Bridging the skills gap in TVET: a study on private-public development partnership in Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

The nature of global labor markets places new demands on the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sector in developing countries. Capacity building programs have become a strategy for governments to increase the standard of TVET. The aim of this article is to analyze conditions for the formation of an intended and enacted curriculum within the framework of an Ethiopian Private-Public Development Partnership (PPDP) in the TVET sector. Data was generated through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and document analysis. The results indicate that the curriculum was geared toward the needs and interests of those industries involved in the PPDP and that greater emphasis was put on developing the intended curriculum than considering situational and contextual (im)possibilities for its enactment. A future consideration when developing curriculum for such a program may be to involve a more diverse group of local actors.

KEYWORDS:

• PPDP
• TVET
• Ethiopia
• intended and enacted curriculum
• competency-based

Introduction

In today’s global economy, changing labor markets generate new demands, requiring the provision of new skills and knowledge from the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sector. As part of the globalized world, the Ethiopian government has strived to restructure the sector to increase access, quality, and relevance to modernize society and to attract industries to move production to the country. Like in many other developing countries, it is argued that TVET should be driven by demands from industries instead of being supply driven (MoE, 2008). This is a challenging task since it not only aims at providing industries with adequately skilled manpower, but also embraces the rights of all young people to receive relevant and high-quality training, and thereby to reduce poverty (MoE, 2008; UNESCO, 2016). Nevertheless, TVET is generally regarded as weak (Allais, 2020a; National Planning Commission, 2016; Teferra et al., 2018). Like many other countries in the Sub-Saharan region, Ethiopia lacks the necessary resources to provide learners with a broad foundation of skills that are required for getting employment in the formal sector. (Afeti, 2017; Yamanda & Otchia, 2021). In addition, there is no well-regulated labor market that can absorb the educated people (Allais, 2020a), and unregulated work typically makes up more than half of the economy (Sparks & Barnett, 2010).

Therefore, engagement in capacity building programs, such as Private-Public Development Partnerships (PPDP), has become a developmental strategy of governments in developing countries to increase investment in the TVET sector and to solve the shortcomings of TVET and labor markets (National Planning Commission, 2016). Partnerships between public and private sector actors (PPP) refers to agreements by which the private sector partners deliver infrastructures and services that should have been provided by the public sector, without profit objectives (Oviawe, 2018). Adding the ‘D’ (Development), thereby turning PPP into PPDP, is closely connected to the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (Moll de Alba & Stucki, 2019). Thus, a PPDP is a multi-stakeholder engagement involved in delivering and funding public services with wider ambitions targeted at developmental activities to increase the life chances of people living in poverty. It should align well with existing national policies but have catalytic effects on the target organization (Moll de Alba & Stucki, 2019).

The case for the study presented here is a PPDP between 1) the Ethiopian Ministry of Education, 2) a world-leading private manufacturing company (here: ‘Heavy Metal’), 3) two international public actors that target poverty reduction: one is a global organization (here: ‘Global Aid’) and one is an international government agency for development cooperation (here: ‘Government Aid’), and 4) a non-governmental local actor that we have given the name Birhan Technical and Vocational College (Birhan College). Birhan College is situated in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In addition, Ethiopian industry representatives are part of the PPDP. Each of these actors worked together to establish a department for the vocational education and training of maintenance technicians. The department is here named Yemekina Tigena Department (YTD), which is hosted by Birhan College.¹ The overall objective of YTD is to provide underprivileged youth with skills that will enable them to get out of poverty and secure long-term sustainable income.

A main focus in research on PPPs and TVET has been on logistics such as financing and infrastructure (e.g. Okoye & Chijioke, 2013; Oviawe, 2018). Moreover, recommendations often put pressure on developing countries to follow prescribed globalized curricula and educational directions (Mundy & Verger, 2015). Studies on PPDPs and the TVET sector are still limited and have had, for instance, a focus on these systemic features of partnerships for the enhancement of employability (e.g. Moll de Alba & Stucki, 2019, 2021). McGrath (2011) and McGrath et al. (2020) argue that the Anglophone dominance in the global knowledge production has weakened the development of sustainable African approaches to the development of TVET. Similarly, Allais (2020b) has problematized the idea of TVET as a mass education to solve the problem of youth unemployment and argued for an understanding of TVET in a context of African industrialization. This indicates that there are complexities embedded in the development of TVET beyond aspects of supply- or demand driven curricula (Allais, 2020c), an argument that also motivates this study.

