u——_—-——_—_— » SECONDARY EDUCAHON 'AND EMPLOYMENT IN BEUZE: A TRACER "STUDY OF RECENT GRADUATES Thesis for the Degree of Ph. 'D. MICHiGAN STATE UNlVERSiTY TIMOTHY THOMPSON 1973 Date 0-7639 PAILI’Agagl .‘)f.-;i".‘; , . . Lxrai‘vcrsuy . This is to certify that the thesis entitled SECONDARY EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT IN BELIZE: A TRACER STUDY OF RECENT GRADUATES presented by TIMOTHY THOMPSON has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Social and PhiIOSOphical Foundation of Education (Comparative Education) Ph. D. degreein Major professor M lLl;lCi73 -' ~".“~W ABSTRACT SECONDARY EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT IN BELIZE: A TRACER STUDY OF RECENT GRADUATES BY Timothy Thompson The purpose of this study is to analyze the relation between secondary education and employment in Belize (for- merly British Honduras). The goal of full, productive, and freely chosen employment is used to guide the study. The method used to collect data for the study involved three elements: (1) tracing recent graduates from all schools in the country to their current (September, 1972) residence place; (2) collecting employment histories from a sample of those graduates who were working in the country; and (3) giving a questionnaire on employment aspirations and expectations to all students in the last year of secondary school. The data were collected by the author between June, 1972, and January, 1973. The study was able to trace 98 per- cent of the graduates to their current residence place and to determine the employment status of those still residing in the country. The study found a high rate of emigration among both men and women graduates. Part of this migration is for Timothy Thompson purposes of further study, but much of it is of a more permanent nature. It constitutes a considerable loss of human resources. Graduates who have remained in the country, especially women, are faced with very limited employment Opportunities. There is, however, no evidence of high unemployment among the group studied. Most of the graduates working in the country are engaged in teaching or hold clerical positions. Few of the graduates are employed in the agricultural sector, although this sector is most important for the develOpment of the country. The study shows that secondary schools did not pre- pare graduates for participation in the labor market, but it also shows that the lack of effective demand for employ- ment in many sectors is an even greater obstacle to attain- ing employment goals. The lack of this demand is the chief obstacle which prevents education from making its contribu— tion to the attainment of full, productive, and freely chosen employment. Nevertheless, educators can further the achievement of employment goals by providing a broadly based vocational guidance which will involve many segments of the community. Suggestions for this kind of vocational guidance are made in the study. SECONDARY EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT IN BELIZE: A TRACER STUDY OF RECENT GRADUATES BY ‘35ATimothy Thompson K A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY College of Education 1973 COpyright by JOHN TIMOTHY THOMPSON 1973 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author is indebted to all of the people in Belize who made this study possible, especially to school principals for their co-operation and to the many grad- uates and students who participated in the study. The author is grateful for the advice and encourage- ment given to him by the members of his guidance committee. John Hanson, chairman of the committee, provided encourage— ment and constructive criticism at all stages. Harry Case raised questions which helped clarify many points. Thanks also go to Carl Gross and Allan Beegle. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES o o o o o I o o o o o o o o o o o o o 0 Vi LIST OF FIGURES o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o Viii INTRODUCTION 0 I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O I O O O 1 Chapter I. DEVELOPMENT AND THE YOUTH EMPLOYMENT PROBLEM O O O O O O O O O I I O O O O O I O 4 New Perspectives on DevelOpment . . . . . . 4 Development, Education and Employment . . . 8 Development and Education . . . . . . . . 8 DevelOpment and Employment . . . . . . . ll Education and Employment . . . . . . . . 13 Youth in the Less Developed Countries . . . 15 The Youth Employment Problem in Less Developed Countries . . . . . . . . . . . 19 II. THE SETTING O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O C 23 Background '. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Education 0 O O O O O O O O O O I O O O O O 34 conClUSion O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 45 III 0 THE STUDY 0 O O I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 4 6 The Questions and Type of Data Needed . . . 50 Selecting Respondents and Collecting Data . 54 IV. MIGRATION AND PRESENT EMPLOYMENT OF GRADUATES O O O O O O O O O O O O C O O 61 Graduates Traced . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Emigration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Employment Status and Internal Migration . 72 The Unemployed . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 HouseWiVeS O O O O I O O O O O O O O O O 76 The Working POpulation . . . . . . . . . 76 Internal Migration . . . . . . . . . . . 79 The Working POpulation and Internal Migration O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 79 iii Page Occupational and Sectoral Distribution . . 82 Men: Occupations . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Men: Sectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Women: Occupations . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Women: Sectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Graduate Labor Force and Total Labor Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Sectoral Comparisons . . . . . . . . . . 91 Occupational Comparisons . . . . . . . . 91 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 V. THE EMPLOYMENT AND EDUCATION OF RECENT GRADUATES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 The Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Transition from School to First Job . . . . 99 Starting Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 First Job Wanted . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 First Job Obtained . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Employment History of Graduates . . . . . . 108 Job Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Occupational Stability . . . . . . . . . 112 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Attitudes Toward Present Job . . . . . . . 118 Future Employment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Expectations for Present Job . . . . . . 123 Future Employment Selection . . . . . . . 125 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Educational History of Graduates . . . . . 128 Secondary Education . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Further Education . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Attitudes Toward Further Education . . . 137 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 VI. ATTITUDES OF PRESENT STUDENTS TOWARD EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT . . . . . . . . . 141 Attitudes Toward Education . . . . . . . . 143 The Rewards of Secondary Education . . . 144 Students' Desire for Further Training . . 146 Occupational Aspirations and Expectations . 149 Elements of an Effective Demand . . . . . . 155 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 iv Page VII. CONCLUSION O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 158 Development in Belize: Goals and ObStaC1eS O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 158 Secondary Education and Employment . . . . 165 BIBLIOGRAPHY O O O O O O. O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 178 APPENDIX 0 O O O O O O I O O O O O O O I O O O O O O 186 Table l. 10. ll. 12. l3. 14. 