Educating out of Poverty? A Synthesis Report on Ghana, India ... - DfID

Chapter 2: Linking Education, Skills and Context
2.5.4 Access to skills by the poor – the challenge <strong>of</strong> the market
States that have experienced structural adjustment, liberalisation, and marketisation, and are
persuaded that the skill development system should be ‘demand-driven’, will find it extremely
difficult to identify a demand for education and training coming from the poorest and most
vulnerable sections <strong>of</strong> society. The slow growth <strong>of</strong> formal employment opportunities and the
high and/or increasing levels <strong>of</strong> poverty in many developing countries, especially in rural areas
(resulting in a slow growth in the number <strong>of</strong> people with reliable salaries), mean that their
economies operate as income-constrained markets, and people’s buying power is weak overall.
This restricts not only overall demand for products and services, but reduces the demand for
training to improve quality since the market could not purchase better quality, more expensive,
goods and services anyway. Furthermore, in many developing countries, the poor are usually
engaged in survival enterprises, more concerned with the next harvest or with keeping their
enterprise afloat, than with investing in training for long term development.
2.5.5 Social composition <strong>of</strong> education and skills training systems
Left to the market, education and skills training systems will tend to favour the non-poor.
There is nevertheless a strong case for analysing the social composition <strong>of</strong> national education
and skills systems. It is almost certainly true that many more programmes are claimed to be
‘pro-poor’ than are serving the poor in reality. Public sector skills programmes usually exclude the
poor, either through direct or opportunity costs or through lack <strong>of</strong> places in these institutions.
Skills programmes that are usually considered pro-poor, such as traditional apprenticeship
training, may well not be easily accessible to the poor since training fees are usually charged.
It would be a fair assumption that long-term poverty reduction strategies require a mix <strong>of</strong>
targeted pro-poor educational provision plus general improvements in education for all.
So a rather fundamental question is whether the children <strong>of</strong> the poor are even to be found in
the various types <strong>of</strong> education and training provision, whether school-based, post-school,
enterprise-based or informal economy-based. Data sets for formal education are available but
there is much less data on the social composition <strong>of</strong> skills provision, especially within the informal
sector. The substantial cost <strong>of</strong> most skills training would suggest that the children <strong>of</strong> the poorer
families are unlikely to be well represented. This perspective suggests that a precondition to
discussing whether skills training institutions impact on the poor is to know whether the children
<strong>of</strong> the poor actually reach such post-basic institutions at all. Our working assumption would be
that with<strong>out</strong> subsidies, talent scholarships and other incentives, the bright poor may well not
access PBET training systems in significant numbers. Research findings on who gains access to
different forms <strong>of</strong> education and training are discussed in Chapter 4.
2.5.6 From skills development to skills utilisation: the role <strong>of</strong> the enabling
environment
The context <strong>of</strong> utilisation is highly dependent on supportive environments, and these are clearly
different in dynamic and less dynamic economies. What can be said with certainty is that the good
quality <strong>of</strong> the education and training environment is a crucial precondition for effective utilisation
<strong>of</strong> skills in the wider economic environment (see Chapter 5 for a discussion on this).
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