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Career and Technical Education (CTE)

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Overview

Career and Technical Education prepares individuals for the world of work through the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies in an occupational field. The name "CTET" or "TVET" continues to evolve and is known to have other monikers.  Other names include vocational education, workforce education, technical education, apprenticeship training, among others.  In this discussion, the two terms, CTET/TVET, are used interchangeably.  CTET is used in some economies to reflect an emphasis on careers and lifelong learning, while others refer to TVET, a more established and common name that was adopted by the UNESCO-UNEVCO International Centre.CTET/TVET programs are generally organized by educational or workforce development agencies at the secondary and tertiary levels to provide students with a sequence of course work that builds foundational career knowledge and specific technical skills and can lead to an occupational degree or certification specialty.  

Education and training around an occupation may include those activities that are more traditionally "hands on" in nature such as machinists and plumbers to health or service sector jobs like nurses and business sales executives.  CTE/TVET in some economies encompasses certain engineering and technology fields too. The CTE/TVET pathway often requires enrollment in and mastery of academic subjects as a condition for graduation.  However, in some economies the CTET/TVET program may be more narrowly defined and mainly focuses on developing an individual's technical skills.

Policymaker interest is high in identifying strategies for strengthening CTE/TVET.  Many current CTE/TVET systems suffer from:

  • low-quality and out-of-date instruction
  • fragmented instruction that fails to provide lifelong learning opportunities for career development and training
  • lack of modern technology incorporated into students’ education and training. 

APEC Economies are increasingly looking for models, strategies, and CTE promising practices for improving their education and training systems to address both their current and long-term needs for well-trained workforces.  But stellar examples exist along the Pacific Rim of high-quality career preparation and technical education and training systems that could be models for others of ways to strengthen CTE/TVET for effectively equipping students with the skills required for meeting the demands of a 21st Century Workforce.

21st Century Workforce Demands

In many occupations, the nature of work in the 21st Century will be quite different from work in the prior Century. This realization is moving all APEC Economies to provide high-quality education and training systems to prepare today's students for the workforce of tomorrow.

Three trends signal the increasing demand and rewards for those who bring special technical and workplace skills to the labour force--and the reduced rewards for those who lack higher-level skills and are only able to perform routine work:

  • Advances in information technologies enable the substitution of computers for routine work--such as grocery product readers, voice recognition answering machines, and robotics on assembly lines.  Aided by computers, skilled workers can experience productivity benefits that turn into higher earnings. 
  • Globalization increases the importance of trade in the world economy which raises world productivity and earnings overall, but also creates world markets for labour in which those economies with the most productive workers gain a competitive advantage over Economies and workers who are less productive.
  • Workers with adaptable skills benefit as the days of one-industry employment for a lifetime are diminishing and the norm is for a person to have 8 to 12 jobs in different sectors over their life span.   

Workers today need solid academic and technical skills, and those in demand will ideally have proficiency in 21st Century competencies, including the ability to think critically, problem solve, and communicate.

Occupational Standards and Certification

Occupational standards and certification can help guide any system of workforce preparation. They define the academic and occupationally-specific skills that prospective and current workers need for attaining different occupational qualification levels.  Program content should be based on the occupational standards and certification requirements in a given field.  To ensure mastery of these standards, an assessment system that can reliably and accurately measure a student's proficiency level on various skills and competencies is paramount.  Three forms for the specification of standards and certificates are:    

  • Qualification frameworks that allow students and workers to certify their knowledge and skills along a continuum of levels in particular occupational areas through a combination of formal education, training, and work experience. Economies that employ qualification frameworks include Australia, New Zealand, and Scotland.
  • Career clusters that identify the knowledge and skills--both academic and technical--required to pursue career pathways within broad occupational areas. The U.S. is an Economy electing to pursue 16 broad career clusters (known as the States’ Career Clusters Initiative (SCCI) ) rather than set of detailed occupationally- specific standards.
  • Occupational-specific standards that define the knowledge and skills needed for certification in different occupational areas. Industry standards may be established through industry group, government, or more typically, jointly. 

CTE/TVET by Type of Provider

21st Century economies characterized by rapid technological change challenge providers to offer CTE/TVET that is up-to-date, relevant and yet sufficiently broad to enable learners to have career adaptability. Three important providers of CTE/TVET are:

  • Secondary schools which may start career awareness in the lower secondary grades (7-9) and provide more specific occupational skills at the upper secondary level (grades 10-12). Balancing academic and technical skills is a particular secondary school challenge, as is creating a positive image for career and technical secondary education and schools.

