3.1.3 Market-driven training reforms: Training priorities, resources and reorientation

During the 1990s, the World Bank has taken the lead in promoting the benefits of pro-market reforms for VET. The main objectives of these reforms focus on the need to promote enterprise-based training in both the formal and informal sectors, encourage greater private sector participation, increase cost recovery, and relatively less public sector training provision (see World Bank, 1991). To date, however, it has proved considerably more difficult to privatise VET than was originally anticipated which has meant that the state has continued to be heavily involved in the funding and direct provision of VET for the formal sector. And, in the poorest countries, even the leading proponents of reform accept that "central governments must play the central role in financing and providing training" ( Middleton et al, 1993:265).

The precise implications of market-driven VET reform for skills development among the poor have yet to be fully investigated. However, given that most training for the poor will have to be publicly funded, a pro-poor training strategy could easily be undermined by concerted efforts to privatise the funding of training. Low levels of demand for training among microenterprise operators and workers coupled with minimal ability to pay obviously limit the scope for cost recovery. The failure of World Bank-sponsored initiatives to introduce significant cost recovery measures for primary schooling in a number of low income countries during the mid-late 1980s provides a salutary warning in this regard (see Bennell, 1996 and Penrose, 1998).

EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING PAPERS 43 Learning to change: Skills development among the economically vulnerable and socially excluded in developing countries Paul Bennell Employment and Training Department International Labour Office Geneva First published 1999 To learn more about this author, visit International Labour Organization's Website.

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