Market Analysis to Prioritize TVET Investment and Industry Partnerships for Program Co-Design

• In Event: Protesting TVET without Results – Tips, Tricks, and Tools for Linking TVET to Industry to Better Serve Youth and the Economy

Proposal

The five-year USAID Forsah TVET Activity supports non-governmental technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions to better prepare Palestinian graduates for the labor market and to productively engage in local and regional economies. Forsah TVET will help supply skilled TVET graduates and create an enabling environment for sustainable labor supply-demand linkages by enhancing TVET institutions’ capacity to respond to the needs of the private sector, creating partnerships between TVET institutions, private sector firms, and youth in specific sectors, and increasing enrollment in TVET programs.

In recent years, multiple political and economic shocks have led to increased prices, lack of access to input and export markets, and rising unemployment and poverty. The TVET sector has a critical role to play in reducing unemployment in West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBG). The Forsah TVET program aims to address the ongoing weaknesses in the TVET sector, in part through a dedicated Private Sector Engagement strategy. IREX and DAI will present two tools being used for private sector engagement and lessons learned for the CIES community: Rapid sector prioritization (RSP) through a Competitiveness Appraisal Matrix (CAM); and, collaborative curriculum identification and development through Training Co-design Teams comprised of TVET, private sector, and youth representatives.

The RSP exercise began with the use of DAIs evidence-based Competitiveness Appraisal Matrix (CAM), to develop an economic rationale for sector selection. DAI used the CAM to review data for 72 economic activities for criteria that measure sector size, employment, value added by employee, investment, growth across these areas, and expected opportunities for women. Next, the process examined the outlook of these sectors based on four criteria to allow the team to better assess the ability of sectors to address development objectives and serve both the current and future needs in WBG.

Finally, a ground truthing process with the private sector and TVET stakeholders to validate and elaborate on the findings—supported the categorization of need for TVET training in these sectors established, emerging, or new. The 16 highest prioritized sectors were offered to TVET institutions to identify their preferred sector as part of their competitive partnership application to Forsah TVET.

Through the competitive application process, six non-governmental TVET institutions were selected to receive project support for improved quality, relevance, and access. To ensure the relevance of modernized programs, collaboration begins with course selection and curriculum co-design that engages the private sector from the outset. Through Shared Values meetings, the selected TVET institutions partner with private sector representatives and experts to identify priority occupations within their selected sectors, relevant to the market needs in their regions and communities.

Following the identification of relevant occupations, the selected TVET institutions subsequently reconvene with private sector and youth to exchange priorities, build common ground and agree on the targeted skills for those occupations, to inform development of demand-driven training program(s). The meetings initiate the formation of long-term TVET- private sector -youth training co-design teams who will work collaboratively through Forsah TVET to develop curriculums as determined by collaboratively identified training needs.

Authors

• Nidal F. Ayesh, International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX)

• Bryanna Eliza Millis, DAI