Challenges and opportunities of school to work transition

ILO provides training on school to work for tourism and hospitality graduate students
According to the ILOSTAT 2023, more than 72 million youth in Africa are not in education, employment or training, the majority of them are women. Tackling youth inactivity and gender inequalities is essential if countries are to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 8) on decent work for all by 20230. More than one in four young people in Africa around 72 million are not in employment, education, or training (NEET). Two-thirds of them are young women. Africa is in the unique position of being a relatively young continent, with a rapidly growing youth population.

Ethiopia has maintained a very strong macroeconomic performance, averaging 10 percent per annum real growth in GDP between 2004 and 2017. Despite slow growth in the early 2000’s and a COVID-19 related slowdown since 2020, real annual growth averages 8.5 percent between 2000 and 2022. Growth slowed further in 2022 rather than, as in other countries in the region, showing signs of post-pandemic recovery. The employment to population ratio in the country is high compared to African and global averages although there are over 20 percentage point (p.p.) between the ratios for women and men which is less than some of the other countries in the region.

According to ILO definition school to work transition – the passage of young person from end of schooling to the first stable or satisfactory employment. But recent study commissioned by the Mastercard Foundation defined successful school to work transition as a process in which youth acquire the skills to make decisions in their job search that maximize their options and enables them to start an employment trajectory that improves their livelihood.

School to work transition trajectories of young people are not linear and do not follow a specific sequence. Some young people study while holding multiple jobs, while others may go back to school after work. Some youth start off in informal employment and then transit to formal employment, while others may never be able to make the transition. The transition from school to work (and transition to stable satisfactory employment in particular) should not be seen as an “event” but a “process” within which a number of transitions may occur, and several factors such as education, skills, gender, family background, cultural norms, location, regulatory and economic climate impact the school to work transition trajectories.

School to work transition is a three-stage process that includes preparation through education, actual transition, and labour market outcomes. The educational system is important in easing learner’s transition challenges from school to work. Within the education system, it is believed that investing in Technical and Vocational Training (TVT) can play a significant role in enhancing the school to work transition among young people.

Young people had high educational aspirations and believed that such school achievements would potentially lead to decent jobs. For many, their childhood dreams were to finish school and join the formal labour market. However, may were unable to achieve their educational dreams, and instead were forced to make the leap from different levels of education into uncertain employment circumstances (Young Lives, 2020).

According to the Policy Study Institute (2023), the transition from school to work takes an average of 12.41 months and that the social costs of such a lengthy transition process can be enormous, causing psychological problems for graduates seeking employment. The university graduates have worse chance of survival or better access to permanent employment opportunities compared to technical and vocational training graduates.
Young people aged 15 – 24 develop the relevant skills for work, such as the broad set of qualifications, knowledge, competencies, attitudes, and values that are needed to secure, maintain, and thrive in employment, and adapt to the evolving economy. Developing skills for a work in this context encompasses building new skills demanded by the labour market as well as mastering, contextualizing, and reinforcing the existing set of skills which enables an individual to be productive in an economic sense. The different skills for work can be built via multiple pathways such as formal, nonformal, informal, on the job and multiple modalities (in school, outside school, online, work based).

The Global Programme on Skills and Lifelong Learning (GPSL3) – Ethiopia component of the ILO provides training on school to work for tourism and hospitality graduate students. Those skills for work comprise core skills. According to the ILO global framework on core skills for life and work in the 21st century defines cores skills ‘a set of non-technical skills, such as social and emotional, cognitive and metacognitive, basic digital skills and basic skills for green jobs, transferable across occupations and professions as well as between low- and high-level jobs.

According to ILO (2023), following the adoption of ambitious targets to create 14 million jobs by 2025 and 20 million jobs by 2030, in 2020 Ethiopia set up the Plan of Actions for Job Creation a five-year blueprint aiming to increase the employment intensity of economic growth. Besides the “traditional” sectors, the PoA explores job creation potential of highgrowth sectors such as ICT, tourism, and creative arts, but lacks youth-responsive strategies. Integrating youthspecific actions in ICT policies can leverage digital transformation to create decent jobs for youth.