“The Value of Vocation”

This is the title of a recent report from the International Monetary Fund. The report emphasizes, for developing countries, the importance of vocational training linked to services required for further economic development. In many cases, good vocational training is more useful – for students and the country – than undergraduate university degrees.

BHP donors support vocational education through Oasis for Posterity Institute for Science and Technology. Results were recently posted for compulsory government exams written by OIST students studying Computer Science and Civil Engineering. These national exams covered all subjects studied in accredited polytechnic institutes during 2024. As in previous years, OIST students performed significantly better than other area students, shown in the graph below.

The results for 6th semester OIST students are compared with seven other, anonymized vocational colleges in the Rangpur division (population about 18 million).

OIST results compared with seven other colleges

Open education resources support WHO nurse educator competencies

A recent article by BHP Director Alex Berland and colleagues is now available in a publisher version through Research Gate. It describes an innovative approach to tackling the shortage of qualified nurse educators, which is a major constraining factor or ‘bottle‐neck’ to improve the global supply of nurses, especially in low‐ and middle‐income countries. To address this specific challenge, one of BHP’s partners, Nurses International, has developed Open Education Resources [NI-OER] to support nurse educators with freely accessible curriculum materials and remote mentoring support.

Some of the original curriculum materials were developed by BHP volunteers at the IUBAT College of Nursing in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The paper analyzes how the NI‐OER could assist nursing colleges and individual faculty members in meeting the WHO Nurse Educator Core Competencies. The article concludes, “Technological solutions cannot solve all aspects of a complex problem like the global nursing shortage but… the NI‐OER appears to have the potential to support novice nurse educators with accessible, adaptable resources.”

Schooling without learning

Covers of the Pakistan, Canada, India and Bangladesh versions of the book

The Political Economy of Education in South Asia, a scholarly text by BHP Director John Richards and colleagues has just been re-issued in India, following initial publication by University of Toronto Press with later editions in Bangladesh and Pakistan. (John is currently drafting the second edition.)

The book has three main themes: (1) Diagnostics,  analyzes the chronic quality deficit in South Asia’s basic education. (2) Teachers: the pivot of educational change describes institutional actors such as political elites and senior officials, teachers’ unions and teacher training institutes. (3) The Political Economy of Education in South Asia explains how these powerful institutions pursue their own goals, resulting in the high “learning poverty” rate common in the region.

One of the book's reviewers, Paul Martin, former Prime Minister of Canada writes, “I have known one of the authors, John Richards, for many years. We have both worked to improve education for Indigenous peoples in Canada. This book goes straight to the point. Its first contribution is an insistence that South Asian governments spend more on public primary education. The second is that success of primary education means, by the end of the primary school cycle, students are able to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. Schools have many goals beyond literacy and arithmetic, but mastering these core skills is necessary for escaping poverty. Those responsible for managing social programs, in Canada or South Asia, must never underestimate the value of good schools."