Introduction of cooperative (dual) vocational training forms in the building (construction) sector
Description
Like other developing and industrialized countries, Egypt in the 1990s faced the challenge of improving the transition from school to work for its youth. The youth unemployment rate was 5 to 7 times that of adult rates signaling that youth 16 to 24 years of age faced considerable difficulty in moving from school to work as measured against youth in other countries where this ratio was lower. While producing economic growth and jobs with good macroeconomic policies was one of the solutions to this problem, for youth the problem often went deeper to structural issues involving whether the skills they obtained in schools matched the needs of the market and how youth went about searching for work and the expectations they held for employment and wages.
Egypt launched economic reforms in 1991 that were intended to transform the economy from a state-controlled to an open market economy. As part of these reforms it took steps to address the youth employment problem. President Hosni Mubarak and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl agreed that year on a program of German technical cooperation that would help Egypt address weaknesses in its secondary technical education system and support economic reforms. A pilot program was introduced to adapt and test the principles of Germany’s dual system in the Egyptian context. The Mubarak-Kohl Initiative-Dual System (MKI-DS) entered a preparatory phase the next year with a grant agreement between the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and Egypt’s Ministry of Education.
The adaptation of the German dual system to the Egyptian context was supported by German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development through German technical cooperation (GTZ) [GIZ] in a partnership between Egypt’s Ministry of Education and a newly emerging private sector created by economic reforms. The cooperation extended from 1994 to 2007.
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The MKI-DS employed the principles of the German dual system, but adapted this system to the institutional context of Egypt. The German dual system was built on three principles: duality, the primacy of crafts, and consensus. Duality involved sharing the responsibility for training between schools and employers. The primacy of crafts required enterprises to go beyond the specific skill needs of the firm to consider the broader needs of performing a craft to produce a more flexible workforce. The dual system required a consensus between schools and enterprises on standards and curriculum before government could approve a program. These principles were built into the MKI-DS along with the introduction of new institutions in the private sector that promoted the public-private partnership underpinning the MKI-DS.
Within the framework of this Initiative, NSCE conducted the Assignment: Introduction of cooperative (dual) vocational training forms in the building (construction) sector. As indicated above, as the Egyptian workforce is not market oriented, the economic and technological development of Egypt requires an increasing number of qualified skilled workers, which can’t be supplied by the available educational institutions and training methods. Egyptian workers can’t produce neither the quantity nor the quality today’s market demands. For this reason, the Egyptian-German training initiative had the goal to initiate a structure change in the Egyptian vocational education system, which should lead to higher and comprehensively qualified manpower.
NSCE joined forces with IP Consultants to perform component 3 within this program ‘pilot measures for dual education system in the construction sector’. The overall objective of the program is that the duel job education system is a main substance of the national job education and lead to highly qualified workforce and higher employment rates.
A cooperative (dual) system for vocational training for the construction sectors is to be developed in pilot locations and tested as a model. It is expected that demand for graduates of vocational schools will be significantly increased through the assistance offered by the duel system, thus ensuring both jobs and mobility for the graduates. This program is considered an important contribution to ongoing structure reforms and leads to the improvement of the industrial competitive capability.