15. LIST OF TABLES The Population of Belize, 1861-1970 . . . Percentage Composition of Domestic Exports by Major Commodities, 1946-1967 . . . . Educational Expenditure by Source and Level in 1968 C O O O O O I O O O O I O C O 0 Location of Primary Schools by Size, 1969 Percent Distribution of Secondary School Enrollment, 1970 . . . . . . . . . . . . Percentage of Populations Residing in Out Districts, 1965-1970 0 O O O O O O O O 0 Primary School Staffing by Teacher Qualification, Sex, and Location, 1969 . Graduates Listed by Year of Graduation, Place of Schooling, and Sex . . . . . . Non-Migrants and Migrants Traced by Origin, Sex, and Current Residence Place . . . . Graduates Out of the Country by Status, Sex Current Residence, and Place of Schooling Graduates Out of the Country by Status, Sex and Year of Graduation . . . . . . . . . Employment Status of Graduates Residing in the Country by Sex . . . . . . . . . In-Country Migration of Employees by Sex . Graduates in the Working POpulation by Occupational Group, Sector of Activity, and Sex . . . . . . . . . . . Indices of Difference Between Graduates and Comparable Groups Within the Labor Force vi I I Page 30 31 36 38 39 4O 43 65 67 7O 71 73 8O 84 9O Table Page 16. Graduates Questioned as a Percent of the Total Working Population Traced by Sex and Place of Schooling . . . . . . . . . . . 97 17. Jobs Wanted and Jobs Obtained by Graduates . . 104 18. Occupational Stability of Graduates . . . . . 113 19. Participation and Dropout Rates for Teachers and Other Government Workers . . . . . . . . 116 20. Present Employment as Described by Graduates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 21. What Graduates Hope Their Present Job Will Lead To 0 I O O I O O O O O O O O O O I 123 22. Graduates' Scoring of Job Factors . . . . . . 126 23. Percentage of Graduates Participating in Non-Formal Education Programs . . . . . . . 135 24. Graduates' Attitudes Toward Further Education 0 O O C O O O O I O O O O O O O I 138 25. Percentage Distribution of Respondents to Student Questionnaire . . . . . . . . . . . 143 26. Most Important Reason for Attending Secondary SChOOl O O I O I I O O O O O O 0 O O O O O O 146 27. Job Desirability—-Boys . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 28. Job Desirability-—Girls . . . . . . . . . . . 153 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Average Number of Jobs Held by Graduates . . . 110 viii INTRODUCTION This study of the relation between secondary educa- tion and employment in Belize1 has been prompted by the growing concern over the limitations of the formal school system, as evidenced by recent studies of out-of—school education,2 and by the increasing attention being given to employment problems in the less developed countries as, for example, the World Employment Program of the International Labor Organization.3 The study has been undertaken to determine the contribution one level of formal education can make toward the attainment of the developmental goal of full, productive, and freely chosen employment. It is not the only contribution education can make; it is not even the most important contribution education can make to the develOp- ment process. Nor, as the study shows, is education alone a sufficient means for reaching employment goals. Nonetheless, the relation between education and employment deserves 1The name of the country was changed from British Honduras to Belize on June 1, 1973. 2Cole Brembeck and Timothy Thompson, New Strategies for Educational Development (Lexington: D. C. Heath Lexington Books, 1973). 3International Labour Office, The World Employment Programme (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1960). serious study as an important aspect of the relation between schools and the whole of society. The study begins by presenting some new perspec- tives on development which have prompted concern for both employment and education (Chapter I). Some necessary back- ground material for the study of the contribution of sec- ondary education to the employment goals of Belize is provided (Chapterlflfl, and then theapproach to the study is described (Chapter III). The migration and present employment status of recent graduates is analyzed (Chap- ter IV), along with the employment histories of a sample of these graduates (Chapter V). Then the attitudes and expectations of present students are studied to determine the influence these have on their job—seeking activities (Chapter VI). This analysis of the relation between secon- dary education and employment goals then makes it possible to make some recommendations for vocational guidance and vocational and rural education (Chapter VII). Some of the terms used in this study may be unfamil- iar to readers; others have a special meaning in this study; or‘ they nay'have different meanings in British and Amer- ican education, both of which have influenced schools in Belize; so their usage is defined here: Graduate: a student who has finished a secondary school successfully (however success is defined by the school). If a university graduate is being referred to, this will be explicitly stated. Labor Force: those who are working and those who are seeking work, even if for the first time. Classifiable Labor Force: those who are working, and those seeking work who have worked before. Working POpulation: those who are working, but not those who are seeking work. Out District: any region of Belize outside of the Belize District. Sixth Form Studies: a two-year program of studies undertaken after the four- (five in some cases) year secondary school program. (Although Sixth Forms are not independent of secondary schools, they are considered as post—secondary schools in this study.) CHAPTER I DEVELOPMENT AND THE YOUTH EMPLOYMENT PROBLEM New Perspectives on Development At the start of the first DevelOpmental Decade in 1960 develOpment was regularly identified with economic develOpment and more specifically with economic growth. At that time the approach taken to development sought the greatest possible growth of national income. Little regard was paid to the distribution of this income, for it was assumed that the effects of economic growth would be diffused throughout society so that all would eventually benefit. The World Economic Survey of the United Nations in 1959 stated: Increasingly it has become apparent that the realization of the goal of economic growth may render manageable the dominant economic problems, both national and international, which in a stationary economy might produce only conflicts and frustra— tions. A reading of more recent reports indicates a dis- satisfaction with this approach and the emergence of a new perspective. While industrialization, economic growth, and stability were central concerns of earlier reports, the 1United Nations, World Economic Survey, 1959 (New York: United Nations Social and Economic Council, 1960), p. 5. more recent ones have emphasized social and political goals as well as economic ones. For example, the 1968 Survey states: It is a part of the present dissatisfaction with much post-war discussion of development, however, that it has not been distinguished from economic growth. Development, as now conceived, is an objec- tive with broad social significance.2 Some of the elements of this broadened concept include "changes in the level, composition and distribution of output which lead to improvements in the present and future welfare of the community at large."3 Social and political measures to change this distribution of wealth and to raise the level of living through the provision of both health care and education have become an integral part of develop- ment policy. Several leading development planners have expressed views similar to those found in the United Nations' docu- ments. Harbison retains an economic perspective, but he shifts his emphasis from the accumulation of wealth to the develOpment of human resources. He speaks of the goal of development as: the maximum possible utilization of human resources in more productive activity and fullest possible devel- Opment of the skills and knowledge of the labor force which are relevant to such activity. The production 2United Nations, World Economic Survey, 1968 (New York: United Nations Social and Economic Council, 1969), p. 3. 