Sustainably integrating soft skills into a TVET high school system in Mexico

• In Event: Building life skills/soft skills/21st century skills at scale and sustainably in LMICs

Proposal

Mexico’s National Technical Professional School (CONALEP in Spanish) is among the largest technical vocational education system in the country, with 307 campuses. Founded in 1978, the upper-secondary (high school) education system helps fill the demand for skilled labor by the country’s large number of firms in high-value sectors. Offering over 47 majors and reaching over 305,000 students annually, CONALEP plays an important role in the preparation of Mexico’s workforce and the country’s overall productivity.
According to studies conducted by the Manpowergroup (2015) and the Centro de Investigación para el Desarrollo A.C (2013), half of employers (on average) are not able to find the talent they need due to a lack of requisite skills—particularly soft skills. In a survey conducted by FLACSO (2012) of CONALEP students who graduated in 2011, alumni said they could have used more training in problem solving, communications, working in groups, following instructions from their bosses, and learning on their own. At the same time, CONALEP teachers, the majority of whom are professionals in their technical fields, are often insufficiently prepared pedagogically and resort to old-fashioned teaching methods. Despite the fact that the CONALEP core curriculum includes socio-emotional skills development, teaching methods and content leave young people disengaged and employers still searching for qualified entry-level employees.
Understanding this landscape and CONALEP’s need for additional preparation in soft skills development, the Rutas (Routes in English) program piloted the introduction of a soft skills curriculum, teacher training, and a teacher support model into the education system’s core curriculum structure through 3 schools. The project then scaled the model successfully to 44 schools across two states, reaching over 20,000 youth on an annual basis and having positive impacts on academic achievement and school dropouts, according to a recent quasi-experimental impact evaluation. The Rutas program has successfully installed the capacity and structure within CONALEP to continue to offer the upgraded soft skills curriculum, train new teachers in its methodology, and assure the quality of its implementation. To date, 246 teachers and 44 coaches have been trained to deliver the curriculum in CONALEP schools. In addition, 14 Master Trainers have been given the tools and skills to train new soft skills teachers and coaches and institutionalize the soft skills curriculum.
The initiative – from its pilot to its scale – offers several important lessons learned regarding the integration of a soft skills curriculum and training methodology into a public TVET system. These will be shared and expounded upon during this panel presentation, including:
How to secure the employer buy-in around soft skills early to help ‘open doors’;
Integrate soft skills into core curricula and align soft skills curriculae to existing student learning objectives to institutionalize and reduce barriers to entry;
Understand teacher incentives to participate in an intense and non-traditional training process; and
Test the best integration strategy and adjust, based on teacher and student feedback.

Author

• Elizabeth Vance, International Youth Foundation