Introduction

The positive relationship between TVET and economic development has long been established.1 It serves as a mechanism to impart employable skills that improve workforce productivity and enables economic transformation through value addition and poverty reduction. Further, TVET prepares young people entering the labour market through meaningful and effective education processes and provides a foundation for further educational pathways.2

Yet, developing nations like Nepal continue to struggle to provide quality and accessible TVET services to citizens, despite considerable investment and longstanding efforts of the government and stakeholders in education. A recent study on financial flows found that TVET remains a deprived sector in Nepal and requires multiple interventions to deliver positive outcomes.3

The 2015 Constitution recognizes TVET as a key pillar of Nepal’s education sector, and political parties across the spectrum have committed to align TVET with the realities of the labour market.4 However, supply and demand constraints prevent TVET from contributing meaningfully to the education sector and the national economy.

On the supply side, the constraints to progress in TVET largely emanate from the public sector. Historically, Nepal has allocated woefully low resources to TVET in comparison to general education. According to the National Education Account in Nepal, between 2009-2016, annual expenditure on TVET accounted for only 2-3 percent of the national budget, while education accounted for 10-15 percent of the national budget. However, with new plans to include up to 70 percent of students in TVET, as well as expected rise in costs of TVET education, future budgetary allocations for TVET should be around 6-8 percent of the national budget.

Nepal’s national projects are classified on a priority scale. Priority One projects are allocated higher resources and budgets, while Priority Two projects are regarded as ‘secondary’ with lower resource allocation. During 2003-2014, TVET was designated as Priority Two, significantly affecting an already underinvested sector.

After promulgation of the 2015 constitution, TVET came under the concurrent rights of all three spheres of Nepali government, each with its own mandate. But the lack of vertical alignment and coordination amongst various levels of government has severely affected TVET. For instance, the federal government is yet to pass a TVET Act, affecting provincial law-making processes related to TVET and making local governments reluctant to deploy long-term TVET programs in their jurisdictions. Further, the Nepali private sector has not engaged with TVET adequately; neither during the policymaking process nor in the job placement space.

On the demand side, factors such as the role of the macro-economy in shaping the labour market and the geographic distribution of employment affect the TVET sector. Driving these demand dynamics are a number of foundational factors — or embedded norms and values — which shape how TVET is viewed by Nepalis, and how this perception in turn affects the decisions of individuals to choose TVET as a path to employment. These factors also affect supply-

1 Hewko 2016 2 Becker 1962; Renold et al. 2015 3 Parajuli et al. 2020 4 The 2017 election manifestoes of the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) and Nepali Congress (NC) both emphasizes the importance of TVET. For more information on the NCP manifesto, please follow: https://ratopati.com/story/20024. The details of NC’s manifesto is available in the bibliography.