31bid. of useful goods and services thus becomes a logical consequence of utilization and development of human resources. This approach stresses the importance of utilizing all_human resources in productive activity and developing skills, knowledge, and capacities of the entire labor force. In a recent book, Singer, one of the chief archi- tects of the first Development Decade, now emphasizes the overall social change which development involves: This change involves society as a whole, and it is not limited to the more obvious changes implied in different rates of growth of various branches of economic activity. These changes in society are interwoven in complex and difficult ways with eco- nomic growth. Some of the changes are absolute pre- requisites of future growth, others are partly or wholly the result of previous growth, others can be created as an integral part of projects aimed at economic growth. ' In his 1969 presidential address to the Society for International Development, Seers was one of many speakers to take up the conference theme and to challenge some of the prevalent notions about development. In his view: The questionstx>ask about a country's develOpment are therefore what has-been happening (1) to poverty, (2) to unemployment, (3) to inequality? If all three of these have declined from high levels, then beyond doubt this has been a period of development for the country concerned. If even one, or two of these cen- tral problems have been growing worse, it would be strange to call the result development even if per- capita income doubled. A plan which conveys no 4Frederick Harbison, Human Resources as the Wealth of Nations (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 115. 5Hans Singer and Salvatore Schiavo—Campo, Perspec— tives of Economic Development (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970), p. 4. targets for reducing poverty, unemployment and inequality can hardly be considered a development plan.6 He goes on to point out that an educational policy which is consistent with these goals will aim at reducing inequal- ity in access to education; it will produce enough trained manpower so that employers can reduce salary differentials and still attract qualified personnel; and it will help develop a consciousness among the people of the realities of development on the local and world scene. Myrdal sees development as the "upward movement of the whole social system" which at the same time reduces inequalities. The equality problem is central in policy issues: "Inequality and the trend toward rising inequality stand as a complex of inhibitors and obstacles to develop- ment."7 Only by removing inequality can growth and development be achieved, so policy debate should tackle these issues head on. With these new perspectives on development comes a new understanding of what factors contribute to development and of how they contribute. Two such factors of impor- tance for this study are education and employment. 6Dudley Seers, "Challenges to Development Theories and Strategies," in International Development 1969 (Wash- ington: Society for International Development, 1970), p. 7. 7Gunnar Myrdal, The Challenge of World Poverty: A World Anti-Poverty Program in Outline (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), pp. 49, 50. targets for reducing poverty, unemployment and inequality can hardly be considered a development plan.6 He goes on to point out that an educational policy which is consistent with these goals will aim at reducing inequal- ity in access to education; it will produce enough trained manpower so that employers can reduce salary differentials and still attract qualified personnel; and it will help develop a consciousness among the people of the realities of development on the local and world scene. Myrdal sees development as the "upward movement of the whole social system" which at the same time reduces inequalities. The equality problem is central in policy issues: "Inequality and the trend toward rising inequality stand as a complex of inhibitors and obstacles to develop- ment."7 Only by removing inequality can growth and development be achieved, so policy debate should tackle these issues head on. With these new perspectives on development comes a new understanding of what factors contribute to development and of how they contribute. Two such factors of impor- tance for this study are education and employment. 6Dudley Seers, "Challenges to Development Theories and Strategies," in International Development 1969 (Wash- ington: Society for International Development, 1970), p. 7. 7Gunnar Myrdal, The Challenge of World Poverty: A World Anti-Poverty Program in Outline (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), pp. 49, 50. Development, Education and Employment Development and Education Although discussions, studies, and the planning of education are frequently limited to what goes on in schools, education encompasses much more than schooling. There is a growing awareness of the extent of the "learning system" in any society, and present discussions are examining edu- cation in this broader context. Much of the interest in non—formal education or out-of—school education arises from an awareness of the great educational task facing the developing countries and the limitations of the formal school system in meeting this.8 Much of the study on the relationship between edu— cation and development has been carried out by economists and restricted to education in the narrow sense of school- ing. One of their chief concerns has been to determine the economic returns to individuals and to society on the size- able investment in schools made by governments and individ- uals. This work has been summarized and critically reviewed elsewhere.9 But this has not been their only concern, nor 8A sampling of ideas and approaches to non-formal education is contained in the papers in Cole Brembeck and Timothy Thompson, New Strategies for Educational Develop: ment (Lexington: D. C. Heath Lexington Books, 1973). 9Mark Blaug, An Introduction to the Economics of Education (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1970), pp. 23-60. are economists the only ones interested in the relations between development and education. The inter—relations between development and educa- tion are many and complex, especially when development is conceived of as more than economic growth and education as more than schooling. However, when these broadened notions are used, it becomes much more difficult to deter- mine the precise nature of the relationships. Vaizey provides a scheme which brings out the complexity, and, at the same time, makes it easier to conceptualize some of the more direct relationships between the two. This scheme, which is also implicit in the passage from Singer quoted above, looks at develOpment and education as processes going on simultaneously with related antecedents and con- sequences. Since education changes and develops attitudes, it is an antecedent of the develOpment process. It pro- vides economic, social, and political skills used in develOpment, so it is an essential component of development. Education is also an aspect of a rising level of living, and so it is a consequence of development as well. Since develOpment and education are processes spread over time, a single educational effort may be the consequence of previous development, a component of the present process and providing the preconditions for fur- ther development. Some illustrations of these types of relations will help clarify the scheme. 