Chapter 2. Progress towards the EFA goals - Unesco

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CHAPTER 2
Education for All Global Monitoring Report
Spiralling youth
unemployment
has added
a sense of
urgency
to national
debates over
technical
and vocational
training
fell only a little, from 15% to 13% (CINTERFOR/ILO,
2008). While some countries, including Australia,
Canada, France and Spain, achieved marked
reductions, six other countries, including the
United Kingdom, experienced increased youth
unemployment.
Young people with low skills are especially
vulnerable, as was evident even before the deep
recession took hold. In the OECD, for example,
skilled jobs have been created at five times the rate
of unskilled jobs since 2000 (OECD, 2008b). The
skills gap helps explain the apparent paradox of high
growth and stagnant youth unemployment in many
countries. In the OECD countries as a group, people
with low skills are twice as likely to be unemployed
as those with high skills, increasing to four times as
likely in the United States. The rising premium on
skills has increased the penalties faced by those in
the OECD’s large pockets of educational deprivation.
Spiralling youth unemployment has added a
sense of urgency to national debates over technical
and vocational training. While the impact of the
economic slowdown is being felt across society,
it has fallen most heavily on the young and people
with low skills (OECD, 2009d). Young people
typically find it hard to get established in the labour
market because of their lack of experience, which
makes them especially vulnerable in a downturn.
The young in general and those with low levels of
qualification in particular are emerging as prime
victims of the slump.
A side effect of the downturn is that it has pushed
technical and vocational education and training to
the centre of the political agenda. In France, where
even before the crisis almost one in five young
people was out of work, a quarter of them for more
than one year, the government has launched an
emergency youth employment programme focused
on apprenticeships (CINTERFOR/ILO, 2009). In
Japan, though youth unemployment rates are lower
than in France, around one-third of workers aged 15
to 24 are in temporary work with insecure contracts
(OECD, 2009c). Here, too, measures have been
introduced to facilitate school-to-work transition
through firm-based training. Comparable measures
involving incentives for young people to stay in
education, training and apprenticeships are being
used across the OECD.
Looking beyond the immediate responses, it
is important for governments to use the crisis
as an opportunity to put in place the long-term
investments and policies – in education and
beyond – that are needed to combat the
marginalization of young people.
Good intentions, poor results:
problems in the developing world
Much can be achieved through good-quality
vocational education and training. But in many
developing countries, vocational programmes
have suffered from a combination of underfinancing,
poor design and weak links to labour markets. In
some regions – notably sub-Saharan Africa and
Latin America – deep cuts in spending during the
1980s and 1990s further compromised quality in
vocational education (Johanson and Adams, 2004).
Public investment has produced disappointing
results, calling into question the potential for
vocational education to fuel economic growth
and reduce poverty.
The poor track record is reflected in student and
teacher preferences. In many countries, vocational
options are viewed either as a last resort or as a
possible route back into general education, rather
than as a stepping stone to employment. This is
especially true of sub-Saharan Africa, where the
reluctance of parents to put their children into
vocational streams is supported by evidence
confirming that general education generates
far higher returns than do vocational alternatives
(Kahyarara and Teal, 2006). Thailand adopted
the German dual system in 2005; successive
governments have attempted to expand vocational
education to combat child labour and the
marginalization of young people who drop out of
school. However, while secondary school enrolment
has doubled, vocational enrolment has failed to take
off, reflecting concerns of parents and students
about the quality of provision and the weakness
of links to job markets (World Bank, 2008g).
The Middle East: fragmentation
and weak links to employment
Faced with the world’s highest levels of youth
unemployment, governments in the Middle East
have identified vocational education as a priority.
Two broad models have emerged. At one extreme,
students in Egypt are tracked early, but vocational
graduates suffer as much unemployment as their
secondary school counterparts (Kamel, 2006;
Salehi-Isfahani and Dhillon, 2008). In the Islamic
Republic of Iran, where tracking into vocational
education starts later, it is seen as a sign of failure,
prompting many students to drop out. (Box 2.12).
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