Improving Trade Policy for Human Development
In order to create a holistic and continuous compulsory 12-year system of comprehensive and specialized vocational secondary education (SVSE), a teacher training and re-training base was created, and curricula and syllabi were approved in accordance with national educational standards. A wide range of additional measures was taken to make the transition to universal 12-year compulsory education during the 2009/2010 school year. Currently, SVSE is provided on a full-time basis in two types of educational institutions: academic lyceums and vocational colleges. According to 2009 data, the country has built 1,335 SVSE institutions, educating 1,304,304 students, of which 1,208 are professional colleges with a headcount of 1,209,564 students, and 127 academic lyceums with a headcount of 94,740 students. The implementation of these measures led to significant improvements in the vocational secondary education numbers: during 2002-2007, the number of SVSE alumni per 10,000 of the population increased from 47 to 117. In order to ensure the training of qualified personnel and employment of the alumni of specialized vocational secondary institutions, in 2005, the government adopted the ‘2006-2010 Standard Territorial Programme for Qualitative Training and Employment of Graduates of Vocational Colleges and Academic Lyceums’, which provides for the creation of new jobs with financing from the off-budget Employment Fund. One of the results of the measures taken was a considerable increase in the share of employed graduates of specialized vocational secondary institutions: in 2007-2008, 92.1 percent of the total number of graduates were employed. However, the fact that only 46 percent of graduates were employed according to their specialization is also noteworthy. This indicates a problem with the mismatch between demand and supply in the job market, which is due to a number of reasons: – The approach to the specialization of educational institutions, especially in rural areas, is characterized by insufficient flexibility in relation to changes in the job market29; – Vocational colleges provide education related to industrial professions in general, without a focused specialization in certain jobs, even during the last years of schooling, thereby limiting the opportunities for college graduates to start working at industrial enterprises without receiving additional training with a more focused specialization; – The level of curricula and syllabi does not provide for the required level of education, as the secondary vocational education syllabi, in their majority, were compiled without consultations or coordination with employers. In order to reconcile demand and supply in the job market, it is advisable to develop and regularly update the vocational education syllabi, based on the results of monitoring demand in the job market; to introduce multi-profile colleges, which would provide training in 10-15 key directions determined by the requirements of allied trades and specializations. Learning skills in several allied professions during three years of education will increase the likelihood of the employment of such SVSE graduates.
Increasing the quality of the workforce means the need to improve the education system
For example, a specialized secondary education institution located in a certain area, which, year after year, graduates the same number of specialists for the same sector (for instance, kindergarteners and librarians). Amidst a relatively low mobility of the population, this leads to oversupply of the same profile specialists in some areas, and to their shortage in other areas.
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