Introduction
Arguments against vocationalisation
Vocational education
Pre-vocational education
Enterprise education
The education system
Conclusions on education and the informal sector
In this chapter we shall consider how the formal education system does currently impact upon the informal sector, and how in future it might have greater influence. As was argued above, the formal education system has been associated in the public mind with very different outcomes from those that have recently exercised policy makers concerned with the informal sector. Nonetheless, the reform processes in the formal education system can be of great relevance to the informal sector, even when they are not explicitly connected to the encouragement of self-employment.
Concerns about the lack of articulation between school and work have been a common theme of debates about educational reform in all countries where there has been a substantial amount of youth unemployment. Traditionally, the concern has been with how the education system could better prepare students for employment.
The 1980s saw a changing perspective towards education in many OECD countries. A realisation developed that education must be more relevant to the modern world of work in which problem-solving and flexibility in the face of technological change and intensified, global competition are the new desired attributes of the good worker. These tendencies have been accentuated in the early 1990s as the recession has raised levels of unemployment across the OECD countries. One response has been to emphasise quality across the education and training system, but to place particular emphasis on increased participation and quality improvement in the post-compulsory stages. Another has been to ensure that all pupils received some exposure to technological studies or work experience. Despite the renewed rise of youth unemployment, however, there has been little evidence of education and training systems reflecting the explicit kinds of self-employment agenda we have pointed to in developing countries, though there has been a rise of interest in enterprise education, as we shall see later.
In the developing countries, governments have long seen unemployment as a threat to the political system and have favoured a variety of interventions designed to reduce the gap between school and the world of work. This had, in many cases, led to programmes of vocational or 'diversified' education, supported often by external donors during the 1960s and 1970s, as well as to a whole range of post-school youth training schemes and national youth services. Such programmes, however, have come under scrutiny since the late 1970s and early 1980s from several external sources. But in particular, the World Bank, once the financial backer of many of the diversified and vocational school projects, has now largely rejected the in-school pattern of vocationalisation as costly and inefficient (Psacharopoulos and Loxley 1985; World Bank 1991a).
Many national governments in developing countries, however, have found it difficult to accept the conclusions of the Bank on the vocationalisation of schooling, and have continued to feel that the scale of youth unemployment required some degree of vocational exposure for all young people. It has been pointed out (King 1990b, 1991b) that in many cases these World Bank and other agency-sponsored schemes for vocationalisation touched only a very small part of the secondary school population and were effectively therefore seen as pilot schemes. By contrast, many governments have moved in the 1980s and early 1990s away from the high cost pilot approach and towards a minimum amount of practical or vocational exposure for all:
Government policies for school vocationalism may well commend themselves more when they are on offer across the whole of a relatively open access secondary [school] system, and also when the crisis in the formal economy has become only too evident (King 1990b: 101).
One of the enduring attractions for politicians of such vocational subjects, schools or streams has been the assumption that vocational skills acquired in school or training centre can point in two directions: they could be valuable both for future employees or as a means to create one's own work, in self employment.
In the sections that follow we shall consider the arguments regarding both 'strong' and 'weak' versions of vocational schooling and pre-vocational models, by which is meant the difference between the orientation to the vocational as part of general education (weak) and the heavy specialisation in the vocational in quite separate schools and streams (strong). Often, it has been a weak version of vocationalism that has been analysed critically, and arguably has been judged against performance criteria that would be more relevant for one of the stronger versions of the vocational.
In much of the debate about the vocational, the dual aims of preparation for employment and for self-employment are not always made explicit, though it has become increasingly common in recent years for national governments to pick out the contribution of technical and vocational skills to self-employment. Thus, it is now not difficult to find such aspirations in the aims of the basic cycle of education:
In addition to the general subjects, the Junior Secondary School curriculum has been designed to provide opportunities for pupils to acquire basic pre-technical, pre-vocational, and basic life skills which will enable pupils to...appreciate the use of the hands as well as the mind and make them creative and self-employable (Republic of Ghana 1992:12)This nine year programme covering 6 years of primary education and the first 3 years of the two-tier secondary school system is to:... impart the rudiments of employment-creating skills at the JSS [Junior Secondary School] level where technical and vocational education is emphasised (Federal Republic of Nigeria 1 992: 3).
We shall also consider what is a relatively new trend in developing countries: Enterprise Education. This has emerged in the OECD countries as a response to their particular problems outlined above. We shall seek to examine the relevance of this initiative in the very different cultural contexts of the developing world. In addition we shall look briefly at some of the key dimensions of education that might have a direct or indirect bearing on self-employment; these would include career guidance, examinations, teacher attitudes, materials, and decentralization strategies.
We start with the case against the vocationalisation of schools since it has attracted so much attention in some of the recent aid agency literature.
There has been considerable support for the argument that general education is superior to vocational education as a preparation for work. Amongst the strongest planks in the case against vocational education has been the so-called 'vocational school fallacy' (Foster 1968). Foster in his pioneering research in Ghana in the late 1950s stressed the rationality of African students and their parents in rejecting vocational education. In a context where the principal source of formal employment was the public sector, the highest premium would be on academic education. Foster argued that it was employment possibilities not curricula that determined aspirations. In such a situation, he suggested, it was academic education that was more truly 'vocational' - in the sense of preparing for a job in government. This argument initially found favour with the immediate post-independence African governments who saw vocational education in the light of their colonial experience, when it had been possible to characterise vocational education as some kind of inferior provision for Africans.
However, the validity of Foster's account today is less clear. Circumstances are very different (King 1994a). Many countries have much higher levels of primary (and secondary) enrolment than Ghana had in the late 1950s. Structural adjustment and the fiscal crisis of the state have in many countries reduced the levels of public-sector employment and its remuneration, and, even for the majority of secondary school leavers, employment in the modern sector of the economy is no longer likely. It is very doubtful that primary or secondary school leavers are any longer planning how to get the once 'safe' job of a clerk or a primary school teacher, for example.
