Christine Evans- Klock Director, Skills and Employability Department International Labour Organisation Moscow, Novemb

1. Quality assurance in professional education and training Christine Evans-Klock Director, Skills and Employability DepartmentInternational LabourOrganisation Moscow, November 2011

2. ILO mandate onDecent Work GOALof PEOPLE everywhere for productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity (definition 1999) • ILO POLICY AGENDA, 4 pillars, necessary elements: • Rights at work • Productive employment • Social protection • Voice and representation { mutually supportive & interdependent Global ADVOCACY to keep productive work and social inclusion at the heart of poverty reduction and fair globalization strategies

3. Bridging the world of education and training to the world of work, • To improve the employability of workers, • To increase the productivity and competitiveness of enterprises, • To expand the inclusiveness of economic growth

4. Presentation • Drivers of change in labour markets for professional education and training • G20 Strategy for linking professional education and training to strong, sustainable and balanced growth • Quality assurance in professional education and training • Quality in process and outcomes • Demand-led professional education and training • Coordination • Examples from ILO work

5. Imperatives: youth employment • Youth unemployment in 2009 highest ever: 13% • 81 million unemployed, out of 620 million 15-24 year olds • Higher numbers economically inactive – “NEET” not in education, not in training, not in work. The average in Latin America is 1 out of 4. • One fourth of young workers were in households surviving on less than US$ 1.24 per person per day • Risks: • Social upheaval now • Loss of future productivity • Lifelong poverty • ILO , Employment Trends for Youth, September 2010

6. Downward tick of youth unemployment in 2010 – good news or more bad news?

7. Imperatives: productivity ILO, Trends EconometricModels, 2009

8. Productivity in G20 Countries GDP per person engaged in 2008 (constant 1990 US$ at PPP) and index (1990=100) change

9. Imperatives: demographic trends Dependency ratios Developed countries and some Asian economies: Number of persons of working age to support each person aged 65 or over is shrinking: 2000:     2050:  

10. Imperatives: social inclusion Rural communities: improve access and quality of education and training Informal economy: promote transition of economic activities to the formal economy Disadvantaged youth: improve basic education, apprenticeships, employment services Persons with disabilities: meet specific needs and be inclusive Across all of these groups, address the special needs of women.

11. Imperatives: globalization • Market integration Distribution of skills • - trade of products and services • - technology diffusion • - labour migration • - production migration - outsourcing

12. Imperatives: climate change • Transition to lower-carbon economies... • could generate millions of new jobs by 2050 Integrating training in environmental policies is both efficient: avoids skills gaps, smoothes the transition; and equitable: re-skilling helps share the gains, realising the job potential ILO, UNEP, IOE, ITUC; Green Jobs Initiative

13. Presentation • Drivers of change in labour markets for professional education and training • G20 Strategy for linking professional education and training to strong, sustainable and balanced growth • Quality assurance in professional education and trainings • Quality in process and outcomes • Demand-led professional education and training • Coordination • Examples from ILO work

14. Coordination and Global Outreach: G20 Training Strategy for strong, sustainable and balanced growth • Pittsburgh Summit, September 2009 • Called for putting quality jobs at the heart of recovery • Adopted framework for strong, sustainable and balanced growth • Asked the ILO, in partnership with other organizations and with employers and workers, to develop a training strategy • “.. to strengthen the ability of our workers to adapt to changing market demands and to benefit from innovation and investments in new technologies, clean energy, environment, health and infrastructure” • Inter-Agency Group on Technical and Vocational Education and Training • UNESCO, World Bank, OECD, regiondevelopmentbanks • Toronto Summit, June 2010 • Received and welcomed the G20 Training Strategy document • Seoul Summit, November 2010 • Adopted Multi-Year Action Plan on Development • Human Resources Development Pillar builds on the G20 Training Strategy to strengthen national skills for employment policies and institutions

15. Towards an ILO skills strategyILC discussion in 2008: How can skills development help improve productivity and increase employment to attain development goals?

16. Linking skills development to Decent work From a Vicious Downward Circle… Unavailable or low quality education and training: • Traps the working poor in low-skilled, low productive, low-wage jobs • Excludes workers without the right skills from participating in economic growth • Discouragesinvestment in new technologies • To a Virtuous Circle... More and better skills makes it easier to: • Innovate and adopt new technologies • Attract investment • Compete in new markets, and • Diversify the economy • Boost job growth

17. Countries sustain a “virtuous circle” link education, skills, decent work by… Ensuring the broad availability of quality education Matching supply to current demand for skills Helping workers and enterprises adjust to change Sustaining a dynamic development process: Use skills as a driver of change: move from lower to higher productivity Expanding accessibility of quality training: rural, women, disadvantaged youth, persons with disabilities HOWEVER... The potential benefits of training are not realised without job-rich growth This is the conceptual framework of the G20 Training Strategy for strong, sustainable and balanced growth

