Education and training for the informal sector
Abstract
Volume 1 of this report examined local, national and international interventions and initiatives aimed at promoting education and training for the informal sector. These were situated both within and outside the formal educational system. The information on which the report is based was drawn from the extensive and constantly expanding literature on the subject of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and training for self-employment, as well as on the country studies commissioned as part of this research project.
Chapter 1 describes the rationale for the study. Chapters 2 to 4 examine in turn the three different sites for interventions aimed at the informal sector (formal and nonformal education, post school and out-of-school vocational training institutions, and the workplace or the enterprise itself). In chapter 5 special note is taken of the problems faced by girls and women in entering forms of really productive self-employment, as opposed to situations in which the aims are barely an improvement upon subsistence or survival work in the informal sector.
In chapter 6 some of the other elements that are often associated with informal sector development are examined. In general, these may be thought of as non-education or non-training-related interventions. They cover items such as credit, technology or the enabling environment. Clearly they need to be discussed; the impression might otherwise be given that education and training on their own could have a direct impact on informal sector development. Having reviewed the role of some of these principal non-education and non-training factors in the encouragement of selfemployment, the question of pathways that has been briefly touched upon above is returned to, with attempts to illustrate ways of thinking about interventions in the informal sector that may take account of several quite distinct pathways.
A very significant part of the report is the bibliography. This draws together a substantial listing of materials from different case study countries, from donors and NGOs, and from research and policy centres working on small enterprise and its connections with education and training.
The second volume consists of a series of four case studies on Chile, Ghana, India and Kenya.
Citation
Educational Paper No. 11, DFID, London, UK, ISBN 0 902500 59 7 (Vol. 1); ISBN 0 902500 60 0 (Vol.2); ISBN 1 86192 090 3 (combined), 332 pp. [reprinted in 1997]
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