Innovative Secondary Education For Skills Enhancement

Conclusions and Discussion 13
Some of the findings of the ISESE project’s research
confirm those already known from other studies or other
countries. Some are importantly new, especially those
having to do with the informal economy, with teacher
attitudes, and with convergence between general and
vocational secondary education.
Major conclusions of this study relevant to skills are as
follows:
Secondary education is vital.
a. Secondary education is increasingly important as
it is now the level of education from which most
students now enter the labor force (the exception
being Africa where this remains the primary level
but where the situation is changing rapidly).
b. Yet secondary education has largely been designed
for a past period, in which it was limited to the elite
(sometimes social and economic elites, sometimes
academic ones) and seen as a path to higher
education, not a final level of education in itself.
c. Secondary education is increasingly important—and
seen to be important—for individual livelihoods and
economic growth. There is increasing evidence that
it is not so much the number of years of education
that determines such outcomes but the specific skills
acquired.
Employers seek cognitive,
non‐cognitive and technical skills.
a. With minor differences, employers in both Africa
and Asia are largely looking for the same set of skills
in those they hire: basic cognitive skills, advanced
skills like critical thinking and problem solving, noncognitive
skills, and technical skills.
b. All these skills are important in both the formal and
the informal economies, but non-cognitive skills
are relatively even more important in the informal
economy as most workers are self-employed and
have to carry out a very wide range of tasks.
c. Technical skills are only useful at the secondary
level if they are very closely related to short-term
demand in the labor market. General technical
skills cost more to provide than general academic
secondary ones with no higher returns to
individuals or the economy.
d. Even where technical skills are important,
vocational education is still largely considered a
second-class option and one that can limit students’
futures.
e. Transferable skills and being able to apply existing
skills in a new context is particularly important in
today’s dynamic and fast-changing job market.
There remains a gender
dimension to employment.
a. Proportionally more women are employed in the
informal than in the formal sector.
b. Girls tend less than boys to pursue science,
mathematics, and technical skills.
Significant curricular
reform is under way.
a. The general learning crisis that pervades primary
education in Africa and South Asia, though less
so in Southeast Asia, applies also to secondary
education, where low-income countries do
relatively poorly on international assessments
compared with OECD and middle-income
countries.
b. There is significant curricular reform in both general
secondary and vocational secondary education,
designed to make both more relevant to employers.
Vocational education increasingly has a skills
development policy behind it.
c. Mechanisms are being put in place in some, but not
all, countries to provide better articulation between
the general and vocational streams to permit much
more flexibility across them and to avoid the
vocational stream becoming one that cannot lead on
to higher education.
d. Although curricular reform is useful, it takes time
and is also not the key obstacle to improving skills.
e. Curricular reform is particularly crucial, however, to
incorporate non-cognitive skills.
13 This section is also based on discussions from the Bellagio review meeting in July 2012.
Skills for Employability in Africa and Asia 23