it is assumed that the delivery of skills and their utilisation in formal and informal labour mar... more it is assumed that the delivery of skills and their utilisation in formal and informal labour markets will be different. These differences may well be substantial in terms of institutional variety, ministry responsibility, political priority and the nature of the enterprise environment. In other words, there will be institutional and delivery-context particularity; but it is anticipated that there will be comparability across the different research sites both because of the focus upon the pathways available to trainees from poor families, and because of the shared concern to follow these needy young people from sites of skill acquisition to sites of skill utilisation. There will also be a degree of methodological comparability, while again allowing for some differences due to context and to the research skills of different country teams. The following pages sketch the current policy context of skills acquisition in Ghana, and point to some preliminary lessons learned from a first two weeks of researching this theme in Southern Ghana. They then discuss the main research question and research objectives under this strand. Four possible stages of the work are proposed, and a detailed fieldguide is added for the first two stages which have already been applied in the current research. Provisional outlines for the second two stages are also included. The Particularity of the Ghanaian Context By good fortune, policies for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and for youth employment have been of priority concern to national policy-makers and to development partners during 2006. Parliament just passed on 27 th July 2006 a Bill to establish a Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET), which has been almost 10 years in the making. Its remit is to formulate national policies for skills development across the broad spectrum of formal, informal and non-formal education. Its reach will cover the formal and informal economies. It will seek to rationalise the assessment and certification systems for skill. Echoing our research strand on skills, COTVET is mandated to secure 'quality in the delivery of and ensure equity in access to' TVET (GoG 2006b: 3). A policy framework for TVET has been consulted upon and finessed over this same period of 10 years, and it has been agreed that the reformed system will be 'demand-driven' and 'competency-based' in order to help close the currently huge gap between skill acquisition and the employment demands of the world of work. There are three imperatives that are keenly felt to have driven this focus on skill: the 'democratic imperative' requires that education and training opportunities should be diversified to serve the needs of all sections of the population; the 'poverty reduction
No abstract is available for this item. ... To our knowledge, this item is not available for down... more No abstract is available for this item. ... To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options: 1. Check below under "Related research" whether another version of this item is available online. 2. Check on the ...
Journal of international cooperation in education, 1998
An analysis of changes in international development cooperation in education is inseparable from ... more An analysis of changes in international development cooperation in education is inseparable from the more general changes in development assistance that have been becoming evident in the mid to late 1990s. The purpose of this article is to underline just how significant some of these tendencies may potentially be, and how they have the possibility to alter out of all recognition the shape of the aided educational universe as it is presently known. On the other hand, it seems entirely possible that some of these new trends may remain more at the level of rhetoric rather than implementation, with the result that the older patterns of relationship between donor and recipient will continue. The article sets out some of the main elements of potential change in international cooperation, looking first at these in the North, and then at their implications for the South. The sources of these changes are not to be found in a single text on cooperation, or in the proposals of a single agency....
Set within the discourse of South-South Cooperation, the article seeks to disentangle some of the... more Set within the discourse of South-South Cooperation, the article seeks to disentangle some of the essential history of university partnerships, before looking in more detail at the kind of partnerships associated with China’s involvement with African universities. In reviewing China-Africa university partnerships, it pays attention to some of the history of this modality, as well as looking briefly at two more recent manifestations, the Confucius Institute partnerships between China and Africa and the 20+20 partnership between twenty African institutions of higher education and twenty counterparts in Mainland China.
UNESCO’s 2012 Global Monitoring Report [GMR], the annual report that assesses progress toward the... more UNESCO’s 2012 Global Monitoring Report [GMR], the annual report that assesses progress toward the six goals of Education for All established at the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000, will focus for the first time in 2012 on the topic of skills development in overcoming social disadvantage. It goes beyond skills acquired in formal education to examine the impact and lessons from other sources of skills that prepare youth and adults for the world of work ranging from informal learning on the job, apprenticeship and enterprise-based training, to learning off the job in government and non-governmental training institutions. In this paper, the author presents eight proposals derived from several bodies of work on skills development which have been completed in the last three years. These proposals seek to avoid merely summarizing this work, but to extract from it, for this discussion on skills development, some new ways of thinking about the topic, some priority areas and neglected ...
