The touchstone for the relevance of technical and vocational education and training is the productive employment of its graduates. A shortage of skilled workers at a time of high unemployment, however, is symptomatic for many of our cooperation countries. The cause of this, besides demographic developments, lies in the heterogeneity of economic structures. There are the traditional crafts and trades on one hand. On the other hand, the modern industry and service sector is being established at the same time. Existing technical education and vocational training systems often fail to address this multiplicity of layers. The labour markets, too, are frequently not transparent enough and actually prevent the supply of skilled workers from correlating with demand in the labour markets. This means the content of technical and vocational education and training does not match corporate needs in all sectors. 

Training is an absolute prerequisite for economic growth. However, it does not create any new jobs by itself. Country-specific advice on how to enhance the performance and the market orientation of existing technical and vocational education and training systems can steer training courses to the needs of business.  Supplementing these measures with counselling and placement strategies in the labour market contributes significantly to eliminating structural unemployment and to fostering greater transparency.

We support sustainable implementation of labour market-oriented technical and vocational education and training systems through expert consultancy on the formulation of relevant policies, through the design of legal frameworks, the introduction of innovative financing mechanisms, the development of practice and workprocess-oriented training courses and through access to international exchanges of experience. We help countries to define the roles of the public and private sectors and civil society and promote decentralisation or privatisation processes wherever this facilitates more customerfriendly service provision. A further priority is the capacity building of the respective actors, from the training and advisory staff up to management levels of both local and national policymakers. Setting up labour market information systems and establishing advisory and placement bodies are additional milestones along the road from technical and vocational education and training to employment.

In this way we ensure to a great extent that partner countries are able to meet the demands posed by labour market-oriented technical and vocational education and training.

Further Information

• Skills development for secure livelihoods
  Factsheet
  gtz2009-en-skills-development-for-secure-livelihoods.pdf, 0.15 MB (English)