Data Analysis
Data Analysis
Data Analysis
Background Paper*
Mary Kawar
* The author is a Senior Regional Specialist on Skills and Employability at the ILO Decent Work Technical
Support Team, Regional Office for the Arab States. This Background Paper should not be reported as
representing the views of the ILO. The views expressed in this Paper are those of the author(s) and do not
necessarily represent those of the ILO or ILO policy. Background papers prepared for this event are made
available to participants to elicit comments and to further debate.
1. Introduction
Education, vocational training and lifelong learning are central pillars of employability,
employment of workers and sustainable enterprise development within the Decent
Work Agenda, and thus contribute to achieving the Millennium Development Goals to
reduce poverty. Skills development is key in stimulating a sustainable development
process and can make a contribution to facilitating the transition from the informal to
the formal economy.
Skills development is also essential to address the opportunities and challenges to meet
new demands of changing economies and new technologies in the context of
globalization. The principles and values of decent work provide guidance for the design
and delivery of skills development and are an effective way of efficiently managing
socially just transitions.
This paper builds on these ILO conclusions. It provides a broad definition of the issue of
skills development and its role in promoting economic growth and poverty reduction. It
reviews approaches to skills development within the context of international
instruments such as the Millimuim Development Goals (MDGs) and reviews trends in
the Arab Region. It then proceeds to address the key policy challenges with an
international perspective through citing examples of skills development efforts from
countries outside the Arab region. The paper concludes with key messages for the
future.
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technology, investment, trade and macroeconomic policies that generate future
employment growth.
Nevertheless, training and skills development can have multiple meanings as they
include wide ranging elements. In the current discussion it is understood in broad terms
to include:
• Initial training provides core work skills and the underpinning knowledge,
industry-based and professional competencies that facilitate the
transition into the world of work;
Core, key, generic, soft - ‘employability’ – skills – This may include communication,
application of numbers, team working, problem solving, learning to learn etc.
Higher order skills – for example: logic, reasoning, analysis, synthesis, statistics, etc.
Evidence on the benefits from adequate investments in quality education and training
firmly establishes that good education and training:
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• Enhances people’s capacities and creativity, opportunities, and
satisfaction at work;
The poverty reduction paradigm behind the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has
been moving closer to a labour-market-centered approach. This is based on the
reasoning that labour is the only asset of the poor and that a growth process that does
not create more and better jobs with adequate social protection might fail to reduce
poverty.
Given the importance of these issues, the ILO’s 2008 International Labour Conference
(ILC) general discussion on how skills development could better serve the twin
objectives of increasing the quantity of labour employed and the productivity of labour
was timely. The ILC adopted conclusions that provide a forward-looking framework for
strengthening linkages between skills, productivity, employment, development and
decent work. These conclusions underscore the principle that effective skills
development policies need to be integral components of national development
strategies in order to prepare the workforce and enterprises for new opportunities and
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preparedness to deal with change. In order to successfully link skills to productivity and
employment creation skills policies should target three objectives: matching supply to
current demand for skills; helping workers and enterprises adjust to change; and
anticipating and delivering the new and different skills that will be needed in the future.
The framework adopted in the conclusions also identifies prime responsibilities for
governments and the social partners, and establishes priorities for support from the
Office in five areas: (1) to boost skills development at the workplace and along value
chains; (2) to help manage global drivers of change; (3) to allow early identification of
current and future skills needs to feed national and sectoral development strategies; (4)
to link education, skills development, labour market entry and lifelong learning; and (5)
to promote social inclusion by extending access to education and training for those who
are disadvantaged in society.
There is also a parallel process which focuses on education, rather than skills and labour
market but which is equally important as a global mechanism that embeds an approach
this is the Education For All which is a global movement led by UNESCO, aiming to meet
the learning needs of all children, youth and adults by 2015. This was a result of 2 World
conferences1 which aimed to "universalize primary education and massively reduce
illiteracy by the end of the decade". From these conferences, the World Declaration on
Education for All (EFA) was adopted, which stressed that education is a fundamental
human right and pushed countries to strengthen their efforts to improve education in
order to ensure the basic learning needs for all were met. The resulting Framework for
Action to Meet the Basic Learning Needs established six goals one of which is lifelong
learning and which directly addresses the issue of skills development among young
people as well as adults. The EFA goals also contribute to the global pursuit of the eight
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially MDG 2 on universal primary
education and MDG 3 on gender equality in education, by 2015.
These global tools and mechanisms play a very important role in setting agendas at the
global and national levels and provide guidance in principles and approaches. They also
provide the set up for measuring progress. For example monitoring the achievement of
the MDGs has given the ILO an opportunity to develop a set of indicators and a process
to actually be able to measure decent work attainment. In relation to skills development
one of the 4 indicators is labour productivity.2
1
World Conference on Education for All, Jomtien Thailand 1990 and World Education Forum Dakar Senegal 2000.