Given the mixture of PPDP actors from both the global South and the global North to address the issues of TVET, employability, and poverty reduction among youth, the aim of this article is to analyze conditions for the formation of the curriculum within YTD. The term ‘curriculum’ refers here to stated goals, including the intentional social purposes and educational goals that were shaped within the context of the partnership. Our understanding of curriculum also includes how these goals were transformed and made accessible by instructors² as learning opportunities for the students, linked to available resources (Billett, 2011). The next section gives a contextual background to our analysis.

The context of TVET in Ethiopia

Ethiopia is among the poorest countries in the world with a population of around 115 million (World Bank, 2020). In 2019, the country was ranked 173 out of 189 countries in the Human Development Index (UNDP, 2020). Even so, the country is striving toward a transformation from an agricultural-based economy to a mixed agricultural-industrial economy (ILO, 2020). However, the industrial sector is still small. According to World Bank indicators, in 2020 employment in industries was 10.35% of the total employed workforce (Trading Economics, 2022). Around 86% of the employed are categorized by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as having vulnerable employment (UNDP, 2020). The Danish Trade Union Development Agency (2020) estimates that around 52% of the workforce has less than basic education and that unemployment among urban youth is a very big problem.

In 2008, a national TVET strategy was launched by the government (MoE, 2008). An argument was that TVET should better respond to the competency needs in the labor market and be organized in modules representing occupational standards. The so-called supply-driven TVET was described as obsolete and a so-called competency-based curricula should be developed. It was clearly stated that the primary goal of TVET was to contribute to ‘poverty reduction and social and economic development through facilitating demand-driven, high quality technical and vocational education and training’ (MoE, 2008, p. 12). Problems with low levels of skills among the population were pointed out and that ‘more than 40% are self-employed in the informal economy, most of which live on the edge of poverty’ (MoE, 2008, p. 8). The reform document also said that statistics regarding access to TVET was unknown, thereby indicating a sector that has been given low priority.

To gain entrance to TVET, students normally must complete a national examination (i.e. the Ethiopian General Secondary Education Certificate Examination EGSECE) at the end of grade 10 (i.e. lower secondary school). Grade 10 completers, but who are not eligible to proceed to upper secondary school due to low scores on the national examination, can join TVET (MoE, 2008). TVET is organized from level I to level V, with each level comprising one educational year. Level V is a polytechnic at higher education level. According to MoE (2011), Geleto (2017), and Krishnan and Shaorshadze (2013), students’ national examination scores determine the level in which they are placed.

By contrasting the policy attraction of competency-based and demand-driven curricula with research on TVET and competency-based curricula in Sub-Saharan Africa, a sector with many problems is revealed. Fragmentation, low status, and poor quality, which negatively affect the relevance and societal acceptance of the education, are among the problems pointed out (e.g. Allais, 2020a, 2020b; Geleto, 2017; Yamanda & Otchia, 2021). These, together with a lack of qualified instructors and poor student-teacher relationships (Abuel-Ealer, 2012), motivated the uptake of competency-based TVET. However, in a study of TVET instructors for the apparel industry in Ghana, Obinnim (2018) found that a competency-based curriculum exacerbated the challenges that instructors experienced due to deviations in traditional teaching methods that increased demands. Even so, Okolie et al. (2020) showed that TVET instructors might be very active in fostering employability skills among their students.

