Vocational education and training - VET

Our latest research reveals that VET qualifications enable graduates to be more job ready compared to higher education qualifications. 

This report explores occupations that can be entered into via either a vocational education and training (VET) pathway or a higher education pathway. It examines whether these individuals do the same job tasks and roles, if there are differences in how well the qualifications prepare them for the role and whether they have the same occupation and employment outcomes, such as salary and career pathways.

This working paper undertakes a meta study on informal apprenticeship in developing countries. It compares the findings of country-level research conducted by the ILO and others in the past 15 years to shed more light on apprenticeship systems in the informal economy. It discusses the features and practices of informal apprenticeship systems, their responsiveness to rights at work, and the effectiveness of such systems along criteria such as dropouts, training quality, and transitions to employment. The analysis is complemented by a selected number of country case studies that describe and assess the policies and programmes that were introduced during past years to strengthen and upgrade apprenticeship systems in the informal economy. The findings aim to improve understanding of this complex, heterogenous, yet self-sustained training system in the informal economy for evidence-based discussions and policy dialogue between ILO constituents and beyond.

The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of the teaching strategies used by lecturers in Indonesia and Malaysia during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the figure of the highest skilled workers of Industry 4.0, the need of protection and more freedom to operate in the labour market, and the possible solution to this issue.

The aim of this research was to identify world-class apprenticeship standards and to make suggestions as to how these could be applied to the English system. By ‘world class’ we mean that the standards described here are acknowledged to be among the best in the world.

Context: International comparative research on Vocational Education and Training (VET) is gaining importance, as global cooperation and mutual learning in VET grows.  However, it is characterized by a high degree of complexity, due on one hand, to the heterogeneity of the VET sector, and on the other hand to the unique challenges of international comparisons.  In addition, comparative research projects are increasingly conducted in the form of cross-border collaborations, which have their own particular organizational and methodological considerations, opportunities, and challenges. This paper presents an example of a cooperative research process, aimed at investigating the complex phenomenon of the competence-based approach in Russian and Chinese VET. In providing an example of developing an instrument for curriculum analysis and comparison, we discuss and reflect on the methodological and organizational peculiarities and challenges of the research process conducted collaboratively by an international team. 

Method: The instrument for analysis and comparison of curricular documents, was developed in an iterative multi-stage process, combining deductive and inductive steps. The embeddedness of the elements of a competence-based approach in curricular documents is investigated, using qualitative content analysis. To develop a coding frame, we started with a comprehensive partially systematic literature review of international, Russian and Chinese discourses on competence-based curricula. The frame was built on the selected model of competence-based education, and on accumulated results of the literature analysis of national discourses. Furthermore, during the first coding process, an iterative adaptation of the developed instrument took place.

Results: The result of this process was the development of an analysis instrument which, on the one hand, is well-adapted to each national context and, on the other hand, allows a comparison of results along the same dimensions of analysis, in our case, elements of the competence-based approach in curriculum. 

Conclusion: Developing an analysis framework for a cross-cultural comparative investigation of such a diffuse and heterogeneous construct as the competence-based approach, can pose a methodological challenge for an international team of researchers. However, an effective application of own team resources such as proficiency in different languages, insider and outsider perspectives, along with continuous intensive communication and a flexible, iterative research process, allows development of a well-adapted analysis instrument for international comparison.

Every three years, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is conducted.

It is the most extensive and widely accepted measure of academic proficiency among lower secondary school students around the world.

In the most recent tests, Canada did comparatively well internationally. But results in all three disciplines — reading, math and science — have declined right across the country.

A new study published by the Fraser Institute today finds that over the twelve most recent testing years:

• Canada dropped 7 points in reading while all other G7 countries made gains.
• Canada dropped 17 points in science while the USA gained 14 over the same period. 
• Canada dropped 15 points in math while four G7 countries, including the UK and USA, made an average gain of 10 points.

In the context of considerable labour market change, many adults in Canada are being challenged to consider alternative career paths, and to upskill or retrain. Career guidance has the potential to facilitate employment transitions: not only from the education system to the labour market, but also from unemployment to employment, and from declining to growing sectors. This study assesses the career guidance services that are available for adults in Canada, and puts them into an international perspective. New survey data show that Canada performs well in an OECD comparison with respect to the quality of career guidance, but there is room to strengthen the provision and accessibility of services. The report provides concrete recommendations to encourage greater and more inclusive use of adult career guidance, and to promote high-quality service provision.

The findings indicate that there are differences in knowledge work identified in two groups of workers, nonetheless, support the conclusion that knowledge works are equally crucial for skilled workers to optimise their role. The findings of this study imply that the role of the two groups of workers could not be described interchangeably within a similar working-class and these findings could be used to create clear distinction in the definition and descriptions of work practices of knowledge and skilled workers within the TVET sectors.

VET (vocational education and training) is a highly complex, multidimensional worldwide phenomenon with diverse structures. Additionally, very different actors define the functions of a national (or even a regional) VET system. The paper contributes to a better understanding of the policy frameworks and current states of such systems. Therefore, we focus on selected VET systems in order to understand their specifics and thus, their market conditions. A qualitative approach is used to answer the research question regarding which conditions create or support market-based opportunities for the provision of commercial vocational training services. We find that the liberalism and deregulation of the VET sectors, as well as the marketisation of VET practices, lead to incentives to internationalise VET offers. Thinking in terms of skills, the kind of education system does not play a role. This is the case in liberal market-driven VET approaches (here, the UK, the USA and Australia) and is mirrored in the micro-analysis categories of curricula, learning location, content, and learning process.

le Cee étudie l'action des pouvoirs publics et des acteurs sociaux sur l'évolution de l'emploi (évolutions technologiques, organisation du travail, marché du travail…).