Islands Business - Education: HOW EMPLOYABLE ARE PACIFIC ISLANDERS?

Skilled people are moving to where the money is

Jacqueline Boreham
If you ask any employer in the Pacific that requires skilled trades people, ‘How employable are Pacific Islanders?,’ you will likely hear one of two common responses—that it’s hard to find good help, and it’s hard to keep them once you do find them.

Industry must be involved... in setting quality standards for trades training.

Pacific Islanders are mobile people, and those who can are quickly moving to where the money is. Australia and New Zealand, our two biggest neighbours, are desperate for our skilled labour and can usually offer better wages and conditions than the average Pacific workplace.

Why, then, is it still so hard for skilled Pacific Islanders to have their trade training recognised overseas? And why are employers in the Pacific importing labour to meet the needs of industry?

Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in the Pacific is still the poor cousin of academic study. Funding reflects this, but post-secondary enrolment levels would suggest that we need to adjust our bias.

Student enrolment for just one TVET provider in one Pacific Islands nation translates to over 20,000 students a year, compared to their better-funded colleagues at our regional university, who amount to a little more than a third of that number.

With the gross disparity that exists between the region’s interest and investment in academic education and TVET, and with the public service in virtually every island state representing the largest burden on the budget, one would ask if it is sensible to keep blindly investing in the production of white-collar graduates for entry therein—especially when the greatest proportion of our population is being serviced by an underfunded TVET system that is not meeting existing labour demands.

Young adults and their parents and teachers, and policy-makers, are aware of the challenges they face as graduates in this region. They may not be aware that arguably the chief cause of unemployment and underemployment of our emerging leaders is a failure by governments to bridge post-secondary education with local labour markets. The public sector cannot absorb our current production levels of university graduates, and regional employment patterns would suggest that the private sector is somehow dissatisfied with local TVET outcomes.

In the words of Wayne Golding, of the PNG Manufacturers Council, unlike basic education, which is ‘a political requirement, and therefore supply driven’, TVET is ‘a service, subject to the demands of the private sector’.

The management of TVET must start including the views of the industry and focus on quality service delivery.

Josua Mataika, chair of the Pacific Association of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (PATVET) and Acting Director of the Fiji Institute of Technology, believes that collaborative TVET offers a real solution to employers.

“Technical and vocational education is flexible enough to be delivered in a workplace and doesn’t need to be a financial burden on employers.

“In most islands nations, accredited TVET can be claimed back as a business expense by employers. But the problem is that the accreditation systems themselves aren’t as effective as they need to be.”

In Fiji alone, it is estimated that 60 percent of the TVET provided is unregistered, and most of what is, is not quality assured. Later this year the Asian Development Bank, in collaboration with the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, will release the results of a comprehensive study of skills development in the region. Its preliminary recommendations point to a need for regional cooperation and needs-based planning for quality training.

The challenge of delivering quality, demand-driven TVET requires partnership to take effect. One such partnership was formed in 2006, when the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) agreed to host the PATVET Secretariat.

SPC made a commitment to capacity-build the association and support it in developing an inventory of every registered training provider and qualification in the Pacific.

One of the main aims of the inventory is to kick-start quality assurance of TVET qualifications by offering regional recognition to national governments as an incentive.

Says Mataika: “By working to identify and strengthen the resources that exist in the region, projects like the regional inventory of TVET are one way to ensure the Pacific’s need to educate for sustainable development is given informed preference over external demands.”

PATVET is instigating another set of priority partnerships across the region by establishing national-level TVET associations whose members include both training providers and the private sector. Samoa and Fiji have taken the lead in this initiative and have burgeoning national associations.

In a Pacific context, education and training must provide an entry point to employment. Whether we keep on limiting that entry point to local markets by failing to provide high-quality skills training is both a political and an economic choice. Employers need to know the value of their prospective employees, and students deserve to be able to choose qualifications that will result in secure local employment.

The Pacific economic landscape is changing as able-bodied and able-thinking islanders take up opportunities that the region isn’t currently attempting to match. Education for sustainable development must make social, cultural and economic sense: it is up to us to work together to tailor quality systems for quality opportunities for our future leaders.

• Jacqueline Boreham is Research and Information Officer at the PATVET Secretariat—based at SPC’s Community Education and Training Centre in Suva, Fiji.