Technical/Vocational

Education and training systems have a vast potential to transform lives and contribute to economic growth. This potential can only be realized under a high-quality education and training services that comply with relevant standards. Persistently high unemployment, particularly among youth and young adults, high vacancies, and signs of over-education and under-utilization of individual skills suggest that education and training services are far from fulfilling their potential.

Funded under the Jobs Umbrella Multi-Donor Trust Fund, the World Bank launched an initiative to assess the key success factors for rapid technology skills training programs (in particular, coding bootcamps) and measure their impact on young people in terms of employment and employability. This initiative is specifically focused on exploring avenues to support upskilling, and thereby reducing unemployment problem in urban settings with traditionally large and growing young populations in developing countries.

Coding bootcamps are intensive short-term programs designed to train participants in programming skills to make them immediately employable. They combine characteristics of traditional vocational training programs with the intensity of military bootcamps for new recruits, intermingling socio emotional and tech skills learning in an intense and experiential manner, in what could be referred to as skills accelerators. The authors refer to coding bootcamps in this report as the ready-to-work model.

The skills for tomorrow’s Jobs in Bangladesh attempts to address key skills challenges and identifyopportunities in the backdrop of fast technological and economic changes. It proposes mid to long-term strategic policy options that would contribute to economic growth and job creation in Bangladesh with a focus on post-secondary education and skills development sectors. It aims to inform the Government and the World Bank’s jobs agenda.

The study reveals substantial vulnerabilities and exclusion of this population; key constraints toeducation, training, and employment; and insights for the design and delivery of programming to improve educational and labor market outcomes. It examines adolescent girls and young women’s overall inclusion as well as specific socioeconomic dimensions, including in education, employment, and agency.

The study benchmarks policies and practices in the community’s workforce development system against international good practices. Specifically, it assesses policies, practices and institutional arrangements, and identifies measures that contributed to workforce development. The study takes advantage of the World Bank’s workforce development diagnostic tool, which is part of the Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) initiative.

This paper provides new cross-country evidence on the impact of cognitive skills, as measured by international achievement tests, on subsequent youth employment outcomes. High average scores are strongly associated with increases in school enrollment and reductions in the incidence of unemployment, with slightly stronger effects for women. Higher scores also correlate with a larger share of youth working in wage and salaried employment, outside of agriculture, and to some extent in higher status occupations, but these findings are less robust.

Prospects for faster, more sustainable economic growth and higher living standards in Bosnia and Herzegovina rely on increasing employment opportunities for all. By maintaining the current structure of labor participation, Bosnia and Herzegovina is not capitalizing on its educated young population, as only 22.7 percent of 15–64-year-old women are actively contributing to the economy through employment. Closing gender gaps in access to economic opportunities requires removing the existing barriers and disincentives to employment and entrepreneurship for women.

Prospects for sustainable and faster economic growth and higher living standards in Montenegro rely on increasing employment opportunities for all. By maintaining the current structure of labor participation, Montenegro is not capitalizing on the educated young population, given that less than half (46.9 percent) of women 15-64 years old are actively contributing to the economy through employment. Closing gender gaps in access to economic opportunities requires removing the barriers and disincentives to employment and entrepreneurship for women.