According to Rasul and Mansor (2013), there might also be a huge gap between the skills employers expect and those possessed by the graduates they employ, which suggests weak industry-TVET linkages (Demessew & Mutendwahothe, 2015). This, as well as local government directives and support from international non-governmental organizations, are additional reasons for competency-based curricula spreading in Sub-Saharan African countries like Ethiopia (Ruth & Ramadas, 2019). Such curricular links make TVET particularly vulnerable to international and private interests (Wheelahan & Moodie, 2016). For example, McGrath et al. (2020) pointed out that TVET reforms in Africa emanate from colonial legacies. As an example, in a case study of the Namibian vocational education system, where a competency-based curriculum also exists, Gessler and Peters (2020) found that the system imitated models in the United Kingdom. A risk in borrowing curricular models is that the complexity of TVET is overlooked and that contextual aspects, like economic and human resources, are ignored (Allais, 2022; Ruth & Ramadas, 2019).

Given our interest in the formation of a TVET curriculum within the context of a PPDP and its various stakeholders, the analytical point of departure is inspired by Billett’s (2011, 2015) work on intended and enacted curriculum. In the next section, we explain this further.

On curricular intentions and enactment

A curriculum reflects knowledge and competences seen as necessary in a certain social and cultural context; it indicates a pathway of activities and an idea on how learning should proceed (Lundgren, 1983). An intended curriculum is a kind of formalized learning plan designed as an intervention. It can be a written document, stating what goals are expected to be achieved and can act as a guide for educational providers and teachers on what is intended, and the organization and sequencing of learning to reach these goals (Billett, 2011). For example, an intended curriculum in TVET may specify whether practical, hands-on experience should be arranged before, after, or in combination with learning the theory behind the practice.

The location of these experiences is another aspect of the intended curriculum. TVET normally involves bridging between an educational institution and workplaces. Thus, how to select and organize knowledge in TVET involves education across two settings – school and work – and there is a need for teachers to support students in integrating their learning experiences across these contexts (Billett, 2015).

In addition, a specific feature of the studied PPDP is the involvement of diverse partners in the construction of an intended TVET curriculum. An intended curriculum in this context implies a powerful international intervention in the socio-cultural context of a national TVET system. It encompasses not only the delivery of education but also ideas on the modernization of TVET institutions and new modes of production in a country striving to develop its economy. As an example, what makes someone ready for work involves bridging the skills gap between ‘old’ and ‘modern’ competences. Put differently, present workplace and occupational requirements need to be considered alongside emerging ones (UNESCO, 2016). Given this, and the range of PPDP actors involved, the formulation of an intended curriculum means bridging a manifold of social, political, and economic interests through contested lines of reasoning and compromise (McGrath et al., 2020).

Finally, an important point of departure for our case is that a curriculum for TVET has personal as well as social dimensions that are interrelated and enacted situationally (Billett, 2011) and involves the agency of students (Smith, 2018). Therefore, the enactment of a curriculum always involves some kind of negotiation between the actors involved, including students (Choy et al., 2018). Consequently, instructors tasked with enacting the curriculum are subject to the circumstances of their teaching environments that might enable as well as constrain the intended activities. In this study, the circumstances for teaching were set by the PPDP.

We focus on the intended and enacted curriculum in this study because we are most interested in 1) understanding what educational experiences and knowledge the actors involved in the PPDP intended for students to gain and 2) exploring the diverse enabling and constraining aspects that were encountered when the curriculum was enacted. The more knowledge we have on these aspects, the greater the possibility to identify adjustments that could be made to the intended curriculum so that it is more responsive to these enablements and constraints.

Method

The data for this article was collected from thirteen individual interviews, including three instructors and two project administrators from YTD, two administrators from Birhan College, three industrial representatives and three alumni from three different industries. In addition, four groups of students from YTD, composed of six members from different educational levels (level I, II, III, IV), participated in focus group discussions, which totaled 24 students. Furthermore, the following documents were analyzed: the YTD initiation document, a project evaluation document authored by Global Aid and one of the partners, and curriculum documents for levels I–IV. Observations from a site visit to YTD provided context for understanding the interviews, focus groups, and documents that were analyzed.