Like many other elements of the new aid architecture, the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda ... more Like many other elements of the new aid architecture, the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) have become part of the stock-in-trade of the donor discourse. A nod in the direction of the Paris Declaration or the AAA has become mandatory, even when some aid donors may be continuing business-as-usual. The Paris Declaration has become a shorthand term for a whole series of proposed reforms in the aid industry, including greater country ownership, aid alignment with national policies, and more harmonisation amongst the multitude of 'development partners'. 1 This is a particularly critical moment to see where the reform of aid has reached. Many traditional donors have a very large domestic financial crisis on their hands, whose scale dwarfs the sums they have allocated to foreign aid in the past. This global financial crisis is also a direct threat to the many promises of rich nations dramatically to increase their foreign aid. On the other hand, many so-called emerging economies, such as China, India and Brazil, are considering the ways they can use their very large foreign exchange reserves; and development assistance is one option for the strategic use of some of their resources. Currently, however, their approach to international cooperation with poorer countries seems to be proceeding on a very different trajectory to traditional donors. Finally, the aid business has come in for a serious critique from a whole range of analysts, including for example: Clark Gibson et al.
This outline review of issues for the UNESCO TVET strategy covers the crucial normative dimension... more This outline review of issues for the UNESCO TVET strategy covers the crucial normative dimension of skills, capacities and qualifications; the role of new upstream policy analytic work on skills development; the concerns with capacity, critical mass and a skills development community of practice; the statistical challenge of skills development data; and the relation of these suggestions to the current draft of UNESCO’s Programme and Budget for 2010-2011.
Purpose: The article discusses the relationship between the human resource traditions of the Foru... more Purpose: The article discusses the relationship between the human resource traditions of the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and those supported by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and in particular by the Education Action Plan for the Belt and Road Initiative, issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE) in 2016. Design/Approach/Methods: The article draws upon discourse analysis of both the FOCAC VI and VII documents and the key MOE 2016 Action Plan. Findings: Given the trans-continental coverage of the BRI, it is suggested that its ambitious pledges in respect of education and human resource development (HRD) actually complement or even exceed the commitments made by FOCAC VI and VII. Originality/Value: This is the first article explicitly to compare the HRD pledges of FOCAC with those associated with BRI’s Education Action Plan.
There has been a long tradition of demonstrating formal education's direct relationship with many... more There has been a long tradition of demonstrating formal education's direct relationship with many dimensions of development, including increased productivity, health, reduced mortality, population control etc. There has also been a literature looking particularly at the 'democratic dividend' from education, both through the lens of global citizenship as well as more generally through education's influence on political participation. The successful securing of global citizenship education (GCE) within the ambitions of Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 in September 2015 was a further milestone in connecting social development with 'democracy, good governance and the rule of law'. Accordingly, there are many telling examples of how GCE can be rolled out in school curricula, through many different school subjects, across the world. Arguably, however, the formal school system is far from being the only location where messages about citizenship, whether global, national or local, can be found. During the period, 2016-2019 in the USA and UK, with the huge rise in smart-phone usage worldwide , it has become apparent that there can be massive micro-targeting, through global platforms, of selected populations with multiple messages about citizenship, national identity, job security, migration threats, potential terrorism and a great deal else. Unlike the citizenship curricula and textbooks of formal schools which are easily accessible, a great deal of this new social media messaging is relatively inaccessible, using procedures that are a long way from traditional electioneering. They are also much less financially accountable, but it is clear that vast sums are now being spent on social media advertising, presenting an existential threat to democracy. The role and level of education in reacting critically to social media campaigning will need to be revisited in this new world of campaigning around global and national citizenship. It is no longer a discussion about education's positive relationship with increased political participation, but whether current education levels are actually capable of dealing with the current threats to citizenship, at global, national and local levels.
Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 2016
International and Development Studies in Geneva. His current research interests cover the Global ... more International and Development Studies in Geneva. His current research interests cover the Global Governance of Education and Training as well as Technical and Vocational Skills Development. Joost Monks is the Managing Director of NORRAG. He is in charge of the strategic development and management of the Network. His research interests lie in Global Governance of Education and Training, in particular the BRICS as emerging actors, and the NORRAG programme of work on Urban Violence, Youth and Education.
