TVET and Sustainable Development: Learning from Experience. What and why do we wait for?

TVET policies and programs come and go and so their different focus and approaches, acronyms as well flood the literature on this theme and make things complicated (SD, GMR, HRBA, EFA, EDA, etc.). The point is that while TVET... [ view full abstract ]

TVET policies and programs come and go and so their different focus and approaches, acronyms as well flood the literature on this theme and make things complicated (SD, GMR, HRBA, EFA, EDA, etc.). The point is that while TVET programs and policies are discussed, while developing countries manage to achieve better rates of economic growth and get the financial resources needed, there is a prevailing situation of large sectors of the population that are strongly necessitated of programs that can offer them alternative means to have access to the world of work and improve their living conditions.

Our argument is that many programs have had a serious impact in these sectors and have left many lessons. Clearly the evaluation yardsticks are other and go beyond productivity and efficiency notions that fall within the economic development paradigm. There is a lot to be done as far as the possibilities TVET programs can have in vulnerable areas, as long as we are clear that we stem from different notions of quality, impact and development.

The purpose is to lean on some examples of successful TVET programs in order to show successful strategies for enabling low-income populations to gain entry to the world of work, strategies that have reinforced the local economy, have transcended at community level and have generated new forms of participation. Lessons are concerned with the need to have a social dimension underlying TVET programs in developing countries, a focus which is very much at odds with the prevailing tendency.