On 17 June, 3ie and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) convened a series of online roundtables with stakeholders across the technical and vocational education and training (TVET), and skills space. The sessions aimed to ensure that forthcoming outputs of our project, aimed at synthesizing and understanding what we can learn from the current evidence on TVET and skills, are both helpful and relevant to those in the sector.
With this in mind, we brought together representatives from academic and research institutions, governments, implementing partners and foundations to reflect on our work so far and understand what we need to prioritize as we move forward. We're grateful to everyone who joined our sessions for their detailed and thoughtful feedback, some of whom are acknowledged below.
- Christine von Harrach – Donor Committee for dual Vocational Education and Training (DC dVET)
- Michael Braun – J-PAL Europe
- Milica Njegovan – Colleges and Institutes Canada
- Nkum Oliver – RDSE Bamenda
- Odette Langlais - Global Affairs Canada
- Dr Rajesh Khanna – Athena Infonomics
- Rossi Vogler – British Council
- Urmila Sarkar - Generation Unlimited, UNICEF
We outline four takeaways that help ensure our research outputs are valuable and relevant.
1. While our work focuses on supply-side interventions, it is vital we take into account the demand side.
Our project focuses on supply-side interventions—i.e. programs that equip people with the skills to enter employment. It does not include demand-side interventions, which seek to increase the number of job opportunities available. However, our discussion made it clear that understanding how demand-side factors play into supply-side interventions is also crucial.
We currently incorporate this in our framework by including programs that offer demand-driven solutions, when supply-side solutions account for the needs and capacity of the local labour market. For instance, skills-matching programs which update TVET curricula to match the needs of the current job market. But this is not enough. When mapping the evidence and assessing the impact of interventions, we need to understand whether these programs engaged with the demand side in their design and creation.
Were TVET and skills programs delivered as part of wider infrastructure projects? Did the program’s funding mechanism require engagement with the private sector? We will need to answer these questions to produce outputs addressing the most critical aspects of TVET and skills.
2. Economic outcomes are the most critical outcomes.
TVET and skills programs exist to help people move into employment. Ensure people are equipped with the skills delivered during training programs is essential, but the labour market outcomes remain most interesting to the sector.
What became very apparent in our discussion was that across contexts, the private sector does not want to engage with TVET and skills programs; businesses do not want to offer on-the-job training opportunities. By exploring the economic impact of these interventions, not only on individuals but also on businesses providing training and the broader economy, we may understand what the economic benefits are to the private sector in engaging with TVET and skills.
3. Need to understand long-term impact and cost evidence.
An issue that resonated with many participants and resonates across the international development space is the need to understand long-term impacts and cost evidence (e.g., implementation costs, cost-benefit ratios, and comparative cost analysis). Program budgets often only cover outcome monitoring over the program’s lifecycle, leaving uncertainty around whether impact is sustained after programs end. While we do not know what the evidence base will show at this stage, we will explore whether long-term impacts and cost evidence are measured in the existing literature.
4. TVET and skills programs are heterogeneous, and many factors are at play.
One of the questions we asked our participants was, "How can this work be most helpful to decision-makers?" The number of different responses to this question was striking. TVET and skills programs look remarkably different across contexts; as such, there were many different suggestions of what we should focus on when exploring what works in the space.
Participants suggested several focus areas such as: the impact of different funding mechanisms, whether the private sector was engaged in the program’s design, attention to green skills and the low-carbon transition, emphasis on life-long learning, the impact of different trainer employment contracts, the role of TVET in community-level innovation.
While we won’t be able to answer every question in this project, we will certainly continue engaging with sector stakeholders to refine our priorities and keep the work relevant.
If you would like to learn more about our project, please contact Cem Yavuz (cyavuz[at]3ieimpact[dot]org).
