At the country level, take a strategic approach to youth employment by addressing the issue comprehensively, working across teams.
- Help countries address youth employment issues comprehensively, from the demand and supply side. This requires greater cross-sectoral collaboration within the World Bank Group and with other donors as
appropriate.
- Help countries design interventions targeted to low income youth. Examples for the private sector could include closing the gap between skills demanded by the private sector and those acquired through the educational system.abc
Most country strategies do not identify youth employment as a strategic issue. A combination of complementary interventions works best, and implementation benefits from multisector teams.
- A comprehensive approach is missing in the Bank's youth employment projects. Most projects include isolated interventions. Collaboration across sector teams is limited.
- Subgroups of youth are always worse off. These include the low-income youth in rural areas without the necessary skills and connections to find work, or access credit and land.
IFC: Agree. IFC: Regarding the first bullet, on the demand side, IFC will continue to contribute to WBG objectives in this regard through its financing and advisory support for private sector investments that provide direct, indirect and induced employment opportunities to the underserved, including youth and women.
On the supply side, IFC will continue to provide investment and advisory services products aimed at developing employable and entrepreneurship skills among youth, in particular through support for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), secondary and tertiary education, and entrepreneurship training such as Business Edge.
Regarding the second bullet, in countries where youth employment is a concern to the government and/or the WB and IFC, IFC will explore opportunities to work with the World Bank to map and strengthen regulatory frameworks and leverage analytical work to identify gaps in education systems, in particular concerning skills provision, where the private sector can step in.
IFC Specific Action 5: Continue efforts to increase investments in private education
Indicator: Number of students reached
Baseline: 1.4 million students reached (2012)
Target: Incremental reach of 1.2 million students
Timeline: June 2015
IFC Specific Action 6a: Continue efforts to increase investments in education for employment (e.g., technical and vocational education, work readiness programs, corporate training, skills development, etc)
Indicator: Proportion of IFC education investment portfolio in education for employment
Baseline: ~20% of IFCâs education portfolio invested in Technical and Vocational Education (TVET)
Target: ~30% of IFCâs education portfolio invested in Technical and Vocational Education (TVET)
Timeline: FY15
IFC Specific Action 6b: Pilot new approaches to improve youth employability by bridging the business and soft skills gap of youth, through Business Edge training
Indicator: Number of youth who obtain jobs or progress to another job one year after the training.
Baseline: Not currently tracked
Target: 4000 youth trained 1200 youth who either obtained jobs or progressed to another job one year after the training.
IFC Specific Action 6c: e4e Initiative for Arab Youth will start in FY13 the implementation of 4 Advisory projects that would focus on improving the enabling environment for the delivery of quality, relevant education and training to youth in one of the 4 priority countries of the Initiative
Indicator: number of e4e Advisory Services projects focusing on the enabling environment for quality education and training
Baseline: No current projects
Target: 4 interventions that seek to address regulatory constraints to private sector entry and operation of education and training firms, assess youth access to finance, and improve qualification frameworks and standards setting
IFC Specific Action 7: Collaborate with World Bank to develop two studies that look at the regulatory frameworks, assess the contribution of the private sector to develop skills for employability, and identify investment opportunities.
Indicator: Number of studies supported by IFC that analyze regulatory frameworks, the private education sector, and skills development
Baseline: 1 study led by IFC (e4e Initiative for Arab youth) as of September 2012
Target: 3 studies supported by IFC (including e4e Initiative for Arab youth)
Timeline: June 2014
IFC continued to invest in private education in FY16 and reached 4.6 million students (1.1 million students incremental increase compared to FY15) according to the IFC Annual Report 2016 (action item 5). IFC also continued to invest in TVET, according to IFC 34.8 percent of the education portfolio in TVET, inline with the target (action item 6a). In terms of piloting new approaches, IFC still uses Business edge, IEG could not find a total number of students found a job after this training program, but IFC MAR team's response to this item indicates there is going to be an evaluation of one of the youth business edge in FY17 (activity item 6b) and this will likely show the extent of the program's impact.
IFC did not provide updates on e4e- Youth Arab initiative (item 6c) since the program moved to T&C. However, IEG would like to highlight that the T&C is a joint GP and the program is still managed by IFC staff. IEG would appreciate IFC to coordinate with T&C to update the developments in item 6c for the next year. IEG updates:, there has been some progress in e4e program. For example, Jordan ICT e4e program resulted in developing an ICT-specific national qualification and competency framework (NQCF), which includes the competencies, skills and knowledge required by the workforce. To ensure its sustainability, the project also created the Jordan Skills Standardization Organization (JSSO) which hosts the NQCF and works with pilot education providers to develop training programs.
IEG considers that Action 7 is complete given that e4e is under T&C, IFC and WB joint GP.
IFC's operations in higher education and training affect youth employment prospects directly. In light of the recent restructuring, advisory programs towards this goal, such as the Education for Employment initiative, are no longer managed by IFC and have been transferred to Trade and Competitiveness. As a result, no updates are provided on action items 6c and 7.
