people and planet

12
Technical and vocational education and training.....................................................222
Tertiary education...................................................................................................................227
Adult education........................................................................................................................236
Target 4.3 introduces technical, vocational and tertiary
education into the global development agenda. These
areas were considered
in the Dakar Framework
Target 4.3 introduces
for Action, but only
indirectly, as a way to
technical, vocational
support alternate goals.
and tertiary education Technical and vocational
into the global
education was seen
as a way for youth to
development agenda
acquire skills, and tertiary
education as a way to
prepare teachers. Tertiary
education also appeared in the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) but only in the context of gender parity.
While targets 4.1 and 4.2 include both education
participation and education outcomes, target 4.3
focuses only on participation. But it is closely linked
to targets 4.4 and 4.6, which focus on outcomes that
may be acquired through education participation at the
technical, vocational and tertiary levels.
In its attempt to monitor the wide scope of target 4.3,
the Inter-agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators
proposed as a global indicator the percentage of youth and
adults participating in formal or non-formal education or
training in the previous 12 months. This broad measure
embraces education and training in all its forms, well
beyond technical, vocational and tertiary education.
While the indicator may not match the exact formulation
of the target, it helps redress an important omission.
SDG 4 includes ‘lifelong learning opportunities for all’.
Lifelong learning comprises all activities undertaken
throughout life with the aim of improving knowledge,
skills and competencies from a personal, civic, social or
employment-related perspective. However, the 10 targets
fail to deal explicitly with adult education, though they
capture all other aspects of lifelong learning. Hence, this
report covers adult education participation under target
4.3 via global indicator 4.3.1.
This chapter examines three education levels – technicalvocational,
tertiary and adult – from the angle of the
three concepts in the target formulation: (equitable)
access, affordability and quality. The proposed indicators
do not capture affordability and quality.
Moreover, the target’s reference to ‘equal access for all
women and men’ generates ambiguity. The inclusion of
‘all’ shifts the emphasis from ‘equal access’ to ‘access
for all’. Does the target imply that everyone above age 15
should participate in technical, vocational and tertiary – or
indeed also adult – education at least once in their life?
Are the three levels interchangeable? Such questions could
complicate monitoring, so this report avoids them and
focuses on identifying measures of access, affordability
and quality separately for each of the three levels.
TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL
EDUCATION AND TRAINING
The thematic indicator proposed for technical and
vocational education and training (TVET) is the
participation rate in technical-vocational education
programmes for youth. Traditionally, participation in
TVET has been measured as a percentage of those
enrolled at either the secondary or tertiary level.
However, this indicator is expressed as a percentage of
an age group (15- to 24-year-olds). Note that the indicator
overlaps with global indicator 8.6.1, the percentage of
youth not in education, employment or training, under
the SDG 8 on employment. The following discussion
addresses both education and training.
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CHAPTER 12 | TARGET 4.3 – TECHNICAL, VOCATIONAL, TERTIARY AND ADULT EDUCATION