10 An example of an attitude change brought about by ‘Education which helps establish one of the preconditions for development comes from studies of the relations between education and fertility. Rapid population growth is an obstacle to development because, among other things, it strains a society's capacity to provide social services such as education and health care. So lower fertility is a precondition for raising the standard of living, and edu- cation can help bring this about. For, as Bjork concludes after a review of studies of education and fertility: Educational advance of the kind which can be reasonably projected in most developing countries must be seen as a kind of lever which will help women to see more clearly that children are more likely to live, to comprehend the simple but basic facts of reproduction and contraception, and to be more open to vieWpoints and values which proclaim the virtue of two- and three-child families and the use of con- traception.lo The manpower approach to development planning pro- vides a clear illustration of the second type of relation-- education as a component of development, even when both processes are taken in their more narrow meanings. This approach to development planning attempts to project the manpower requirements for a given level of economic output, to translate these skill requirements into educational programs, and to set enrollment levels accordingly. It loRobert Bjork, "Population, Education and Moderni- zation," in Education in National Development, ed. by Don Adams (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971), p. 142). ll 1tecognizes the importance of developing skills, but it (does not guarantee their proper utilization.ll Casual observation can illustrate the third type of relation between development and education. The demand for more education in less developed countries is as much an effect of a higher standard of living as it is a cause. Empirical evidence to support the observation that the demand for education is an effect of development is pro- vided in Anderson and Bowman's study of the relation between income and school enrollment.12 They found that percapita income in 1938 predicted school enrollments in 1950 better than 1938 enrollments predicted 1950 income. This corre- lation suggests that education is as much an item of con- sumption as of production, so that education is not only a causal factor in development, but a result of it as well. Development and Employment The second factor of importance for this study is employment, and, like education, it too is an integral part of the development process. Employment is not just the absence of unemployment, for even with no unemployment there can be underemployment and malemployment. In 1961 llMark Blaug, An Introduction to the Economics of Education, pp. 137-168. 12Mary Jean Bowman and C. Arnold Anderson, "Concern- ing the Role of Education in Development," in Old Societies and New States, ed. by Clifford Geertz (New York: The Free Press, 1963). 12 f311:; International Labor Organization unanimously adopted a.resolution on employment policy which this study accepts as a goal of development. As a goal, it is a state to be aimed for, even though it may never be fully achieved. Because they will be used in much of the analysis that follows, the objectives of the policy are quoted here in full. The resolution calls upon the governments of all countries-- (a) (b) (C) to adopt, as a major goal of social and economic policy, the objective of full, productive and freely chosen employment, this goal, which among other things, includes higher standards of living, being understood to mean-- (i) that there should be work for all who are available for and seeking work; (ii) that the jobs available should be as produc- tive as possible; (iii) that there should be freedom of choice of employment and the fullest possible opportunity for each worker to qualify for and use his ac- quired skills and natural endowments in a job for which he is well suited, irrespective of race, sex, creed, age, or personal origin; to recognise that the continuous process of adjustment required in the employment market in order to achieve and maintain full, productive and freely chosen employment calls for a watch- ful adaptation of national and international employment policy measures, guided by assessment of the current situation and the forecasting of future develOpments; to recognise the importance not only of investment in the material of means of production but also of investment in the full development of the poten- tialities of human beings, both as individuals and as partners in all forms of association required for the achievement of advanced levels of social and economic development, and to maintain an appropriate balance between them. 13International Labour Office, "Resolution Concern- ing Employment Policy, 28 June, 1961," International Labour Office Official Bulletin, XLIV, l (1961), 29-30. 13 This type of employment policy provides for the development and use of the human resources of a society in the production of the goods and services which that society requires. And, provided it is coupled with other policies, such an employment policy can help achieve the equitable distribution of these goods and services as well. There- fore, for a country to develop, in addition to an employment policy such as the one described here, it must have other social policies to make goods and services accessible to all, wage policies to provide adequate compensation for all workers, and policies which will provide for the needs of those who cannot find employment or cannot work. Education and Employment The two factors discussed here, education and employment, are not independent. For a society to attain full, productive, and freely chosen employment, all of its people must be able to increase their knowledge, to learn useful skills, and to develop their abilities to partici- pate in that society. An education which makes this pos- sible is life-long, permanent; it is not confined to schools. Many of the skills and abilities needed in life are learned informally in the family, in other social 14 groups and on the job, but schools cannot limit themselves to job preparation or even to skill development.14 Not only may attempts to link education too closely to job preparation lead to distortions in the economy; they may also lead to distortions in education as well. In a situation of relative educational abundance, as in the United States, job requirements may become distorted so that people are over-trained for their jobs.15 It may also happen, as in the case of Ceylon, that an abundance of one kind of education produces an over—supply of people seeking a particular kind of work while other jobs go unfilled.l6 In conditions of educational scarcity the type of education may have little effect on the job chosen. For, as Foster argues, the structure of incentives has a greater influ- ence on occupational choice than the type of curriculum pursued.l7 These incentives include income, job security, occupational prestige, etc. 14These are the themes which run through the report of the International Commission on the Development of Education submitted to UNESCO by Edgar Faure in 1972. (Edgar Faure, Learning to Be: The World of Education Today and Tomorrow [Paris: UNESCO, 1972]). 15Ivar Berg, Education and Jobs: The Great Training Robbery (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1972), pp. 38—60. 16International Labour Office, Matchinngmployment Opportunities and Expectations: A Programme of Action for Ceylon (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1972). 17Philip Foster, ”The Vocational School Fallacy in DevelOpment Planning," in Economics of Education, I, ed. by Mark Blaug (Baltimore: Penguin, 1968). 15 The process of education is also distorted by being 15411ked too closely with job preparation and external incen- tisies. As Figueroa states concerning education in the 'West Indies: Any kind of education which aims mainly at turning out a certain kind and size of labour force is not an education at all. Moreover, it is likely to be inef- ficient even in the aim of turning out a certain kind of manpower because man is more than a cog in a vast industrial wheel. To educate for manpower needs and not for manhood is bound to end in frustration and perhaps bloodshed, for it raises people's expectations for dignity as well as bread, and, in the end, it gives them a stone. Schools are more than instruments of economic growth, and they do not achieve their goal if they are made subservient to economic goals. For their goal is to help develOp a broader vision of develOpment as well as to develOp the social, political, and economic skills needed to carry on this process. Education must aim for the less easily measurable goals of flexibility and openness to change. Youth in the Less Developed Countries It is individuals who are employed and individuals who are flexible and open to changes. Integrating employ— ment and education within the development process, then, is done through individuals. An important group of indi- viduals in any country, but especially in the less developed l8John Figeuroa, Society, Schools and Progress in the West Indies (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1971), p. 89. 