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

Institutional transformations in the field of vocational training in Latin America and the Caribbean have been marked by the dual characteristics of being simultaneously linked to economic and social objectives. From the beginning, vocational training was an instrument that contributed both to productive development and to the promotion of social integration and cohesion.

In the past, social vocational training policies rested mainly on VTIs. The experience accumulated by those institutes in looking after disadvantaged sectors, plus the mandate they received from governments, turned them into the first sectoral public bodies called upon to promote social policies in the pursuit of equity and the struggle against poverty through education.

The emergence of new approaches regarding training policies, particularly those addressed to the more disfavoured groups, has been in keeping with changes in the ideas about the role of the State. New conceptions place it in the subsidiary position of correcting matters by means of instruments focusing on specific populations or sectors, protecting them from the inequities that may result from a defective operation of the mechanisms of training markets.

To such defects also contribute phenomena such as the inordinate growth of informal sectors, the social sequels of economic adjustment policies and the appearance of long-lasting unemployment. Faced with such complex problems, the former institutional organisation revealed shortcomings, regarding both coverage, flexibility and relevance of its training offer.

As opposed to classic policies, the new approach has been characterised by a preference for focalised projects and programmes, instead of all-embracing endeavours. Actual delivery of the training has been mainly entrusted to private, non-governmental organisations, which have been thus promoted. Additionally, demand driven criteria have been adopted and a new and enhanced evaluation culture has been set in place.

Ministries of Labour have taken on a leading role in the design, implementation and management of those new policies. In some countries, institutional mutation has been practically complete, whereas in others the old and new institutionalities are still under discussion. When former VTIs managed to survive, they did so through deep transformation processes. They were as usual driven by economic, productive and technological needs, but also envisaged social goals. At the same time, the last few years have witnessed a withdrawal of several Ministries of Education from the vocational training field.

Application of the new type of social policies to vocational training makes it now possible to draw up a balance sheet with positive aspects, but also important shortfalls. Some of those aspects are as follows:

1. On the one hand, new social policies have allowed to expand the training offer and in some cases upgrade it on the basis of quality criteria. It has opened fresh avenues for a more active participation of the social players, both in the management and in the financing and implementation of training. They have nurtured an evaluation culture based on the achievement of occupational outlets rather than on statistics of training actions carried out. And fundamentally, they have been a critical and stimulating presence that fostered transformations in VT management.
2. On the other hand, the institutionality built around Ministries of Labour has proved to be rather fragile. There is little capacity to make medium and long term investments in curricular research and development, teaching materials and resources, the training of trainers, etc. The implementation of training action rests upon a universe of executing agents that tend towards fragmentation and scattering, are unable to act strategically, and find it difficult to hoard knowledge profitably. In the face of the challenge of constructing a training system ensuring a lifelong education for all, it has not been possible to reconcile the immediate goals of many programmes with training itineraries of longer duration.
3. Greater opportunities necessarily stem from an attempt to complement efforts, resources and knowledge from different institutions and agents. Experiences in that respect do not abound. More often than not, the various institutionalities have been at odds with each other.
4. However, what has been difficult to bring off at the level of general policies, has sometimes occurred in concrete cases. VTIs have been known to adopt new methodological criteria and a more flexible curricular scheme to meet the needs of poverty sectors; some trade unions have managed programmes financed with public funds and have worked out operational agreements with VTIs; there have been examples of tripartite management of training programmes for the young, for women, for micro-enterprises or rural workers. These are new institutional arrangements, still weak, but they provide a common learning ground for non-traditional actors and bring together diverse points of view.
5. The traditional link between training and labour relations systems shows that training has become an object of negotiation and agreement. This is due to the weight of the knowledge factor within the productive process, and its connections with aspects such as employment, productivity, labour legislation, quality, health and hygiene, etc. It is therefore quite natural that this situation should awaken the interest of both employers and workers. However, their involvement in it depends to a great extent on their own capacity to organise themselves and make their interests heard.
6. Attention of groups below the poverty line then requires strategies envisaging more than just the mere offer of courses, however well designed and promoted they may be. For such strategies to be reasonably successful and sustainable, they must also facilitate the transformation of such groups into actors capable of organising themselves, representing and defending their own interests. In other words, those people have to take development in their own hands and become responsible for it.
7. Considerable progress is being made in the field of VT in areas such as co-ordination of training with processes of innovation, development and transfer of technology, compliance with quality standards in management, training delivery, the application of new teaching technologies (multimedia, distance education, mobile or virtual actions), as well as in the constant updating of contents. With differences in their rate of development, VTIs are managing to put the region on the map regarding the latest training tendencies.
8. Consequently, it is a formidable challenge to prevent training policies from becoming additional segmentation factors through differential or unequal mechanisms to access knowledge. Essential factors to meet that challenge are institutional co-ordination and getting closer to complementarity among the various training approaches and policies. Over and above the immediate action required by urgent situations, sectors below the line of poverty deserve a road of access to modern knowledge.

(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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