Journal of International and Comparative Education, 2014
This paper examines the implications of the post-2015 education agenda from an aid perspective. I... more This paper examines the implications of the post-2015 education agenda from an aid perspective. It does so by analysing how Western European and North American countries have been referred to in the main strands of the post-2015 literature relating to education; how current priorities in the post-2015 education proposals might affect future development aid; how the donors have responded to Education for All (EFA) and the education-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) since 2000; how the changing aid landscape and wider range of aid providers could impact on the financing of education post-2015; and finally how there could be improved allocative efficiency in development assistance.
Since its launch in 1985, NORRAG has established itself as a broad-based multi-constituency netwo... more Since its launch in 1985, NORRAG has established itself as a broad-based multi-constituency network of researchers, policymakers, NGOs and consultants that aims to intermediate between research and policy, offering and producing neutral knowledge and critical analysis of complex international education issues. Its main objectives are: Collection, critical analysis, and synthesis of research Dissemination of just-in-time information and knowledge Advocacy of critical analysis to governments, NGOs and other organizations Cooperation with other groups, particularly in the Global South, in order to share information, carry out joint programmes, join efforts in advocacy and strengthen networks NORRAG's current programme focuses on the following themes: Education and TVSD in the post-2015 and beyond Agenda Technical and vocational skills development policies Knowledge production, research, data, results and evidence for policy making Education and training in contexts ...
... Kenneth King taught in the Department of History in Nairobi University from 1968 to 1971, and... more ... Kenneth King taught in the Department of History in Nairobi University from 1968 to 1971, and is now attached to the Centre of African Studies ... He is the author of Pan-Africanism and Education, and has edited the Autobiography of Harry Thuku and Kenya Historical Biographies. ...
This sets out a useful framework which helps to accommodate the variety of research approaches th... more This sets out a useful framework which helps to accommodate the variety of research approaches that succeed it; it indicates also the range of work that lies ahead for researchers in the 1980s.
it is assumed that the delivery of skills and their utilisation in formal and informal labour mar... more it is assumed that the delivery of skills and their utilisation in formal and informal labour markets will be different. These differences may well be substantial in terms of institutional variety, ministry responsibility, political priority and the nature of the enterprise environment. In other words, there will be institutional and delivery-context particularity; but it is anticipated that there will be comparability across the different research sites both because of the focus upon the pathways available to trainees from poor families, and because of the shared concern to follow these needy young people from sites of skill acquisition to sites of skill utilisation. There will also be a degree of methodological comparability, while again allowing for some differences due to context and to the research skills of different country teams. The following pages sketch the current policy context of skills acquisition in Ghana, and point to some preliminary lessons learned from a first two weeks of researching this theme in Southern Ghana. They then discuss the main research question and research objectives under this strand. Four possible stages of the work are proposed, and a detailed fieldguide is added for the first two stages which have already been applied in the current research. Provisional outlines for the second two stages are also included. The Particularity of the Ghanaian Context By good fortune, policies for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and for youth employment have been of priority concern to national policy-makers and to development partners during 2006. Parliament just passed on 27 th July 2006 a Bill to establish a Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET), which has been almost 10 years in the making. Its remit is to formulate national policies for skills development across the broad spectrum of formal, informal and non-formal education. Its reach will cover the formal and informal economies. It will seek to rationalise the assessment and certification systems for skill. Echoing our research strand on skills, COTVET is mandated to secure 'quality in the delivery of and ensure equity in access to' TVET (GoG 2006b: 3). A policy framework for TVET has been consulted upon and finessed over this same period of 10 years, and it has been agreed that the reformed system will be 'demand-driven' and 'competency-based' in order to help close the currently huge gap between skill acquisition and the employment demands of the world of work. There are three imperatives that are keenly felt to have driven this focus on skill: the 'democratic imperative' requires that education and training opportunities should be diversified to serve the needs of all sections of the population; the 'poverty reduction
No abstract is available for this item. ... To our knowledge, this item is not available for down... more No abstract is available for this item. ... To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options: 1. Check below under "Related research" whether another version of this item is available online. 2. Check on the ...