16 ones, is the youth population. For less developed countries have a large proportion of young in their population. Most of these countries have rapidly growing popu— lations as the result of declining death rates. The decline in death rates, due largely to the reduction of infant mor- tality, has resulted in a greater proportion of young people in these populations. More than 45 percent of the population may be under fifteen years of age. Having a large proportion of children and young adults in a pOpula- tion has important economic and social effects. A growing proportion of children in a population usually results in larger families, and these children are more of an economic burden on their parents, especially in urban areas where children cannot contribute as much to family support as they can in an agrarian setting. And the greater the pro- portion of children in a society the greater the demand for the provision of education and other social services such as health care. Young adults make similar demands on society for the provision of social services. And because of their numbers they also play an important role in social and political develOpment. Moller has collected considerable historical evi— dence from such diverse sources as the Reformation period and Indonesian political scene in the 1950's to show that the proportion of young people in a population is a crucial factor in social and political development. 17 Historical evidence appears to indicate that the subversion of any established government, if not accomplished by coup d'etat, requires a movement that cuts across social classes; and whether such a move- ment is directed against a native or a foreign elite, young people provide the driving force and often, to a large extent, the intellectual and organizational leadership.19 He supports this historical evidence with arguments from social psychology which has established that young people, because they are not burdened with responsibilities, are more inclined to take risks and engage in socially dis- ruptive behavior. But, as Moller points out, the outcome of this youth power is ambiguous. Its outcome depends upon what use is made of force, what elites seek out the youth, what elites the youths find appealing, the social and human costs of change, and a host of other factors. The direction of social change results from the total situation in which the young find themselves, including the types of leaders with whom they inter- act and the traditions and institutions they have inherited. The presence of a large contingent of young peOple in a population may make for a cumula- tive process of innovation and social and cultural growth; it may lead to elemental directionless acting- out behaviour; it may destroy old institutions and elevate new elites to power; and the unemployed ener- gies of the young may be organized and directed by totalitarian rulers. The dynamism of its large and youthful populations distinguishes the crowded history of the twentieth century.20 19Herbert Moller, "Youth as a Force in the Modern World," Comparative Studies in Society and History, X (April, 1968), 256. 201bid., p. 260. 18 In spite of the important role youth can play in the less developed countries, studies of youth are still in their infancy, and no adequate theoretical framework has been developed to guide them.21 However, there is a growing awareness of the impor- tance of youth on the part of governments and international agencies. The Secretary General of the Commonwealth Caribbean Regional Youth Seminar put the problem this way: Youth itself is not the problem; the problem is rather how to help the young to find a role in a society that has changed and is changing so rapidly that adjustment to change is always too long delayed.22 In order to help the young find their role in society the first step, as outlined by the seminar, is to identify the dimensions of the role of youth and the constraints they face in their role. Living conditions and employment prospects place constraints on youth. And young people's needs, interests, and aspirations vary from group to group. For example, the needs of rural youth are not the same as those of urban youth; also young people with different 21Leopold Rosenmayr, "New Theoretical Approaches to the Sociological Study of Young People," International Social Science Journal, XXIV, 2 (1972). The entire issue of the journal is devoted to the subject of youth as a force in society today. 22Commonwealth Caribbean Regional Youth Seminar, Youth and Development in the Caribbean (London: Common- wealth Secretariat, 1970), p. 3. 19 levels of education and from different ethnic backgrounds may not have the same interests and aspirations. To meet the needs and aspirations of youth and to plan for the future, not only must the role of youth be understood, but the young themselves must be involved with adults in planning and implementing programs that are of concern to them. They are the key element in the success of these programs. The Youth Employment Problem in Less Developed Countries Awareness of the potential of youth for the develop- ment process makes the employment problems they face all the more important. For, despite the difficulties in measuring unemployment, there is evidence that, however it is measured, unemployment rates among young urban workers in less develOped countries are almost double those for the urban labor force as a whole.23 The large numbers of young peOple in developing countries, especially in the urban areas, seeking entry into the labor force for the first time is one of the reasons for these high rates. The problem, then, is more than one of numbers; it is also one of assim- ilating new entrants. As has already been pointed out, the number of young peOple in the pOpulations of less developed countries 23David Turnham, The Employment Problem in Less Developed Countries: A Review of Evidence (Paris: Organi- zation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 1971), pp. 48—490 20 is proportionately very high. So every year a larger number of jobs have to be found if these new entrants are to find work. And since most of the new entrants into the labor force for the next fifteen to twenty years have already been born, there is no let up in sight. The prob— lem in urban areas is even more acute because of the even larger proportion of young in these areas. The growth rates of urban areas are usually higher than those for a country as a whole due, in part, to migration from the rural areas to the cities. Migrants are frequently young adults, single and with higher educational attainment than that of the average member of the populations from which they originate.24 They have gone to the city to escape rural life and to seek work. Besides the sheer numbers of young people seeking work, especially in the urban areas, and the problems of rural development, there are other problems facing young and old alike. One of these is poverty and income distri- bution. Migration to the cities is an indication of the inadequate incomes obtainable in rural areas, and, while statistics for many countries are not available, it is at least arguable that large groups of people have experienced little or no broad based improvement in standard of living during the recent 4Harley Browning, "Migrant Selectivity and the Growth of Large Cities in Developing Societies," in Rapid Population Growth: Consequences and Policy Implications, ed. by National Academy of Sciences (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971). 21 development period and may even have become worse off, despite record increases in real and national product per capita of between 20 and 50 percent for most countries. In Colombia the International Labor Organization team found that: A very large proportion of the active labor force has an inadequate income, by any standards, and this proportion is considerably more than that of the unemployed or underemployed. Poverty therefore emerges as the most compelling aspect of the whole employment problem in Colombia. The outlook for the growth of employment in the modern sector, the type of employment being sought by many of the young, is not good, and increases in productivity may even slow down the rate of employment creation in this sector. So the prospects of finding productive work in the cities may be growing dimmer. Solutions to the employ- ment problem will have to be sought through employment generation in all sectors and in all regions of the less developed countries. Solutions, however, are not easy to come by. And it is becoming increasingly clear that there are no general formulae for solving the problems. For, as Callaway has stated: The magnitude and distinctive kinds of unemploy— ment differ in each country according to the level and 25David Turnham, The Employment Problem, p. 10. 