Providing skills training in schools has had wide appeal with politicians, government bureaucrats, and others who advocate for the state to play a heavy public trainer role.
The interest in providing skills training in schools has been primarily motivated by issues of scale. While NGOs and training institutions are capable of training only limited
numbers, "basic schooling reaches hundreds of thousands or millions of young people for six or more years"(King, 1989: 27).
As early as 1972, the ILO mission to Kenya argued that school curriculums should be more practical and now students are taught how to make the same type of split chairs and tin lights sold in the informal economy. The students are subject to national examination.
However, in light of the 'Kenya experiment' various criticisms have been made of training for the informal economy being conducted in schools. These criticisms are rooted in the vocational school fallacy that was put forth by Phillip Foster in 1968. Foster's vocational school fallacy is a critique of those (primarily Thomas Balogh and the UN) who were arguing at this time that the African school system should promote agricultural education because of agriculture's importance to the continent. Formal schooling was seen as the principle culprit responsible for 'the flight from the rural areas to the towns' because of the curriculum's hostility to agriculture. Balogh argued that technical agricultural skills should be taught in schools because this education was more practical and poverty alleviating than formal academic education (Foster, 1968: 396).
While Foster agrees that agricultural development is important for raising incomes and that this must take priority before industrial skills training and industrial development in general, he has two main criticisms of vocational schooling: 1) "reliance on formal educational institutions in instituting change" (Foster, 1968: 398) and 2) emphasis on vocational schooling tends to "view vocational and general education as substitutes for each other rather than to see them as essentially complementary and hardly substitute"
(Foster, 1968: 398).
In contrast to those advocating vocational schooling as a means of achieving the goals of economic planners, Foster is suspicious of the ability of schooling to meet such aspirations. He argues instead "schools are remarkably clumsy instruments for
inducing prompt large-scale changes ... and the schools have not often functioned in the manner intended by educational planners" (Foster, 1968: 398).
Foster's vocational school fallacy is relevant to the more recent discussion of training for the informal economy being conducted in schools today. He points out that it is
ludicrous to expect schools to provide relevant vocational training when they experience difficulties in providing even the most basic levels of education (particularly literacy) upon which to base successful vocational instruction:
If at present the schools perform these basic functions ineffectively, it is patently absurd to expect them to incorporate a range of auxiliary vocational activities - quite apart from the relative absence of staff either competent or willing to undertake such activities" (Foster, 1968: 418).
More recent literature repeats these criticisms. Using similar arguments, Simon McGrath comments in 1999:
there is a need for caution in theorizing new roles for education and training. These systems are frequently criticised for failing to provide preparation for the formal sector, traditionally one of their functions. What evidence is there for thinking that they will be more able to plan for what has traditionally been unplanned? Clearly any simple vision of schools forming their pupils into young entrepreneurs through mere curricular changes is fallacious. Equally, given the massive criticisms of vocational training institutions' failure to place their students in formal employment, why should they be expected to be any better at preparing them for the informal sector?
(McGrath, 1999: 41-2).
Criticisms have also been made against training for the informal economy being conducted in schools because it can rarely go beyond the technological knowledge of the informal economy and often falls short of this (King, 1989: 28), the informal economy does not need the 'help' of schools as it has its own systems of innovation (Ibid), and finally, vocational schooling has not proven to be successful in channeling girls into skills areas that have traditionally been the domain of boys and men (Bennell, 1999: 15).
King also warns
the school system may prepare large numbers for the informal sector by not permitting them to continue their education beyond a certain level. In other words, what is commonly perceived as failure in school operates as one of the first major orientations to informal sector jobs" (King, 1989: 29).
Despite these criticisms, many continue to push for training for the informal economy to occur in schools. This continued push is due to a failure in understanding how and why people work in the informal economy and of the complex causes of poverty more
generally. Vocational education does not guarantee employment - informal or otherwise.
Although vocational schooling may alter people's perceptions toward work in the
informal economy, it can not guarantee that it will provide them with skills that will lead to secure livelihoods. According to Foster, "the idea that children's vocational aspirations can be altered by massive changes in curriculum is no more than a piece of folklore with little empirical justifications" (Foster, 1968: 405).
Foster argues that without the institutional complex which would make training in new agricultural techniques useful and profitable, vocational instruction will do little in the way of inducing youth into farming (Foster, 1968: 410). The same could be said of work in the informal sector - that simply offering training in business/entrepreneurial/cooperative skills at the school level will not be enough to induce an entrepreneurial spirit among youth until it is evident that there exists an entire institutional framework which effectively promotes micro-enterprises. One reason why politicians favour vocational schooling is because it lets them off the hook of trUly making an enabling and pro-poor environment _ a discussion which will be tackled later on.
Foster's work is also important as it reveals the danger of Viewing basic and vocational schooling as mutually exclusive. 'Getting basics right' in languages, math and science is integral for success later on in informal enterprises. The schooling system would do well to concentrate on these basics rather than forfeit resources and time in vocational
subjects that do not necessarily lead to sustainable incomes.