Recend Trends in technical education in Latin America

JACINTO CLAUDIA (COORDINADORA)

IIPE-UNESCO

Lugar: Paris; Año: 2010 p. 206

978-92-803-1350-5

The book reviews recent transformations with regards to the links between Academic Secondary Education (ASE), technical and vocational education and training, and preparation for work. It analyses recent changes in approaches, difficulties and advances, and challenges, mentioning some promising strategies. Over the past few decades, secondary education has expanded in Latin America, even though most youngsters have not completed the level. While many youngsters must face the job market with an incomplete secondary education, this level has become a basic requirement to access good jobs. Moreover, the Latin American job market is more and more segmented, and only those with the highest educational capital have a chance to access the most productive sectors in the economy. As a result of this, over the last decade there have been many initiatives in the region oriented to improve retention in secondary education, and to improve its pertinence, and to train to work the ones that had dropped out formal education. Concerning secondary technical education, there?s a tendency to incorporate it into the general educational system. Skills development entered the regional educational agenda. Some countries like Colombia, Chile and México have transformed technical secondary education in this direction. This processes conveyed multiple adaptations in terms of: the curricula, the management arrangements, and the training of specialized staff. But the expected results are only partially achieved. But other countries, like Argentina and Brazil, adopted a more comprehensive approach to technical education linking general and specialized skills and knowledge. These opposite trends are analyzed. Concerning ASE, in recent years there were developed a wide range of work-related knowledge into secondary education, facilitating instruments and options to enable the development of general and specific knowledge, including internships, guidance and orientation to enter the job market, entrepreneurship and vocational training articulated with secondary education. Comings and goings in these trends are examined. Many social programmes and active employment policies focused in drop-outs from secondary or even primary school. Nowadays, there are many questions concerning the orientation of these programmes: whether reintegration into the mainstream educational paths should be promoted to enable youngsters to complete at least a 12-year education; whether vocational training may be enough to enable youth to access decent jobs. Adopting broader conceptions, recent programmes have developed links with basic or secondary education to encourage youngsters (and adults) to complete their basic and secondary education, through flexible strategies. To sum up, a key task in Latin America is to implement national education and training systems that enable coherent effective linkage of the different resources available to promote equity, and development, creating bridges linking formal, non-formal and informal education into a lifelong learning system.