Technical education and professional training in Latin America

In the framework of a technical cooperation between CAF and the Inter-American Dialogue, and in coordination with the Instituto Nacional de Educación Técnica (National Institute for Technical Education) an international seminar regarding education in Latin America was held in Argentina, on August 11th. Esteban Bullrich, Minister of Education and Sports in Argentina, highlighted the importance of education as an axis to solve the main problems of his country.  

The Minister states that one of the main weaknesses of the Argentinean labor market is that it lacks the skilled labor needed by the productive sector. In this respect, he highlighted the importance of joint work between the public and private sectors, cooperation organizations, and the civil society, to identify alternatives to the problem resulting from the lack of a link between technical training and the demands of the labor market. Mauricio Macri, President of Argentina, was present in the event. 

Jaime Holguín, CAF's Director of Social Development Projects for the Southern Region, explained that there is a very close correlation between education and the growth levels of countries, just as individual wellbeing is related to the capacity to obtain better salaries. In this respect, the main challenges of the region, included in CAF's Educational Agenda, are linked to increasing the quality of education, improving access with infrastructure, and reducing drop-out rates, in addition to consolidating closer links between technical training and the specific needs of the labor market. 

At the same time, Ariel Fiszbein, Education Director of the Inter-American Dialogue, highlighted that Latin America is the region that takes the longest time in filling a position for qualified workers. Although there is an increase in access to enrolment, the graduation rates are low, and this is mainly due to school drop-out rates. In this respect, he mentioned some of the measures that could be taken to reduce desertion, such as economic support for students, and the diversification of the educational offer with shorter programs. 

With respect to the relevance of the studies, Fiszbein commented on the disparity between the cost of professional training and the results obtained, which generally end up harming the person in training. In addition, he highlighted that there is a deficit in the so-called soft skills, such as team-work, responsibility, and flexibility. 

Another relevant aspect highlighted during the seminar was the National Curricular Development Policy in Chile. Alejandra Villarzú, former Under Secretary for Technical-Professional education in the country, mentioned that this strategy is being implemented with a multi-sectorial participation, and the objective of the new curriculum is to respond to the challenges of relevance, reducing the number of specialists and evaluating based on achievements and learning. 

With respect to the subject of gender, Clemencia Consentino, Senior Researcher at the Mathematica Policy Research, commented on her experience with Science and Engineering education, emphasizing the need to motivate more women to choose these types of careers, as there is a profound deficit in this respect. Most of the Engineering and the commonly called Hard Sciences graduates are males. As one of the main causes of this deficit, she states that a lack of information on these programas has beem detected. 

The meeting included the participation of Walter Grahovac, Minister of Education of the Province of Cordoba, Robert Lerman, of the Fellow Institute of the Urban Institute, and Barbara Rowan, Academic Research Director at Pearson North America. In addition, the event included a panel for the exchange of ideas, with the participation of CAF guests from Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay, Panama, Paraguay, and Argentina, who commented on their advances and main challenges, among which stand out the need to generate a stronger link between technical training and market needs, and the complexity of this challenge in view of the difference in the rhythms and dynamism of both sectors:  productive-labor and training-education.