TVET policy reforms in Chile 2006–2018: between human capital and the right to education

ABSTRACT

Human development and rights-based approaches to education have been gaining support among international organisations and development agencies as alternative frameworks to human capital orthodoxy. While these global trends have been well-documented in the international development literature, there is little empirical evidence into what extent, and through which mechanisms, alternative development paradigms in education are influencing Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) reforms. Chile provides an excellent opportunity for this kind of research given the long cycle of political contestation of neoliberal education policies in the country during the last decade. The article analyses TVET policy discourses for the last three government administrations (2006–2018) from a Cultural Political Economy perspective. The adoption of the rights-based approach in Chile shows its potential to mobilise greater involvement of the state in the funding and provision of TVET and in the support to secondary TVET students who want to continue their studies in tertiary education. However, the rights-based approach to education falls short when it comes to problematising political economy structures that shape TVET policymaking and the precarious labour market opportunities available to TVET graduates. These shortfalls show the need to incorporate more fundamental critiques of the neoliberal paradigm into the formulation of alternative policy agendas for TVET.

KEYWORDS:

• Education policy
• political economy
• international development
• vocational education
• right to education

Introduction

Global concerns about youth unemployment and the growing demand for further education in low- and middle-income countries have renewed interest in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and skills among the international cooperation community (UNESCO 2012; McKinsey, 2012; OECD 2012, UNESCO/UNEVOC 2013; World Bank 2013). This political interest has been accompanied by a new wave of criticism from human rights, political economy and human development approaches to the human capital orthodoxy that has dominated international development agendas in TVET (Allais 2012; McGrath 2012: Tikly 2013). Despite the robust global debates, we do not know much about the extent these new policy ideas have actually translated into new TVET policy reforms in Global South countries and, specifically, the factors that could explain these policy changes.

The political economy analysis of TVET reforms in Chile that we present in this paper offers an opportunity to better understand the conditions that affect the policy assumption (Steiner-Khamsi 2014; Verger 2014) of alternative frameworks in national TVET reforms. Chile is a very interesting case for this kind of research because of its traditional alignment with neoliberal development paradigms (Sung, Turbin, and Ashton 2000; Bellei and Vanni 2015) and because it is one of the very few economies that has graduated from middle income to high income in the last decades. Furthermore, the specific period covered by this paper (2006–2018) coincides with a long cycle of social unrest and political contestation of neoliberal policies in education led by the student movement. Although TVET was not central to these processes of social mobilisation, the new political scenario created by these movements allowed for some important shifts in the policy orientations of TVET policies.

The analysis of policy documents and interviews with policymakers shows significant changes in the orientations of TVET policies in Chile. While the first period of reforms (2006–2014) was dominated by the human capital approach, during the second period of reforms (2014–2018) the right-based approach to education was adopted. The policy adoption of the right-based approach has resulted in greater involvement of the state in the provision and regulation of TVET and new policy initiatives to address social inequalities in the post-school educational trajectories of TVET students. Despite these policy changes, the analysis also shows how social and educational actors still struggle to recognise TVET as an area of political contestation and their difficulties to articulate alternative development frameworks for this sector.

The paper starts with a brief review of current international debates about the role of TVET in development between human capital, political economy, right to education and human capabilities approaches. The second section outlines the main characteristics of the TVET system in Chile as well as recent trends in enrolment, provision and returns to investment. The third section introduces the analytical framework of the Cultural Political Economy (CPE, Jessop 2010; Sum and Jessop 2013) and describes the methods and data used for the analysis. The fourth section presents the findings of the study in two blocks (2006–2014 and 2014–2018), which correspond to two periods with different political orientations in TVET reforms. Finally, the ‘Conclusions’ section synthesises the main findings and elaborates on the implications of the Chilean case for international development debates in TVET.

TVET in international development

The growing recognition of TVET in international agendas (e.g. Sustainable Development Goals 4 and 8) has spurred the debate about the policy orientations that should guide these agendas and their translation into concrete national policy reforms and practices. Theoretical accounts of TVET in the policy discourses of international organisations like the World Bank have been largely dominated by neoclassical economics and human capital orthodoxy (McGrath 2010). This prevalence of human capital theory in dominant understandings of TVET and its associated policy programmes has received wide criticism from the comparative education and international development literature (Anderson 2009; King 2009; King and Palmer 2010). In the following paragraphs, we briefly summarise some of the TVET policy debates between human capital theory and three of its most salient criticism, namely the political economy of skills, the rights-based approach and the human capabilities approach. This debate will not only show the level of contestation that dominant approaches have generated, it will also illustrate a range of alternative policy ideas for the design and reform of TVET systems that have emerged from education and international development debates.