The participants were selected since they worked closely with the PPDP at YTD. To illustrate, the project administrators in YTD are the project coordinators whereas the administrators from Birhan College are the college Deans. There were only two people in each respective position, so all were interviewed. These administrators had roles in supervising the implementation of the training. The industry representatives were part of the curriculum development and implemented the work-based training. The alumni were selected based on their availability at the time of data collection and came from the same industries as the industry representatives. YTD had just three instructors, so all were interviewed.

The focus group students were selected based on their willingness to participate. One of the authors posted a notice on a board at Birhan College that invited students in each educational level to participate in a focus group discussion. Focus group discussions were then conducted with those who came voluntarily from each of the four educational levels. Both males and females participated in each group.

The first cohort of students started their education in 2014, with 20–30 students accepted in each cohort annually. At the time data was collected for this study, the project had been running for five years, meaning that students from the early cohorts had already completed their four years of TVET training. According to an evaluation (reference not included for anonymity), 94.1% of first cohort students were employed full-time compared to only 63% in the second cohort. The data was based on questionnaires to the students.

All interviews and focus group discussions were conducted in the Amharic language by one of authors. They were audio recorded and later transcribed into English. Furthermore, a written consent form was prepared and explained to the participants. Each participant signed a consent form that explained the purpose of the study and the right to withdraw from the study. Through the consent, we also guaranteed the research participants that they were not obliged to talk about anything with which they were not completely comfortable. Since the project administrators, project coordinators, and YTD instructors were few, and all were interviewed, quotes used to illustrate our findings were not linked to any individual. Instead, we specified the participants’ roles in the PPDP to maintain their confidentiality. Further, confidentiality was ensured by following the ethical guidelines of (deleted for anonymity) University.

To capture the enabling and constraining aspects of the formation of the curriculum, the analysis focused on tensions related to the enactment of the curriculum, as they were described by the interviewees. To do so, the focus first was on what they wanted to achieve by the curriculum, and second, on how diverse their interests were and what they perceived to restrict activities. This was then related to contextual aspects of the PPDP. We now proceed with the results of our analysis.

A partnership for development of the curriculum

According to the YTD initiation document from Government Aid, the Ministry of Education, Birhan College, Global Aid, Government Aid, and Heavy Metal, each had different roles within the PPDP and thereby different contributions to the arrangements within the project. The overall task of Global Aid was to promote industrial development for poverty reduction, build resilient infrastructures, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation across the globe. In this context, Global Aid’s contribution was the experience of project management. Government Aid’s role in the PPDP was to provide development assistance through financial support. Similarly, Heavy Metal had a financial role as a provider of in-kind support such as machineries. As a world leading manufacturer of among other things construction equipment, Heavy Metal needs well-trained mechanics that can service the equipment, so financing machinery relevant to their production and maintenance lines was in their interest. Birhan College’s responsibility was to host the training by contributing with premises and by paying instructors’ salaries. Finally, the role of the Ethiopian Ministry of Education was to authorize the curriculum of YTD. According to a document from Global Aid, one ambition of the Ministry was to replicate the experiences of the PPDP in other TVET institutions.

Hence, the setup of the project was three dimensional and included supervisory roles, financial roles, and executor roles. Global Aid collected funding and machinery from Government Aid and Heavy Metal respectively and then managed the project at Birhan College. Procurement and other running costs were also managed by Global Aid. Global Aid representatives were responsible for sending reports to Government Aid regularly.

Two ideas expressed in the initiation document were that the education should adjust to changing labor market demands and that students should be introduced to modern machinery. Our review of the curricular documents and interviews with instructors showed that the curriculum was based on modules related to different types of competencies. The competencies were divided into small discrete units. For each unit, there was information on content, objectives, skills, concepts, methodology, assessment, and the duration of the course. In total, the four curriculum documents, one for each level, encompasses 332 pages.