There is a further argument against curriculum diversification towards vocational subjects, however. This is based on an evaluation of World Bank-supported attempts to diversify secondary education in Colombia and Tanzania. The findings suggested that the higher costs of such education were not reflected in higher returns at either the individual or societal levels (Psacharopoulos and Loxley 1985). This research appears to have led the Bank to conclude that several forms of 'vocationalisation' of education will suffer from the same problem. However, there have been serious reservations about both the original research and the subsequent generalisations. Jain (1991) has argued that Psacharopoulos's methodology and data can support a significantly different conclusion. Equally, it can be argued that this research is only applicable to one of a variety of modalities of school-based vocational education - what we have called the weak version (King 1987; 1994a).
A further strand of the criticism of vocationalisation strategies has focused on the failures of planning and implementation (Chisman 1987, Lauglo and Lillis 1988). Critics argue that the planning necessary for such strategies is highly complex. Therefore, they are seen to be beyond the capacity of weak ministries of education. These criticisms are important. However, though planning of institutionally-based vocational education and training (VET) is complex, Caillods has pointed out that it 'is much easier to organise, manage and control than any other system' (e.g. alternance training or the 'dual system' of Germany and several other countries) [Caillods, 1993: 4].
Even though we have implied that some of the basic criticisms of vocationalisation have been overstated or overgeneralised, we must acknowledge that there are many things to be criticised in the vocational and technical schools and streams. Martin Carnoy, in a very recent article (1993), captures some of the continuing problems faced by the vocational side of schooling. It is interesting to note that one aspect of his criticism (of Ivory Coast) relates to the absence of explicit orientations to self-employment:
Although there are programs for almost every conceivable trade and skill, and although they are run under many different auspices, they (TVET programs) are startlingly similar: most teach skills in a way that emphasizes employment rather than self-employment, marketing is only taught in marketing programs, there is little follow-up or job-counselling support for graduates, the courses in many schools are long because they emphasize requirements for a certificate and they are uniformly expensive - especially public programs (p. 14).
It is in fact rather common to find vocational education being blamed for its cost and lack of connectedness to occupations that are related to the vocational bias; it is much less common to hear of their being insufficiently attuned to self-employment. Perhaps one reason for this is that despite the rhetoric about the double benefits of vocational education (useful for employment and self-employment), it is not easy to move directly into self-employment, as this comment from a curriculum planner from Tanzania admits. The comment is all the more significant, coming, as it does, from a country that more than any other (from 1968 to 1990) sought to make even its primary school curriculum reflect a concern, particularly with rural self-employment:
It is often rightfully claimed that vocationally trained young people should be able to create employment for themselves. This may be possible on rare occasions but, in many cases, the young people need a variety of predetermined projects they can take up, identify with or modify, according to their interests or needs (IFEP 1990: 237).
As was hinted above, a major complication of this debate is the lack of precision concerning definitions. This is a direct consequence of the very great variety of country-specific versions of VET. Here, we shall divide such experiences into three broad modalities, although we shall have occasion to examine major trends within these.
The first modality is Vocational Education. This is taken to include those school-based strategies which include a major technical component which is directed at the preparation of pupils for participation in a particular trade. Secondly, we will examine pre-vocational strategies. Here, any technical-practical component should be understood as constituting part of a broad general education. These subjects are not designed to prepare students for trades. Rather, they provide an introduction on which further training can be based. More importantly, they serve as a means of attitudinal preparation for manual work. Thirdly, we shall consider the more recent development of enterprise education.
In all three versions, we are aware that the debates are not necessarily concerned with vocational education for self-employment, but we shall seek to draw out some of the implications for self-employment and the informal sector wherever possible
Before we discuss the evidence on vocational education and pre-vocational education, we need to make a number of inevitably rough distinctions. They are rough because the terminology of vocational education has often been transferred from industrialised to developing countries, and even within the same developing country, e.g. Kenya, it is possible to find, in a ten year period, different British, North American and Swedish concepts of 'industrial arts' education all being grafted on to selected Kenyan schools. Broadly, however we may talk about three different kinds of school-based VET:
First, within the general secondary or high school, it is possible to select a variety of courses which may be termed vocational; thus in the USA a wide range of high school graduates pick up as much as 20% of their total credits from vocational subjects (Millsap and Muraskin 1994). Secondly, in other comprehensive high school traditions, the single upper secondary school, e.g. in Sweden, provides 13 broad vocational lines, in addition to general education lines, and a technician line. This is a much more structured presentation of vocational options than in the USA or UK. Thirdly, there is the tradition of quite separate vocational and technical schools running alongside the general secondary school. Increasingly within those Western European countries that have this provision, the separate types of school divide at the end of 9 years of general education. But even here there are exceptions with The Netherlands having a lower-secondary technical school starting after primary, at the same point as the general secondary.
This third type - of separate vocational and technical schools - is not restricted to Western Europe. Across the former Soviet Union, for example, it was commonplace to have in addition to the general secondary school a secondary vocational school, providing matriculation as well as a vocational qualification, and a lower vocational school that offered just a skilled worker qualification (Sams 1994). Understandably, much of Eastern Europe was similar in structure (Grootings 1994), as was China prior to the Cultural Revolution. In the developing world, the tradition of the separate vocational school has remained important in much of Latin America, in parts of South East Asia, and in the Middle East. In Francophone Africa, there has been influence from the French practice of having a technical stream and a vocational stream running alongside the academic upper secondary. Meanwhile in anglophone Africa, the absence of a very distinctive school-based TVET tradition in the UK during the colonial period is still partly reflected in the now independent states of the continent.