For human capital theorists (Schultz 1961; Becker 1964), the market rewards the investment of individuals in their skills, which increase their productivity, with better jobs and higher earnings. Within this approach, the problems of unemployment and poverty in developing countries are typically attributed to the alleged inadequacy of the skills of the workforce (Almeida et al., 2012; Gasparini et al. 2011; World Bank 2013). Under this framework, the main goal of TVET reforms should be to expand the skills levels of the workforce and to align the provision of skills with the demands of the economy, basically employers. The articulation of human capital ideas within wider neoliberal policy programmes and new public management principles has configured a global toolkit of policy reforms in TVET (McGrath 2012). This toolkit includes wider powers for employers in the planning and delivery of TVET, greater autonomy for public providers and incentives for private provision and a restricted role for the state as regulator and evaluator of the system. Typical policy reforms associated with this agenda are the adoption of national qualifications frameworks, competency-based training, work-based learning and outcomes-based accountabilities.

The dominant orthodoxy of human capital in TVET agendas has received extensive criticism from political economy authors. Firstly, the very notion of skills as a set of tasks required to be performed in the workplace is criticised because it does not serve the learning needs of young people in the medium and long term and ignores the importance of their access to the theoretical knowledge that underpins vocational practice (Allais 2012). Secondly, human capital optimism on the capacity of knowledge economies to generate quality jobs contrasts with the growing polarisation of social inequalities between workers in scarce highly qualified jobs and those stuck at the lower end of labour markets in indecent working conditions (Avis 2007; Brown, Lauder, and Ashton 2012; ILO 2011; Palmer 2007). And thirdly, human capital approaches do not recognise that the processes of skills formation are embedded in specific political and economic structures and power relations (Valiente 2014). Political economy critiques basically claim that TVET policy agendas that aim to tackle social problems (e.g. youth unemployment, social inequalities) without attacking the political, economic and labour market structural roots of these problems, in current global capitalism, will inevitably fail and just reproduce if not exacerbate the current state of affairs.

The rights-based approach to education stresses that education is a universal human right that should be guaranteed to all as a matter of justice. The rights-based approach has played a major role in the formulation of the Education for All framework and in galvanising support among donors, governments and civil society to the expansion of the access to education globally (UNESCO 2015). Katerina Tomasevski, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, offered the most comprehensive framework to think the right to education. In her ‘4As’ framework (Tomasevski 2006), she argued that education should be available (free of charge), accessible (non-discriminatory), acceptable (of relevance and quality) and adaptable (to the needs to minorities). By focusing on the intrinsic value of education for human beings, it represents the most conceptual contrast with the instrumental view of education as human capital (Robeyns 2006). Also, its universalistic aspiration draws attention to the access to education of the poorest and most marginalised in society and makes the state and political authorities accountable for the effective realisation of their rights (McCowan 2011). Much less applied in TVET than in primary education (McGrath 2012), its formulation as a right to lifelong learning has emphasised the humanistic goals of education and the need to guarantee the access to different levels of education irrespectively of the individual circumstances of social class, ethnicity, gender and age (Faure 1972; Delors 1996; Jarvis 2004).

Strongly aligned with the rights-based approach to education and development, the human capabilities approach has posed the most challenging questions to human capital orthodoxy in TVET. Drawing on the contributions of capabilities theory (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2000), a group of authors have started to delineate the implications of designing TVET policies that do not focus on a narrow understanding of development as economic growth, but on the expansion of the ‘agency freedom’ of individuals (Tikly 2013; Powell and Simon 2014). Under this framework, the main aim of TVET policies should be to expand the actual freedom of learners to pursue their own life projects. The incorporation of the diversity of life projects in the design of TVET policies requires a better understanding of the aspirations and motivations of individuals when they participate in TVET (Powell 2012). It also requires understanding of how the existing unequal structures of opportunity affect these individuals and social groups in their access, learning and post-school transitions to higher education and/or the labour market. By pointing out the importance of unequal structures of opportunity, the capabilities approach has the potential of articulating some of the political economy critiques of unequal social and educational structures within a human development normative framework.

While human capital approaches have dominated and still prevail in TVET development plans, we have showed how the criticisms from the political economy of skills, rights-based approach and human capabilities approach have started to permeate the discourse of some of these international organisations (i.e. UNESCO/UNEVOC and ILO). What has been less studied is to what extent these shifts in the global agendas have actually been accompanied by changes in national TVET policy reforms and, specifically, the factors that could explain these policy changes.

The context of TVET in Chile

The neoliberal reforms undertaken during the military rule transformed the skills formation system in Chile (Sung, Turbin, and Ashton 2000) and gave birth to one of the most marketised education systems in the world (Bellei and Vanni 2015). Primary and secondary education operates under a model of school vouchers, in which the financial sustainability of the providers relies entirely on their capacity to attract demand of schooling from families. The supply of tertiary education is mainly private and funded through students’ fees. This extreme neoliberal model of education has resulted in extraordinary social segregation between schools, large inequalities in the access to a highly stratified higher education offer and one of the highest private expenditures in education in the world (OECD 2004; Elacqua 2012).