The analysis of learning outcomes from the curriculum documents also showed that almost all competencies were dominated by practical knowledge. Furthermore, as Table 1 indicates, most of the practical knowledge was about the understanding of work-related activities (i.e. hands-on training). For example, Table 1 shows that level I learners in YTD are expected to attend training sessions exclusively in the school workshop. This was intended to reduce the burden on industries. Students at level II or above are expected to practice in the workshop located at YTD, as well as in industry. For example, in level III, for the competence ‘Service and repair electronic drive management system’, students are expected to spend a total of 60 hours in school and industry settings. The initial 40 hours are spent at YTD in the classroom or training with instructors in the college workshop. These initial hours were meant to prepare students for the remaining 20 hours, which they spend being guided by an industry supervisor. As a further example, for level IV, the competency ‘Overhaul final drive assemblies’, consists of a total of 84 hours of training. Fifty-nine hours are spent at Birhan College while the remaining 25 hours are spent in industrial settings. All modules were organized in this manner.

Table 1. Examples of competencies and allotted hours from the YTD curriculum.

Levels	Competencies	Hours at the YTD workshop	Hours in industry	Total hours
Level I	Carry out workshop practice activities	70	0	70
	Test, service and maintain battery storage systems	30	0	30
	Remove and replace electrical/electronic units/assemblies	40	0	40
Level II	Implement and monitor environmental regulations in the automotive mechanical industry	10	5	15
	Perform manual arc and oxy acetylene welding	40	20	60
	Inspect and service steering systems	17	8	25
Level III	Service and repair electronic drive management system	40	20	60
	Assemble and install pneumatic system/components	40	20	60
	Inspect service and/or repair clutch assemblies and associated operating system components	20	10	30
Level IV	Overhaul final drive assemblies	59	25	84
	Overhaul engines and associated engine components	68	31	99
	Prepare a vehicle repair quotation	20	13	33

In summary, the intended curriculum consisted of sequenced competencies that related to hands-on, technical training meant to increase employability. Less focus was given to developing soft skills.

Overlapping interests on curriculum preparation

According to the interviewed Birhan College administrators and some industry representatives, Heavy Metal initially suggested their own in-house curriculum during the development phase of YTD. However, this was strongly challenged by Birhan College and the Ministry of Education over concerns that the curriculum would not have local relevance. According to those interviewed, the curriculum became a shared goal in which all actors committed to realize. The responsibility of making the curriculum responsive to local realities was then left to the local partners and industry representatives. Accordingly, one industry representative stated:

Our company was invited to discuss on the essentiality of Heavy Vehicle and Earth Moving Machinery Maintenance training. We also participated in the curriculum development process.

Similarly, one YTD administrator confirmed that:

Since one of the focuses of the training was bringing employability to the learners, the skills were linked to the job market in automotive industries. The training assures that there is no mismatch between the training and competencies required in motor vehicle companies.

According to both, needs assessments were conducted, particularly in motor vehicle industries, as a response to the existing inadequate workforce. Hence, YTD was initiated with the expectation of producing quality and relevant mechanics for the maintenance of heavy duty and commercial vehicles for the industries. It seems the industries had the upper hand in the curricular content selection. However, industries may have needs for different competencies, as one industry representative stated:

All the equipment and machineries are latest and modern. However, all of them are provided by (Heavy Metal) … even though most vehicles have systems, for example, hydraulics, that are the same to all vehicles, we as a company noticed some differences across different vehicles.

While the provision of the latest and modern machineries is fundamental for the effectiveness of the training, educating students on the same machineries does not allow them to learn a diverse skillset. This is pertinent because as technological advancement progresses, the technicality of the vehicles changes as well, and the students will not be prepared to handle these advanced technologies. In other words, the training does not address students’ needs by educating them for work in diverse local and global markets. Instead, the training in YTD is being implemented with the interests of the industries taking precedence. This follows what was stipulated by the national TVET strategy from 2008 (MoE, 2008). Three participants in this study, two of whom were actively involved in the industry, revealed that after a needs assessment was conducted with industries, different stakeholders, such as curriculum experts from an Ethiopian university, a local business that also was the international company’s representative in Ethiopia, Birhan College, and different motor vehicle industry representatives began participating in the curriculum development process. In the next sections we turn to the everyday local context of instructors and students at YTD, and the enabling and constraining aspects that they encountered when the curriculum was enacted.

