Mamta Murthi

Skills, not just diplomas : managing education for results in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

The countries of Europe and Central Asia (ECA) are currently emerging from the deepest recession suffered by any developing region. Post-crisis conditions are very different from those of preceding years. Financial resources are more limited and more expensive, and export growth is restrained by potentially slower growth in destination countries. Restoring and sustaining growth in this context require reforms that boost competitiveness and increase labor productivity. Such reforms are all the more important given the shrinking of the working-age population in many countries of the region. This book uses a range of different data sources to argue that the skills problem in the ECA region relates more to the quality and relevance of the education provided in ECA countries than to problems of access. A central argument of the book is that ministries of education are constrained in a number of ways from effectively managing their education and training sectors. The three most important and interrelated impediments to improving quality and relevance are the lack of systematic data on key skills-related performance issues (i.e., how much students are learning and whether they are finding jobs after they graduate), the legacy of central planning, and inefficient use of resources. Lack of data on student learning and employment outcomes makes it difficult for education ministries to address the legacy of central planning, which emphasizes centralized management based on inputs. Ministries of education in the region continue to micromanage the sector using detailed norms and regulations. This input-oriented style of management leads to the inefficient use of resources and results in a rigid education sector not the type of flexible sector needed by ECA to create modern, skilled workforces. This book highlights how these constraints manifest themselves and then presents ways of overcoming them, relying on the experience of ECA countries that have successfully addressed them, together with international experience. Recommendations are presented in separate chapters for pre-university, tertiary, and adult education.

Resolving the Skills Shortage in the ECA Region: A Policy Framework

This chapter identifies the major impediments that prevent the education system from delivering the skills that are being demanded by the labor markets as identified in the previous chapters. It then offers a policy framework and policy directions to help overcome these impediments. The impediments and a policy framework for addressing them guide the discussion of education system reform for the remainder of the book. Here we argue that the three most pressing problems of ECA education systems that get in the way of imparting the needed skills are: (1) the lack of data on the skills and competencies that students actually acquire as a result of the educational process; (2) the legacy of central planning—particularly its effect on the management of education systems in the region—which makes education systems inflexible and resistant to the initiative of front-line actors (who can actually improve education); and (3) the inefficient use of resources, a problem that has become particularly acute in the current economic climate. Certainly these are not the only impediments to making education systems more responsive to skills needs in the region. However, they are common to all ECA countries and lie at the heart of addressing the skills deficiencies discussed in chapter 2.1