TVET is a very important component of the offer of initial education in Chile. Schooling in Chile is compulsory until the age of 18, with all the students following the same curriculum until the age of 16. After completing their basic education, typically at the age of 14, students choose if they will attend an academically oriented (cientifico-humanista) or a vocational school (tecnico-professional). Around 40% of secondary education students are enrolled in vocational schools. During the first 2 years of secondary education, the curriculum in these two types of schools is the same, and only in the last 2 years (ages 16–18) students in vocational schools follow a differentiated programme according to their professional field of specialisation. Students that complete their secondary studies in a vocational school receive a vocational diploma (tecnico de nivel medio) that allows them to continue their studies into tertiary education. Around 31% of tertiary education students are enrolled in vocational studies (Centro de Estudios Mineduc 2017a), which are mainly offered by the Technical Training Centres (2 years) and the Professional Institutes (3 years), and they are much shorter than the university ones (between 5 and 6 years). Access to university education is open to all those students that completed secondary education and is generally subject to a compulsory entrance examination (Prueba de Seleccion Universitaria, PSU).

Chile has experienced considerable educational expansion over the past few decades. Today, the 83% of the youngest generation (25–34 years old) have completed, at least, upper secondary education studies (OECD 2017) and the participation rates in tertiary education of population between 18 and 24 years old exceed 40% and continue to grow (Centro de Estudios Mineduc 2017b). However, the rampant educational inequalities in Chile mainly affect the student population attending TVET. The majority of the students in vocational secondary schools come from low-income strata of society; in fact, 65% of the young population from the poorest quintile that is attending upper secondary education are enrolled in TVET (Sevilla 2012; Ortiz 2011). Originally, the TVET sector was designed to provide students an early entry into the world of work. However, the low labour market relevance and the poor economic returns to secondary TVET have boosted the percentage of students from vocational schools that continue their studies into higher education, mostly in tertiary vocational institutions. The post-school trajectories of these students tend to be more complex and challenging than the ones in the academic routes. Students from the vocational routes on average preform worse than their academic counterparts in national examinations to access higher education (PSU). More often they combine education with work in their post-school trajectories and they present higher dropout rates in tertiary education (Arias et al. 2015; Farías and Carrasco 2012; Larrañaga, Cabezas, and Dussaillant 2014; Sepúlveda, Ugalde, and Campos 2011). The lack of correspondence between the curriculum of secondary and tertiary vocational institutions, the economic barriers of low-income populations to access higher education, the academic disadvantage of TVET students in national examinations or the difficulties of TVET students to articulate their post-school trajectories have been some of the challenges for TVET policies in Chile in the last years.

Public policy debates in Chile have traditionally paid little attention to TVET (CEPPE/CIDE/CIAE 2013) despite the high enrolment in this sector and the problems faced by the TVET students. Although political discourses rhetorically emphasised the importance of TVET for better preparing young people for the demands of the economy and the labour market, TVET has played a marginal role within national reform initiatives in Chile for a long time (OECD 2004, 2015). This policy landscape is rapidly changing and TVET is gaining momentum due to its relevance for the education and training of lower-income populations, particularly in tertiary education (Mineduc 2009). In parallel to the growing attention paid to TVET in education policy debates, the period covered by this paper coincides with a long cycle of social unrest and political contestation of neoliberal policies in education, which has been led by the student movement. While the 3-month strike of secondary students in 2006 (Penguin’s revolution¹) challenged the foundations of the quasi-market model of schooling that had prevailed in the country since the military rule, the new cycle of student-led protests from 2011 to 2013 questioned the fundamental principles of a private system of higher education and forced many political players to incorporate the right to education in their political programmes. Although the TVET sector was not central to these processes of social mobilisation, the new political scenario created by these protests allowed for some shifts in the policy orientations of TVET reforms.

Methodology

The paper addresses two questions in relation to TVET policy developments in Chile. Firstly, what have been the main policy orientations guiding TVET reforms during the three administrations that have governed the country from 2006 to 2018? And, secondly, what material and ideational drivers explain the continuities and the changes in TVET policies during this period? To answer these questions, we apply the analytical framework of the CPE (Jessop 2010; Sum and Jessop 2013) to the qualitative analysis of policy discourses in 11 policy documents and in 27 interviews with policymakers and TVET stakeholders that have been key in these policy developments.

This section is organised into two parts. Firstly, it briefly outlines the principles of the CPE approach to policy analysis and its application to research on TVET reforms. Then, it presents the main data sources utilised for this study (policy documents and semi-structured interviews), the sampling strategy and the rationale for data analysis procedures.