In considering their possible impact on employment and self-employment, it is important to emphasise that, within these three approaches, there are a very large number of different school-based versions of vocational and technical education in operation round the world, many of which account for a considerable proportion of the relevant age cohort. Thus when China decided shortly after the Cultural Revolution to restore the proportion of pupils entering vocational upper secondary education to 50:50 with general secondary, it was not dramatically out of line with several other countries. By contrast, it is well known that the World Bank, which in the 1960s and 1970s had supported a great deal of "diversified" secondary education (through agricultural, technical, commercial and home economics options in regular secondary schools) had by the mid 1980s decided that this style of school-based vocationalisation was not effective:
These 'diversified' programmes are no more effective than academic secondary education in enabling graduates to enter wage or self-employment (World Bank 1991a: 9)
So widely have the Bank's criticisms of diversification been disseminated that it is worth re-emphasising the fact that it was commenting on only one of the three modalities of school-based vocational education - what could be termed the least structured version of secondary vocational education, and that it was drawing its evidence from research carried out in just two very different kinds of countries, Tanzania and Colombia.
It is particularly important to identify the original sources of this widespread World Bank evidence about vocational education, and to underline the fact that in Latin America there are many more traditions of vocational education than this particular, diversified one that was examined in Colombia.
In other vocational and technical traditions of Latin America, there are varieties of both terminal and non-terminal vocational and technical education. Indeed, it has been argued that the majority of technical schools in Latin America are not terminal; rather they have a dual purpose of training technicians and preparing students for further studies in higher education (Gallart 1994). Nor is it impossible in Latin America that a vocational or technical school should be a centre of academic excellence. In Brazil, for example, there are highly prestigious federal technical schools, as well as elite technical schools run by the national training agency (SENAI).
Whatever the tradition of vocational education, there can be little doubt that it will tend to be more expensive than regular academic education. This should not immediately lead to the conclusion that it should be removed from Ministries of Education and entrusted to local industry and commerce to provide. Especially in the least developed countries it is difficult to share the World Bank's faith in industry's ability and/or willingness to provide sufficient levels of training (World Bank 1991a). As a result it seems likely that the state will continue to have to play a major role in the provision of entry level training for the foreseeable future. In Latin America, by contrast, the many forms of the vocational school are complemented by extensive and generously funded vocational training systems after school. And there are very different traditions in other regions.
It is dangerous to judge these diverse traditions just by criteria of cost-effectiveness and external and internal efficiency. For instance, in the former Soviet Union and much of Eastern Europe, it has been argued by de Moura Castro (1993) that vocational schools have had a much wider than economic remit:
These schools are total institutions, offering education, training, sports, social activities, food and overall support to the students Whether we like it or not there is plenty of old- fashioned discipline. Ultimately, these schools do a better job of social control than most Western institutions of the same nature (p.38).
Equally, from the perspective of this review of Education and training for the informal sector, it could be argued that vocational education can be thought of as a preparation for self-employment in many different ways. Most of these are not at all specific to self-employment First, it may provide a fundamentally useful skill, such as technical drawing, electrical wiring, or typewriting. Second, it can offer an opportunity to translate a problem or a challenge into a physical solution that can be judged for its fit and effectiveness. Third, it can be taught in ways that connect very directly with 'real work' in the outside world, and thus for many pupils who find traditional academic subjects dry and remote, it can offer a bridge both to the world of work, and a backdoor route to mathematical insights that they would only with difficulty have derived from straight mathematics.
If these skills are well taught, by good teachers, they are as likely to have a long term impact as when a more academic subject is well taught. Equally, when they are poorly taught without the resources to allow for practical achievements, they may become merely disjointed pieces of theory, little different from poorly taught 'academic' subjects ('State the 5 functions of the carburettor.' as compared to 'State the 5 reasons for the outbreak of the Boer War'.).
Where the World Bank is correct about the value of general education is that understanding language or mathematics and applying them is a crucial transferable skill, whatever the site of work may be. Similarly, however, understanding materials and manipulating them for specific purposes is an important transferable skill. Both can teach the significance of accuracy, finish and relevance. But the Bank would argue that schools find it difficult enough to achieve a modicum of success with literacy and numeracy, without becoming encumbered with what might be termed 'operacy' or 'technacy'. (The term 'operacy' is defined by Bev Young as 'education for capability, giving people the relevant manipulative and intellectual skills to cope with life in the 21st century' (Young 1992: 241).)
As we have seen, some arguments have focused on negative attitudes towards vocational education, and others on the poor external match between the particular skill taken in school and the later job. When it comes to pre-vocational education, it is no longer so relevant to apply this last criterion, since it is not the intention of the school-based orientation to translate directly into a particular line of work. Often, instead, pre-vocational programmes may be thought of more accurately as a form of general education. Thus if Technological Studies is part of the national curriculum for secondary schools in a particular country, its effectiveness cannot be measured by the match between this exposure and later work.
From our viewpoint of education for the informal sector, therefore, such orientations to the practical are designed to be generally of value to the school leaver or young worker. In a strict sense, pre-vocational suggests that there are courses taken at school which are a first stage or preparation for later more specialised vocational training. That is true of some countries where there is an integrated system of qualifications, but very often what is termed pre-vocational by the school may not be recognised by the later training institution.
There is not much to gained by seeking clearly to distinguish vocational from pre-vocational, since it is obviously the case that some curricula may be termed vocational but, because of the resourcing and surface coverage of a field, are effectively just providing a very initial exposure. Others may be termed prevocational, but within the particular country context are acknowledged as an essential first part of the road towards a skilled trade. To the extent that curricula are accurately termed pre-vocational, they usually anticipate some later dimension of formal vocational training; they would almost certainly not be seen as the first stage of a later vocational apprenticeship in the informal sector.