Journal of international cooperation in education, 1998
An analysis of changes in international development cooperation in education is inseparable from ... more An analysis of changes in international development cooperation in education is inseparable from the more general changes in development assistance that have been becoming evident in the mid to late 1990s. The purpose of this article is to underline just how significant some of these tendencies may potentially be, and how they have the possibility to alter out of all recognition the shape of the aided educational universe as it is presently known. On the other hand, it seems entirely possible that some of these new trends may remain more at the level of rhetoric rather than implementation, with the result that the older patterns of relationship between donor and recipient will continue. The article sets out some of the main elements of potential change in international cooperation, looking first at these in the North, and then at their implications for the South. The sources of these changes are not to be found in a single text on cooperation, or in the proposals of a single agency....
Set within the discourse of South-South Cooperation, the article seeks to disentangle some of the... more Set within the discourse of South-South Cooperation, the article seeks to disentangle some of the essential history of university partnerships, before looking in more detail at the kind of partnerships associated with China’s involvement with African universities. In reviewing China-Africa university partnerships, it pays attention to some of the history of this modality, as well as looking briefly at two more recent manifestations, the Confucius Institute partnerships between China and Africa and the 20+20 partnership between twenty African institutions of higher education and twenty counterparts in Mainland China.
UNESCO’s 2012 Global Monitoring Report [GMR], the annual report that assesses progress toward the... more UNESCO’s 2012 Global Monitoring Report [GMR], the annual report that assesses progress toward the six goals of Education for All established at the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000, will focus for the first time in 2012 on the topic of skills development in overcoming social disadvantage. It goes beyond skills acquired in formal education to examine the impact and lessons from other sources of skills that prepare youth and adults for the world of work ranging from informal learning on the job, apprenticeship and enterprise-based training, to learning off the job in government and non-governmental training institutions. In this paper, the author presents eight proposals derived from several bodies of work on skills development which have been completed in the last three years. These proposals seek to avoid merely summarizing this work, but to extract from it, for this discussion on skills development, some new ways of thinking about the topic, some priority areas and neglected ...
Like many other elements of the new aid architecture, the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda ... more Like many other elements of the new aid architecture, the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) have become part of the stock-in-trade of the donor discourse. A nod in the direction of the Paris Declaration or the AAA has become mandatory, even when some aid donors may be continuing business-as-usual. The Paris Declaration has become a shorthand term for a whole series of proposed reforms in the aid industry, including greater country ownership, aid alignment with national policies, and more harmonisation amongst the multitude of 'development partners'. 1 This is a particularly critical moment to see where the reform of aid has reached. Many traditional donors have a very large domestic financial crisis on their hands, whose scale dwarfs the sums they have allocated to foreign aid in the past. This global financial crisis is also a direct threat to the many promises of rich nations dramatically to increase their foreign aid. On the other hand, many so-called emerging economies, such as China, India and Brazil, are considering the ways they can use their very large foreign exchange reserves; and development assistance is one option for the strategic use of some of their resources. Currently, however, their approach to international cooperation with poorer countries seems to be proceeding on a very different trajectory to traditional donors. Finally, the aid business has come in for a serious critique from a whole range of analysts, including for example: Clark Gibson et al.
This outline review of issues for the UNESCO TVET strategy covers the crucial normative dimension... more This outline review of issues for the UNESCO TVET strategy covers the crucial normative dimension of skills, capacities and qualifications; the role of new upstream policy analytic work on skills development; the concerns with capacity, critical mass and a skills development community of practice; the statistical challenge of skills development data; and the relation of these suggestions to the current draft of UNESCO’s Programme and Budget for 2010-2011.
Purpose: The article discusses the relationship between the human resource traditions of the Foru... more Purpose: The article discusses the relationship between the human resource traditions of the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and those supported by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and in particular by the Education Action Plan for the Belt and Road Initiative, issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE) in 2016. Design/Approach/Methods: The article draws upon discourse analysis of both the FOCAC VI and VII documents and the key MOE 2016 Action Plan. Findings: Given the trans-continental coverage of the BRI, it is suggested that its ambitious pledges in respect of education and human resource development (HRD) actually complement or even exceed the commitments made by FOCAC VI and VII. Originality/Value: This is the first article explicitly to compare the HRD pledges of FOCAC with those associated with BRI’s Education Action Plan.