Action item 5: IFC continues to support the private sector to deliver quality education and expand reach to underserved segments at affordable prices, leading to employment opportunities. IFC's FY16 commitments in the education sector are expected to reach 1.8 million students. The most notable contributor this year is a text book publisher, and digital education service provider in India, SChand. The company has a tremendous reach as it is one of the few publishers with the scale to reach a sizable number of student learners across the country. SChand has significant experience in publishing textbooks at affordable prices across primary, secondary, and tertiary education.
Action item 6a: IFC has continued its efforts to increase investments in education for employment through projects focusing on technical and vocational education (TVET) as of June 2016, 34.8% of the total education portfolio is invested in TVET. This represents a total of 21 projects.
Action item 6b: With respect to piloting new approaches to improve youth employability, IFC continues to promote the Business Edge training program to help bridge the business and soft skills gap of youth. The FaST E4E project (December 2014 to December 2016) was specifically set up to test approaches for supporting youth employability and entrepreneurship using the Business Edge training program. As at July 28, 2016, 970 youth, of which 549 (47%) are women, have been trained under this project. An evaluation to assess achievements against the project targets is scheduled for 2017, in particular assessing number of youth that have found jobs or started new firms.
Action 5: As of June 2015 IFC has 13 TVET investments in education portfolio. This corresponds to 13 percent of the education portfolio.
Action 6a: According to the IFC Annual report, 3.5 million students were reached in FY15
Action 6b: There is no information on how many people are trained and got job through Business Edge
Action 6c: No significant progress have been made in e4e initiative during the past fiscal year.
IFC remains committed to provide investment and advisory services products aimed at developing employable and entrepreneurship skills among youth, in particular through support for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), secondary and tertiary education. It also continues to work with the World Bank in the areas of regulatory frameworks and leverage analytical work to identify gaps in education systems, in particular concerning skills provision, where the private sector can step in.
On the investment side, IFC continues to support the private sector to deliver quality education and expand reach to underserved segments at affordable costs and lead to employment opportunities. During FY12-15, IFC supported a total of 37 investment projects in private education with an incremental reach of 7 million students. Some notable examples include: (i) Luminus (Jordan) to expand access and quality of vocational and technical school training in Jordan and Iraq with a strong link to labor market needs (ii) Mauricio Equity (Brazil) , improving access to quality and affordable education for low and middle income in the frontier regions of Brazil with estimated incremental reach of 108,900 students (iii) Laureate international providing high quality, low cost education around in 29 countries including Mexico and Peru and (iv) Bridge International Academies (Kenya), providing low-cost and high quality private schools education to students from low income communities, increasing access to around 500,000 students.
On the advisory services side under E4E initiative, 2 comprehensive studies for Egypt and Morocco by Mckinsey, which included, but not limited to, assessment of the regulatory frameworks in both countries, led by Advisory services in 2012. Another 2 studies were conducted for Jordan and Tunisia, led by Investment service. We are also currently implementing 4 interventions in each of the 4 countries (Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Jordan), focusing on improving the eco-system designing qualifications/competencies frameworks in all countries, creation of sustainable mechanisms that will link skills requirements, in the sector to feed into education and training provision, of labor market information systems (LMIS) and platforms, that will eventually link to National ones in each country, to facilitate access to information. In addition, a couple of projects were approved in 2013, in both Egypt and Tunisia, that directly address the Regulatory system in both countries, to encourage private investments in Education and training, but due to the current political situation in both countries, and continuous change in governments, we were unable to secure client commitment to work on both projects. Both projects are currently on hold, until the situation is more stable.
Action 1. IFC management agreed to standardize due diligence questionnaires and template for industry specialist reports used in Investment Review Meetings (IRMs) as one of the MAR targets, but decided to not to implement the action.
Action 2. IFCâs 2012 Education strategy describes IFCâs strengths and lays out its future directions including the World Bank and IFC collaboration in education.
Action 3. IFC Education department has shifted its focus from access to quality and employability with the 2012 education strategy. IEG welcomes IFCâs efforts to work with 2 private clients for developing quality and employment indicators. The establishment of these indicators is crucial. However, after two years of its Education strategy approval, IFC has not yet developed indicators to measure quality and employability.
Action 4. Same as Action 3
1. In 2012-13 Industry Specialists designed a template for a standard specialist's report. It was shared with the wider network (specialists, managers, directors and some IOs) There was a diverse range of views expressed, but no clear consensus. Therefore it was decided it was not feasible or productive to implement this type of standardized template.
2. IFC Education Strategy discussed at the Board October 2012 subsequent efforts have focused on joint WBG strategy for the sector, which was presented to President Kim in September 2014.
3. IFC is working jointly with 2 leading clients, Uniminuto and Laureate, to develop quality and employment outcomes indicators. This work is ongoing, and is expected to be field-tested in late 2014. After that it will be disseminated within the WBG, and subsequently with other clients in FY15.
4. IFC will evaluate the experience from piloting with Laureate and Uniminuto, and client feedback to determine feasibility of applying to all tertiary/TVET client institutions.