As far as attitudes to pre-vocational education are concerned, the evidence from Zimbabwe is that in a situation where marketable skills, such as motor mechanics, are supplied in high quality schools, they can become a most prized curriculum element (McGrath 1993). The high status of good quality academic schools that also take a diversified (pre-vocational) curriculum is confirmed by evidence from Kenya (Lauglo and Närman 1988; Närman 1988b). But as the tracer studies by Närman of Kenyan diversified school leavers point out, it is extremely difficult to identify a self-employment outcome from such schools. Thus, very few of the 38% who were still looking for work in the three year follow-up were prepared to describe themselves as in the informal sector or self-employed (Närman 1988b). This is understandable when some programmes of pre-vocational are attached to traditionally high status academic schools, whose graduates would normally have expected to acquire formal sector jobs.
But as the formal sector contracts, and as pre-vocational education gets attached to ordinary schools for the whole cohort of secondary school students, it is much more likely that school leavers will be found in the informal sector. The 'pre-vocational paradox', as it might be termed, could mean that simply because of lack of alternatives very large numbers of young people leave schools to find work in the informal sector (as they do already). This puts governments under further pressure to stress the importance of a minimum of prevocational skills for all, but at the same time the financial crisis makes it harder and harder for government to resource such pre-vocational courses effectively. In the weakest countries, there will be a tendency because of resource constraints, for the allegedly vocational to become pre-vocational and for the pre-vocational to become more and more general.
There will be a tendency also in these weaker states for government to emphasise the vocational without seeking to clarify 'the essential distinction between "orientation" to vocational and work-related skills on the one hand and actual job "preparation"' (Hoppers 1994b: 8). This lack of certainty can produce a situation in which something called practical, vocational or technical in the curriculum generates different expectations from different constituencies:
The politicians hoped the schools would do the latter (job preparation) and saw this as a major justification to support the effort. Teachers knew better and were happy if they could manage to provide a basic introduction to the skills. And the parents were left wondering what was really going on in schools (Hoppers 1994b: 8).
At the moment there is very considerable variety and experience of such programmes in both Africa and Latin America. Because of the financial problems alluded to, not a great deal can be deduced about the extent of pre-vocational orientation on the ground from what is written in the policy papers and curriculum guides. Some schools are clearly offering what might he called 'barefoot' pre-vocational studies, and others a good deal more. What is clear is that, in Africa at least, there is considerable official enthusiasm for some degree of vocational input into schools (Yacine 1986). For example, in the debate surrounding the future direction of education in the new South Africa, pre-vocational education is very much on the agenda. The Department of National Education is in favour of pre-vocational education which it sees as
the exposition of knowledge, the inculcation of values and attitudes, as well as the transmission of skills used within one or more broad vocational directions. In this way it is ensured that on leaving school the learner will be ready for training with a view to entering a career. (quoted in NEPI 1992: 23)
Evidence from the stronger countries such as Kenya and Zimbabwe, in particular, suggests that prevocational education has the support of parents and pupils alike (Hoppers 1992, McGrath 1993). Moreover, it appears that this support is increasing even though such provision has rarely led directly to wage-employment. This is not surprising as it is pre-vocational. However, there is evidence that it has had a positive effect in orienting students towards manual labour (Hoppers 1994a). For many it has been the basis on which specific vocational preparation for both the formal and informal sectors has been built. In the case of Kenya, there is also evidence to suggest that graduates of this system are using the some of the skills learnt for income-generating and saving activities (Lauglo and Närman 1988).
Education with Production
One particular model of providing pre-vocational education is Education with Production (EWP). This approach focuses on the development of academic skills enhanced by practical skills and attitudinal change. The practical skills are focused on the achievement of a degree of cost recovery through production of goods or services (Hoppers 1994a). The claims for EWP have often been excessive, but, if the above considerations about care in planning and implementation are respected, it can provide an enhanced secondary education provision (Hoppers 1994a). It is important to stress that we are talking about EWP as pre-vocational education (Hoppers and Komba 1992). The emphasis must be on general education enhanced by a practical input stressing attitudinal and technical orientation to employment or self-employment. The EWP school is not the most suitable forum for the development of technical, marketing and business skills, but it provides a strong foundation on which future training can build (McGrath 1993). In the context of the informal sector it may also be advantageous due to its clear ideological commitment to self-reliance (ZIMFEP 1993).
One example of where EWP has been attempted is Zimbabwe. Whilst attempts at nationwide institutionalisation have not been successful, the Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production (ZIMFEP) has received positive evaluation from its principal donor, SIDA (Gustafsson 1985). EWP programmes have also been tried in a number of other countries world-wide. In Latin America, for example, EWP has been central to Cuban education. In less ideological forms it has also emerged in other countries such as Brazil and Bolivia (Corvalan 1988).
Hoppers uses the example of EWP, however, to make a point about educational initiatives that has a much broader application to the theme of this volume. He argues that the adoption strategy for EWP (and, he might have added, for many other initiatives) is to seek to persuade the politicians and senior professionals of the acceptability of EWP, on the assumption that it could then be easily implemented nationally. The result of this reliance on the state at the central level was deleterious for EWP, and, by extension, for many other schemes intended to have a local impact:
The consequences of all this has been that to the extent that debates on policies and programmes related to EWP (and vocationalised education in more general terms) took place, they were conducted only at senior levels and largely over the heads of teachers and communities, who did not see their own primary concerns being addressed (Hoppers 1994b: 11).
Although many evaluations of EWP have not been positive, it does remain a theoretically attractive approach. As industry increasingly seeks for labour that can adapt to new technologies, so the traditional division between mental and manual is reduced. This might serve to increase the attractiveness of EWP to industry. At the same time, the demise of state socialism has led to a reduction in EWP's identification with radical ideologies. This too is likely to stimulate reappraisal of EWP in certain quarters.