2
Indicators for measuring progress towards full and productive employment and decent work for all is
Employment-to-population ratios Labour productivity vulnerable employment and share of working poor
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4. Overview of trends in skills development in the Arab Region
While recognizing the variety of challenges facing individual countries, the common
problem identified, especially in the Arab region is that investments in education and
training are not yet resulting in satisfactory levels of productive employment. Young
people face uncertainty in moving from education into decent work. Enterprises often
have trouble finding enough people with the skills they need to be able to expand their
business or adopt new technologies. And the opportunities for employment growth due
to industrial diversification, trade patterns, may be jeopardized because skills
development systems are not oriented towards preparing the workforce for the future.
Across the Arab region, employers often identify lack of the right skills as a barrier to
expanding business and employment. According to results of representative surveys of
firms in different regions conducted by the World Bank, this concern is more prominent
in the Arab region than elsewhere (Figure 1). One quarter of the enterprises surveyed in
the Arab region cited skills and education as a major constraint to business growth,
compared with, for example, about 5 per cent in East Asia. However, employers’ level of
concern does not appear to be matched by similar level of commitment to provide on-
the-job learning opportunities. As also shown in Figure 1, the Arab region shared with
South Asia the distinction of having the lowest incidence of formal training at the
workplace, with just under 20 per cent of firms surveyed reporting that they provide
formal training to their workers. The Arab region was the only one where more firms
cited skills and education as major constraints than helped meet that need by providing
formal training.
The concern about skills expressed in the survey is not about the quantity of young
people that receive vocational training but about the quality or relevance of that
training. This was the motivation behind a survey conducted by the ILO to trace
vocational school graduates’ experience in entering the labour market and to gauge
their employers’ satisfaction. The results showed that only 17 per cent of the employers
found the technical and vocational training (TVET) graduates able to meet expectations.
The graduates also seemed less than satisfied, with just under one in five reporting that
their training had directly led to wage employment or self-employment.
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Figure One. Employers’ perceptions of TVET and provision of workplace training3
70
% of firms surveyed
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
South Asia Arab Europe and Africa Latin East Asia
Region Central America & and Pacific
(MENA) Asia the
Caribbean
Within this context of low economic participation, low investment in training and a large
public sector where most young people prefer to be, the Arab Region has very low
productivity rates as compared to other regions in the World (Figure 2).
3
Investment Climate Capacity Enhancement Program, The World Bank Institute (Hong, 2006)
4
Tzannatos (2011) based on Trends Econometric Models”, Geneva, ILO October 2010 in Arab Development
Challenges Background Paper 2011 - Employment, Vulnerability, Social Protection and the Crisis of Arab Economic
Reforms, Khalid Abu-Ismail, Gihan Ahmed, Jennifer Olmsted and Mohamed Moheiddin
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It is important to highlight that skills development and other investments in human in
human capital comprise one of the factors necessary for productivity growth. Improving
productivity is not an end in itself, but a means to improving workers’ lives, enterprises’
sustainability, social cohesion and economic development. Continued improvement of
productivity is also a condition for competitiveness and economic growth and therefore
poverty reduction.
In this section, the principal issue of skills mismatch and persistent unsatisfactory
employment outcomes of education and training is broken down into three policy
challenges and responses with the use of good practice examples from around the
world
The primary employer of educated new labour market entrants in most Arab economies
used to be the public sector, resulting in a skills development system with few links to
the private sector. The traditional attraction of employment guarantee in the public
sector coupled with the disconnection between training provided by the education
sector and the skills required by businesses help explain this tendency. With growing
market economies in the region, the introduction of new technologies, and greater
integration into the world economy, the demand for labour in higher-productivity
private sectors is increasing, and the response by many public education systems in
Arab States is lagging behind this new demand.
All over the world, teachers and trainers face the same problem: they tend to teach
what they know instead of what their students need to learn. The involvement of
employers in the management of training institutions helps to keep them abreast of
changing technologies and ICT equipment in use at the workplace, as well as to track
what occupations and skills are declining or rising in demand.
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mechanism to facilitate a continuous process of updating information on skill
requirements. Both employers and trade unions can analyse the impact of emerging
technologies or markets on future skill needs.
Because it is not possible to prepare students for every new technological breakthrough,
the most important skill students can acquire is how to continue learning. “Learning
how to learn” includes many core skills – in communication, math, computers,
teamwork, and problem-solving, for example.5 It is very difficult to train workers in
these core competencies once they have finished their education. So it is important
that employers help education and training institutions see this level of learning as one
of their key responsibilities. Equipped with the ability to learn, workers can then more
easily profit from on-job-training and employers are therefore more likely to invest in
training workers.
