This dissertation is a study of policy stakeholders (N = 24) in four countries within the regional Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) policy environment. The scope was to identify how they navigated and interpreted conceptualizations of TVET and general education, which have been explicitly tied to national and regional…

This book unravels the 'new reality' of national educational reforms, exploring optimal strategic directions for education and training. Offering a particular emphasis on EU-wide political guidelines, it encompasses lifelong learning across all levels, and it showcases the pivotal role of modern skills in education for reducing poverty, promoting…

Researchers are combining self-reports from mobile surveys with passive data collection using sensors and apps on smartphones increasingly more often. While smartphones are commonly used in some groups of individuals, smartphone penetration is significantly lower in other groups. In addition, different operating systems (OSs) limit how mobile data…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore an employability enhancement initiative, the Additional Skills Acquisition Programme (ASAP) project in the state of Kerala, India, as a case for the inclusive development of employability in college and university students. Design/methodology/approach: ASAP is applied as a case study to examine the…

The paper addresses the impact of COVID-19 on vocational education and training, seeking to discern the outline of possible directions for its future development within the debates about VET responses to the pandemic. The discussion is set in its socio-economic context, considering debates that engage with the social relations of care and…

Lifelong learning has been the subject of international policy debates and incremental developments over the past century. The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect on the neoliberal discourse of key competences for lifelong learning, which is promoted by the European Union as a self-sufficient policy solution that can cure a wide range…

This paper examines the role of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in Palestine through an economic and social development lens, and identifies the lessons learned. The paper discusses the effect of TVET on employment within the notion of decent work, poverty reduction, and empowerment of youth, within a context of…

This paper aims to present a general perspective of the actions developed by the Uruguayan Broad Front, which has been defined as an example of the reformed left in Latin America. The Broad Front governed Uruguay between 2005 and 2020. It implemented several alternative and innovative policies. Methodologically, the paper is empirically supported…

India's informal economy accounts for more than half the country's GDP but is characterised by low levels of skills, and considerable barriers to skills development for workers. The Government of India has implemented ambitious policy initiatives for upskilling, designed to catalyse 'formalisation' of the economy, and improve productivity.…

In this paper, our main objective is to test the hypothesis that child labor can be a rational response to low returns to formal education in Mali. To this end, after a literature review, we build a flexible conceptual model that explicitly links the child labor supply to the comparison of the expected returns to education with child labor. The…

This study identified informal economic activities in Hausa community in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. It examined how people acquire knowledge and skills about the identified informal economic activities and provided explanation on why people prefer informal economic activities to other types of economic activities to making a living in Hausa community in…

In the framework of a household's collective decision processes, this study presents a structural empirical model to test the hypothesis that child labour is compelled by household's poverty and parent's bargaining power against one another. To this end, a measure for mother's intra-household bargaining power is developed. I use Iranian…

The SDGs mark the clearest global acceptance yet that the previous approach to development was unsustainable. In VET, UNESCO has responded by developing a clear account of how a transformed VET must be part of a transformative approach to development. It argues that credible, comprehensive skills systems can be built that can support individuals,…

We study the market for teachers in England, in particular teacher turnover. We show that there is a positive raw association between the level of school disadvantage and the turnover rate of its teachers. This association diminishes as we control for school, pupil and local teacher labour market characteristics, but is not eliminated. The…

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has exposed the glaring inequities in school systems -- from the broadband and computers needed for online education to training teachers to keep classes going digitally. Most education systems were nimble: they rethought the curriculum, embraced hybrid learning, adjusted school calendars and schedules, and adapted…