Agriculture in Schools
Another specific form of pre-vocational education that is the subject of much debate is agricultural education. Attempts to improve agricultural knowledge are relevant to a consideration of the informal sector as it is a central part of the reality of those involved in the sector in the rural areas. It is also known (Eisemon 1989) that there seem to be some very suggestive correlations between the teaching of agricultural knowledge (and primary science) on the one hand and the application of such knowledge in smallholder agriculture. But here we return to our earlier problem: how important is it that the school curriculum should contain explicit information about agriculture and rural technologies as opposed to merely providing numeracy and literacy? The famous piece of research by the World Bank about the impact of school attendance on farmer productivity says nothing about agricultural content, school quality, or school curriculum, but just about plain numbers of years attended:
Our overall conclusion is that farm productivity increases on average by 8.7 percent as a result of a farmer's completing 4 years of elementary education (Jamison and Lau 1982: 8).
By contrast most policy makers are certain that explicit and examinable knowledge about agricultural science can make a difference to practice, and hence the many schemes from Tanzania's 'Education for Self-reliance' to Kenya's or Nigeria's compulsory agriculture for junior secondary schools.
There is little doubt that whether schools can be shown to have both a direct and an indirect effect on the huge numbers of young people who are actively self-employed in agriculture, the policy community will continue to believe in the explicit teaching of agricultural science. It is also certainly the case that a productive and well-rewarded agricultural sector is probably essential to the health of the informal sector in smaller and larger towns. To this extent there may be an important educational connection between the rural and urban informal sectors.
Although agriculture along with industrial education suffered from having been compulsory for Africans in many colonial primary school systems, and although it witnessed a sharp fall in support immediately after Independence, it is worth noting that its status in the eyes of parents and pupils has been substantially repaired. Recent research (Riedmiller and Mades 1991; Riedmiller 1994) in no less than 30 African countries suggests that primary school agriculture evokes largely positive attitudes. This is not to say that it is popular when it is taught largely as food production, to acquire additional income for the school or the teachers, but when it is a coherent part of national certification that also pays attention to practical implementation, it appears to have grown in popularity. It is possible to argue that one reason for this shift in attitude is that pupils have become realistic about self-employment in agriculture being a likely outcome of their education, unless they are lucky enough to proceed to much higher levels. But as with so many of these possibilities, we currently lack good research on attitudes and aspirations that was so widely available from the time that Foster did his work in Ghana.
What is evident in what Bude (1989) calls the 'new generation' of primary school texts in Africa is a move to include a great deal of material that is quite deliberately thought to be relevant to learners who in many cases will be moving from school to work in the rural environment, including the informal sector:
Especially in the more utilitarian subjects like 'General Knowledge', 'Environmental Science', 'Agriculture'/'Rural Science', 'Social Studies', 'Home Science' etc., the existing social and economic conditions of African societies are taken up as teaching/learning topics. In order to prepare primary school students for life, themes like alternative energies, seeking a job after school, opportunities in the informal sector, living conditions in the cities, health problems etc. are discussed in the textbooks and turned into learning experiences for the pupils (p. 26).
The experience of the Rural Education and Agriculture Programme (REAP) in Belize is a clear example that school-based agriculture programmes can be highly successful. REAP was initiated in 1976 to create the attitudes and provide the skills necessary for rural youth to make meaningful contributions to the country's agricultural development. Established by an intra-ministerial and international agency group, REAP was conceived in three phases extending over a 10-year period. During the pilot phase (1976 to 1979) the programme was tested in eight primary schools in three of the country's six districts and in one secondary school. A special programme was developed to train teachers for REAP, and outdoor education centres were constructed in each pilot school to give students an opportunity to apply their learning in an agricultural setting. The main thrust of the district level phase (1979 to 1982) was the expansion of REAP to all six districts in Belize with the gradual transfer of much of the technical and material assistance received from foreign agencies to ministries, district-level officials, and community groups and service organisations REAP's national-level phase began in 1982. REAP has received favourable evaluations from students and teachers alike, and 80 percent of the programme's graduates have remained in rural Belize in some form of agriculture (Jennings and Edmond 1986).
The above evidence suggests that school-based agriculture programmes can succeed. But the example of REAP illustrates the importance of careful and systematic implementation. The appropriate response for donors, therefore, might be to see in which ways they can facilitate the improvement of the implementation of such programmes, It should be noted, however, that in these very fields of school-based pre-vocational and vocational education, many donors appear to have diminished their support. To what extent they have been influenced by the critical analysis of the Bank or by the greater priority of supporting literacy and numeracy in the basic cycle (following Jomtien) is not clear, but the shift away from this area is apparently very evident in East and Southern Africa (Hoppers 1994b: 1213).
Enterprise education, like a number of other curriculum areas in vocational education, can have numerous meanings. Some of these are basically concerned with making the pupil more enterprising in school. Typically these innovations are characterised by emphasis on creativity, pupil-centred learning,, problem solving; and they can be detected in many of the large innovative primary and (to a lesser extent) secondary school projects and programmes whether national reforms or donor-aided programmes, These would include Cianjur in Indonesia, and the Andhra Pradesh Primary Education Project, or Lok Jumbish in the state of Rajastan, both in India, or the 900 Schools project in Chile (Vaccaro 1994; Agus Tangyong et al 1989; SIDA 1993).
But, beyond this teaching-centred version of enterprise education, there has also been an increasing emphasis in recent years on attempts to introduce into the school curriculum a basic awareness of working life and positive attitudes towards business. In some cases this has been promoted at a rather general level of raising awareness about the world-of-work as part of a "life skills" package. In other models it has meant the systematic attempt to develop entrepreneurial attitudes and competencies at the school level (Hoppers 1992).
It is possible to organise a programme, of whatever complexity, in a variety of ways. Enterprise education, it is argued, can be located in the core curriculum; in optional subjects within the mainstream curriculum; or as an extra-curricular activity (Hoppers 1992). In most cases, a combination of these different location is likely.