    Singapore's Institute for Technical Education (ITE) is a Singapore Quality Harvard Innovation award-winning technical education provider at the upper secondary and beyond level serving the lowest 25 percent of achieviers operating within a world-class academic education system. ITE has maintained a high 90% satisfaction rate from employers with the graduate employment rate for a five-month job search period also consistently at 90%.
      
  • Two-year postsecondary education institutions serve as a bridge to work or more advanced postsecondary academic training.  The U.S. community colleges are an excellent example of low-cost providers that integrate academic and technical training geared to local labour market conditions. They are also well-known for allowing more able attendees to continue on to a four-year collegiate education.   
  • Industry-based training is carried out by a particular industry or company. Industry training may cover general competencies in personal areas such as leadership or teamwork or academic competencies (for example, computer skills or data analyses). Specific skills are commonly covered relating to particular jobs, such as welding or invoice preparation. Apprenticeship programs are one historically common form of industry training where entry-level learners are trained and mentored on the job. Japan is an Economy that is a leader in industry-based training of all types, relying on enterprises rather than the formal education sector for a considerable amount of occupationally-specific training.

Critical Cross-Cutting CTE/TVET Issues

The effectiveness of CTE/TVET systems hinges upon their successfully addressing a number of critical cross-cutting issues: 

  • Implementing TVET programs amid the economic crisis
  • Youth unemployment and related secondary school failure may require offering a combination of fundamental academic programs targeted to youth who do not do well academically along with career awareness and occupational training to provide essential employment skills.  Vocational education and training for youth offer a hands-on approach targeted at motivation as well as education and training.   
  • Sustainable Career Development promotes education and skills throughout working life from youth though retirement--and beyond to post-retirement work. 
  • The vital role of Enterprises in human resource development is critical to CTE/TVET systems at all different stages of career progression. Enterprises are essential in providing guidance to ensure that education and training is relevant and aligned with employment opportunities as well as being a major source of skilled trainers. 
  • Regional economic development approaches career and technical training through identifying and then addressing regional human resource development needs. The U.S. WIRED  initiative (Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development) incorporates education and training as an integral part of industrial development within a regional economic strategy. 
  • Online career education and vocational training offers a 21st Century strategy to provide expert courses that are equally accessible 24/7 in rural as well urban areas.  Ensuring widespread use of this mode of education and training is an important policy issues.
  • A high-quality CTE/TVET teacher workforce with regularly upgraded knowledge and skills in the teaching subject is essential to the transfer of relevant technical skills to students.  In addition, school systems may find that some CTE/TVET teachers are in short supply in areas where it is more lucrative to stay in the occupational field.  Under-served areas are particularly susceptible to teacher shortages.

Promising CTE/TVET Practices

Promising CTE/TVET practices are examples of specific CTE/TVET practices that CTE/TVET providers or experts have cited as ones their experience has shown to be effective in delivery of TVET services to particular populations. Ideally, evidence of effectiveness in terms of gross outcomes or net impacts would be presented and described. In many cases, such evidence is not presented and the practice is idetifed as promising based on expert opinion rather than emprical evidence.  

APEC Activities

Since 1996, the annual APEC Forum on Human Resources Development has been jointly hosted by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan and Overseas Vocational Training Association as a cooperative project by the Labour and Social Protection Network and the Human Resources Development Working Group of APEC. The LSPN has cooperated on the following fora:


Career and Technical Education (CTE)/Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) was recently identified as a priority area in APEC's Education Network.  Indeed, CTE/TVET was a significant topic at the 4th APEC Education Ministerial Meeting held June 2008 in Lima, Peru, and was featured in the Joint Statement produced by the Ministers. The Education Ministers released a strategic action plan and recommendations for priorities in career and technical education, including:


Standards and Assessments
1. Compare CTE frameworks across economies, learning about effective practices to integrate academics with vocational training to ensure appropriate workplace preparation and to elevate the prestige of CTE training in APEC economies.  This includes the implementation of the project on Comparability and Benchmarking of Competencies and Qualification Frameworks in Construction and Welding.


Teacher Quality and Instruction
2. Identify effective strategies for improving teacher training programs for CTE instructors providing them with up-to-date resources and tools.
3. Share evidence-based practices for effectively involving employers, industry groups, and the service sector in developing curricula.
4. Strengthen CTE development of curricula. especially through means such as on-line training programs available to APEC members.
Policies and Research
5. Share good practices on involving employers, industry groups, and the service sector in drafting policy related to competencies, curriculum, and assessments.
6. Undertake analyses in one or more vocational sectors that compare CTE/TVET skills and qualifications in order to create common benchmarks.

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