Poverty. Growth and Training Development
in Latin America and Caribbean Countries

Arguments about the various models of institutional arrangements in the field of vocational training have been going on for at least twenty-five years. What has been a sometimes fierce debate has calmed down with time. However, in mapping out today the institutional reality of vocational training in Latin America and the Caribbean a diversified picture is unveiled, still marked by two opposing approaches.

Nevertheless, those approaches have evolved from the form they took on, say, towards 1976 (date of promulgation in Chile of the Training and Employment Statute, with the creation of SENCE on the one hand and the privatisation of INACAP on the other, which can be taken as a valid starting point for our purposes).

On the one hand, former VTIs (in those countries where they have subsisted) are undergoing processes of deep institutional change at different rates. They have for instance left aside centralised management schemes, "flattening out" their organisational structure and making earnest efforts to have greater numbers of staff directly involved in teaching vis-à-vis administrative or support personnel. They have also developed innovative mechanisms to get closer to productive and social realities, and make their action more relevant to them.

Programmes of the new generation have also come a long way, which has made it possible to consider not only the advantages that allowed them to prosper in the first place, but a number of problem spots as well. Here reason counsels a "pause" to make up for shortcomings and to rescue much of the knowledge and experience gathered by other institutional forms.

Box: Brazil: Workers’ Assistance Fund

Specifically regarding the struggle against poverty, these new policies have come up against an age-old problem in the social sphere: the deflection of actions towards population groups endowed with greater cultural and social capacity, that seize them for their own benefit. So it happens that sectors suffering from "harder" or more chronic poverty remain beyond the reach of the programmes.

Another problem has been attention of small or micro-enterprises, mainly in the informal sector, where their very nature places them outside training circuits, or when lack of capital prevents them from investing in training.

In the last resort, delegating execution to private agents, on the assumption that training supply and demand would balance each other spontaneously and efficiently, has turned out to be wrong. Slants have become apparent in the offer of courses fundamentally channelled towards the services sector. This has not been a reflection of the obvious transformations of labour markets and productive structures, but rather a matter of costs. It is always cheaper, as far as infrastructure and equipment are concerned, to give courses for computer operators, secretaries or accountants, than to deliver industrial training. When that is not the case, there may be a proliferation of courses on repair of household appliances, footwear repair, clothes making, sewing, and the like. . These are at best more akin to survival strategies, declining output makeshifts, rather than the new forms of production organisation that require polyvalent skills, flexibility, initiative, teamwork, etc.

The fundamental issue, stated perhaps schematically, would be as follows: Should we necessarily have to choose between two models of social policy regarding training? Is the alternative between, on the one hand, strong, hegemonic institutions with a supply of long, rigid courses and with a tendency towards a loss of up-to-dateness and, on the other hand, programmes targeting specific populations, with short, custom-made courses?

The extension and complexity of the universe of poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean indicate, rather, that answers cannot be easy and, much less, be adopted according to restrictive criteria such as the above.

It is obvious that certain situations require quick, agile responses. Young people who do not manage to enter the labour market, who have early deserted their studies and who live in a personal and family situation which makes it imperative to find a source of income, are a clear example of this. In that sense, a programme which provides them with a chance to reach a certain level of technical knowledge quickly and have an initial job experience will be, surely, very welcome.

Box: Honduras: Adult Education in Vocational Training

But it is necessary to look a bit further: What chances will those same young people have to develop a training itinerary that, taking as its base the knowledge acquired in such a programme, allows them to access higher levels of qualification, in an on-going training perspective?

If a case is to be made for the micro- and small enterprise sector, both of the informal and the formal sectors of the economy, it is clear that the answers have to be of an integrated nature. Not only is it insufficient to propose a course or succession of courses: training both of workers and of the employers themselves needs to be located within the aggregate of the requirements of the productive or services unit. It is therefore imperative that policies in this regard be inter-institutional, in such a way that demands in terms of skills development, administration, productive management, technological management, access to information, credit policies, inter alia, may be attended to in a relevant manner and adequate priorities may be set. Moreover, the very concept of "subject of attention", from being the individual worker, becomes centred in the productive unit and, particularly, in assistance for linkage with other firms or production lines which may themselves be, and in this case are, the "target population."

We are speaking, therefore, of a manner of acting that involves, besides quick answers to urgent situations, investment in curriculum research and development, in training of trainers, in methodological and institutional development which allows a linkage of the supply of training for these recipients with the modern approaches of labour management and organisation, in innovation, development and transfer of technology; it is clear that alliances must be developed that allow the resources and capacities existing in our societies to be linked and taken advantage of.

These findings have, obviously, profound implications for each of the players who act at present in the field of public vocational training policies addressed to the poverty sectors, an aspect that will be dealt with below.

(Table of contents)   (Foreword)  (Vocational Training: between productive policies And a social policy)  (Changes in socio-economic geography and their equivalent in the institutionality of vocational training)   (Competing paradigms?)  (Implications of Institutional Transformations for the Vocational Training Players)  (Training and poverty: Outstanding features of the most innovative experiences)  (Lessons Learned)

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