18. G20 Training Strategy: Building blocks , not stumbling blocks - the “How” • Anticipating skill needs • Participation of social partners • Sectoral approaches • Labour market information and employment services • Training quality and relevance • Gender equality • Broad access to training • Finance • Assessing policy performance

19. G20 Seoul Summit: Multi-year Action Plan on Development • Action Points on human resources development • asked international organizations to work together to help low-income countries “develop employment -related skills that are better matched to employer and market needs in order to attract investment and decent jobs” • Action point 1 calls upon the World Bank, ILO, OECD,UNESCO • to “Create internationally comparable skills indicators;” • Action point 2 asks the development banks, ILO, and UNESCO to form a “unified and coordinated team” to support Low-Income Countries to enhance employable skills strategies”.

20. Presentation • Drivers of change in labour markets for professional education and training • G20 Strategy for linking professional education and training to strong, sustainable and balanced growth • Quality assurance in professional education and training: • Quality in process and outcomes • Demand-led professional education and training • Coordination • Examples from ILO work

21. Quality in skills systems Two major purposes: • as a key driver of reform and a driving force for change. • as an accountability mechanism on effectiveness. • Quality systems serve as a common reference to ensure consistency amongst different actors at all levels. • Quality systems seek to introduce transparent processes and procedures to ensure mutual understanding and trust between different actors.

22. Why Focus on Quality? • Quality mainly affects the value and success of education programmes: • High quality programs provide a strong link between what is learnt and the needs of the labour market ie: graduates are more likely to find suitable employment; • High quality leads to a higher status and improved attractiveness of TVET.

23. Social partner perspectives For employer organisations: • quality systems ensure training programs are properly adapted to market needs; • quality programs support improvements to enterprise productivity and profitability; • quality programs encourage workers to be more responsible for their own training process and progress; • quality programs should allow for the development of competencies that meet company needs.

24. Social partner perspectives For worker organisations: • quality qualifications protects against precariousness in labour market; • quality programs support personal development and facilitates career development and evolution; • quality programs are certified by a label/logo which acts as an important marketing device to potential employers; • quality programs allow for transferability of competences beyond a specific company/job;

25. Quality in skills systems applies to... • Qualifications / Certification; • Competency Standards; • Curriculum and Courses; • Training Providers; • Delivery; • Intermediary services (employment services); • Assessment and accountability. In effect, all aspects of the professional education and training system.

26. But what about the quality of training? • Quality of training is reflected by a wide range of measures used by different countries, including: • Management of the training process; • Relevance and credibility of training; • Assessment processes; • Competence of teachers delivering the program; and • Accessibility of training.

27. And what about the outcomes? • Wide range of indicators used to measure quality in skills systems at a national level, including: • Attainment; • Participation; • Progression; • Retention; • Completion;

28. Quality in Process and Outcomes • Quality indicators can therefore be divided broadly into two categories: • first, those that focus on the processof training, and • second, those that focus on outcomes or outputs of training.

29. Conceptual framework Indicators of skills for employability G20 Action point, Being developed by OECD and World Bank with ILO and UNESCO

30. Presentation • Drivers of change in labour markets for professional education and training • G20 Strategy for linking professional education and training to strong, sustainable and balanced growth • Quality assurance in professional education and training: • Quality in process and outcomes • Demand-led professional education and training • Coordination • Examples from ILO work

31. HRD Recommendation (ILO, 2004) Tripartite agreement on shared responsibilities for skills development: Governments have primary responsibility for • education • pre-employment training, core skills • training the unemployed, people with special needs The social partners play a significant role in • further training • workplace learning and training Individuals need to make use of opportunities for education, training and lifelong learning

32. Demand-ledskillsdevelopmentthroughsectoral coordination • Improve relevance of training, and thus: • Employability of workers • Productivity and competitiveness of employers • Build Public-Private Partnerships for: • Initial training • Continuous learning • Engage Employers’ and Workers’ representatives at all stages of skills policy: • Design • Implementation • Assessment

33. Sectoral based professional education and training reduce skills mismatch - lessons

34. Demand-ledskillsdevelopment assumes a skills-based business strategy Should we prepare young people for the labour market? Or prepare the labour market for young people? What about skills utilization? • Do employers invest in training, or is their strategy based on low-wages & low-productivity? Do sectoral bodies includesmallenterprises? Workers? Question: What is the social status and job quality of TVET? • Answer: What is the quality of the training and of the resulting jobs?

