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International aid to education is changing and this book examines some of the new directions regarding international development cooperation, globalisation, international funding and technical-assistance agencies, as well as national responses to changes in international development cooperation. Contributing authors represent a cross-section of leading scholars and key officials in international funding agencies and in national bodies in the North and in the South.

Part one is entitled 'Development co-operation in the context of globalization' and contains the following chapters: The new boundaries of international development co-operation / Jacques Forster; The future of international aid to education: a personal reflection / Aklilu Habte; Aid, international co-operation and globalization: trends in the field of education / Michel Carton; Education, development and assistance: the challenge of the new millennium / Simon McGrath. Part two is entitled 'New approaches to development co-operation among international funding and technical-assistance agencies' and contains the following chapters: Educational multilateralism at a crossroads / Karen Mundy; Education and development co-operation: a UNESCO perspective / Wyn Courtney; Development aid in education: a personal view / Stephen P. Heyneman; The Europeanization of aid / Wolfgang Gmelin; Education and geopolitical change in Africa: a case for partnership / Lennart Wohlgemuth; Changing frameworks and practices: the new Department for International Development of the United Kingdom / Myra Harrison; Redefining strategies of assistance: recent trends in Japanese assistance to education in Africa / Yumiko Yokozeki and Nobuhide Sawamura; Non-governmental organizations as partners in Africa: a cultural analysis of North-South relations / Juliet Elu and Kingsley Banya.

Part three is entitled 'New directions for aid practice: constraints and opportunities' and contains the following chapters: Aid co-ordination through the other end of the telescope / Henry Kaluba and Peter Williams; Co-ordination of aid to education at the country level: some experiences and lessons from the United Republic of Tanzania in the 1990s / Lene Buchert; Aid co-ordination in theory and practice: a case study of Botswana and Namibia / Ulla Kann. Part four is entitled 'National responses to changes in international development co-operation' and contains the following chapters: Aid to South African education: a case of the reluctant recipient? / Kenneth King; Educational policies, change programmes and international co-operation: the case of Chile / Cristian Cox and Beatrice Avalos; Issues amidst assistance: foreign aid to education in China / Kai-ming Cheng; Development assistance to primary education in India: transformation of enthusiastic donors and reluctant recipients / Jandhyala B. G. Tilak. Show less

The South African workforce is characterised by racial, gender, occupational and sectoral unevenness in the distribution of skills, employment and training opportunities. This article considers how enterprise training in South Africa contributes to ameliorating, sustaining or exacerbating such inequalities. Using data from the National Skills Survey of 2003, it explains these features with reference to a tension between the distorted apartheid training legacy and the inherent unevenness of training-related policy implementation after 1994. Unevenness will be a feature of any national workplace training environment and is not necessarily a sign of dysfunction. In South Africa, unevenness in the pattern of access to training opportunities may reflect legitimate treatment of workers who were previously disadvantaged.

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After its first year of operations, TAFE GLOBAL, the international arm of TAFE NSW, has made some definite inroads in overseas markets. More than 4,200 students are now undertaking TAFE NSW courses internationally. TAFE GLOBAL's offshore programs make use of a range of delivery methods, including distance delivery, twinning and face-to-face delivery by a mix of Australian and local teachers. TAFE GLOBAL has won a number of significant aid projects in countries such as Fiji, the Philippines and South Africa. It was able to successfully negotiate a contract to supply consulting services to assist with the planning of the 2004 Athens Olympic and Paralympic Games. Show less

Organised by the International Labour Organization in partnership with Silatech, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab and the Arab Urban Development Institute, the symposium, held on 6-8 March 2014 in Doha, brought together policy makers and practitioners with academics and researchers to present and discuss the evidence base for 'what works' in increasing the employment and productivity of youth. Discussants shared recent findings of impact evaluations from the Middle East and North Africa region and other developing regions. Participants were also introduced to evidence from systematic and literature reviews which are important for evidence based policy creation. This working paper was one of the background documents to the symposium.

Youth unemployment in South Africa is high, differs substantially by race group and is increasing. A wage subsidy is one type of intervention which aims to reduce youth unemployment by providing a subsidy to firms which covers part of the cost of employing young people. The outline of a youth employment incentive was provided by the National Treasury in 2011. In order to understand how a wage subsidy may affect youth unemployment it is useful to know how South African young people and firms may react to a wage subsidy. A randomised control trial (RCT) is one way to investigate this.

This paper discusses the results from an RCT of a hiring voucher among young Africans. It specifically investigates whether the allocation of a wage subsidy voucher to a group of young people affected their employment probabilities in the short-term (one year after allocation) and one year later once the eligibility for the voucher had lapsed. The key finding of the paper is that those who were allocated a wage subsidy voucher were more likely to be in wage employment both one year and two years after allocation. The impact of the voucher thus persisted even after it was no longer valid. The magnitude of these effects was relatively large - those in the voucher group were 7.4 percentage points (approximately 25 per cent) more likely to be in wage employment one year after allocation and of similar magnitude two years later.

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Despite the explosive growth in the number of people receiving disability benefits in South Africa, very little is known about the labour supply effects of the disability grant (DG). This study investigates the impact of disability grant receipt on labour force participation. Consideration is given to potential bias that may arise from unobserved confounding factors. The study utilises data drawn from the 2007 wave of the General Household Survey (GHS) and implements a three-step methodology in a comparative perspective. Firstly, a standard probit regression of labour force participation is applied, followed by an instrumental variable regression to correct for possible endogeneity of DG take up. Finally, the sensitivity and robustness of the results is checked by implementing a variety of propensity score matching techniques. The results overall suggest that the DG receipt has substantial work disincentive effects, but the magnitude of the effect differs between parametric and non-parametric estimators.