Opportunities for workplace training can ease the transition from school to work for
young people. Experiential learning, such as internship and apprenticeship programmes,
enhance the classroom-based knowledge through practical application. This dual
approach may be particularly appropriate for higher-skilled occupations, which require
theoretical education and learning through doing.
Opportunities for workplace learning are important not only for young people entering
the job market but for all workers throughout their careers. Lifelong learning smoothes
the transition from declining to emerging sectors for workers and makes it easier for
enterprises to adopt new technologies.
5
ILO, Portability of skills, Committee on Employment and Social Policy, Governing Body, 298th Session,
Geneva, March 2007.
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Box Two: International experience and good practices on relevance of training:
upgrading skills of workers
In France, national and particularly regional government provided generous funding to help
enterprises train or retrain workers, often in combination with reduced working hours, but
without loss of salary, as an alternative to retrenchment. A Social Investment Fund financed
by the State. the European Social Fund (EUR 5 billion) and social partners (EUR 500 million)
was set up to finance measures which promote the employment of young people, enable
workers made redundant to re-enter the labour market, and facilitate access to vocational
training
In Canada, individual training plans range from upgrading skills in current jobs, preparing for
promotions, and even training for jobs outside the company. Workers remain employed –
helping retain aggregate demand in hard-hit communities – and acquire new skills, while
employers are able to retain staff and avoid having to train new workers when markets pick
up.
Source: ILO (2009) A skilled Workforce fo strong sutainable and balanced grouth: Proposals to G20
leaders for a Training Strategy, Pittsburg G20 Leaders meeting
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Box Three: International experience and good practices on relevance of training:
Anticipating future skills needs and stimulating growth
• Ireland’s Expert Group on Future Skill Needs (EGFSN) analyses future skill needs and
develops proposals for how to meet them, through a broad membership including
business representatives, educationalists, trade unionists, and policy makers. The
breadth of participation enables EGFSN to identify changing occupational profiles within
sectors and the demand for different occupations. EGFSN identified the key elements to
be included in a generic skills portfolio for the future: basic or fundamental skills (literacy,
numeracy, ITC); people-related skills (communication, team-working...); and
conceptual/thinking skills (collecting and organising information, problem solving, planning
and organizing, learning to learn, innovation and creative skills). They provide advice on
how to improve the awareness of job seekers of sectors where there is demand for skills
and the qualifications required.
• The wide replication of Brazil’s national training institution, SENAI, is a good measure of
success. SENAI is run by association of industries, funded by a levy on the industrial
payroll, and has sister institutions serving different sectors (agriculture, small enterprise,
service sector, etc.). Senai’s “Prospecting Model” adjusts training provision based on
analysis of take up rates of emerging technologies and of new forms of work organization.
The model generates estimates of job requirements over a five-year period based on
studies of technological and organization prospecting, tracking of emerging occupations
and monitoring demand trends for vocational training. The quality of basic education is
challenging the share of young people able to take advantage of training opportunities.
• At the core of the Republic of Korea’s sustained growth pattern lays a government-led
skill development strategy. The rapid progress in closing the productivity gap reflected an
economic development strategy based on investment and research and development.
Investment in a well-educated and highly-skilled workforce was an integral part of
encouraging adoption of new technologies. A current challenge is to avert shortages in
the higher-end vocational occupations by increasing the attractiveness of non-academic
skill development paths.
Source: ILO (2009) A skilled Workforce fo strong sutainable and balanced grouth: Proposals to G20
leaders for a Training Strategy, Pittsburg G20 Leaders meeting
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5.2 Quality of training
Higher school enrolment rates across the Arab region have coincided with declines in
quality. Many countries in the Arab region have found it difficult to maintain standards
for teaching staff or to invest in infrastructure, equipment and curriculum development.
Measures to improve the quality of education and training systems need to be
considered through social dialogue with all stakeholders. Some of the measures aiming
at improving the quality of education and the training system in Arab states that are
under consideration or being implemented as part of TVET reform include:7
Developing more effective teacher training programmes and creating incentives
for teachers and training institutions by linking a portion of teacher salaries or
institution budgets to performance;
Establishing standards for what students should know and be able to do at
various stages of the education and training system;
Enhancing the use of information technology in the educational process; and
Linking improved quality of training and employability of graduates to higher
perceptions of the value of vocational education and training.
