At the 2014 World Economic Forum in Davos, a short book Education and Skills 2.0: New Targets and Innovative Approaches was released.
The book critically reviews existing and new ideas, perspectives and frameworks on education through relevant analyses and case studies. It explores the full array of social benefits of different programmes and interventions and related evidence of return on investment. The authors believe the real value-add of the publication is on conceptualizing and describing innovative, plausible, scalable, compelling and high-impact solutions that will improve access to education, strengthen educational quality, improve workers’ skills and increase equity – across income level, gender and other demographic subgroups.
A challenge posed in the book is: how do we create alternative pathways to learning for school dropouts to give them an additional chance at learning or a career? It was an honour to be asked to contribute a description of Yoza Cellphone Stories as an example of such an alternative pathway.
Steven Vosloo 