35. Demand-ledskillsdevelopment assumes a skills-based business strategy Can public-private partnerships encourage a skills-based strategy? By sharing costs and benefits of training? By supporting job creation in promising industrial sectors? By helping small enterprises train workers? By combining classroom and workplace learning for youth? By targetingat-risk populations while meeting skillshortages? By investing in lifelong learning for all workers? Learning fromexamples – Netherlands, Costa Rica, Ireland

36. Netherlands – Success factors • Culture of bipartite and tripartite cooperation (“Tulip model”) • Social acknowledgement of TVET’s as source of labour – especially for small enterprises • Availability of effective sectoral employer branche-organisations and sectoral unions • Stable commitment to a shared responsibility for life long learning (state, individual, employer) • Autonomy of training institutions balanced with accountability to industry

37. Presentation • Drivers of change in labour markets for professional education and training • G20 Strategy for linking professional education and training to strong, sustainable and balanced growth • Quality assurance in professional education and training: • Quality in process and outcomes • Demand-led professional education and training • Coordination • Examples from ILO work

38. Countries that sustain a “virtuous circle” link education, skills, decent work by… Coordinating! To close the gaps between… • … basic education, vocational training, and the world of work • … training providers and employers at sector and local levels • … skills development and industrial, trade, technology and environmental policies • … developmentpartners • Avoid skill gaps today and drive economic and social development tomorrow.

39. Coordination is critical for success • Institutions for Coordination • Social dialogue • Inter-ministerial mechanisms • Local and sectoral skills councils • Value chains and clusters • Employment services & labour market information systems • “Deliver as One,” UN country teams

40. Countries that sustain a “virtuous circle” link education, skills, decent work by… • Preparing for future jobs • Integrate skills into national and sector • development strategies • Include skills in responses to global drivers of change: • technology • trade • climate change

41. Example: Findings on Environmental and Skills policy coordination Sound environmental policies FRANCE DENMARK GERMANY SPAIN UK KOREA CHINA COSTA RICA US ESTONIA BRAZIL AUSTRALIA INDIA S.AFRICA EGYPT Comprehensive skills policies for greening Lack of skills policies for greening PHILIPPINES THAILAND BANGLADESH INDONESIA MALI UGANDA Lack of environmental policies

42. Findings on skills for green jobs • The change is happening • Success depends on: policy coherence, targeted measures, local initiatives, collaboration of various actors and levels • Vocational education and training is catching up less efficiently than higher education • There ismuchgreaterdemand for greeningexisting jobs and occupations than for preparing for jobs in wholly new technologies.

43. Presentation • Drivers of change in labour markets for professional education and training • G20 Strategy for linking professional education and training to strong, sustainable and balanced growth • Quality assurance in professional education and training: • Quality in process and outcomes • Demand-led professional education and training • Coordination • Examples from ILO work

44. 1. A closer look atNQFs

45. NQF Research Questions • Which models of NQFs and which implementation strategies and approaches are most appropriate in which contexts? • To what extent can NQFs achieve various desired policy objectives, for example employability? • Is there, in the view of designers, managers and stakeholders of NQFs, evidence of impact, for example on productivity or improved access?

46. Involvement of Social Partners in the Design, Implementation & Evaluation of NQFs

47. Social dialogue and the role of stakeholders Mainly government-led Weak stakeholder involvement Resistance from education/training institutions «Policy borrowing » (better: adaptingratherthanadopting) Speed of “Adaptation” Top-down versus bottom-up Donor aid and “expertise” Implementation and use in the 16 countries

48. Improved communication of qualification systems: most successes although also problems Improved transparency of individual qualifications through learning outcomes: over-specification and unused Reduced mismatch between education and training and labour market: very little evidence Recognizition of prior learning: little evidence Improved access to learning opportunities: little evidence Expectations vs Evidence thus far

49. 2. Skills for trade and economic Diversification (STED) • Provide guidance for strategicskills policies • Target sectors that are key to export development, economic diversification, and job creation • Skills policies embedded in a wider strategic understanding of what each sector needs to achieve • Promote structural transformation • Gap in business capabilities • Gap in workplace skills • Learn from successful “globalizers” that early on coordinated • Investment policy • Trade policy • Technology policies, and • Training and education policies

50. Scenario Employment and Skills Modelling – quantitative & qualitative data How does STED work? • Demand Side • Labour Force Surveys: Occupational composition and training received in current workforce • Business surveys / interviews: Vacancies, satisfaction with current training system, in-house training, etc. • Collaboration with YEP on School-to-Work Transition Survey • Supply Side • Number of graduates for main occupations from relevant schools, training institutes, universities, etc. • Relevance and applicability of training provided (curricula, equipment, school-to-work transition) • General level of relevant soft-skills (e.g. languages, teamwork)