Bulletin 16: Editorial

Welcome to the 2nd online issue of the UNESCO-UNEVOC Bulletin. We have received a lot of positive feedback on the new format and would like to thank all of those who have contacted us with their valuable comments and suggestions. We trust that you find this web-based format the most convenient way of keeping up to date on the activities of UNESCO-UNEVOC, as well as those of the UNEVOC Network and the TVET community at large. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you encounter any problems accessing the content.

Within UNESCO at large, important changes have taken place in the area of education for the world of work. In October, UNESCO’s General Conference approved a new strategy which defines the organization’s work in relation to TVET over the next three biennia (2010-2015). UNESCO aims to strengthen its assistance to Member States to improve their TVET systems and practices, in line with Education for All (EFA) goal 3 relating to “appropriate learning and life skills.” Under the new strategy, the work of UNESCO in the area of TVET will focus on three core areas:
1. Provision of upstream policy advice and related capacity development;
2. Conceptual clarification of skills development and improvement of monitoring; and
3. Acting as a clearinghouse and informing the global TVET debate.

Several aspects of the strategy are of particular importance to the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre, in particular the UNEVOC Network. For example, in the area of providing upstream policy advice and developing capacity at the country level, it is aimed, among other things, to establish coherent and cooperative multilateral approaches that involve “the existing UNESCO regional networks and the UNEVOC networks worldwide” and stress “South-South, South-North and South-South-North cooperation”.

Within the UNEVOC Network, it is aimed to identify “more regional centres of excellence such as the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER, Australia) and the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training (KRIVET, Republic of Korea)”. These centres of excellence have a special status in the UNEVOC Network and support and complement UNESCO’s work in TVET. KRIVET, for example, is sponsoring an activity this year in line with South-South cooperation that seeks to assist Central Asian vocational educators in developing qualification frameworks for TVET. I invite leaders of UNEVOC Centres to consider whether they would like to be included in this special category of UNEVOC Centres, which is reserved for leading institutions with wide-ranging expertise in TVET and with the ability for international collaboration and providing support to UNESCO to realize the common goal of achieving the continuous improvement of TVET.

In the new TVET strategy, attention to the UNEVOC Network is also given in the context of UNESCO’s clearinghouse function. The strategy aims to “revamp the global UNEVOC networks, which are composed of government ministries and research and training institutions, to serve as a useful platform for cooperation and information-sharing to improve TVET across the world.”

The new strategy gives TVET priority in UNESCO’s work in the area of education over the next three biennia. The success of the implementation will not only depend on efforts on the part of UNESCO, but also on the collaboration of the beneficiary countries. For more information, you can access the full text of the strategy on the UNESCO website at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001833/183317e.pdf.

I would like to recognize the efforts of UNEVOC Centres in sharing information, organizing activities and raising funds for activities and North-South collaboration. In August, the Centre for Flexible Learning, Municipality of Soderhamn (one of two UNEVOC Centres in Sweden), received financial support of 100,000 Euros for the first year and additional funds for the following three years from the regional body responsible for the European Social Fund in Gavleborg county (Sweden) in order to advance cooperation and collaboration within the UNEVOC Network. Other UNEVOC Centres, such as the Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland, the University of Tampere in Finland, and the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg in Germany have also raised funds which they have used to support the organisation of seminars for the benefit of educators from UNEVOC Centres in developing countries. Some experts from these institutions have offered to contribute to the effort of establishing a TVET Best Practice Clearinghouse. These initiatives, which are very much in line with the new UNESCO TVET strategy and its emphasis on North-South and South-South collaboration, are very encouraging, and I look forward to working with these institutions.

We are delighted that UNEVOC Centres from around the world have responded positively to our latest call for articles. Along with latest news from the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre in Bonn, you can find their articles and updates in the section “News from UNEVOC Network Members” of this Bulletin.

In late June, the International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work: Bridging Academic and Vocational Learning was published. It took some 218 authors from developed and developing countries, from the fields of policy, practice and research, to produce a manuscript of 1.2 million words and a total of 197 chapters. The 6-volume International Handbook is part of the larger UNESCO-UNEVOC International Library of Technical and Vocational Education and Training, which consists of two Handbooks, a Book Series and various other types of publication. For more information about all titles that were published in the past few months, please see the section “New Publications”.

The current issue of the Bulletin also features a UNEVOC Forum article: “Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET): A Brief Study of the Role of Enterprises, Government and NGOs” by Stephen Murray, Director of the Carlyle Institute. You can access the Forum in the section “New Publications”.

On behalf of the entire UNESCO-UNEVOC team, I wish you pleasant reading.

L. Efison Munjanganja,
Officer in Charge
UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre,
e.munjanganja(at)unevoc.unesco.org