NN46, September 2011
Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark
Aid Effectiveness and the Role of Education and Training
By Tom Eats and Ross Hall, Edexcel, Pearson, London
Email: tom.eats@edexcel.com; ross.hall@pearson.com
Keywords: Education; learning; sustainability; aid effectiveness; assessment
Summary: Education is a prerequisite to all sustainable development and assessment of learning should therefore be used as a measure of aid effectiveness.
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At the time the UK coalition government came to power last year it did so under the cloud of the financial crisis which precipitated a series of cuts to government departments, but the budget for DFID was protected. As a consequence, that aid budget was agreed with much talk of aid effectiveness and eliciting value for money.
The purpose of development aid is often understood as aiming to achieve a lasting self–sustainability for recipient countries, and to eventually enable them to function independently of aid. That said, it often seems that aid agencies principally fund shorter term humanitarian support or infrastructure projects. For example, there are many tenders in road building, hospital construction and a range of electrical, water and sanitation infrastructure.
These types of projects are necessary and important, but the extent to which they provide long term solutions to development needs is debatable. Our thought is that the possibilities of education, and in particular vocational education, to act as fundamental building blocks towards development goals – and indeed as a measure of success – haven’t yet been fully appreciated.
While there has been heavy backing for education-specific projects – particularly in primary enrolment – aid agencies have tended to view education as an end in itself, rather than as a broader conduit for development. Our inclination is to put education in a central position so that it is embedded in all projects, with outcomes of aid activity being measured in terms of an increase in human capacity.
That would mean, in supplying a need for a new hospital, for example, agencies would be required to not only support the provision of the hospital itself but would also train people in every aspect of the work needed to operate the hospital effectively. So, rather than just employing people for manual labour, contractors would also be endowing the country with skills that they can continue to apply and develop.
This is essentially the extension of a thought process that suggests that applying education to every development challenge is the approach most likely to bear fruit in the long term.
However, training on its own will not provide shorter term evidence of value for money, or an evaluation of aid effectiveness that donor bodies seek. This is why we are suggesting that the provision of vocational assessment has a unique role to play, as by setting a common standard and assessing the quality of learning, it is possible to provide an effective measure of the increase in human capability. What clearer measure could there be of long term sustainability?
In building an assessment of learning for use as measure of aid effectiveness, we would envisage that any approach must be the outcome of a proper engagement between educational institutions, national governments, sector bodies and development organisations in such a way that the standard is widely understood, recognised and accepted.
Defining these standards - and measuring the quality of programs against these standards - strikes us as incredibly important work for the sector as a whole. By promulgating the value of relevant, high quality, benchmarked vocational learning we believe we can play a fundamental role in supporting countries achieve their long term ambitions.
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Cite article as: Eats, T. and Hall, R., (2011) ‘Aid Effectiveness and the Role of Education and Training’, in NORRAG NEWS, Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark, No.46, September 2011, pp. 43-44, available: http://www.norrag.org
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