Analytical framework: CPE

The main objective of this paper is to analyse the political economy of TVET policy reforms in Chile for the period 2006–2018. The political economy approach aims to elucidate the explanatory factors affecting the processes of discussion and reform of a specific policy domain, in this case TVET. Among the different political economy approaches (Novelli et al. 2014), we adopt the CPE framework proposed by Jessop (2010). Beyond traditional structuralist political economy approaches (Busemeyer and Trampusch 2012), CPE allows us to analyse not just how material drivers (mainly economic, institutional and political) influence political processes but also the role of semiotic drivers (e.g. discourses or ideas). CPE does not propose to replace material drivers for semiotic ones to explain the process of political reform but to focus on how these two types of drivers interact. From a broad understanding, ideational drivers can have an important influence on ‘quickening the pace, altering the trajectory or raising the stakes of institutional reform’ (Hay 2002, 194). As Verger (2014) notes, beyond material drivers, ideas play an important role when it comes to the analysis of why some countries adopt specific processes of policy reform and why some policy solutions are presented as feasible to policymakers and other stakeholders.

CPE also identifies three ‘evolutionary’ mechanisms or phases of policy reform: variation, selection and retention. These three mechanisms do not entail a sequential understanding of the policy process (Jessop 2010) but a heuristic device to analyse the interaction between semiotic and material drivers. Firstly, the variation mechanism takes place when a specific policy domain (e.g. education) is problematised. This process of policy variation can be triggered by different kind of events and contextual changes (e.g. economic crisis, student mobilisations) and it generates the need to review policy discourses, policies and practices adapting them to the new circumstances. Secondly, the selection mechanism entails the political struggle between competing definitions of the causes of the problem and the policy solutions to be adopted (e.g. between human capital and the right to education agendas). In this stage, policy actors develop strategies to promote their policy solutions and to present them as viable policy choices to those with the capacity to make decisions. Finally, the retention mechanism includes the institutionalisation of a given policy solution through changes in the national legal framework and their incorporation into actors’ practices (e.g. technocrats, practitioners, beneficiaries). These three phases of reform process identified by CPE are influenced by drivers of material and semiotic nature. In the case of TVET, it is important to bear in mind that educational drivers are important to understand the policy processes but also other extra-educational factors (e.g. economic or social) are essential to analyse these processes. In sum, the CPE framework not only allows us to identify the policy paradigms guiding the reforms but also to analytically elucidate the political, economic and educational drivers that explain their adoption by political authorities in a particular moment of time.

Data sampling and analysis

The research strategy of this study was organised in two phases. Firstly, through the engagement with local experts and gatekeepers in government, we identified the main TVET policy documents for the period between 2006 and 2018. These documents include the national policy strategies on TVET, the final reports of advisory councils, the reports of international organisations, among others. After carrying the analysis of the information and policy discourses contained in these policy documents, we drafted initial findings and evidence gaps to fill in with semi-structured interviews to policy actors. We identified and interviewed 27 key policy stakeholders and TVET experts involved directly or indirectly with the reforms, including government officials, policy makers, educational providers, civil society stakeholders, among others. Table 1 provides an overview of the key policy documents analysed for the different government administrations and the sample of interviewees.

Table 1. Selection of policy documents and informants by government administration (2006–2018).

Government	Year	Policy documents	Interviews
Bachelet I Centre-left	2006	More and Better Technicians for Chile Final Report Advisory Council on Education	7
	2007	National Strategy Innovation and Competitiveness
	2009	Final Report National Commission TVET
	2010	Final Report Second National Commission TVET
Piñera Right-wing	2011	National Diagnostic Report on TVET
	2012/2013	Unpublished draft of TVET reform
Bachelet II Centre-left	2014	Bachelet’s presidential programme	13
	2015/2016	Political statements from tertiary TVET providers and other civil society organisations
	2016	National TVET Policy
	2018	National Strategy on TVET
Additional contextual interviews (1998–2018)			7
Total interviews			27

Policy discourses mapped out through the analysis of the policy documents became the entry point to examine the policy agendas and frameworks predominant during the different government administrations. This documentary analysis was also instrumental in identifying the main individuals and institutions involved in the policy process. Both the documents and the interviews transcripts were analysed thematically with a focus on the potential explanatory factors affecting the variation, selection and retention of TVET policy reforms. The thematic analysis was organised according to the following dimensions: (1) diagnosis and problematisation, (2) policy orientation and assumptions, (c) policy solutions and (d) initiatives and legal reforms adopted. We decided to split the materials into two periods (2006–2014 and 2014–2018) due to changing policy orientations and agendas between the two first administrations (Bachelet I, Piñera) and the third one (Bachelet II). The dimensions for the thematic analysis of the material were systematically applied to the two periods.