It must be noted at the outset that enterprise education is a theme that is highly contested. In several countries there is clearly a tension between what might be termed pedagogical preoccupations, on the one hand and political and labour market versions of enterprise, on the other. Many teachers are hostile to the notion of pupils being oriented to the free market in what may be termed the more externally-driven models of enterprise. On the other side, politicians and policy-makers look to enterprise education as a way of making pupils and students more 'realistic' or more ambitious about the world of work that lies ahead. Like so much else in the world of vocational education, it is possible for a strong, market oriented version of enterprise education to be in the education reform documents or education policy statements but for the version in the classrooms to be fundamentally different.
Enterprise Education in the Core Curriculum
If enterprise education is to be included in the core curriculum, this will change the substance of the existing core. It may be possible that it already exists writ small in the core. This is normally the result of a policy of promoting 'enterprise across the curriculum'. For example, the most commonly used 'O' Level English textbook in Zimbabwe contains comprehension passages and structured essay questions on the topic of establishing small businesses and cooperatives. In such a case attention could be on reinforcing this content. In other situations, where the emphasis is on enterprise education as improved pedagogy, it is entirely possible that the existing curriculum and enterprise education will be in harmony, but there may be a lack of appropriate learning resources to establish a more active teaching/learning situation.
However, there is also the very real possibility that some of the more politically motivated enterprise education approaches might contradict elements of the existing curriculum. In such cases, it is necessary to examine the reasons behind this conflict rather than simply assuming the importance of the enterprise message.
Some countries have already started to establish Enterprise Education. In Kenya elementary business awareness has entered the curriculum as early as the sixth year of the primary school, where it is complemented by a number of pre-vocational offerings (Oketch 1993). In Malaysia the Lifelong Entrepreneurship Education Model envisages enterprise education as a central part of the core curriculum from a similarly early age (Hailey 1994). A similar focus also is proposed for the new South Africa by the Nationalist Party (NEPI 1992).
What makes some of these apparently educational initiatives problematic is that they can derive ultimately from a political perspective about the need for a particular ethnic community to become more competitive in business (for example the Malays vis a vis the Chinese and Indians in Malaysia). The other problem with enterprise as part of an examinable core under the title of business education, for example in Kenya, is that the trappings of business vocabulary and concepts can be examined and tested relatively easily; it is quite another matter to change the attitudes and values (King 1989).
An additional problem with some enterprise programmes is that they may not be culturally appropriate as they stress values which are often in direct opposition to traditional understandings of business and enterprise (King, Parnell and Carr-Hill 1992). Furthermore, even with the more pedagogical version of enterprise education proponent are envisaging more than a simple technical change to new curricula with new learning materials. It appears that successful enterprise education in their view is related to a fundamental change in teaching methodologies and, indeed, education systems (Salleh Hj Din and Gibb 1990, Lavrijsen 1991). The creation of the "enterprising teacher", the "enterprising student" and the "enterprise classroom", however, is likely to be highly problematic in resource-poor countries.
Enterprise Education in Optional Subjects
There are a number of subjects already present in the curriculum which appear fertile ground for the dissemination of enterprise education concepts. These could include practical prevocational subjects such as agriculture and building. They also include business studies, commerce and related subjects. It is argued elsewhere in this chapter that these subjects do have an important part to play in general education, as long as they retain a pre-vocational focus. In all these subjects there should be little difficulty in devising modules that introduce entrepreneurial concepts to students. However, as noted above, significant changes in pupil attitudes are likely to require more than the addition of such modules.
Enterprise Education in Extra-Curricular Activities
The approach of locating enterprise education within extra-curricular activities has much in common with the experience of production units under the EWP model (Hoppers 1992). Such units, for example in Zimbabwe, are in practice separate from classroom activities (Gustafsson 1985 and 1987). They take place outside lesson time and are production- rather than education-oriented (Hoppers 1992). The choice of what to produce is determined at the particular school and is based upon the interests of the staff and pupils involved, as well as the nature of local resources and markets.
There are theoretical arguments in favour of linking such productive activities to the mainstream curriculum in a close and explicit manner. However, there are serious practical problems involved in such an arrangement (Hoppers and Komba 1992). Therefore, the model of production units as extra-curricular entities is preferable. In the same way, a limited programme of enterprise education concentrating on students and teachers who are self-selected may be far more realistic and successful than "Enterprise for All" schemes.
Despite the current interest shown in enterprise education a body of evidence is yet to emerge which demonstrates its efficacy. It is possible, however, to put forward some tentative predictions of its probable impact. A pedagogical approach may do little more than assist in a changing teaching and learning styles in a way that probably will be impossible to associate with participation in actual enterprises after school, whilst a school-based anticipation of and exposure to entrepreneurship will be difficult to introduce, except in specific pilot settings. Both types of approach will have a low probability of success unless economic conditions and cultural realities are conducive to the proposed change. This highlights one of the fundamental contradictions inherent in educational reform. Such reform is frequently seen as a way of changing society. However, in reality radical educational reform typically occurs when wider, societal change is already happening. We have argued that the vocational school fallacy has limited modern day relevance due to changed economic circumstances and, hence, altered parent and student attitudes. In the current contexts of many countries there appears to be a great likelihood of what King (1993) calls an 'enterpreneurial school fallacy' developing if schools and colleges on their own are expected to make a major contribution to a more dynamic market economy.
Careers Advisory Services
Building on this last recommendation, there are also a number of other specific interventions which can be made to enhance the performance of the school system in preparing youth for the informal sector. Amongst the most important of these are careers guidance and school leaver placement services (Hoppers 1992).
Careers Guidance
Whatever the vocational or entrepreneurial content of the school curriculum, the role of careers guidance is in need of greater consideration. It has been argued that much could be done to promote self-employment through positive images of such activities through the guidance system (Hoppers 1992). Advocates of such an approach stress the benefits that could accrue from bringing the self-employed into the school as a role models and sources of information. In particular, the value of female role models from the sector could be very great.
