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On the occasion of World Teachers' Day on October 5, the authorities must further equip trainers and industry experts in technical and vocational education as well as higher education through the competency-based approach (CBA) and university pedagogy in order to produce graduates whose training is in line with the needs of the country.
This text is designed to encourage policymakers to adopt strategies to address graduate unemployment and reduce the precariousness of families living in pockets of poverty in Haiti.
For better program relevance, it is necessary to involve business leaders upfront and integrate courses on SME management and entrepreneurship for graduates of vocational and university training leading to self-employment. In light of transnationalization and production traceability, graduates must be equipped to be competitive at both the national and regional market levels.
What about the training-employment match?
The training-employment match refers to the correspondence between the skills acquired through training and those required by the labor market. It is essential for reducing unemployment, avoiding overqualification or underqualification, and improving company performance. Nowadays, governments and businesses seek to adjust educational systems and human resource practices to limit these imbalances.
Despite the social upheavals and tensions prevailing in the country, including the dizzying increase in insecurity with cases of kidnapping and assassination, the authorities must develop mechanisms to achieve a better training-employment match.
It is worth recalling that the former Minister of Education, Nesmy MANIGAT, from the Paul-Martelly Government, placed major importance on the reform of technical and vocational education as well as higher education in his National Pact for Quality Education (2015-2020), with legislative packages, one of the tools of good practices, terms dear to colleagues at the World Bank.
These two levels of education, downstream of the Haitian educational system, produce graduates for the labor market. These graduates must be competitive to meet the demands of the modern production and services sector and to be able to live in a cognitive society increasingly marked by the digital revolution linked to Artificial Intelligence (AI). All this is just to identify the necessary palliatives to the pathology that is graduate unemployment in major cities and at the same time reduce the extreme poverty of families, a theme featured in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) during the 70th session of the United Nations in New York in September 2015.
In our various plans, such as the National Education and Training Plan (PNEF), there is still a major area of intervention such as increasing external efficiency where it is a question of revisiting the curricula of these two subsectors for the purpose of rebalancing between the training offer and the demand for the labor market. For several decades, the educational authorities of the country have been primarily concerned with the quality or internal efficiency of basic education, wanting to opt for the pedagogy of success. Docimologists emphasize two antidotes to combat school failure or wasted student years in education planning, namely automatic promotion and formative assessment.
The first concerns the fundamental literacy cycle (1st to 4th grade) based on a behaviorist approach or the Pedagogy by Objective (PPO) according to the vision of the Haitian reformer Joseph C. Bernard (Minister of Education from 1979 to 1982) and the second pertains to reformed secondary education based on Lev Vygotsky's socio-constructivist approach or CBA, included in the policy document for the renovation of the secondary sub-sector.
However, it has been found that when diagnosing the Haitian educational system, there is a lack of attention regarding its externality in terms of program relevance or professional integration. In clear terms, the expectations of parents and the requirements of the labor market are not being met considering the high unemployment rate and the lack of qualified technicians.
Sometimes one wonders perplexedly what happens to our graduates who return from vocational training in general? Will they find a job? Is the training received by these graduates in line with the objectives of the labor market? Is there a structured partnership framework between the heads of professional and university centers and business leaders or presidents of socio-professional associations? Has a study been conducted by the supervisory body (INFP) on the promising and sustainable fields of study? Is there an employability agency to receive job seekers? Has consideration been given to an allowance for graduates who are job searching? Do the experts from IHSI calculate the unemployment rate by sectors: primary, secondary, tertiary, and even quaternary with telecommunications and aeronautics? Are there public policies to strengthen the links between vocational training and promising fields (tourism, energy, services, fishing)? Is there continuing education to adapt employees' skills to technological and organizational developments across all sectors?
Perceived as black boxes, schools and businesses once stood at opposite ends and superbly ignored each other. There is even an old saying that became banal: each to their own profession, the school trained, the business manufactured products and made money. However, now, the rapprochement between schools and businesses is a crucial asset to effectively prepare young people for the new and changing demands of the labor market.
Graduates should not be abandoned under any circumstances, as in economic spheres, outputs are more important for the state than inputs in a given cycle of studies due to the added value or skills acquired, products of the resources mobilized by decision-makers during years of training.
Professional integration studies are needed to use Anglophone expressions such as 'follow-up studies' or 'tracer studies' to follow students and gather information about their career paths, even interviewing them at the workplace. And why not organize focus groups with business leaders to determine their degree of satisfaction according to studies conducted in Francophone Africa?
It must be noted that when a country has a number of graduates who are unemployed, one must question the socio-economic purpose of education, the external yield of the educational system, and why not government policy concerning job creation.
