Sector Results and Learning:
Education

Program Improvement Competitive Grant (PICG)-supported Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) courses succeeded in strengthening linkages between TVET providers and large employers’ skills needs, thereby driving this project’s improved performance relative to past TVET programs. In particular, internships, dual employment and training programs, and direct relationships between training providers and employers all contributed to improved employment outcomes. MCC is addressing this lesson by investing in TVET provider governance models that are more responsive to employer needs in Morocco, Cote d’Ivoire, and Kosovo. While employers lauded certain PICG-supported courses which introduced students to the latest technology, other courses did not offer practical, hands-on experience with machinery, equipment and technology, and safety protocols. The lack of hands-on training can be remedied through employer mentorship arrangements and workplace-based training. Substantial hands-on experience during training and/or expanding the number of internships or amount of workplace-based training offered may provide valuable experience where trainees may not have prior experience and would further boost employment outcomes. In the future, MCC should ensure that TVET programs include practical/hands-on training both in the classroom and through internships/workplace-based training.

Targeted support is needed to recruit and retain women in non-traditional Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) programs. Closing gender gaps in labor market outcomes will require interventions specifically designed to improve the country’s work environment for women. The low participation of women in courses supported by Program Improvement Competitive Grants and continued wage inequality of women after completion was disappointing to MCC. Female participation in TVET courses was particularly low in sectors such as aviation, electrical systems, and engineering. As noted in the TVET Principles into Practice paper, changing social norms to empower women to enter traditionally male-dominated fields and ending gender-based wage discrimination in the labor market can be difficult. MCC is addressing this lesson by working with governments and donors to conduct detailed analyses to understand the constraints facing women’s workforce participation, which in turn inform the design of context-specific, complimentary interventions to address those challenges. An innovative approach was piloted in this Compact, one which merits study in order to be taken to scale. Millennium Challenge Acccount (MCA) Georgia, in partnership with the United Nations Women, established an annual competition, the “Business for Gender Equality Awards.” This competition recognizes three Georgian businesses each year that are investing in workplace policies and programs that open avenues for the advancement of women at all levels and across all business areas as well as encouraging women to enter non-traditional careers. In the four years MCA Georgia organized this competition and awards event, more than 150 companies have participated. Recognition is an important incentive for private sector cultural change and activities such as this are a potentially impactful means to complement the more supply-side focus on increasing female participation in TVET programs. Changing gender norms is a needed precursor to increasing women’s employment in non-traditional sectors, one that requires time, resources, and intentional efforts.

Flexible contracting structures like the one used for the policy technical assistance component can lead to support being nimble and responsive to government needs. The contract structure for technical assistance set an overall theme of private-sector orientation for assistance to be provided, but then allowed specific tasks to be set within that theme on an annual basis. As the government’s needs changed over time this mechanism allowed MCC to react to those changing programmatic needs flexibly. The grant manager contract was also structured to retain a pool of experts that the manager could draw on as needed, thereby expanding the range of available expertise, and reducing costs compared to a more rigid model of hiring fixed key personnel. MCC is already leveraging this lesson by building flexible contracting into Human and Community Development projects through the use of flexible technical assistance mechanisms such as “unpriced option year” contracts. Such flexible contracts can lead to increased engagement with government over time, by providing decision points for course correction during the program. This engagement led to increased buy-in at the policy dialogue level and ultimately strengthened government relationships with the private sector.

Small grants awarded through a competitive process led to outsized results, which more than compensated for the increased complexity of administering many small grants. There was a good degree of opposition to the use of small grants for the Strengthening Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) Provider Practice component during design. However, the pool of small grant applications resulted in so many high-quality proposals that the project (1) increased the maximum grant amount in the second round from $10,000 to $25,000 and (2) added a third round to accommodate grants. According to some stakeholders, an even larger maximum grant amount would have been justified. As these grants were strategically chosen to align with planned TVET reforms that were not covered through the existing state budgets and that could be sustained beyond the Compact, they complemented existing policy while filling programmatic gaps that ultimately contributed to a broader TVET reform agenda. While these grants fell short of achieving more ambitious program goals – such as the system-wide adoption of certain practices – there is evidence that the small grants led to key contributions both by specific providers as well as a more robust government discourse of private-sector driven TVET. In the future, MCC should consider using this type of approach to compliment other investments when implementation complexity can be managed (such as by bundling it with other tasks in an already planned contract – as was the case in Georgia).

Trainees who had prior experience and were using Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) programs to gain further skills enjoyed the largest improvement in labor market outcomes. In designing training programs MCC should consider investments in both pre-service and in-service training. Compared to pre-training earnings, trainees who were employed at baseline increased their monthly earnings by about 10 percent, while the subset of trainees who returned to the same job they held before training increased their monthly earnings by 21 percent. Trainees who had more than two years of prior work experience obtained full-time, course-relevant jobs at about double the rate of those with less experience. This suggests that employers in course-relevant fields may have had substantially less demand for Program Improvement Competitive Grants course graduates who did not also have meaningful prior work experience. This demonstrates that in the Georgia context, employers regard TVET programs as a valuable way to upskill existing workers. Not only can in-service training for existing employees have potentially greater initial impact – employers are more likely to contribute to or entirely finance this kind of training. This can be an important revenue source for TVET providers contributing to overall financial sustainability of programs. MCC is addressing this lesson by considering both in-service and pre-service training in Morocco, Côte d’Ivoire, and Kosovo.