CriticalConsiderationsForTVETReformInNepal

Development Goals (MDGs) as performance metrics. Incorporating global development agenda within the country’s policy making framework had two crucial effects on the TVET sector. First, Nepal’s national projects were classified on a priority scale. Priority One projects were allocated higher resources and budgets, while Priority Two projects came to be regarded as ‘secondary’, and lower resources were allocated to them. TVET was classified under Priority Two in the 10th Five-Year Plan in 2002, resulting in few incentives for the government to mobilize resources towards TVET projects. This decision further weakened an already feeble TVET system.

Second, with the incorporation of MDGs within its national policies, Nepal prioritized school enrolment in its 10th Plan (2002-2007). Subsequently, expenditure on primary education increased from 53 percent to 63 percent as part of total education expenditure in the period FY 2000/01-FY 2004/05, whilst the combined share of expenditure on primary and secondary education increased from 75 percent to 88 percent in the same period. Projects such as ‘Education for All’ gave further impetus to increase access to education. Formal education up to the secondary school level began to be treated and provisioned as a public good. The MDG targets for increasing secondary education enrolment rate were ambitious and, in reality, difficult to achieve.

Realizing the need to combine education with skills and employment for a vibrant workforce, the Government of Nepal implemented Skills for Employment programs in cooperation with Department of Cottage and Small Industries (DCSI) among others, but rarely through the Department of Industries. These programs were run either through grants or loan assistance. Their objectives included Market-Oriented Skill Training (MOST) to women, Dalits and disadvantaged groups to enhance their access to the TVET system. Although these interventions increased women’s and lowincome communities’ participation in the workforce (albeit informal) remarkably, they had an insignificant effect on generating meaningful and sustainable employment opportunities for women and had an even smaller effect on the country’s economic advancement.

Even though significant donor and government resources have been spent to make TVET more inclusive and propoor, the data presents a different picture. For instance, CTEVT’s data shows that the only sector where women’s participation is significant in TVET is in nursing. Outside of nursing, women’s participation is dismally low. 10

4.2 Provisioning TVET as a Public and Private Good

In order to better understand the public administration challenges around TVET provision, it is useful to appraise the nature of TVET from a goods/services perspective. In addition, it is useful to consider how provisioning of TVET intersects with public policy measures of human development, such as the Human Development Index (HDI), which is a summary measure of average achievements in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life; being knowledgeable; and possessing a decent standard of living. Within these three HDI dimensions, TVET’s primary linkage is with the education sector, where the sector’s objective is to impart useful knowledge and skills for access to employment opportunities.

The government’s recent decision to promote 9-12 vocational streams in secondary and higher secondary education within the existing public schools network in rural areas can be viewed as evidence of its renewed interest in promoting skills for employment. This decision has positioned TVET within the education sector, conferring it with the essential characteristic of being a public good under the right to free education as set out in the 2015 constitution. While further clarity is needed on the public-private dynamic of post-secondary TVET, the broader linkage with skills for employment and ultimately to prosperity and social justice posits a public good orientation to provisioning preemployment TVET.

10 Poudel, 2019