Some countries have attributed low social esteem of vocational training to early tracking
systems that seem to curtail young people’s options instead of being the gateway to
multiple paths towards lifelong learning and decent and productive work. Some
countries in the region are moving from a tracked system to a more integrated
programme with more options for students. In Tunisia, following the 2002 education
reform, bridges have been built between general and vocational education enabling
students to move from vocational training onto the baccalaureate track and so gain
access to higher education. A similar system operates in Lebanon where vocational
secondary school can lead to a technical baccalaureate that opens to post-secondary
technical or to university education.
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Box Four: International experience and good practices on Quality of Training
Argentina focuses on improving training at the enterprise level through uses of its Tax
Credit Regime to target incentives to SMEs to invest in training workers. SMEs can finance
training projects up to the equivalent of 8 per cent of the sum of total remuneration. They can
also be reimbursed for costs incurred for skills assessment and certification in addition to
actual training – an incentive to boost recognition of skills learned informally or on-the-job.
This feature helps make the programme (begun in 2007) attractive to SMEs, who comprise
70% of beneficiaries.
Source: ILO (2008) Skills for Improved Productivity, Employment Growth and Development, International Labour
Conference, 97th Session, report V, Geneva
Across the region the large formal economy coexists with a large informal economy.
The high growth sectors with high value added requiring higher-skilled workers are not
necessarily the ones creating the majority of new jobs, while at the same time training
of poor quality traps workers in low-productivity work in the informal economy. For
example, in Egypt employment is expanding at a good pace and unemployment is
declining but major concerns remain about the quality of jobs being created as public
sector employment growth slows, the population bulge of youth starts to enter the
labour market, and the private sector does not create enough good jobs.
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Box Five: International experience and good practices on improving access to training
for specific target groups
“Second chance” programme in Spanish cities The programme accepts students and
trainees who do not have skills or want to diversify their skills. It provides technical training
and individualized support services to help young people make the transition into the labour
force. The programme is flexible to accommodate for the schedules of the trainees. This
programme is run by the European Association of Cities for Second Chance Schools and is
being implemented in four Spanish cities: Bilbao, Cadiz, Gijón and Barcelona. The
programme is divided into phases with a decreasing share of coursework and an increasing
proportion of workshops, tutoring and in-company work over a two-year period. The
programme benefits from the strong local involvement of employers in raising the success
level.
Assisting girls and young women with access to secondary education and skills
training in Bangladesh The Female Secondary School Assistance Programme, financed by
the International Development Association (IDA), supported government efforts to improve
girls’ access to secondary education (grades 6–10) in rural areas. They and their families were
given cash stipends to cover tuition and personal costs. This incentive was combined with
efforts to increase the proportion of female teachers, to invest in the provision of water and
sanitation facilities, and to improve community involvement in the incorporation of
occupational skills into the training. Overall, access to secondary education increased for girls
in Bangladesh, jumping from 1.1 million in 1991 to 3.9 million in 2005. An increasing number
of the girls enrolled come from disadvantaged or remote areas.
Source: ILO (2008) Skills for Improved Productivity, Employment Growth and Development, International Labour
Conference, 97th Session, report V, Geneva
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6. Key concluding messages
In brief, the building blocks of any skills strategy must be: solid foundation for skills and
stronger links between the worlds of education and work. This in turn requires: good
quality in childhood education; good information on changes in skill demands;
responsiveness of the education and training system to structural changes; and
recognition of skills and competences. To be effective, policy initiatives in these areas
will also need to be closely linked with economic and social policy agendas.
There is a wide agreement on a few broad guiding principles linking skills and work
Quality basic education for all is an agreed goal and an essential prerequisite for
further skills development.
Dedicated policies and measures are required to facilitate access to training and
skills development to persons and groups hindered by various barriers, including
low income, ethnic origin and disabilities.
Education and skills policies are more effective when well coordinated with
employment and social protection policies and with industrial, investment and
trade policies.
Timely information enables the world of learning to monitor the match between
the supply of skills and the demand.
The pace of change of the world of work, set by innovation, technology and
markets, is high. Keeping up with this pace of change is a continuing challenge
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for learning institutions. The active participation of employers’ and of workers’
representatives in vocational education and training institutions is essential to
bridging this gulf.
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Selected references:
European Commission. 2010. New Skills for New Jobs: Action Now; A report by the
Expert Group, February, Brussels.
ILO. 2009 A skilled Workforce fo strong sutainable and balanced grouth: Proposals to
G20 leaders for a Trainign Strategy, Pittsburg G20 Leaders meeting
ILO. 2008a. International Labour Conference (97th session, 2008), Conclusions on skills
for improved productivity, employment, growth and development, Geneva.
ILO. 2000. International Labour Conference (88th session, 2000), Conclusions concerning
human resources training and development, Geneva.
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