“The Tracer System”, a digital tool for evaluating the external effectiveness of the vocational training and for decision-making

• In Event: The Future of Education in Afrika

Proposal

Presentation on MCC-funded Cote D’Ivoire Skills for Employability and Productivity Project
Theme: “The Tracer System”, a digital tool for evaluating the external effectiveness of the vocational training and for decision-making

Since 2019, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has been funding the Employability and Productivity project, part of the 6-year Compact program in Côte d’Ivoire. One of the objectives of the project is to improve the acquisition of quality, in-demand technical skills and increase job placement rates among graduates of Compact-supported technical and vocational education and training (“TVET”) centers.
Activities related to this objective include (i) the construction of three (3) Technical Education and Vocational Training centers based on a new model of partnership with the private sector, the Partnership for Skills Development (PDC), and (ii) Quality Management and Accountability that support result-based management within the TVET sector, notably the establishment of an accreditation system for TVET centers and a Tracer system for TVET graduates.
We will be presenting on a successful case of quality management and accountability in the TVET sector through the development of the Tracer system, a tool for monitoring job placement of the TVET graduates.
Context of monitoring the job placement of TVET graduates
One of the difficulties that the TVET sector has faced in Côte d’Ivoire has been the lack of reliable data on the number of graduates and the indicators pertaining to their job placement. Yet, the effectiveness of a training system is both internal and external. It depends as much on the training programs and teaching methods as on graduates integration into the workplace.
The system for monitoring TVET graduates, set up in 2017 by the Directorate of Apprenticeship and Job Placement (DAIP), made it possible to begin producing statistics on graduates job placement. However, these statistical data on employment are quite disparate, often infrequent depending on the data sources, and not always available. They often come from household standard of living surveys and general employment surveys that are not specifically designed to shed light on employment of TVET graduates. Furthermore, the samples do not allow for the volumes needed to conduct detailed analyses.
Thus, the specific issues to which the Tracer system provides a solution are:
- The difficulty of having reliable statistics on the integration of TVET graduates in Côte d’Ivoire; for example, a snapshot of graduates employment 6, 9 or 12 months after they graduated;
- The difficulty of having indicators to assess the relevance of training in relation to the needs of the labor market.
This explains the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s funding of a system for monitoring TVET graduates in Côte d’Ivoire, the Tracer system.
What is the Tracer system?
The Tracer system is an online platform that is accessible in real time by all national and regional stakeholders that was set up to ensure better monitoring of TVET graduates job placement in Côte d’Ivoire. It is a tool that responds to a type of experimentation of digital technology in the training sector where technology enriches practices. The Tracer system was designed and customized to be usable via an online platform that should provide, among other things:
- Information on the professional status of TVET graduates;
- Information on the cohorts of graduates by gender, by training program, by TVET center, by regional TVET office, etc.
- Indicators for evaluating the relevance of the training offered by TVET centers;
- Results on employer satisfaction with graduates;
- Information on future training programs to meet the needs of the labor market;
- Indicators for measuring relationships between employers and training centers;
- An overview of the TVET graduates’ profiles;
- An overview of the number of students in each TVET center;
- An annual overview of the number of graduate cohorts by training program, and by TVET center;
- An annual overview of the job placement indicators by training program and by TVET center;
- The characteristics of jobs;
- Entrepreneurship projects of the graduates;
The advantages of the Tracer system for the TVET Ministry, vocational training stakeholders, graduates and partner companies are as follows:
- Innovative, reliable and operational system: it provides reliable statistics in real time on the learners’ path after training;
- Efficient data collection system: it allows data collection to be monitored in real time and the results (at national, regional and center levels) to be visualized even before their publication;
- Decision support system: it allows reports and dashboards to be automatically generated to improve decision-making by managers at the Ministry. This includes:
o Monthly overview of graduates’ employment status;
o Placement rate per month, by gender, by age group, by degree/diploma, by training program, by regional office, etc.
o Characteristics of jobs and internships;
o Unemployment rate;
o Retraining rate;
- Configurable and scalable system: All applications are developed in open source, are modular and configurable to support the current and future needs of TVET Ministry;
- Integrated system: Everything is done on the same platform, from the extraction of the raw database of graduates to the publication of the final reports of the survey results and interoperability with the current ERSYS Management Information System;
- Single data repository: Interconnection with the Ministry’s Information System for sharing the data repository (Graduates, centers, programs, Degrees/diplomas, etc.);
- Quality Control: Adoption of a quality approach at all levels of the integration monitoring process;
- Multi-space system: several spaces created according to needs of each stakeholder in the system (Ministry, DAIP, Principals, Placement officers or SERFE, Regional TVET Directors, Graduates, and Partner Companies, etc.);
- Permanent contact with the graduate: Possible use of SMS and WhatsApp to improve communication with the graduates and allow them to update their information online quickly and easily;
Although efficient, the Tracer system relies on human resources that are capable of using it, advancing it and monitoring its outputs.

Author

• OLIVIER OHOUX, MCA-Côte d'Ivoire