Publication: Advancing Adult Learning in Eastern Europe and Central Asia
Loading...
Published
2011-04
ISSN
Date
2017-06-27
Author(s)
Hirshleifer, Sarojini
Editor(s)
Abstract
This report presents available evidence on adult education and training in Europe and Central Asia (ECA), differentiating two separate types: continuing vocational education and training (CVET) for the employed, sought either by employers or individuals, and retraining and second chance education for the non?employed. This paper presents available evidence on the extent and patterns of lifelong learning in ECA. It argues that advancing adult education and training in ECA is important not only to meet the new skills demands but also to respond to a rapidly worsening demographic outlook across most of the region. While it is not equally important for all ECA countries, adult education and training should be high on the agenda of those ECA economies that are closest to the technological frontier and facing a demographic decline, such as the new European Union (EU) member States and Russia. The paper lays out a framework for government action to advance adult learning in ECA through a mix consisting of policy coordination between government and the enterprise sector, a sound regulatory regime and appropriate financial incentives.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Hirshleifer, Sarojini; Bodewig, Christian. 2011. Advancing Adult Learning in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. SP Discussion Paper;No. 1108. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27347 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Bulgaria : Workforce Development(Washington, DC, 2014)This report presents a comprehensive diagnostic assessment of Bulgaria's workforce development (WfD) policies and institutions. The results are based on a new World Bank tool designed for this purpose, SABER-WfD. SABER-WfD is part of the World Bank's initiative on Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) whose aim is to provide systematic assessment and documentation of the policy and institutional factors that influence the performance of key areas of national education and training systems. The SABER-WfD tool encompasses initial, continuing and targeted vocational education and training that are offered through multiple channels and focuses largely on programs at the secondary and post-secondary levels.Publication Bulgaria : Raising Skills for Employment, Growth and Convergence(Washington, DC, 2009-09)The Bulgarian labor market has seen remarkable improvements in recent years and has contributed to strong economic growth. The benign environment for job creation is now changing, as the global economic crisis impacts on labor market demand in Bulgaria. Compared to the EU27 averages, activity and employment rates have remained low, and Bulgaria has significant untapped domestic labor reserves. Bulgarian pupils in school also do not acquire the necessary skills and competencies to compete in a high innovation economy. Continued available vacancies suggest that skills shortages remain a barrier to employment even during the crisis and measures to retrain and up-skill the unemployed and those at risk of lay-off is an important policy direction for the short-term. In light of Bulgaria s demographic decline over the coming decades, medium-term growth and convergence require sustained increases in labor productivity and investments in human capital. Short-term measures during the economic crisis ideally combine efforts to keep workers in employment through temporary publicly subsidized short-working hour schemes as well as the use of unemployment benefits and measures to accelerate transitions from old to new jobs. The economic crisis is an opportune moment to address skills shortages both to tackle unemployment and to help the recovery in the short-term and to promote the foundation for medium-term economic growth and convergence. Looking at the medium term, with Bulgaria s labor productivity remaining low in a European comparison, sustained interventions from early childhood to adult education are necessary over the coming years to raise human capital and ensure the increases in labor productivity that Bulgaria needs to accelerate growth and convergence. In satisfying the growing demand for skilled labor and boosting employment, Bulgaria needs to urgently look at promoting the transition of young people from education to the labor market, including through keeping them longer in school and ensuring they earn the skills that are in demand in the labor market as well as promoting part-time employment and internship programs for young people.Publication Bulgaria : Improving the Quality and Relevance of Education for All(Washington, DC, 2009-09)Bulgaria has recently introduced sweeping reforms of its secondary education system to promote more autonomy and accountability of schools for better learning outcomes. Positive results are already showing but more remains to be done to reap the full benefits of the reforms. Per-student-financing and delegated budgets have led to a wave of school closures that had become essential in the wake of a dramatic decline in student numbers. As opposed to the previous centralized system, school-based management with a considerable degree of decision-making power of the school principal has set the stage for schools to better adjust to local needs and opportunities for a better education. External student assessments are now routinely conducted, which have substantially improved the evidence base for education policy-making. However, concerns remain as to the accountability of schools to the local community. While principals are accountable to the municipal authorities for the use of financial resources, parents have little formal ways of holding principals accountable for learning outcomes. The reform was launched in the face of dramatic challenges in terms of unsatisfactory learning outcomes, early school leaving and considerable inequities in the education system. Moreover, Bulgaria s vocational education and training system remains un-reformed, and there are concerns with regard to the quality and relevance, with few formal communication channels to the labor market. The higher education system, meanwhile, is characterized by low participation relative to other new EU Member States, and the system of occupationally-oriented colleges, an important part of higher education across the EU, remains underdeveloped relative to academically-oriented universities. The economic crisis and associated fiscal pressures should not lead to cuts in the education budget. Promoting accountability for learning outcomes and results is the key policy direction for both secondary and tertiary education. Teachers are the key determinant of the quality of education.Publication Matching Aspirations : Skills for Implementing Cambodia's Growth Strategy(World Bank, Phnom Penh, 2012-03)Over the past decade, Cambodia improved the skills of its workforce at a slower rate than other countries in East Asia. And, although Cambodia's firms do not perceive skills as their main business constraint, skills shortages may negatively affect the process of both industrial and agricultural upgrading and