Enabling aspects

Enabling aspects for the enactment of the curriculum, as described by the interviewed, were instructors’ professional development, access to modern equipment, and cooperative hands-on training with industry. These are described below.

According to the YTD instructors and project coordinators, YTD provides opportunities for instructors to keep pace with the ever-changing work environment through a so-called ‘training of the trainers’ program. The program is a capacity building training that helps instructors to develop their professional competences. Under this program, Heavy Metal facilitates workshop trainings abroad. As one of the instructors, who also was the Head of the Department of YTD, said, ‘I have been in Sweden for a month through a train-the-trainer program’ while an instructor stated, ‘for more than a month, I was in Dubai for a skill up training’. Beyond this, one of the instructors said, ‘I am attending free online trainings with (Heavy Metal) for certification’. According to the instructors, the programs and trainings they attended directly relate to heavy duty equipment and commercial vehicles. One of the instructors mentioned that ‘the training is so helpful for me to acquire skills and knowledge about modern machineries that I can apply (implement) it with my students’.

Responses from participants, as well as observations during the site visit, indicated that YTD has a modern workshop equipped with the latest machineries to work on engine rebuilding, mechanical repairs, and computerized diagnostic services among others. In addition, according to the project coordinator, ‘the skills training was provided in cooperation with almost twenty cooperative partner companies’. Interviews with instructors indicated that after students complete each competence, they go to industry for hands-on practice. Many of the students agreed that cooperative training provided them with first-hand knowledge and experience through simulated teaching activities. Beyond this, one of the students said, ‘cooperative [training] has an advantage for me as it provides an opportunity to work with other industry-working mechanics thereby, I develop social and communication skills’. Another student added, ‘in addition to working with machineries, practicing outside of the school environment [in industry] gives me another imperative to adapt the workplace situations’. Therefore, cooperative training may enable students to develop soft skills, which was not a focus of the intended curriculum. Another student participant said that during her stay in industry, the company assigned a supervisor who instructed and guided them. However, she said it was to a lesser extent compared to the YTD instructors. To summarize the focus group discussions, the training helps the students as it provides practical training. One student illustrates this sentiment well.

I have gained valuable skills related to heavy duty equipment and commercial vehicle maintenance … most of the time I spend working with machineries in the (YTD) workshop. For example, I mostly practice assembling and disassembling different types of engines. It is a great privilege for me to study in (YTD).

To further examine the conditions for the enactment of the curriculum, the next section focuses on constraining aspects to implementing the curriculum.

Constraining aspects

Constraints to enacting the curriculum were found to include large student groups, high instructor turnover and poor financial management, detached supervision during work placements, and linear employment returns.

One challenge to the enactment of the curriculum is that each of the three instructors must handle large student groups. For example, an instructor expressed concern over these work conditions by stating:

The difference between the number of students to a teacher is huge … today single instructors in (YTD) are controlling fifty students, so how can that teacher devote time to attend to students on practical work one after the other.

One of the project coordinators said that it was difficult to find competent instructors:

With regards to skilled instructors, most of them are university graduates. However, the availability of competent instructor in (YTD) was not to the desired level.

The number of instructors is small as there are only three with academic qualifications ranging from TVET level IV to a Master of Science degree. Students frequently learn by the same instructors, which can give a sense of boredom and limits their learning, as one student pointed out, ‘I am a level III student learning by the same trainers. I wish I could have different experiences and see approaches from different trainers’. This shows the perceived negative impact of an overcrowded classroom and training program with few instructors.

From an instructor’s perspective, overcrowded classrooms combined with unattractive salaries contributed to constraining the enactment of the curriculum:

I teach what the department assigned me to teach regardless of specialization … it means I am an instructor as well as a workshop attendant. Unless more TVET instructors are employed by offering an attractive salary, it will be difficult to achieve what we planned because it is difficult for a single instructor alone to teach the theoretical aspects and switch to the practical aspects.