One guidance-based experiment worthy of further investigation is found in the junior secondary school system in Botswana (Hoppers 1992). Self-employment clubs were established in these schools and cater for both current and past students. This provides a service to the latter as well as bringing their experiences to the attention of those still in school. As well as providing orientation and networking opportunities regarding job opportunities; these clubs can also serve as a location for the development of management and production skills.
However, in the poorer developing countries careers guidance is almost non-existent, and in most of the planned economies of Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and also in China, it was not a priority until very recently, when schools had to begin to orient their leavers to a- dramatically less certain, and more diverse, work environment (Wei-Yuan Zhang 1993). For the poorest countries there are likely to be insuperable resourcing difficulties in tackling this. Equally problematic is a reliance on teachers as the organisers of career guidance. The basic problem is that careers education has traditionally been about what Dore called 'real jobs' in the modern sector of the economy. In the poorer countries of the world there have never been sufficient of these to justify having a careers programme to discuss choice amongst them. And as for the huge number of positions in the informal sector, these have not until recently even been conceived of as careers worth discussion. One of the consequences of taking self-employment seriously, however, might be much more information about informal sector 'careers'.
School Leaver Job Placement
One example of where the school leaver is given more support than guidance alone is found in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production (ZIMFEP), which is also responsible for the promotion of EWP within the curriculum and for production units, runs a School Leaver Job Creation Project through its Employment Creation Department (Fungati 1987). This department has achieved a reasonable degree of success. Of the 7 000 formal jobs created in the Zimbabwean economy every year, 700 are filled by ZIMFEP (ZIMFEP 1992 and 1993). The cost of creating one viable job has also been very low. Whereas the Small Enterprise Development Corporation (SEDCO) has costs of Z$12 150 per job, ZIMFEP has achieved costs of Z$8 483 per job (Colclough et al 1990: 124).1
1 Z$10= £1
ZIMFEP has continued strongly to support cooperative development through the development of training programmes to impart technical and business skills to cooperative members (ZIMFEP 1993). Many of the ZIMFEP-supported cooperatives have developed national reputations. One of them, the Black Umfolosi music group, has even acquired a major international profile. Recently ZIMFEP has begun to focus on entrepreneurial skills development.
This is an example of what can be achieved in this arena. However, its wider replication is highly problematic. This programme is primarily aimed at the graduates of only 7 of Zimbabwe's more than 1 500 secondary schools. It is essentially therefore a pilot experiment. Furthermore, it is run by an NGO (ZIMFEP) with considerable international donor support. What works on a small-scale in Zimbabwe may be beyond the reach of many other developing countries, and beyond the reach of the many ordinary schools within Zimbabwe.
Decentralisation
It is also necessary to consider what kind of structures need to be place in national education systems in order for reforms that seek to relate to the informal sector to succeed. One particular weakness of many education systems (as well as training systems) is an over-centralisation of authority. Decisions are made at national level, with very little autonomy given to regions, let alone individual schools (Hoppers 1992, 1994b). Clearly some central decision making has to be exercised in terms of the overall structure of the curriculum. However, there is a need for limited, but clearly defined and meaningful, areas in which regions, districts and schools can shape specific programmes within this larger framework. This may be particularly appropriate in the area of preparation for work in the local, informal economy.
One example of this comes from Ghana where both junior and senior secondary schools offer a selection of vocational and pre-vocational options from a nationally prescribed list. The options chosen are those which best reflect local raw material and expertise availability (Boeh-Ocansey 1993).
If schools are to respond to the needs of the informal sector, they must be able to reflect local realities. It is essential that programmes such as enterprise awareness, pre-vocational studies, and production units are planned at the lowest possible level.
Such flexibility requires decentralisation of both decision making and financial resources. However, there is a danger that this will be carried out precipitously. We are not concerned here with the ideological attractiveness of decentralisation. We are also aware of fears that in some cases decentralisation has had negative equity implications, especially in Latin America (Messina 1993). And we are also aware from the well known history of local pre-vocational subjects in schools in Sri Lanka (now abandoned) that the process of privileging local informal sector skills through schools is not at all straightforward. Rather, our concern is that decentralisation should be supported where it is likely to improve the quality of education provision, and there may be ways in which a higher status for local, well-paying informal sector skills can be confirmed by schools.
The Role of the Community
The role of the community in the school must also be considered. In Kenya, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and many other countries, for example, local communities have had a major role to play in the massive expansion of education through their participation in the financing and construction of new schools (Bray and Lillis 1988; Chung 1988; Shaeffer 1992). Community participation in the overall management of schools should be encouraged. However, as with decentralisation there is no easy wisdom about how community participation in schooling translates, for example, into a greater interest in local skills. Indeed, it is often the case the community schools are absolutely determined that their curriculum not deviate one iota from the national or mainstream curriculum.
The Examination System
The nature of the examination system is also important when considering how the education system can best prepare youth for the informal sector. Traditionally the education system has been geared to the formal sector and the examination system has served as a sifting mechanism to help employers to decide who should be employed (Dore 1980). Therefore, it was the often the "failures" of the school system who graduated into the informal sector.
In recent years, however, there has been a major sea-change in the perceived needs of employers. Rapid technological change especially in the OECD countries and in the newly industrialising countries has led to the realisation that employees must be flexible enough to respond to such changes. As a result, problem-solving methodologies and a more extended basic education have been emphasised. These changes in labour process are much less evident, however, in the industrial estates and agricultural sector of the poorer developing countries. Examinations continue to be dominated by the selection requirements of higher education and of the formal economy, and take little account of the fact that few of those examined will enter either. To an extent, however, trends in OECD countries do affect the developing world through the work of international examination and selection systems.