The political economy of TVET reforms in Chile

The analysis of policy documents and the interviews carried out during the fieldwork has allowed us to characterise two main periods of TVET policies between 2006 and 2018. The characterisation of the two periods has been based on the main policy approaches that have guided policy developments on TVET (human capital approach in the first period, the right to education in the second period). The first period, between 2006 and 2014, comprises the first government of Michelle Bachelet (2006–2010) and the government of Sebastián Piñera (2010–2014), led by centre-left and right-wing coalitions, respectively. This first period is characterised by the prevalence of the human capital approach to the formulation of TVET policies. During this period, the political debates around TVET focused on how the sector could contribute more effectively to the training of a better qualified workforce and to increase the productivity of the economy. The second period starts in 2014 when Michelle Bachelet, leading again a centre-left coalition, came to power for a second time. This last period has been characterised by the adoption of a right-based approach to education and has resulted in a greater role for the state in TVET and growing concern for correcting educational inequalities among students in their transitions after schooling. For both periods, variation, selection and retention mechanisms have been identified, as well as the main drivers that influenced policy changes and continuities in TVET.

The year 2006–2013: the presidential advisory council for the quality of education and the national commission on TVET

In March 2006, Michelle Bachelet assumed the presidency of Chile for the first time. This new government gave continuity to 16 years of centre-left governments since the restoration of the democracy in the country. Although education and TVET had not been prioritised in the political programme of the new government, they gained political momentum due to two separate streams of problematisation (variation) that required political responses from the government. The first source of problematisation was the mobilisation of secondary students that spanned over 3 months in 2006 (also known as Penguin’s revolution) and that forced the government to establish a Presidential Advisory Council for the Quality of Education to deal with their demands. The second source of problematisation had a specific focus on TVET and was originated by economic actors and high-level technocrats in the ministries of finance and education, which led to the creation of the National Commission on TVET. The two processes of policy change triggered by these events were interconnected and both affected the TVET sector but they followed different mechanisms of variation, selection and retention as it is shown below.

The mobilisation of secondary students in 2006 (supported by university students and teachers’ unions) started with demands for free transportation and the elimination of entrance exams to university. These initial very specific demands quickly turned into more structural and political ones, which included the end of profit in education, the elimination of school fees, the increase in the public funding of education and prohibiting schools from having selective admissions (Bellei and Cabalin 2013). The protests gained wide social support and put education at the centre of political debates (Cabalin 2012). The centre-left government responded to the context of social unrest and educational crisis generated by secondary students’ mobilisations with the creation of a Presidential Advisory Council for the Quality of Education (Consejo Asesor Presidencial para La Calidad de La Educación) that would analyse the challenges of the Chilean education system and propose a series of political reforms.

The advisory council was composed of a wide range of policy actors from government to education providers, students’ and teachers’ unions and civil society organisations (Cruz and Eduardo 2016). Although TVET was formally part of the remit of the council, little attention was paid to the sector in the sessions and the debates between its members. One reason for this low profile of TVET was that the main objective of the council was to deal with students’ demands, which did not include specific requests for the TVET sector. It is important to understand that the students’ mobilisations were mainly led by secondary students in the academic track, which are the ones from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Secondary students in the vocational track, which tend to have a lower socioeconomic background, were less involved in the student movement and the protests (Interview with stakeholder 5).

Another reason for the absence of TVET in the works of the council was the lack of contestation and public debate around the role of this sector in the Chilean society. While social stratification among schools and economic barriers in the access to higher education became very controversial educational issues, the challenges faced by TVET students to access a qualified job or to continue their studies were never matters of ideological dispute among educational actors in Chile. As a high-level participant in the council explained to the research team, the very political character of the council did not help the TVET sector to attract attention in the debates.

I think there was a debate [about TVET] but failed to establish itself as a central debate. I would say it was a permanent but marginal debate. […] What played the central role were the most contentious issues. I would say that TVET was not in discussion. (Interview with stakeholder 7)

The low profile of TVET in the debates of the council was reflected later in its very minor presence in the final report of recommendations. Although TVET secondary schools were indirectly affected by policies targeting the whole school offer,² very few policy initiatives directly targeting the TVET sector were actually selected and retained. Compensatory measures for the most disadvantage TVET students and the increase of public funding for under-resourced TVET schools³ were the only initiatives directly targeting the sector. Both measures had a focus on a more equitable provision of secondary education, which was one of the main demands of the student movement.

The second stream of problematisation of TVET was not led by educational actors but by economic ones. The National Council of Innovation for Competitiveness published a National Strategy for Innovation in 2007 (Consejo de Innovación, 2007) that later was used by the National Commission on TVET to justify the need for reforms. Under the rhetoric of the knowledge-based economy, this policy document problematised the state of education in the country and argued that a supposed shortage of individuals with high qualifications was damaging the competitiveness of the Chilean economy. Interestingly, Chile is one of the countries in the OECD with above average completion in upper secondary educational and access to tertiary education. In order to justify the claim that an insufficient education development was slowing down the economic growth of the country, the authors of the report decided to selectively compare Chile only to the countries with the highest participation rates in tertiary education in the world:

If we do not change the speed at which we are building human capital, we will be systematically lagging behind, losing competitiveness in the world. That is why Chile should face the challenge of speeding up and eliminating these gaps by 2020, to reach a tertiary education enrolment close to 80%, a similar level to countries such as Korea, Lithuania and Latvia. (Consejo de Innovación, 2007)