economic diversification. Employers point to a structural imbalance in skills supply, including a relative shortage of vocational training graduates compared to university graduates. This report provides valuable insight for Cambodia to develop the skills necessary to match the country's development aspiration. At the same time, it outlines specific actions to create opportunities for access to information in the skills market, to expand household-oriented interventions, to improve school retention, and to strengthen second-chance options - including technical and vocational education and training. This report further proposes how to expand financing for early childhood development effectively, to strengthen institutions, and to promote incentives toward better results among skills providers, including higher education institutions. The analysis in this report represents an important collaborative contribution to Cambodia's growth strategy and human development agenda.Publication Developing Skills for Economic Transformation and Social Harmony in China : A Study of Yunnan Province(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-10-25)It starts with a demand-side analysis in chapter two, examining historical trends in demand for skills, revealing the types of skills in demand, and projecting future demand for skills driven by economic growth and policy development. Chapter two also highlights the emerging skills shortages and mismatches in Yunnan. The rest of the report focuses on the access, quality, and relevance of Yunnan's education and training system and how effective it is in supplying the skills in demand. An overview of Yunnan's formal and non-formal education and training system is presented in chapter three. Chapter four focuses on the formal Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system, examining its governance, industry participation, curriculum reforms, quality assurance, and finances. Analysis of the formal education and training system focuses mainly on secondary and tertiary TVET. Chapters five and six address two major training programs outside the formal education system: non-formal training for rural workers and work-based training for urban workers, both of strategic importance. Finally, chapter seven draws on lessons from the Shanghai Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA to demonstrate the role of schools in developing the cognitive skills of 15-year-olds. The report concludes with a summary of findings and a set of policy recommendations for meeting the skills challenges and improving the education and training system.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication The Role of Social Ties in Factor Allocation(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-10)We investigate whether social structure helps or hinders factor allocation using unusually rich data from the Gambia. Evidence indicates that land available for cultivation is allocated unequally across households; and that factor transfers are more common between neighbors, co-ethnics, and kinship-related households. Does this lead to the conclusion that land inequality is due to flows of land between households being impeded by social divisions? To answer this question, a novel methodology that approaches exhaustive data on dyadic flows from an aggregate point of view is introduced. Land transfers lead to a more equal distribution of land and to more comparable factor ratios across households in general. But equalizing transfers of land are not more likely within ethnic or kinship groups. In conclusion, ethnic and kinship divisions do not hinder land and labor transfers in a way that contributes to aggregate factor inequality. Labor transfers do not equilibrate factor ratios across households. But it cannot be ruled out that they serve a beneficial role, for example, to deal with unanticipated health shocks.Publication The Firm-Level Impact of the Covid–19 Pandemic(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-09-02)The World Bank commissioned a firm-level survey to provide quantitative evidence of the impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Two rounds of data have now been collected for the months of March and May using a nationally representative World Bank survey providing information on the impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The survey includes five hundred firms spanning a wide range of industries and firm sizes, as well as the formal and informal sector. This note provides a snapshot of how the firms’ outcomes and response to the pandemic have changed between the months of March and May 2020.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Impact of Migration on Economic and Social Development : A Review of Evidence and Emerging Issues(2011-02-01)This paper provides a review of the literature on the development impact of migration and remittances on origin countries and on destination countries in the South. International migration is an ever-growing phenomenon that has important development implications for both sending and receiving countries. For a sending country, migration and the resulting remittances lead to increased incomes and poverty reduction, and improved health and educational outcomes, and promote economic development. Yet these gains might come at substantial social costs to the migrants and their families. Since many developing countries are also large recipients of international migrants, they face challenges of integration of immigrants, job competition between migrant and native workers, and fiscal costs associated with provision of social services to the migrants. This paper also summarizes incipient discussions on the impacts of migration on climate change, democratic values, demographics, national identity, and security. In conclusion, the paper highlights a few policy recommendations calling for better integration of migration in development policies in the South and the North, improving data collection on migration and remittance flows, leveraging remittances for improving access to finance of recipient households and countries, improving recruitment mechanisms, and facilitating international labor mobility through safe and legal channels.Publication MIGA Annual Report 2013 : Insuring Investments, Ensuring Opportunities(Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2013-10-11)In fiscal year 2013, Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) issued 2.8 billion dollars in investment guarantees for projects in our developing member countries. At 1.5 billion dollars, representing more than half of new business, the bulk of MIGA's guarantees issued support investments in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sixty-nine percent of new business volume this year was in complex projects in infrastructure and extractive industries, a strategic priority for the Agency. This year, 82 percent of MIGA's new volume fell into one or more of strategic priority areas: investments in the world's poorest countries, "South-South" investments, investments in conflict-affected countries, and investments in complex projects. MIGA also established the conflict-affected and fragile economies facility to further deepen support to this priority area.