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In 2000, South Africa implemented a levy-grant policy (Skills Development Levies Act, 1999) to give an incentive for workplace training across private and public sector workplaces alike, but the impact of the levy-grant scheme in the public sector was restricted by financial and management processes unique to that environment. This article shows how factors not anticipated by the legislation strongly influenced the impact of the levy-grant scheme. For example, non-training-specific policies intended to govern the behaviour of line managers strongly influenced training activity. In the future, leveraging training potential in the South African public service requires concerted intergovernmental collaboration across the line function boundaries between labour and the public service.

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The purpose of this article was to examine social marketing strategies Adult Education and Training (AET) centres in South Africa use during entrepreneurship training programmes. The sample was drawn from AET centres of the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province. The study used the qualitative approach (semi-structured interviews) to collect data from adult trainees and centre managers. However, the broader study upon which this article is based utilised mixed research methods, that is, quantitative and qualitative approaches.

The main findings of the study reveal that the social marketing strategies that the AET centres apply to turn unemployed adults into entrepreneurs entails mobilising external stakeholders to create opportunities for trainees to access financial and non-financial support for the start-up and growth of micro-enterprises. The study tentatively concludes that social marketing strategies are effective tools AET centres can use to turn unemployed adults into entrepreneurs and facilitate socio-economic transformation in impoverished communities. As a practical implication for policy, there is need for policymakers at local and national levels to embrace social marketing to enhance the effectiveness of entrepreneurship training for poverty reduction among unemployed and vulnerable population groups.

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Skills for Prosperity (S4P) supports education and skills development across Brazil, Egypt, Kenya, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa and the Philippines. S4P's mission is to ensure that partner countries have a diverse workforce with skills for the future, which will drive sustainable and inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction. To this end, the focus is on increasing the quality, relevance, equity and affordability of higher education (HE), technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and English language teaching (ELT), working at the individual, institutional and policy levels. Strong emphasis is placed on supporting access to education and skills development for marginalised groups, especially young women, people with disabilities, ethnic minorities and indigenous groups. The S4P Hub, which is managed by a Palladium-led consortium, oversees the delivery of the programme on behalf of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), working with implementing partners in each country.

S4P Hub commissioned this paper to consider how key development partners approach investing in TVET and skills. The outputs from this research will hopefully inform future donor programming and investment in TVET and wider skills development in lower and middle-income countries. This paper draws on the observations and recommendations of experts in TVET and skills development and presents evidence from national programmes of TVET reform. The paper pays particular attention to how development partners conceptualise and approach investments in TVET and skills systems and on the learnings from their experience of reforming TVET and skill systems in development settings. In its widest sense, the paper takes an explorative approach to consider what evidence can be shared to demonstrate and ensure that investing in TVET is good value for money. The paper highlights numerous models, approaches and tools that can be used to increase the impact of investments in TVET and skills and ensure that skills issues can be addressed in a coordinated way at national, sectoral and local levels. More effective partnerships and enhanced support to national partners must remain a priority, and investments must continue to address systemic issues and build system capacity at the same time as addressing priority economic sectors and value chains.

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The current dominant account of aid to education focuses on schooling and official development assistance and talks in terms of policy work, donor harmonisation and, increasingly, budgetary support. However, this approach is limited in a number of ways. The return of international policy interest in vocational education provides an opportunity to take a look at whether the dominant paradigm is really a solution in all cases. Through an exploration of the evolution of the South African further education and training, this paper illustrates the importance of looking at where a country wants and does not want to learn from. It points to the need to gaze beyond official development assistance to examine the way that dimensions such as cultural diplomacy, commercial interests and solidarity play a role in policy learning. It also draws attention to the often-varied national institutional resources for learning and the complex interplay of individuals, both local and foreign, in the learning process. Finally, it hints that many apparently minor instruments such as exile, study abroad and structured exchange visits may contribute to a far more complex web of policy-related learning than is captured in conventional accounts of policy borrowing/learning that focus on the official level. It may be that a more meaningful discussion of the effectiveness of international cooperation, rather than the more narrow notion of aid, would ensue if such perspectives were taken on board.

Published abstract reprinted from 'International journal of educational development', copyright 2010, with permission from Elsevier. Show less

The aim of this study was to develop the profile and competencies of a harmonised curriculum for a multi-country regional sector-specific higher education programme. The study, which was based on a case study of Renewable Energy involving six countries in Southern Africa, was based on established methodologies proposed by previous studies on harmonisation and profiling of higher education programmes. The study uses a general curriculum development approach leading to the definition of generic and specific competencies and feeding into a learning taxonomy to create alignment with specific learning outcomes at the intended qualification level. However, the approach extends the harmonisation concept to include industrialisation potential, which is crucial in the developing-country context. This allows for the exploitation of shared resources in sector-specific technology areas and supports the development of regional standards on technology and practice, as part of developing a sustainable regional economic sector. Twenty two competencies, encompassing both generic and specific competencies, were defined. These competencies were grouped into six key competence areas, and later transformed into four clusters of competencies: core competencies, hard skills, soft skills and attitudes. These four clusters were then placed on a planetary system to represent the meta-profile for the qualification, which forms the framework for the future design of learning materials for the qualification.

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