As it is stated in the quote, the expansion of tertiary education was presented as one of the main solutions to improve the competitiveness of the Chilean economy. This policy message had direct implications for TVET policy. If most of the students enrolled in the academic track of secondary education were already transitioning to tertiary education, then the expansion of the access to tertiary education had to come from the students attending secondary TVET. The expansion of tertiary education was also a demand of TVET students and their families. Over the years, the population of Chile has accepted the idea that, in order to get a decent job and escape poverty, you need a higher education degree (Larrañaga, Cabezas, and Dussaillant 2013). In fact, the majority of policymakers interviewed agreed that secondary TVET is not enough to guarantee a successful transition into the labour market and decent life conditions. Ironically, this perception was not so distant from reality given that, at that time, the rates of return to studies in secondary TVET were significantly lower than returns to tertiary education (OECD 2004).

The traditional orientation of secondary TVET towards a quick insertion in the labour market became an impediment for the government’s plans to expand tertiary education. In 2008, the Ministry of Education decided to address this problem by creating a commission of experts to develop a national agenda of reforms for TVET. It is important to highlight that the composition of this commission was significantly different from the previous presidential advisory council. In this case, it was composed mainly by TVET experts and government technocrats and did not include the participation of unions, students’ organisations or other civil society organisations. The technocratic background of the members of the commission had a significant influence on the type of debates and the policy orientation of its recommendations. In contrast to the political character of the advisory council of 2006, the members of the commission saw themselves as a group of technical experts:

I would say that [TVET Commission] it was not a political group. It was a much more technical group. No political differences were noticed. (Interview with stakeholder 5)

The main policy recommendations of this commission were strictly aligned with the orthodox human capital approach to TVET and the global policy toolkit described by McGrath (2012). In order to facilitate the transition of secondary TVET students to tertiary education, the commission recommended the adoption of a national qualifications framework, the creation of a political authority responsible for secondary and tertiary TVET provision⁴ and a more significant emphasis on STEM skills in the TVET curriculum. The commission also recommended wider engagement of employers in the provision of TVET through work-based learning opportunities, greater autonomy for providers and the reinforcement of the evaluative role of the state through quality assurance mechanisms and test-based accountabilities (Mineduc 2009).

Despite the comprehensive package of reforms selected by the commission, the level of retention of these reforms was very low. This lack of policy retention can be explained by two main factors. The first factor was that the recommendations of the commission saw the light at the end of the mandate of the first Bachelet administration, reducing the capacity of the government to adopt structural and effective policy reforms. The second factor was the climate of political instability in the Ministry of Education during the Piñera administration. A new cycle of student protests started in 2011, led this time by the university student movement,⁵ which significantly altered the capacity of the Piñera administration to develop a coherent agenda of reforms in education.

It was hard to put [TVET] as a priority. Especially in a government that had so many difficulties with the political agenda on education. There were four ministers. It was hard for me to work with four ministers. So, indeed, the ministers were concerned about thousands of things less than vocational education, for political reasons, for reasons of context, for many reasons. (Interview with stakeholder 10)

The only policy recommendation from the TVET Commission that was retained by the Bachelet and the Piñera administrations was the creation of a Secretary within the Ministry of Education to oversee both secondary and tertiary TVET provisions. This TVET Secretary had more of a symbolic value than an effective influence on concrete policy reforms during these administrations but it became an important actor in the TVET policy developments that took place during the second Bachelet administration.

The year 2014–2018: a new agenda for TVET with a focus on the right to education

The ‘Chilean winter’⁶ and the continued cycle of university student protests from 2011 to 2013 not only challenged the education administration of Piñera, they also introduced new ideas and debates in the education agenda that were going to be adopted by the political coalition of Bachelet when returning to power in 2014. These ideas included the critique of the marketisation of education and the consideration of education as a social right to be guaranteed by the state. The student unions acquired so much political relevance during the period that they became one of the most influential ‘educational policy stakeholders’ in the country (Bellei and Cabalin 2013). In fact, the new left-wing political parties with presence in the National Parliament based their legitimacy on the struggles of the student movement.⁷

President Bachelet returned to power in 2014 with a very different political agenda from her previous administration. Her political programme emphasised the need to tackle social inequalities and their structural roots as the main barriers for the future development of Chile (Bachelet 2013). The education reforms, together with the constitutional and fiscal reforms, were supposed to be the main pillars of this fundamental transformation of the country. The political programme of the new government in education defended a complete paradigm shift from the previous neoliberal policies:

This proposal defends a paradigm shift. This implies passing from education as a good that can be traded in the market and competition as a regulating mechanism of quality, to a coordinated educational system that offers Chilean children and young people a social right. (Chile of All political programme, 2014)

The consideration of education as a social right crystallised in a series of major policy initiatives that expanded the role of the state in the funding and the regulation of education: eradication of for-profit and cost-sharing in state-funded schools through the Inclusion Act, recentralisation of a public schooling sector that during the military rule was left in the hands of local authorities and free university education for the 60% of the population with lower socioeconomic background. All these policy initiatives brought changes to the TVET sector, either in secondary or tertiary education, but none of them had a specific focus on TVET. The only specific TVET policy initiative approved during the first days of the new government was the creation of 15 new public tertiary institutions in different regions of the country. The direct involvement of the state in the provision of tertiary education, in a context where all the tertiary education providers were private, was in itself a major political shift. The regional spread of these institutions was supposed to facilitate a more equitable access to tertiary education without creating direct competition with the main private providers who concentrated their market presence in the big cities.

