Understanding attrition in UK maritime education and training

The shipping industry worldwide is experiencing a shortage of trained and qualified officers to operate a rapidly expanding global merchant fleet. High cadet wastage in Maritime Education and Training (MET) institutions is an obstacle to skills replenishment in the UK. This paper examines the specificity of MET programmes with regard to the question of attrition and explores the intricate ways in which globalisation in the industry and the seafaring sector has influenced declining training opportunities and rising attrition rates in the UK.     

Enabling labour market entry for adults through non-formal education and training for employment in South Africa

Adult non-formal education and training (NFET) in South Africa was adopted in 1990 to address the problem of unemployment of non-educated and unskilled adults. Public and private NFET centres aim to meet the training needs of adults who were deprived of formal education that would foster access to opportunities for employment. The paper reports on a study conducted to investigate what constitutes NFET enabling environments for employment. The paper focuses on the approach of training delivery fostering labour market entry of graduates. The findings show that individual trainees who participated in private centres had a higher probability of being employed because of the creation of internal enabling environments for skills acquisition and focus on income-generating activities. The authors conclude that an integration of technical skills with business skills and ‘learning by earning’ is a potential training delivery approach enabling graduates to participate in economic activities.     

Graduate unemployment in South Africa: social inequality reproduced

In this study, I examine the influence of demographic and educational characteristics of South African graduates on their employment/unemployment status. A sample of 1175 respondents who graduated between 2006 and 2012 completed an online survey. Using binary logistic regression, the strongest determinants of unemployment were the graduates’ race, their socio-economic status and their year of their graduation. Surprisingly, the graduates’ field of study, level of study, marks obtained and whether or not they had received career guidance at their higher education institution did not significantly influence their employment/unemployment status. Of the employed graduates, 27% reported that they consider themselves to be underemployed. The results show the strong influence structural factors have on determining employment prospects of graduates and question the extent to which higher education institutions and graduate employers reproduce social inequality through their graduate recruitment services and practices.     

Vocational education and training in India: a labour market perspective

Skill development has been a major policy agenda in several countries and there is a lot of emphasis on the promotion of vocational education and training (VET) programmes. This paper investigates the labour market outcomes of the vocationally trained population in India using the data from a nationally representative survey on employment and unemployment. We find that a large section of the population in the age group 15–59 years does not have any kind of formal training. Among the VET holders, a large share is accounted for by non-formal trainees. Quite a high proportion of formal trainees in the workforce remain unemployed reflecting underutilisation of human resource. We also examine the extent to which individuals’ training matches their occupational levels and find that overall about two-thirds of the trainees are employed in occupations related to the field of training. Further, we compare the returns to general secondary and vocational education streams using the standard earnings function accounting for the sample selection bias. Our findings show that the relative returns to vocational education is higher than that to general secondary education.     

Problematising vocational education and training in schools: using student narratives to interrupt neoliberal ideology

ABSTRACT

In Australia, like many western countries, there has been a convergence of education policy around a set of utilitarian and economistic approaches to vocational education and training in schools. Such approaches are based on the assumption that there is a direct relationship between national economic growth, productivity and human capital development resulting in the persuasive political argument that schools should be more closely aligned to the needs of the economy to better prepare ‘job ready’ workers. These common sense views resonate strongly in school communities where the problem of youth unemployment is most acute and students are deemed to be ‘at risk’, ‘disadvantaged’ or ‘disengaged’. This article starts from a different place by rejecting the fatalism and determinism of neoliberal ideology based on the assumption that students must simply ‘adapt’ to a precarious labour market. Whilst schools have a responsibility to prepare students for the world of work there is also a moral and political obligation to educate them extraordinarily well as democratic citizens. In conclusion, we draw on the experiences of young people themselves to identify a range of pedagogical conditions that need to be created and more widely sustained to support their career aspirations and life chances.     

An examination of the vocational education and training reform debate in Southern Africa

This paper explores the role that vocational education and training (VET) can play in Southern African responses to major socio‐economic challenges. It argues that this role will be most pronounced if it is articulated within a broader educational and economic vision that is shared by a range of stakeholders in society and supported by an adequate funding base, effective information systems and qualified and motivated planners and implementers. However, it cautions that it is also important to remember that VET reform will not in itself transform economies or societies. The paper argues that there is considerable convergence within Southern Africa around 10 themes of VET reform. It argues that there is much that is of merit in the current broad package for VET transformation but that it is essential that it is carefully critiqued and that elements are adapted to national circumstances and visions.     

Private higher education in Africa: The case of Monash South Africa

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to review the contribution of private institutions to higher education in Africa and use Monash South Africa as a case study. A literature search was conducted to gain perspective on the current situation with respect to private higher education institutions in Africa and how they are perceived in relation to public higher education institutions.

In comparison with public higher education institutions, private higher education institutions in Africa were successful in four areas: ? Widening access to higher education in the continent

? Improving the quality of education

? Improving student experience

? Increasing the recognition and marketability of their degrees

However, private higher education institutions in Africa have failed in two areas: ? Reducing the costs of higher education in Africa

? Assisting with retention of skilled human capital in African countries.