Official statistics indicate that over 70% of people are languishing in unemployment and precariousness. Those who work either are underemployed or are engaged in disguised unemployment given the rising cost of living, a corollary of recurrent crises and the devaluation of the national currency.
Obviously, there is an informal sector swelling with many people, not to mention the circulation of staggering sums, to put it mildly, millions of US dollars. This sector eludes the tax authorities, all things considered. It requires strengthening for social benefit. Moreover, local SMEs must invest in continuing education to reduce under-competence.
Sometimes, with the penetration of foreign capital in a neoliberal regime, it is not the multinationals that create jobs but rather the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) often found in the informal sector. Often, employment can generate training when large companies establish themselves in developing countries like ours. There needs to be a synergy of action between the formal and informal sectors for wealth creation or full employment.
A wise choice to make
Considering the cost-effectiveness analysis and especially the cost-benefit analysis, the Haitian state must make a wise choice. Either it opts to increase basic or secondary education. Or it mobilizes more resources towards vocational training in general. In other words, by investing in technical education and/or higher education.
Increase in the budget share allocated to education
The share allocated in the national budget, which was about 17%, should increase to 30% with a GDP of 4%. Although this is a bit ambitious compared to other state priorities such as agriculture, housing, and health as axes of intervention in the country’s strategic development plan with proven indicators.
Provision of educational equipment
Professional and university centers must be equipped with pedagogical equipment, laboratories, practice materials, and teaching materials.
Dual training
Many of our graduates travel to other climes that are more favorable in search of a better life. This brain drain, which we have witnessed for ages, constitutes a significant opportunity cost for a country that so desperately needs skilled personnel for its growth and level of modernity. To combat precarity and youth unemployment in major urban centers, dual training is an alternative pathway.
In many African countries such as Senegal, Benin, Chad, and Congo, exclusive training in establishments has lost its monopoly following the introduction of dual training. This latter is nothing but a dual training system in vocational schools and companies. It should be understood well that this is not just an internship.
Add to this the involvement of business leaders in the development of training modules and even having them be part of the management council of the establishments.
Courses on entrepreneurship and SMEs
Courses on management, SMEs, and entrepreneurship can be organized for graduates of technical and university education. These courses can have notable benefits for a cohort of young graduates by allowing them to find opportunities either to secure employment in the labor market or to start their own micro-enterprise collegially, generating employment and growth. The state could, in turn, promote microfinance as seen in Bangladesh.
Establishing service firms with fixed addresses
One sometimes wonders why these graduates do not band together to control the market since the country has many potentialities in terms of diversified resources and human beings (around 12 million inhabitants)? They could also create firms with fixed addresses based on their fields.
Firms in engineering, accounting, electricity, construction, plumbing, tiling, multi-services, etc., can be established. Everyone knows where to find an engineer, electrician, computer technician, and telephone repair person.
To promote SMEs, the state must opt for public policies related to a less drastic protectionist system while regulating the market for imported products and even start-ups.
A special 1% tax on payroll
The state can levy a special tax on payroll monthly to finance initial vocational training, as done in South Africa, while forming a mixed council (public-private) for the co-management of these funds.
A law encouraging school-business relations
The legislative chamber can pass an education law that relates to school-business relations through a collaboration protocol particularly concerning the identification of training needs as in Romania.
Conclusion
The socio-economic purposes of the Haitian educational sector give a utilitarian character to the school. In this sense, it must produce graduates with transversal, behavioral, and transferable skills for the needs of society. However, to resolve the equation of training and the labor market, this must go through political stability in the country with respect for constitutional time and electoral time. In clear terms, with the organization of periodic elections as many Latin American countries do, such as the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Brazil, to name a few. For everyone acknowledges that stability generates sustainable development and social progress. In terms of education economics, profitability in Haiti is very low when conducting an anthropological and even sociological analysis of political actors. The conception of cohabitation and respect for cultural diversity as a new paradigm is not on the horizon. And pulling graduates out of the pariah state into which they sink is not on the horizon either.
Yves ROBLIN, Graduate of the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIPE) in Paris, of the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) of Port-au-Prince, of the Faculty of Law and Economic Sciences (FDSE), Author: "A 20th Century Rich in Events and Inventions: The Case of Haiti" 436p. roblinyves@yahoo.fr
IHSI: Haitian Institute of Statistics and Informatics
INFP: National Institute of Professional Training.
Bibliographical References
Main Sectors of Education in Haiti, 2017, Media text, 323p, Yves Roblin
PNEF (1997-2007)
GTEF 2010/Education and Training Plan
Modules from IIPE-UNESCO on technical education
See the works of Dikel Delvariste, Jean Marie Leveille, Yves Villefranche.
Websites: Internet
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