The policy developments in TVET that followed the first 100 days of the new government cannot be understood without considering the role played by the TVET Secretary within the Ministry of Education. It is important to remember that this structure was created during the first Bachelet administration following the recommendations of the National Commission on TVET, but it was only during the second Bachelet administration that this structure managed to gain political influence within the Ministry of Education. The work of the TVET Secretary operated mainly in two areas. The first was designing a new national strategy for TVET based on the principles of the right to education that could be widely accepted by the main policy stakeholders in the sector. And the second was ensuring that the specificities of the TVET sector were properly recognised and incorporated into the major general education reforms launched by the new administration.

The TVET Secretary tried to widen the traditional narrow economic approach to TVET policy without generating contestation from the private sector. This difficult political navigation resulted in policy documents that discursively combined the human capital approach with the right to education agendas. The collaboration with UNESCO/UNEVOC provided legitimacy to these intents and also a general policy framework to reconcile these aims. The individualistic focus of both approaches facilitated this discursive integration:

the great challenge of the national TVET policy is to ensure that young people and adults (students and workers) have opportunities to develop educational and labour market trajectories according to their expectations and abilities, consistent with the development needs of the country. (Mineduc 2016, 9)

The TVET Secretary also had to act as a lobby group for the sector within the Ministry of Education. Many of the major education reforms initiated by the new administration systematically overlooked the needs and specificities of TVET providers and their students (Interview with stakeholder 8). The higher education reform was the clearest example of these omissions. The first version of this reform included free education for the students attending universities only but not for those attending tertiary TVET. Similarly, when designing the new accreditation and quality assurance mechanisms for tertiary education, all the criteria were established based on the characteristics of university education providers (Interview with stakeholder 19). The internal lobbying of the TVET Secretary within the Ministry of Education and the external pressure from the associations of TVET providers were necessary political moves to counterbalance the influence of the Council of University Rectors (CRUCH) and get this situation addressed in further policy developments (Guzman 2017; Vertebral 2015).

The National TVET Policy was finally approved and published by the Ministry of Education in 2016. This policy included an implementation plan for the rest of their mandate with concrete policy targets (2016–2018). The development of this policy was led by the TVET Secretary and in wide consultation with other stakeholders. It was important to convince them that the new agenda for a greater involvement of the state in education should not be seen as threat but as an opportunity to satisfy some of the historical demands of the sector. In fact, the national TVET policy of 2016 included policy recommendations from the National Commission of 2009 (national qualifications framework, employers’ involvement in TVET planning, test-based accountabilities) together with the new government initiatives (public tertiary TVET provision in the regions, free tertiary education for low-income populations, incorporation of TVET teachers to the general continuing professional development system). In addition to the political support from the sector, a policy loan of 90 million USD⁸ from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) facilitated the support of the new administration to the package of reforms proposed by the TVET Secretary.

The level of retention of the initiatives contained in the National Policy for TVET has been uneven so far. The new public tertiary TVET institutions and other small-scale initiatives⁹ have started to materialise but the adoption of a national qualifications framework got stalled in the debate around who should lead this policy. While government representatives thought that the state should host the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) within the Ministry of Labour, representatives of the private sector (Fundación Chile, Corfo) had already developed frameworks for some economic sectors and wanted to keep control of these developments. Another proposal that materialised during the last year of the administration was the creation of the National Advisory Council for TVET (Consejo Asesor de Formación Técnico-Profesional),¹⁰ which is composed of high-level representatives from different areas of the government, unions, private sector and TVET experts. The first action taken by this council was the elaboration of a National Strategy for TVET 2018–2030 that proposed a higher level of institutional coordination within government (between the Ministries of Education and Labour) and beyond government (with employer and TVET providers) at national and regional level with a focus on better supporting the post-school trajectories of TVET students. The return to power of a right-wing political coalition after the presidential elections in 2018 could easily mean that the adoption of the recommendations contained in this strategy will be, at the most, very selective.