26International Labour Office, Towards Full Employ: ment: A Programme for Colombia Prepared by an Inter—agenoy Team Organised by the International Labour Office (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1970), pp. 20-21. 22 pace of the individual economy, the rate of population growth in relation to resources, the historical devel- opment of the educational system, the particular social and political framework. Planners in each country will have to examine their own unique situation. By identi- fying the employment problem, analyzing its relation to the education system and the economy, they can deter- mine policy Options. The problem can be alleviated only from within. The next chapter provides background for such an examination of the youth employment situation in Belize. 27Archibald Callaway, Educational Planning and Unemployed Youth (Paris: UNESCO: International Institute for Educational Planning, 1971), p. 14. CHAPTER II THE SETTING Since the aim of this study is to delineate the employment problem among recent secondary school graduates in Belize and to analyze it as it relates to secondary education, some background information is necessary. Emphasis in this chapter will be on those aspects of the country, especially its educational system, which have a bearing on the study. Some of the information, however, is necessarily of a more general nature. Such information is all the more necessary for Belize because, as Raymond Smith points out: The territories of the circum-Caribbean region contain some of the most complex societies in the world. Their complexity lies not in their size, degree of internal differentiation or technological development, but in the dependent and fragmented nature of their cultures, the ethnic diversity of their populations, the special nature of their political development and the apparent incoherence of their social institutions. The complexity of Belizean society is especially evident in its political situation, its small population and land area, its ethnic diversity, and its economic history. 1Raymond Smith, "Culture and Social Structure in the Caribbean: Some Recent Work on Family and Kinship Studies," Comparative Studies in Society and History, VI (October, 1963), 24. 23 24 Background Politically Belize is an anomaly. Claimed but unsettled by Spain, the area was inhabited by English wood cutters and their slaves in 1638; it was more than a cen- tury later, however, before official recognition of the settlement came and their right to cut logwood was recog— nized. And it was not until 1786 that a Superintendent of the settlement was appointed. This position was raised to the rank of Lieutenant Governor in 1862, when the country was formally erected into the colony of British Honduras, and in 1859 the "Convention between Her Majesty and the Republic of Guatemala, Relative to the Boundary of British Honduras" was signed, but the force of this agreement remains in dispute to this day as Guatemala continues to claim the entire territory.2 The Guatemalan claim presents a serious obstacle to further constitutional development beyond the present stage of internal self-government which was achieved in 1964. It does not appear that the present government will seek full independence unless the claim can be resolved in a way that will guarantee the autonomy of the country. Like many new nations, Belize is small, but unlike her West Indian neighbors, Belize has a low population density. It is twice as large as Jamaica and more than four times the size of Trinidad and Tobago; the population 2New York Times, March 12, 1971, section 1, p. 6. 25 density of these two countries is more than thirty times that of Belize. With an area of 8,600 square miles and a population of slightly more than 120,000, it is the second smallest and least densely pOpulated country in Central America. The country is a coastal strip on the eastern sea- board of Central America bounded on the north and north- west by Mexico and on the west and south by Guatemala. At its greatest extent, it is 174 miles from north to south and 70 miles from east to west. The northern half of the country is a broad, swampy coastal plain which rises about 500 feet to a low plateau in the west. To the south the coastal plain narrows and the Maya Mountains intrude from the southwest. (Hf the coast of the country lies the second longest barrier reef in the world, and the waters between the mainland the reef are dotted with many small cayes. The country has just enough minerals to tease the imagination, but at present there are no known mineral deposits worthy of commercial exploitation. Exploration for oil deposits, however, continues. Heavy forest covers large areas of the land, and this forest has been a major source of income in the past. Much of the land, howeVer, is either swampy or mountainous. Of the total land area, 38 percent is estimated to be potentially 26 arable, although in 1968 only 8.5 percent of the arable land wais being used for agriculture.3 The size, population density, location, and resources (ii the country indicate that agriculture can play an impor- tant role in the development of the country. Belize is large and relatively uninhabited in comparison with its West Indian neighbors, and so it has adequate land avail- able for expanding agricultural production to meet the food needs of more crowded countries. It is close to mar- kets for its agricultural products--the United States and the West Indies. And its tropical climate gives it an advantage in producing crops such as bananas, citrus, and sugar. Government planners give agriculture a large role in the future development of Belize, but, in spite of its resources, an agricultural tradition has not developed in the past. The demographic history of the settlement of the country and the history of its economic growth help explain this. The settlement was begun in 1638 at the present site of Belize City by English buccaneers turned logwood cutters, and, at that time, there was no indication of any indigenous 3These figures are calculated from those given in the Development Plan 1964—1970 (Belize: Government Printer, n.d.). 27 cutters.4 Mention of the settlement did not occur in official records until 1682, and official recognition of the cutters came only in 1763 with the Treaty of Paris between Great Britain and Spain. Much of the early population was made up of slaves. An 1806 report put the total pOpulation at 6,000, of whom 10 percent were listed as white, 17 percent as people of color and free negroes, and the remainder as slaves. In the slave population men outnumbered women and children almost three to one. After 1816 the number of slaves declined until 1838 when slavery was abolished. Besides freed slaves, other additions to the popu- lation came from Mexico during the War of the Castes;5 indentured Chinese labor for the newly begun sugar indus- try arrived in 1865 and 1866; some immigrants from the southern United States came in the 1870's, and later in the century indentured East Indian and Jamaican laborers came.6 The Caribs also settled along the southern coast 4"Archaeologists estimate that in what is now British Honduras alone, these people [the Maya] once num- bered 750,000, but by the time of the first British settle- ment in the seventeenth century, they had largely dis- appeared." Colonial Office, Report of the British Guiana and British Honduras Settlement Commission (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1948): p. 206. 5Nelson Reed, The Caste War of Yucatan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), pp. 128, 170. 6Colonial Office, Settlement Commission, p. 219. 