwards a range of studies has concluded that it has not led to the assumed employment opportunities and been value for money.  These arguments have been made in many papers including, I suspect, contributions to this edition of NORRAG.

However in many countries it is still seen as a priority, with particularly low income countries seeing it as one of the main ways of reducing unemployment.  It has become particularly relevant as a result of the push towards ‘Education for All’ as countries struggle with the millions of partially educated primary school graduates with limited employment opportunities.  It is not surprising that calls have increased for schools to teach skills that can be turned into livelihoods, for curricula to be revised and for donors to provide more resources to enable this to happen. Yet this has often resulted in supply-led, largely government programmes based on the assumption that teaching ‘vocational’ skills will lead to employment resulting in economic growth and development.

Yet perhaps there are benefits that are not sufficiently valued.   Having taught vocation subjects in secondary schools in the UK, Kenya and Botswana,  I can affirm that there are skills that are taught that are of considerable value that are not necessarily considered as contributory factors to employment and economic growth.  These include the ability to envisage, design, plan, make and evaluate.  The satisfaction of creating.  The confidence which comes with making something practical that is seldom found in theoretical exercises in other parts of the curriculum; this can often feed into increased confidence in learning other skills.  The ability to translate thoughts and knowledge into practical outcomes.  The ability to use skills for everyday living including basic housing and furnishing needs.  The ability to be an informed consumer.   Inclusive skills for all, rather than the elitist skills often seen as necessary for economic growth.   As well as contributing  towards the skills that employers say they particularly value such as communication, team working and problem solving, these are useful capabilities and core developmental skills that have value apart from direct employment and economic growth.

Perhaps we can conclude that what we value may be different; for donor countries that need to measure value for money for accountability, based on the assumption that economic growth leads to development; for partner governments who may well be seeking to reduce youth unemployment for political reasons and for the individuals who seek the opportunity to acquire skills that will be of benefit throughout their lives.

Maybe those who provide the finance and policies which support these programmes need to acknowledge that benefits cannot always be categorised in terms of unit costs, numbers of people in work or impact on economic growth. 

Let’s not just value the things that are easy to measure.

 

References

Foster P.  (1965)  The Vocational School Fallacy in Development Planning