Mid-Term Evaluation of the EU funded programme Support to the Technical and Vocational Education and Training Reform Programme in Egypt TVET II
- Worked with AESA, a company based in Brussels, Belgium.
RRD was involved in the evaluation of this project directed at the TVET reform program of the country and engaged in document study, interviews, site visits, survey, and report writing.
The Egyptian TVET system is scattered as it mainly composed of a large number of Initial Vocational Education and Training (IVET) institutes and to a lesser extent Continuing Vocational and Training (CVT) institutions. The TVET institutes include a large number of programmes governed by an equally large number of stakeholders.
The capacity for initial VET constitutes around 2900 different institutes, the largest capacity by far is administered by the Ministry of Education, which includes around 2200 technical secondary schools, offering Technical Secondary Education.
The project that was evaluated aimed at improving the structure and the performance of the TVET system to better respond to the new socio-economic needs, in particular youth employability and increased competitiveness in the context of the country's current and future development. The TVET II had a particular emphasis on the Tourism sector, although other sectors are targeted as well, given on the one hand the importance of this sector in the Egyptian economy and labour market and on the other hand the shortage of TVET provision at a level adequate to meet the economic and competitiveness objectives of the country.
Objectives:
The project engaged in the realisation of three main objectives closely corresponding to the main problems with the TVET system.
The first objective was to put in place a rational streamlined governance of the TVET system performing coherently through clear leadership, participation, partnerships and transparency.
The second objective was to improve the quality of the TVET offer to respond better to the labour market skills needs and private sector demand, starting from pilots focusing in selected key economic sectors (with particular emphasis on Tourism) and extending its actions to the system level, where in particular mention was made to:
- Revise and improve the delivery of the TVET institutes according to labour market needs;
- Improve the offers of the Vocational Training Centres (VTCs) and other venues delivering trainings, ensuring higher quality and relevance for the labour market;
The third objective was to increase the employability of Egyptian youth, jobseekers and workers, and to enhance the capacity of the TVET system to develop appropriate skills programmes to meet labour market demand, with particular attention to selected key economic sectors, notably Tourism.
The project has produced quality outputs on governance as well. For the project to have impact on the governance it is necessary for the government of Egypt to embrace these outputs and take them on board. Especially the adoption of Competence Based Training and Education methodology proved to be fruitful as the students are likely to profit from this as the competencies they learn are relevant for the labour market and will ensure they will be engaged in profitable employment after graduation.
Students preparing food in Luxor, Egypt