28 of the country as early as 1802.7 The most recent large- scale immigration has been that of the Mennonites from Mexico which began in 1958, and by 1966 they numbered approximately 3,500 and constituted 3 percent of the total population.8 Accompanying all of this immigration has been a steady stream of migrants out of the country,either back home, as in the case of many indentured laborers, or, as in more recent years, emigration of the native born to other countries, especially the United States.9 7For an account of the Carib settlement see Douglas Taylor, The Black Carib of British Honduras (New York: Werner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1951). 8An account of this migration is given in Harry Sawatzky, They Sought a Country: Mennonite Colonization in Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 331-367. 9In 1964 the United Nations projected the population for Belize for the next two decades using life table meth- ods. The projections, based on 1960 data, assumed an in- crease in life expectancy and a constant fertility, but they did not take into account migration. A comparison of the age structure of the projected population with the prelimi- nary results from the 1970 census indicates agreement in overall figures, but there is a considerable discrepancy in age structure between the projections and the actual pOpu- 1ation. The projected growth for the decade was 2.5 per- cent too high, so the average annual growth rate was 3.2 percent as compared with 3.5 percent as projected. The proportion of children under fifteen in the 1970 population is greater than projected, indicating a higher fertility level than originally projected. And the prOportion of people over sixty—five is slightly higher than had been projected, so life expectancy may have increased slightly more than was projected. But, in spite of increased fertility and life expectancy, the total pOpula- tion did not reach the projected size. The population between fifteen and sixty-five was less than projected. The population between fifteen and sixty—five years of age in 1970 made up the five to fifty-five year old group in 1960. A decline in numbers of this group over 29 The proportion of native born in the population has steadily increased from 42 percent in 1861 to over 90 per- cent in 1960, but, as Table 1 indicates, this proportion is levelling off. Ethnic diversity persists, however, as casual observation will show, but the most recent statistics on this date back to 1946 when the census listed the popula- tion as being 38 percent Black, 31 percent Mixed, 17 percent Amerindian, 7 percent Carib, 4 percent White, and 3 percent other.lo Besides having a diverse population, the country has had a rapidly growing one as well. Growth in the later 1960's, however, was slightly less than that projected in 1963 by the United Nations. There is evidence to show that this difference is due to emigration, and that the birth rate is actually higher than that projected. Table 1 also gives some indication of the growth rate of the the decade is due either to death or to a net out migra- tion. However, there is no evidence from the vital statis- tics that the death rates for this age group have been particularly high for the decade. If all of the decline were due to deaths, the death rate for the period would have been over ten per thousand, whereas the recorded rates are much less than five per thousand. Much of the decrease in population in this age group must be attributed to emi- gration. At present, however, there are not sufficient data to determine the rate of this emigration. Using the difference between the actual population between fifteen and sixty-five in 1970 and the projected population for this same age group as an estimate of the loss, the net out migration has been 7,000; Ufis is equivalent to 6 percent of the 1970 population. 10The classification mixed included both mestizos (descendants of Amerindians and whites mainly of Spanish descent) and descendants of negroes and whites). 30 population and of the growing proportion of young in the country. Table 1.--The population of Belize, 1861-1970. Percent Percent Percent Total Annual Under Native Year Population Increase 15 Years Born 1861 25,635 n.a.a n.a. 42 1891 31,471 0.8 n.a. 72 1921 45,317 1.5 n.a. 84 1931 51,347 1.3 39.1 87 1946 59,220 1.0 38.4 90 1960 90,505 3.8 44.6 91 1970 119,934 3.3 49.1 n.a. a . n.a. = not available. Sources: 1861-1946: Colonial Office, Report of the British Guiana and British Honduras Settlement Commission. 1960: West Indies Population Centre, Census of British Honduras: 1960. 1970: Ministry of Trade and Finance, Preliminary Data Sheets for 1970 Census. The population of Belize, then, is sparse, young, ethnically diverse, and internationally mobile. This diver— sity and low density have encouraged the establishment of small, autonomous units within the country—-sma11 shops, subsistence farms, etc. These units do not grow fast enough to provide productive employment for the many young people in the population. And the international mobility of the pOpulation has broken down barriers to emigration, for many 31 families already have relatives living abroad who can help new emigrants establish themselves. Much of the subsistence farming provides only seasonal labor, and in the past wood cutting and chicle gathering were other sources of seasonal employment. Prior to the 1950's the economy of Belize was largely dependent upon the export of forest products (mahogany, pine, other woods, and chicle). Only more recently have agricultural exports, especially sugar and citrus, provided the main source of foreign exchange. The relative importance of the chief exports of the country since 1946 is set out in Table 2. Table 2.-—Percentage composition of domestic exports by major commodities, 1946-1967. Year Commodity 1946 1950 1955 1960 1965 1967 Forest Products 75.1 83.6 74.5 42.7 14.4 9.3 Citrus 9.8 11.8 13.3 30.8 25.1 22.2 Sugar 0.0 0.0 4.8 20.7 33.1 53.0 Othera 15.1 4.6 7.4 5.8 27.4 12.5 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 Total Value (millions of dollars B2.) 3.5 4.6 7.0 10.2 15.2 16.4 aOther includes fish products and resinous extract. The latter accounted for 14.3 percent of the total in 1965 when a resin extracting plant was in operation. Government of British Honduras, Annual Abstract of Statistics, no. 6 (1968). Source: 32 Heavy dependence on forest products as a source of income has not only greatly depleted the available reserves, it has also hindered the development of an agricultural tradition. Writing in 1948, the British Guiana and British Honduras Settlement Commission stated: Agricultural activities at the present time, as in the past, play a very minor part in the economy of British Honduras. So much is this the case that the inhabitants have come to rely almost entirely on imported foodstuffs for the bulk of their require— ments, even at times of high prices, when such depen-' dence on external supplies is felt to be particularly burdensome because of its direct effect on the cost of living, only half-hearted attempts have been made to approach somewhat nearer to self-sufficiency in this respect. No doubt conditions of work in the forest are partly responsible for this, since imports of foodstuffs, standardized in quality and conveniently packed . . . are more reliable in supply than the irregular quantities offered by small scale producers.ll This agricultural tradition is still absent. The small subsistence farm is a place where a "tired man recu- perates from his outside labor, disciplines his offspring, and lays the foundation for next season's subsistence crOps before setting out again to earn money to keep the farm . "12 g01ng. There are, however, some signs of improvement in agriculture. Rice production is now not only sufficient to meet the country's needs, but it is being exported as well. And the sugar industry is growing as Table 2 shows. 11Colonial Office, Settlement Commission, p. 252. 12A. S. C. Wright, et al., Land in British Honduras: Report of the British Honduras Land Use Survey Team (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1959), p. 40. 