Why investing in UK partner countries’ education and skills development makes sense
High quality and affordable education and skills development is the cornerstone of prosperous, inclusive and stable societies. That is why in 2017 the UK Government decided to launch the Skills for Prosperity (S4P) programme.
S4P aims to improve the quality, relevance, equity and affordability of education and skills development across Brazil, Egypt, Kenya, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa and the Philippines. S4P aims to ensure that these partner countries have a diverse workforce with in-demand skills, which will allow them to drive sustainable and inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction.
The programme places strong emphasis on marginalised groups, especially young women, people with disabilities, ethnic minorities and indigenous groups. In this sense, it ties in with other work done by the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) on advancing gender equality and social inclusion overseas. It also complements FCDO programmes that support early-stage education in country through to UK scholarship schemes that fund bright international students to study in top notch UK universities, with the hope that they will become their countries’ leaders.
Beyond international development objectives
While helping advance partner countries is S4P’s primary objective, this investment is also beneficial for the UK. From British companies being able to access a skilled workforce to education and skills organisations “exporting” their services overseas, S4P helps the UK project its soft power. If we succeed at building skills pipeline in these middle-income countries, they will become the UK’s trading partners of tomorrow.
Another great added value comes from the lessons that we have learnt delivering S4P across three continents, that we can use to inform the design of future education and skills development programmes. The learning ranges from what works when involving private sector’s employers in skills development training through to how to improve gender equality and social inclusion in the education and workplace.
Moreover, S4P stood many tests that jeopardized its existence. This includes political fluctuations, cuts to official development assistance budget, the merger between the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) into the current FCDO, Brexit and COVID-19.
Sharing how we managed to navigate these turbulent times and the best practice that emerged can inform and future-proof other interventions. The blended approach to learning, delivered both in class and virtually, that we had started piloting before COVID-19, ensured that we continued to deliver education interventions at a time when the world was trying to solve the issue of school closure. Having experienced early on what worked well and less well when it comes to digital learning puts us in a privileged position of helping shape the debate on education recovery.
Embedding sustainability in S4P’s interventions
For S4P’s impact to be felt beyond its duration, sustainability needs to be front and centre. In other words, S4P will have managed to achieve its objectives if by the end of the programme in March 2023, partner governments will be able to scale up the innovative approaches that we have been piloting with them at the regional or national level, even in the absence of UK funding.
We have seen encouraging success stories from our countries. These ranged from teaming up with Accenture in Kenya to deliver online modules to improve learners’ work readiness to partnering with CISCO in Mexico to enhance students’ IT skills through to Brazilian states embedding S4P’s improved English language teaching materials in their curricula. We hope that these initiatives will be replicated and expanded so more people can benefit.
To ensure local ownership, which is conducive to sustainability, the S4P structure was also designed in a unique way, where FCDO Programme Managers lead the delivery of interventions in each of the nine countries, working closely with governments and local implementing partners. This means that we have been building the internal capability of the FCDO. We have also been forging relationships with partners governments, that now know they can request education and skills reform support to the UK Government in future and harness their connections with the UK education and skills sector.
Over the next 14 months, we will continue to embed sustainability across the programme, so it can improve education and skills development outcomes for millions of young people and their communities. We will also be sharing our learning here, so please watch out this Medium publication for more stories.
