Canada. Lessons Learned & Best Practices for Success for Women in Apprenticeship & Skilled Technical Jobs (Paper)
Best Practices to increase success for women in apprenticeship and the skilled trades require ongoing collaboration and support between women training, entering and working in technical fields, and their partners in government, industry, unions, educational institutions as well as community agencies working in the field towards this success. Historically, we have often seen one or another of these groups initiate an intervention, but little has changed because the other partners were not at the table.
Source: ResearchGate
Germany. Transfer in international VET cooperation: Development of a typology (Paper)
The study aims to identify the understanding of transfer of vocational training service providers in internationalisation projects, as well as different types of transfer. The transfer itself is determined by the project activity rather than by a pre-determined understanding of transfer on the part of the internationally active VET provider. In turn, the project activity shapes the type of transfer in combination with the project partners in the target country context. The project actors focus on structures and content; the transfer of practices and processes is largely understood implicitly and thus less directly forced.
Source: Wiley/International Journal of Training and Development
oPt. Planning the post-war reconstruction and recovery of Gaza
Gaza has witnessed an almost complete destruction of economic activity in all sectors. In the immediate post-war situation, some emergency employment programmes will be “critical to provide incomes to workers who have lost their jobs” as they seek to support their families. It is expected that micro and small enterprises will need emergency grants and wage subsidies as part of the process of restoring activity and to facilitate local economic recovery. Extensive skills development and vocational training will also be required.
Source: UN News
Switzerland. Does Updating Education Curricula Accelerate Technology Adoption in the Workplace? Evidence from Dual Vocational Education and Training Curricula in Switzerland (Paper)
This paper examines whether updates of education curricula help to bring new technologies faster into firms’ workplaces. We take a text-as-data approach and tap into two novel data sources to measure change in educational content and the use of technology at the workplace: first, vocational education curricula and, second, firms’ job advertisements. Our results show that curriculum updates substantially shorten the time it takes for new technologies to arrive in firms’ workplaces, especially for mainstream firms.
Source: IZA – Institute of Labor Economics
USA. Taking a skills-based approach to building the future workforce
Companies have recognized that skills-based practices are a powerful solution to challenges that have intensified since the pandemic. Employers have struggled to find the right candidates for important open positions and then keep the talent they hire. Through a skills-based approach, companies can boost the number and quality of applicants who apply to open positions and can assist workers to find more opportunities to advance internally, which can help employers improve retention. It also helps communities by creating more and better job opportunities for a broader, diverse pool of workers.
Source: McKinsey
Structuring the complexity of drop-out from VET: a theoretical framework guiding empirical research perspectives (Paper)
After more than 50 years of research on drop-out from Vocational Education and Training (VET), databases provide vast amounts of drop-out studies from around the globe that entail hundreds of potential drop-out factors. However, many scholars tend to explore the topic without detailed and theoretically grounded foundation. The presented framework will help organising the research field and enable scholars to delimit their work more precisely, leading to a more traceable structure of further research efforts and more significant contributions to the state of knowledge.
Source: Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training
Beyond the training gap: learning foundational skills on the job
Low-skilled workers tend to have jobs that are less likely to foster foundational skills. This worsens skills gaps and income inequality.
Source: Bruegel
Refugees and VET
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) defines refugees as people who have fled war, violence, conflict or persecution and have crossed an international border to find safety in another country. This issue outlines the role vocational education and training (VET) plays in helping refugees and displaced persons integrate into their new communities. It also discusses the barriers and obstacles refugees face and the potential role of technology to improve access to VET and deliver innovative educational solutions.
Source: VOCED
The world is failing to meet SDG 8: how to achieve decent work for all by 2030?
Trade unions are working against the clock to overcome the obstacles to achieving the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The UN reports are unanimous: the world is far from achieving the 2030 Agenda. Neither the funds made available nor the political action being taken are sufficient to deliver on the promise of building a better world that leaves no one behind. In its 2023 edition, the SDG 8 Monitor assessed the situation in more than 150 countries, covering more than 98 per cent of the world’s population.
Source: Equal Times