The project administrators, as well as instructors, argued that unattractive salary is a major cause for high turnover. Even instructors who trained under the ‘training of the trainers’ program abroad leave YTD because of dissatisfaction. Despite these challenges over instructor salaries, one of the project administrators indicated that financing running costs for the program was less of an issue:

So far financial resources are not a problem in (YTD) as the financial resources are mainly from donors such as Government Aid. There are sufficient financial resources to purchase running costs for training materials to integrate in teaching-learning activity.

While there may be financial freedom in purchasing materials, this freedom does not extend to employee-related costs. It is not possible to use the financial resources to prevent or reduce the existing high turnover of instructors, which affects the teaching and learning process. Nevertheless, a lack of financial management is hindering the enactment of the training curriculum as the salaries of instructors are not supported. That said, there appears to be a decentralized role among actors, where Government Aid is a fundraiser, yet the funds raised by Government Aid are not invested in buying heavy machineries because Heavy Metal does it.

Turning now to the organization of the curriculum, we learned through discussions with instructors, industry representatives, and students that shortly after learners successfully complete the intended competencies (i.e. modules), they begin training in a workplace. The industry assigns supervisors who instruct, guide, and evaluate students’ work. However, once students are sent to work placement training, instructors rarely visit students. Therefore, the responsibility resides on industry supervisors to evaluate learners’ performances and report to YTD. Consequently, instructors have fewer opportunities for follow up. This finding suggests that a detached relationship between instructors and students during apprenticeship training is also a constraint to the enactment of the curriculum.

Regarding students’ employment possibilities after the training, perspectives varied. For instance, in one of the focus groups, a student stated:

I have gained valuable skills related to heavy duty equipment and commercial vehicle maintenance … I am now quite confident that I will successfully join and work in a reputable company.

The response indicates that the student is hopeful to be employable in industry. However, one of the alumni said, ‘In a company where I am working, none of the graduates from YTD were employed after me’. This suggests that the companies involved in the training are not capable of taking in all the graduates every year; saturation is inevitable for them. Consequently, there is a risk that graduates will not get employment as expected. The linear alignment of the curriculum with industry does not necessarily result in a better supply of employable graduates for the wider market. This implies that the curriculum is narrowly linked to certain industries rather than to the broader labor market for mechanics. Therefore, the training may be perceived as restrictive in terms of long-term employability and professional mobility because the industries determine the knowledge, skills, and competencies that are required in the market.

Perceptions also varied in relation to how well the curriculum prepares students for self-employment. For example, one student expressed concern in this regard:

We learn everything about maintenance for heavy earth moving machineries by modern machineries. However, the training does not teach us driving skills to check out whether the vehicle we fix is working or not … we also do not learn business and entrepreneur skills.

Despite the training with machineries, the student expressed concern over not being trained to start a business. In contrast, a YTD administrator said, ‘the training also gives students an opportunity to employ themselves’. In Ethiopia there is a possibility for anybody, including TVET and university graduates, to organize themselves in small and micro enterprises to ask the government for a loan to start a business. Nevertheless, the administrator could not mention any students who had initiated their own business, and throughout the course of data collection, no one mentioned any self-employed graduates. The training does not seem to promote self-employability as the curriculum was formally designed to fulfil the interests of industries and the learners have no freedom in choosing what to learn. Consequently, students do not learn how to create, innovate, or problem-solve, which are important in this ever-changing world. These findings indicate that the YTD curriculum was formally designed to fill the skills gaps in the industrial sector rather than promote self-employability.

Summary and conclusion

This study was about the local formation of a curriculum for a so-called competency-based education within a TVET private-public development partnership (PPDP). The PPDP, comprised of Ethiopian and international actors, was involved in establishing a department called YTD and the education of maintenance technicians. We posed two questions: What educational experiences and knowledge did the actors involved in the PPDP intend for students to gain? What diverse enabling and constraining aspects were encountered when the curriculum was enacted?

The answer to the first question indicates that the curriculum was geared toward the actual needs and interests of those industries involved in the PPDP. A competency-based curriculum model offered students many opportunities to gain practical, hands-on training in vehicle maintenance on machinery specific to certain industries, an approach that was strongly supported by the Ethiopian government. Thus, the negotiations involving industry representatives in designing the curriculum were supposed to strengthen an intended connection between industry and the training that students received, which has previously been shown to be weak (Demessew & Mutendwahothe, 2015).