In fact, private higher education institutions in Africa, have exacerbated the two situations above.

Monash South Africa was the first foreign university to be established in South Africa and one of over 100 private universities in the continent. As a campus of Monash University in Africa, it has seen a steady growth with over 3,500 students in the past 10 years of its existence. Like other private institutions, the campus was successful in the four areas above and also fails in the area of costs and assisting in retention of skilled staff in Africa. The campus has been successful in blending its private provider status with a public purpose mandate by offering degrees in social science, business and economics, information technology and health sciences.     

高职教育实施职业资格认证制度的理性思考

高等职业教育专业教学改革,要始终把转变教育思想观念贯彻于全过程;正确确定专业培养目标,积极探索多样化的人才培养模式;正确把握基础理论必需够用为度,突出技术应用能力的培养;坚持走产学研结合的道路;建立与完善同高职教育相关的国家职业资格认证制度和劳动就业准入制度,培养更加适销对路的高等技术应用型人才。     

Issues in the education of TESOL teachers by distance education

Language teacher education by distance (LTED) has become a widespread and important practice in the preservice and in‐service education of teachers, and in language education internationally. The advent of the Internet has combined with developments in other information communication technologies, the globalisation of English, and the marketisation of education to afford a rapid increase in the number of TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages) teacher education programs, and greater variety in the ways in which teaching and learning is mediated in these programs. This article reports on an international survey of TESOL teacher education providers, and considers the status of language teaching qualifications earned by distance, changes in the institutional roles of language teacher educators, and the current state of research into LTED.     

经济全球化条件下我国高校人才培养的目标与理念更新

经济全球化在导致全球经济竞争日益激烈的同时,必然使全球高等教育竞争进入白热化状态,而全球高等教育竞争的根本则是人才之间的竞争,人才之间的竞争最终决定着经济竞争的水平。本文认为,只有通过研究经济全球化条件下我国高等教育的应对策略,确定有效的人才培养目标,实现高等教育理念的全面更新,才是我国赢得经济全球化主动权的必然选择。     

Teachers' attitudes towards adolescent sexuality and life skills education in rural South Africa

This study investigated the attitudes of 43 teachers and school administrators towards sex education, young people's sexuality and their communities in 19 secondary schools in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and how these attitudes affect school-based HIV prevention and sex education. In interviews, teachers expressed judgemental attitudes towards young people's sexuality and pregnant students, and focused on girls' perceived irresponsible behaviour instead of strategies to minimise HIV risk. Despite general awareness of the HIV epidemic, few teachers perceived it as an immediate threat, and teachers' own HIV risk was infrequently acknowledged. Teachers perceived themselves to have higher personal standards and moral authority than members of the communities and schools they served. Male administrators' authority to determine school policies and teachers' attitudes towards sexuality fundamentally affect the content and delivery of school-based sexuality education and HIV prevention activities. Opportunities to create a supportive educational environment for students and for female teachers are frequently missed. Improving teachers' efficacy to deliver impartial, non-judgemental and accurate information about sex and HIV is essential, as are efforts to acknowledge and address their own HIV risks.     

The internationalisation of American higher education: a positional competition perspective

This paper examines the potential negative consequences of the internationalisation of American higher education from the perspective of positional competition theory. This analysis suggests that internationalisation efforts undertaken by colleges and universities contribute to positional competition between students vying for admission, between graduates competing for prestigious, well-paying jobs, and between higher education institutions themselves, who compete for prestige. As positional competition necessarily involves displacing other in obtaining advantage for one’s self, the paper further describes how the positional competition engendered in part by the internationalisation of higher education contributes to the replication of social patterns of inequality.     

Sexuality education in South Africa: Three essential questions

Sex education is the cornerstone on which most HIV/AIDS prevention programmes rest and since the adoption of Outcomes-Based Education (OBE), has become a compulsory part of the South African school curriculum through the Life Orientation learning area. However, while much focus has been on providing young people with accurate and frank information about safe sex, this paper questions whether school-based programmes sufficiently support the needs of young people. This paper is based on a desk-review of the literature on sex and sexuality education and examines it in relation to the South African educational context and policies. It poses three questions: (a) what do youth need from sexuality education? (b) Is school an appropriate environment for sex education? (c) If so, what can be said about the content of sex education as well as pedagogy surrounding it? Through reviewing the literature this paper critically engages with education on sex and sexuality in South Africa and will argue that in order to effectively meet the needs of youth, the content of sexual health programmes needs to span the whole spectrum of discourses, from disease to desire. Within this spectrum, youth should be constructed as “knowers” as opposed to innocent in relation to sex. How youth are taught as well as how their own knowledge and experience is positioned in the classroom is as important as content in ensuring that youth avoid negative sexual health outcomes.     