In principle the need for a strong general education with increased emphasis on coursework assessment and problem-solving would also seem to be highly relevant for the informal sector. But although, here and there are initiatives, as we have mentioned, to introduce more creative learning into schools, this has been restricted to the lower primary levels, and has so far had little influence on the examination-oriented learning of upper primary and secondary schools. Even when new, potentially relevant curriculum content for those working in self-employment gets introduced, it is by no means clear that its relevance survives the way that this knowledge gets reprocessed and repackaged into multiple choice examination questions, and their preparation. King (1989) has argued that
In this process, child survival knowledge gets changed into school survival knowledge. Very little is currently known about how much this theoretical emphasis of the examinations affects the organisation and potential application of this enormous quantity of useful 'development' information. (pp. 497-8)
Currently, in many countries examinations are preoccupied with educational continuation and not with the confirmation of the skills and knowledge needed for active life. This presents a major challenge to such innovations as Child-to-Child (Hawes and Scotchmer 1993).
The Role of the Teacher
The key determinants of the success of any innovation within the education system are the willingness and ability of teaching staff to respond (Fullan 1991; McGrath 1993). Both in-and pre-service training of teachers must reflect changes in curriculum content and methodology. This may require fundamental changes in the organisation of both initial training and upgrading of teachers. The importance of addressing teacher preparation should not be underestimated. In Zimbabwe, for example, the effectiveness of major curriculum change has been seriously constrained by a lack of communication between the Curriculum Development Unit, part of the Ministry of Education and Culture, and the teachers' colleges, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Higher Education (McGrath 1993).
Too often, attention is focused on the ability of teachers merely to implement curricular changes. This leads to an emphasis on top-down approaches. Whereas what is needed are strategies for teacher professionalisation, such as those currently deployed in Chile's reforms (Vaccaro 1994). However, teacher performance is also highly dependent on their attitudes. This suggests the need for attention to be directed at encouraging their support for reforms. In Kenya, for example, negative teacher attitudes have been a significant factor in the implementation problems faced by the 8-4-4 system (Oketch 1993) and in Tanzania parents have identified teacher attitudes as one of the main problems of education in the rural areas (Cooksey 1993).
But the current debate on educational standards points to another, more fundamental issue. Part of the World Bank's prescription for improved education is a concern for increased efficiency (World Bank 1988 and 1991a). This, it is argued, can be promoted through double-shifts, larger class sizes, etc. This is an unnecessarily narrow understanding of the issue. In the developing world teachers are already highly demoralised. Increasingly, their already inadequate salaries are forcing them to make additional income from informal sector activities simply to survive. Such conditions make for low efficiency. Seen in this light, some of the World Bank's proposals are likely to cause a deterioration rather than an improvement in the quality of education provided. From the perspective of this present analysis, we have the contradiction that the teachers are being asked through the new emphasis on education and training for self-employment to be more creative in the classroom, but in many cases teachers are already themselves obliged to be part of the very informal sector they have less and less time to orient their pupils towards.
Learning Materials
The World Bank and other agencies such as ODA do seem to be on firmer ground, however, when they call for improved learning materials (World Bank 1988 and 1991a; ODA 1990). Experience shows that educational innovations are compromised when they are introduced without sufficient curriculum materials to support them (Dyer 1993; Oketch 1993).
There have been a number of important educational innovations which have emerged from developing countries, such as the Zimbabwe Secondary School Science Project (ZIMSCI) (Robson 1992). It is necessary to encourage further locally generated innovations and to ensure the wider replication of those which have already proved successful. Many successful innovations fail to be widely replicated due to the poor dissemination of research and policy between developing countries. Networks of researchers in the South are beginning to develop to address these challenges, and should be assisted where necessary. Southern educational data bases, such as REDUC in Latin America, are an essential component in learning about good practice
Whatever the exact content of the education provided in a particular country, issues regarding the nature of the education system must also be addressed. If students are expected to develop skills and attitudes in favour of self-reliance and entrepreneurship, then this must be reflected in both the official and the hidden curriculum of the school. It is possible, however, that the culture of the schools may be so contradictory with the enterprise culture that the enterprise gospel cannot be successfully preached in schools. Indeed there is a fear that students who are exposed to too much academic education may become unsuited to enterprise (D'Souza and Thomas 1993).
However important textbooks and other non-salary materials may be in schools, it is worth underlining, as with so many other elements in this discussion, that there is no single materials factor that is likely to make a great difference to schools in isolation from teacher and administrative improvement. Indian research has demonstrated that better materials simply will not be used if teachers are held responsible for their loss or deterioration (Govinda and Varghese 1993). Equally, materials that seek to illustrate and orient for self-employment will on their own have little effect, especially where there are few linkages between school knowledge and community knowledge.
What appears to emerge from the discussions throughout this chapter is the great diversity of international experience. This has often resulted in conflicting theories and models which have emerged from research in very different contexts. The struggle to find a suitable balance between academic and practical components of a truly general education will be returned to as a theme in chapter six as we seek to identify and construct pathways to self-employment. To anticipate that discussion, it suffices to say here that there is not, and cannot be, a single pathway or approach to this objective. Rather, a suitable modality must be found anew in each context. Nonetheless, we have stressed the importance of the institutional capacity of the education system to develop and implement such solutions and this is an area in which more generalisable recommendations can and have been made.
Many researchers and policy people would go along with the Jomtien Declaration in this problematic area, and urge that whatever the link to eventual work, the school must emphasise not just enrolment or completion but the successful achievement of learning. A poor quality programme, whether its content is linked or not linked to later work, will have little effect. Which is another way of saying that a poorly resourced, unassessed programme of practical skills in primary school for the informal sector is certain to be of less eventual value to school-leavers than a high quality programme emphasising basic literacy and numeracy, with no explicit teaching about working life. The unanswered question is: what is likely to be the value added to a high quality primary school programme by a high quality focus on working life?
For many commentators, this is the wrong question. High quality preparation for working life should be done through vocational training not vocational education. And we turn to that in the next chapter.
