TVET and Globalisation The Rise of Technical and Vocational Skills ...

TVET and Globalisation
The Rise of Technical and
Vocational Skills Development
Worldwide
KENNETH KING
Emeritus Professor, University of Edinburgh
Kenneth.King@ed.ac.uk

Presentation Outline
• Changing global agendas. Fashions, drivers,
meanings
• The Skills Year - 2012
• Skills and Education for All (EFA) from Jomtien
to the present day
• Skills-and-poverty versus Skills-and-growth
• TVET reform initiatives – health warnings

2012 TVET’s Turn Worldwide
• After 10 years the Global Monitoring Report
(GMR) reviews skills. Launch September 2012.
Focus on TVET for marginalised youth
• Also, UNESCO sponsors World TVET Report.
Launch at the Third International Congress on
TVET in Shanghai May 2012. Focus on the
need for a new paradigm
• See NORRAG News 46 for latest update on
TVET worldwide (www.norrag.org)

Don’t neglect TVET history!
• The origins of aid (1949) and the transfer of
‘technical knowledge’ – Truman
• The role of aid agencies in promoting TVET
from 1950s – ILO and UNESCO turf wars
• The role of the World Bank (WB) –from 1963
to 1979 – TVET yes! Rather than
‘dysfunctional’ general secondary education
• Foster and the Vocational School Fallacy
(1965) – famous but no influence on policy!

TVET and aid architecture,
80s and 90s
• From structural adjustment to rights-based
approaches
• World Conference on Education for All – big
impact on TVET
• The rise of WB “theology” of rate of return
• The WB’s 1991 TVET policy – negative impact
• Specially on aid-dependent countries –not
PRC
• De Moura Castro’s classic quote (NN18)

Return of TVET to agency and
government agendas, 1999-2012
• International Congress on TVE (T) 1999 Seoul
• TVET alive and well in E. & SE Asia: e.g. China
• Revisiting and discovering TVET in the aid world
• UNESCO new TVET policy 2009
• Global Monitoring Report to treat Dakar Goal 3
(2000) :
“equitable access to appropriate learning and
life skills programmes”
TVET terminology has been very problematic!

Multiple meanings of skill in
basic and post-basic education
• Core skills (3Rs, ICT, texting & emailing &
twittering) in basic education (BE) and
post-BE
• New skills, soft skills, higher order skills in
BE and post-BE
• Attitudinal skills e.g. confidence, hard
work, perseverance in BE and post-BE
• Traditional technical and vocational
manipulative & design skills in post-BE
• Entrepreneurial & employability skills
• Western and Eastern meanings of skills??

THE DIFFERENT WORLDS
OF LIFE SKILLS AND WORK
SKILLS?
• Life skills as psycho-social and
interpersonal
• Close links to health, and protection from
diseases, including AIDS
• Livelihood and work skills link to
enterprise and employability
• Complementarity of life, livelihood and
work skills?

Global drivers of skills
• Quantitative success of EFA leads to
interest in TVET and sec. schooling
• Skills for poverty reduction
• Skills within sector-wide approaches
• Politics of skills-for-employment and
skills-for-security (anti-terror)
• Skills for enterprise productivity,
competitiveness and individual prosperity
• But what about skills for human
development – not just for jobs & work?

Skill links to poverty reduction, youth
unemployment & social cohesion
• Who gets skills? NOT the poor, marginalised,
and women
• What does it mean to acquire skills – if low
quality, poor teachers, no work links?
• What impact of skills on employment, poverty
and social cohesion?
• Need an enabling, dynamic and meritocratic
economy

Skills and Growth?
• Four years of education make a difference to
farmer productivity? Under what conditions?
• Skills make a difference to productivity? Under
what conditions?
• If disabling local environment, what about
skills for migration? Malawi, Poland,
Bangladesh, Philippines, Indonesia
• Skills export for remittances? Bangladesh et al

TVET Reform Initiatives
Panaceas vs Health Warnings
• Being aware of the slippery language –just 3
examples out of 11 in the IIEP Fundamental
• From supply-driven to demand-driven TVET?
• Towards portability of skills, CBT, and NQFs?
• Towards vocationalisation of secondary
education? What evidence from Nordics?
• Reforms will be much easier when economies
are growing –China, S. Korea, Mozambique

TVET Tips for Planners and Politicians
• Context, culture and history matter
• Skills don’t equal jobs. Avoid productivism!
• Skills for poverty reduction? But massive and
growing rich/poor disparities
• Skill acquisition – not same as skill utilisation
• Skills and the MDGs? – the pursuit of no single
sector like primary school will secure goals
• INTERSECTORALITY ESSENTIAL

Further Reading
• For Fundamental 94:- www.iiep.unesco.org
• For further treatment of Skills – look out for
the Global Monitoring Report of 2012 -
www.unesco.org/en/efareport
• For critical analysis of education and skills
http://www.norrag.org/resources/publication
s – See NORRAG website-for 12 years of Skills
Working Group Reports
• See NORRAG News 46 special issue on SKILLS