Religion in education policy in South Africa: a challenge of change

Since 1995, the National Department of Education has developed a number of policies to give effect to the proposed transformation outlined in White Paper 1 (Notice 196 of 1995) and in subsequent legislation. A range of Acts and policies were introduced, many of them dealing with how religion should be dealt with in schools and it culminated in the promulgation of the National Policy on Religion and Education (2003). In all these policies the role of the school and, in particular, of the school principal has been foregrounded as important for effective implementation of policies. This article is based on research conducted to determine how school principals dealt with religion and the implementation of the religion and education policy. This study found that school principals often ignore the policy and maintain the status quo. When faced with conflict of religious interests, they partially sub-contract into the policy. The study also found that past experiences with religion in education, either as students or educators, had a major impact on how principals perceive the role of religion in schools and how they dealt with it.     

Vocational education and training for sustainability in South Africa: The role of public and private provision

Written in the twilight of the Mbeki Presidency, this paper considers the role that skills development has in the sustainability of the South African political–economic project. It explores some of the disarticulations of public policy and argues that these both undermine public sector delivery and open up opportunities for private provision to be, under certain circumstances, more responsive to the challenges of national development. We argue that there is a possibility that the state could work more smartly with both sets of providers. Crucially, however, this would necessitate working more smartly within itself. This was a major plank of the Mbeki strategy but it has failed conspicuously with regard to the Education–Labour relationship. Whether a new President can achieve a radical reworking of this relationship may be an important indicator of the viability of any new development project.     

Inviting discomfort: foregrounding emotional labour in teaching anthropology in post-apartheid South Africa

This article examines the potential and limitations of Megan Boler's ‘pedagogy of discomfort’ in a post-apartheid yet heavily racialised South Africa. Taking an ‘ethnographic sensibility’ to anthropological teaching, this paper sketches the social and historical context of discomfort produced by everyday classroom practices at a historically privileged university. This paper argues that new patterns of thought, if achieved at all in the course of learning through ‘discomfort’, are deeply embedded within uneasy social relationships.     

Global citizenship education in South Korea: ideologies,inequalities, and teacher voices

Guided by neoliberalism and post-colonialism, this article takes the case of global citizenship education (GCE) in South Korea to explore social studies teachers’ experiences and their everyday voices in teaching GCE. The findings demonstrated a number of barriers that teachers confront and the entrenched ideologies behind these hurdles, which contributes to the marginalisation of GCE. By drawing scholarly and policy implications that consider the complicated global/local nexus of GCE within dominant Eurocentric and neoliberal discourses, the study adds to existing research on teachers’ GCE practices from different societies and expands upon the critique of Western-centric, neoliberal perspectives embedded in GCE.     

Skills for inclusive growth in South Africa: Promising tides amidst perilous waters

Skills development is critical to South Africa's development. It has been argued that South Africa's twin post-Apartheid challenges, poverty and unemployment requires a level of skills development not undertaken before (0300 and 0045). The creation of a separate ministry, the department of higher education and training (DHET), which has incorporated institutional entities from former Ministries of Education and Labour has engendered an expectation for the realisation of a co-ordinated and integrated post school education and training system. The establishment of this entity for the first time anticipates a coherent response to the education, training and skills development challenges faced by the country. The initial anticipation that this development will provide the basis for a coherent post-school education, training and skills development system, that is responsive to national development encapsulated by the notion of inclusive growth, have waned somewhat. In an attempt to link education and labour market more deliberately, it attempts to respond to both the education and labour market constituencies for greater synergy. The reality of success of a new institutional structure, within a wider structure embedded in the older pre-merged configuration, has proved more difficult than anticipated. The notion of ‘policy as boundary object’ is considered a critical missing element in the current re-positioning and the changed political circumstances represent a golden moment to do things differently. This paper explores the current structural re-configuration, as it has, and is likely to, impact on the skills development provisioning in the country. In particular, it focuses on the impact of current developments on the delivery of intermediate level skills, and the likely role of the beleaguered public FET Colleges (FETCs) in this regard. Whilst it is accepted that the current development is new and unlikely to have a track record, the current context is critically evaluated in terms of the potentials and challenges identified against the empirical experience of ten years of skills development in the country.     

The idealism of education policies and the realities in schools: the implementation of inclusive education in South Africa

Inclusive education as a global movement emerged over the past 30 years to ensure quality mainstream education for all learners. Since 1994 the newly democratic South Africa also had expectations as well as the political will to change education by adjusting legislation and policies. However, the vision of a truly inclusive education system in South Africa has been difficult to achieve and results regarding the implementation of inclusive education remain questionable. There has been a growing realisation that the advent of democracy was not in itself a sufficient condition for the elimination of historical and structural inequalities in education with as recurring theme the dissonance between the government's socio-political imperative for change and economic realities. This article focuses on the development of policy and guidelines on inclusive education in dynamic interaction with the complexity of realities in South African schools with a special focus on the policy recommendations regarding the development of full-service schools. The constant comparative analysis of the two phased case study of a full-service school in a rural town revealed interesting results illustrating the complexities regarding the implementation of inclusive education and the challenges and opportunities in bridging the gap between the idealism of policies and the realities in schools.