There has been a long tradition of demonstrating formal education's direct relationship with many... more There has been a long tradition of demonstrating formal education's direct relationship with many dimensions of development, including increased productivity, health, reduced mortality, population control etc. There has also been a literature looking particularly at the 'democratic dividend' from education, both through the lens of global citizenship as well as more generally through education's influence on political participation. The successful securing of global citizenship education (GCE) within the ambitions of Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 in September 2015 was a further milestone in connecting social development with 'democracy, good governance and the rule of law'. Accordingly, there are many telling examples of how GCE can be rolled out in school curricula, through many different school subjects, across the world. Arguably, however, the formal school system is far from being the only location where messages about citizenship, whether global, national or local, can be found. During the period, 2016-2019 in the USA and UK, with the huge rise in smart-phone usage worldwide , it has become apparent that there can be massive micro-targeting, through global platforms, of selected populations with multiple messages about citizenship, national identity, job security, migration threats, potential terrorism and a great deal else. Unlike the citizenship curricula and textbooks of formal schools which are easily accessible, a great deal of this new social media messaging is relatively inaccessible, using procedures that are a long way from traditional electioneering. They are also much less financially accountable, but it is clear that vast sums are now being spent on social media advertising, presenting an existential threat to democracy. The role and level of education in reacting critically to social media campaigning will need to be revisited in this new world of campaigning around global and national citizenship. It is no longer a discussion about education's positive relationship with increased political participation, but whether current education levels are actually capable of dealing with the current threats to citizenship, at global, national and local levels.
Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 2016
International and Development Studies in Geneva. His current research interests cover the Global ... more International and Development Studies in Geneva. His current research interests cover the Global Governance of Education and Training as well as Technical and Vocational Skills Development. Joost Monks is the Managing Director of NORRAG. He is in charge of the strategic development and management of the Network. His research interests lie in Global Governance of Education and Training, in particular the BRICS as emerging actors, and the NORRAG programme of work on Urban Violence, Youth and Education.
Journal of International and Comparative Education, 2014
This paper examines the implications of the post-2015 education agenda from an aid perspective. I... more This paper examines the implications of the post-2015 education agenda from an aid perspective. It does so by analysing how Western European and North American countries have been referred to in the main strands of the post-2015 literature relating to education; how current priorities in the post-2015 education proposals might affect future development aid; how the donors have responded to Education for All (EFA) and the education-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) since 2000; how the changing aid landscape and wider range of aid providers could impact on the financing of education post-2015; and finally how there could be improved allocative efficiency in development assistance.
Since its launch in 1985, NORRAG has established itself as a broad-based multi-constituency netwo... more Since its launch in 1985, NORRAG has established itself as a broad-based multi-constituency network of researchers, policymakers, NGOs and consultants that aims to intermediate between research and policy, offering and producing neutral knowledge and critical analysis of complex international education issues. Its main objectives are: Collection, critical analysis, and synthesis of research Dissemination of just-in-time information and knowledge Advocacy of critical analysis to governments, NGOs and other organizations Cooperation with other groups, particularly in the Global South, in order to share information, carry out joint programmes, join efforts in advocacy and strengthen networks NORRAG's current programme focuses on the following themes: Education and TVSD in the post-2015 and beyond Agenda Technical and vocational skills development policies Knowledge production, research, data, results and evidence for policy making Education and training in contexts ...
... Kenneth King taught in the Department of History in Nairobi University from 1968 to 1971, and... more ... Kenneth King taught in the Department of History in Nairobi University from 1968 to 1971, and is now attached to the Centre of African Studies ... He is the author of Pan-Africanism and Education, and has edited the Autobiography of Harry Thuku and Kenya Historical Biographies. ...
This sets out a useful framework which helps to accommodate the variety of research approaches th... more This sets out a useful framework which helps to accommodate the variety of research approaches that succeed it; it indicates also the range of work that lies ahead for researchers in the 1980s.
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