The answer to the second question is a bit more multilayered. We could, for instance, notice that aspects enabling the enactment of the curriculum easily could turn and become constraining depending on situational and contextual conditions. For instance, a training scheme for instructors’ professional development that was partly meant to reduce the lack of qualified instructors, a prevalent challenge in the Ethiopian TVET system (Abuel-Ealer, 2012), also resulted in high staff turnover. The trained instructors had unattractive salaries and could easily find other jobs. Instructors leaving meant that any competencies gained through their professional development was lost, as well as the resources that were put into the professional trainings.

Additionally, we found that the possibility for students to have hands-on training with industry not only allowed them to gain practical experience using modern machinery but also enabled the development of transferable soft skills, which was not part of the intended curriculum. Further, students’ access to modern equipment and their cooperative training with industry was perceived as reducing the gap between their achieved competences and future employers’ expectations, which some prior studies have pointed to as a problem (Rasul & Mansor, 2013). However, when enacted, there was no support structure for the students. The connection between the educational institution and the industry was mainly limited to and driven by the detailed descriptions of the learning content and the sequencing in the curriculum documents. Like Obinnim (2018), we found that the implementation of a competency-based curriculum is marked by inefficiency. For example, there was little space for teacher interventions given the limited number of teachers and the large student groups. No attention was given to the workplace supervisors. Since the competency-based descriptions defined the narrower needs of specific workplaces, it was up to the students to gain the broader occupational competences.

Linear employment returns also constrained the curriculum. The students’ professional mobility may be limited because they have only been prepared to work in certain industrial contexts and on machinery that quickly becomes outdated in the fast-paced technological environment in which they work. Large student groups can be seen as a continuation of the poor student-teacher relationships pointed to by Abuel-Ealer (2012), which was further weakened by the organization of work-based training, where instructors were detached from the learning that took place within industry.

In the case presented here, one could argue that greater emphasis was put on developing the intended curriculum than considering the (im)possibilities for its enactment. This is perhaps not surprising since international donor money was needed for the purpose of developing the TVET sector. Thus, the outcome will in the end be measured against the ideals of donor organizations and neglect local traditions. In other words, the principles underlying curricular models from international contexts will be duplicated (Gessler & Peters, 2020). There were few aspects that suggested new paths for the local and national context.

Many of the constraints we identified involve the instructors and the challenges they faced when implementing the curriculum. It may be that those government and industry actors who were greatly involved in planning the curriculum did not anticipate or fully understand the circumstances of the local instructors (Billett, 2011; Ruth & Ramadas, 2019). Overlooking the local challenges underlying the enactment of the curriculum is problematic because a PPDP then only serves as a temporary bridge to meet local skills gaps. When project funding ends, training programs are likely to return to their previous state of being severely under-funded, with outdated equipment and underqualified instructors.

To conclude, our hope by identifying these enablements and constraints is to open a discussion on how those involved in developing curriculum for training programs within PPDPs could be more responsive to local conditions. Such discussions are important because PPDP is an intervention that could be initiated in other developing countries. Our findings underscore the importance of engaging instructors in discussions early in newly formed PPDPs to build an awareness of instructors’ work contexts and potentials for enacting the curriculum that was intended. Gathering insight from students or graduates may also be advantageous for developing a curriculum where the intentions are more likely to be experienced by students (Billett, 2015). Therefore, a future consideration when developing curriculum for such a program may be to involve a more diverse group of actors. Lastly, further research is needed on PPDPs in developing countries to corroborate our suggestions for designing a curriculum that is responsive to local conditions, as the case study design used here offers only a limited glimpse into this emerging intervention in TVET.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

Notes

1. Birhan College is part of a humanitarian organization for children who have lost their parents.

2. In the project documents, ‘instructor’ and ‘trainer’ are used interchangeably. In Amharic, the term used is ‘aseltagn.’