Conclusions

The last decade of TVET policy developments in Chile has been marked by the alternation between two policy paradigms: human capital and the right to education. The cycles of social and political contestation against the neoliberal model established in Chile since the military rule has opened opportunities for new ideas and policy orientations in the educational debates, including TVET. While human capital orthodoxy has been the traditional dominant approach in TVET policy developments in the last decades and during the first Bachelet and Piñera administrations (2006–2014), we have witnessed the emergence of a new TVET policy agenda based on the principles of the right to education during the second Bachelet administration (2014–2018). This change of policy paradigm can be explained by the centrality acquired by social and educational inequalities in the political debate. It seems clear that when inequalities are the main driver of policy problematisations, the functionalist and narrow economic orientation of the human capital approach is insufficient to offer policy solutions.

The adoption of the right-based approach to education by the Chilean Government has provided a justification for greater involvement of the state in the provision and regulation of the system and has placed inequalities in post-school educational trajectories of TVET students at the core of the policy agenda. However, it is important to recognise that there have been many continuities in TVET policies between the latest administration and the previous ones. The most important continuity across these 12 years of TVET policy developments has been the assumption that it is impossible for Chile to offer decent life conditions to secondary TVET graduates if they do not pursue a tertiary education. This shared assumption among the different policy actors in Chile is what is driving the redefinition of the purpose of secondary TVET as an educational offer that prepares students for the progression to tertiary TVET.

While this redefinition of the purpose of secondary TVET may have positive effects on a widen participation of socially disadvantaged students in tertiary education, both the knowledge-economy rhetoric of the human capital approach and the right to education discourse share the lack of questioning of the political economy structures that shape labour relations and the world of work in global capitalism. Without an adequate analysis and critique of the economic model and labour policy, it is difficult to foresee how TVET can contribute to improving the overall prospects of disadvantaged young people. This is an important message for the TVET community in Chile but also for the international TVET community, which in the last few years have been combining human capital and rights-based approaches to TVET without a proper engagement with alternative policy frameworks (i.e. political economy, capabilities).

The analysis of these 12 years of TVET policies in Chile has shown that some of the critiques to human capital orthodoxy in global agendas are also manifesting over time in national policy developments. Having said that, we cannot ignore the difficulties of educational actors to problematise policy agendas in TVET. Even in the context of large student mobilisations and social unrest, the same actors that were questioning the neoliberal model of education failed to recognise TVET as an area of political struggle. In contrast to what happened in basic and university education, the critics of the neoliberal model have been unable to problematise TVET as a field of ideological confrontation. Human capital has become the common sense approach at a political and social level when discussing TVET issues because of its capacity to link TVET policies with the economic development aims of the country. The Chilean experience shows that alternative frameworks are still far to become a real alternative for TVET policies. Breaking this hegemony will require the politicisation of TVET and this cannot be achieved through educationist silo-thinking. It is only by incorporating the social critique to neoliberal economic policies and capitalist labour relations into our education policy discourse that we will be able to offer alternative policy agendas for TVET and development.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our colleagues from the Universidad Alberto Hurtado (Leandro Sepúlveda, María José Valdebenito, Daniel Leyton and Carolina González) for their contributions in the preparation of this paper. We are also grateful to Jon Lauglo, Stephanie Matseleng, Simon McGrath and Michele Schweisfurth for their comments on an early version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council through the project Newton RCUK-CONICYT Governing the educational and labour market trajectories of secondary TVET graduates in Chile (ES/N019229/1).

Notes

1. The 2006 students’ mobilisations were labelled as Penguins’ revolution because of traditional secondary students’ uniforms in Chile which are white shirt and black jacket.

2. As a result of the 2006 presidential advisory council, and after the political discussion, two main reforms were passed. The new Education Act (Ley General de Educación) replaced the one approved during the dictatorship, and established new standards for preschool, primary and secondary education to improve the level of equity and quality of the Chilean education system. The Preferential School Voucher increased the amount of resources for schools attended by the most vulnerable students.

3. During Bachelet presidency, two main scholarships for TVET students were created: one to cover the costs of their internships and another one to cover the cost of the university entrance exams.

4. The TVET Commission placed great emphasis on the articulation between secondary and tertiary TVET programmes and on the coordination of initial TVET with the vocational training schemes offered by the Ministry of Labour. References to the adult education sector were completely absent in the works of the commission and in the rest of the policy debates covered by this research.

5. Although these mobilisations affected significantly the government of Piñera, their main political effects will materialise during the second Bachelet administration.

6. The international press and media referred to the university student mobilisations of 2011 as the ‘Chilean winter’ due to their coincidence in time with the ‘Arab spring’ revolutions in several North African and Middle Eastern countries.

7. Four former presidents of the main student associations were elected as Members of Parliament for the new Chilean Parliament in 2014: Gabriel Boric, Karol Cariola, Giorgio Jackson and Camila Vallejo.

8. Programme to Improve Technical Vocational Education (CH-L1095).

9. One significant example of these projects is the articulation programme between TVET and the world of work in the region of Valparaiso (Neo), which is directly funded by IDB.

10. This advisory council is composed by representatives of the government, unions, private sector and TVET experts.