33 This improvement in agricultural production has important implications for youth employment. Agriculture is one of the potential growth points of the economy, so it can be a source of employment generation if its growth is properly directed. This will be realized only if jobs can be generated and young peOple attracted to them. Any attempts to do this must face the problem squarely and realize that in the present circumstances emigration and white collar work are still more attractive alternatives to graduates. In contrast to the lack of an agricultural tradi- tion in Belize is the country's strong tradition of trade activities, both within its boundaries and with its neigh- bors, which gives employment in this sector more prestige. Some even argue that the traders and large—scale land owners deliberately suppressed small-scale agriculture to maintain the market for imported foodstuffs.l3 And historically, trading activities have certainly played an important part in the country's life at the expense of agricultural devel- opment. Belizian traders in the past have not only sup- plied the local populace with food and other consumer goods, they have supplied neighboring countries as well. At times they have supplied arms to warring Indians, as during the Caste War, supplies to the Confederacy during the American l3Wayne Clegern, British Honduras: Colonial Dead End, 1859—1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967), pp. 52, 162. 34 Civil War, and liquor to rum runners during Prohibition in the United States.14 Education Education has an important role in employment gen- eration. But it might be argued that in the past schools, especially secondary schools, have been an escape route for those in the rural areas,15 and that they have not made a Vcontribution to agricultural development. The following discussion of education in Belize describes some of its more important aspects, its organization, administration, finance, enrollment, and staffing. This latter is partic- ularly important for this study since teaching is a major source of employment for recent graduates. From its beginning in 1816 to the present, educa— tion in Belize has been closely associated with the Chris- tian denominations. The first primary school, the Honduras Free School, was connected with the Church of England, and the first regular secondary school, Wesley High School, was started in 1882 by the Methodists.l6 14Ibid.. pp. 19-37. 15M. G. Smith, "Education and Occupational Choice in Rural Jamaica," Social and Economic Studies, IX (September, 1960), 352. 16A brief account of the early history of education in the country is contained in the Department of Education Triennial Report 1952-53-54 (Belize: Government Printer, n.d.). The statistics used in what follows are taken from the reports of the Education Department. The last complete report available was for the school year 1967—68. 35 Under the present system most primary schools are managed by the denominations and grant aided by the govern- ment. This aid includes teachers' salaries and mainten- ance grants for buildings, furniture, and equipment. Gov- ernment also makes grants of one-half of the cost of approved building projects. One technical college and two junior secondary schools are conducted by the government; the remainder of the secondary schools are denominational and fee charging except for a free ecumenical comprehensive school in the new capital. Some scholarships to secondary schools are provided by the government and salary grants for one or two teachers are provided each school. Administration of the school system is the charge of the Chief Education Officer, but final authority rests with the Minister of Education who is advised by a National Council for Education. Periodic reports and missions such as the Easter Report in 1934 and the UNESCO mission in 1964 have also advised the government on educational matters. Finance of education is a complex matter under the denominational system. The proportion of recurrent gov- ernment expenditure devoted to education increased 30 percent from 1965 to 1968; as a proportion of all government recurrent expenditure it amounted to 16 percent in 1965 and to 17 percent in 1968. A breakdown of total educational expenditure for 1968 is given in Table 3. Over one-half of government expenditure goes for primary education; this . . I'll]: all. .il'll II. I Ii [Ii 36 .onlmmma .ucwE luummoo coflpmooom may mo uuomom Hmoccm .mmusozom nmflpflum mo ucmacum>oo "condom mvm mah.w mmv HVH.H 50H.H AHo.N HMDOB o moo.a ma mam wa mvm mum>flum CNN mmm 0 mm mmm mv mummuQ5H0> ocm monouoco mmo mas.m mew nus sum mme.a Amunma upsugmo flame Damacum>ow HMDOB Hmnuo paw Hmsmflm wumocoomm humaflum ucmnusomm aoflumnp paw mousom Inoz ImHQHEo¢ nmgomma pcounsomm .Amumaaoo mmflamm mo monomDOSDV mmma cw Ho>oa paw mousom ma endpflocomxm Hmcoflumooomll.m magma 37 accounted for 71 percent of the expenditure at this level in 1968. Private expenditure on books, supplies, etc. accounts for most of the remainder of the expenditure at this level. Secondary education is largely financed by private funds through tuition fees and the purchase of school supplies. The private contribution for 1968 was estimated by assuming a cost of $140 per pupil per year for tuition, fees, and books. This is a conservative estimate which barely covers tuition at many schools. Government expenditure on teacher training and higher education goes largely to the operation of the teacher training college and for the training of public servants. It also includes a subvention to the University of the West Indies. Private expenditure in this category is the estimated cost of scholarships not paid from national revenue or by churches. It does not include the considerable expenditure made by private, non-scholarship students studying outside the country. The administrative costs include expenses of the Ministry of Housing which is part of the same ministerial portfolio. The other expenses include the training of policemen, the operation of a youth hostel and training school, and agricultural extension ser- vices. Total expenditure for primary education was $68 per pupil, and for secondary education it was $343, a dif— ferential of one to five. Of this, government expenditure amounted to $48 per primary school student and $117 per 38 secondary school student. So the differential between government expenditure on primary and secondary school students is two to five. Primary school enrollment is estimated to be 95 percent of the five to fourteen year age group. Total enrollment has grown 52 percent from 1960 to 1969, and the population of this age has grown by about the same amount during this period. As the high enrollment ratio indi- cates, the primary schools are distributed rather uni- formly over the pOpulated regions of the country, and they enroll about equal numbers of boys and girls. Many of the rural schools are, however, small one or two teacher schools as Table 4 indicates. This also means that primary school teaching opportunities are spread uniformly over the pOpulation. Table 4.--Location of primary schools by size, 1969. Number of Schools Percent of School Out Total Enrollment City District Total Enrollment 500+ 7 8 15 31.2 300-499 7 5 12 16.0 200-299 10 16 26 20.0 100-199 2 39 41 19.6 50- 99 0 40 40 10.1 0- 49 0 29 29 3.1 Source: Government of British Honduras, Annual Report of the Education Department, 1968-69. 39 In contrast with primary education, opportunities for secondary education are still unevenly distributed, although secondary school enrollment has more than doubled in the past decade. According to 1970 enrollment statistics there are 126 girls per 100 boys enrolled in the secondary schools of Belize City; in the out districts the situation is reversed with only 77 girls per 100 boys. Overall, how- ever, there are 106 girls per 100 boys in secondary school. Table 5 shows the relationships in another way by giving the percent distribution of the total secondary school enrollment. It also shows the city/out district imbalance in this enroll— ment. This difference is more noteworthy when the distri— butions of the total population and of the primary school enrollment are considered. Table 5.--Percent distribution of secondary school enrollment, 1970. Boys Girls Both Sexes Belize City 28.8 36.3 65.1 Out Districts 19.7 15.2 34.9 Total 48.5 51.5 100.0 Source: Government of British Honduras, Annual Report of the Education Department, 1969-70. Table 6 shows the prOportion of various populations found in the out districts between 1965 and 1970. There has been little change in the proportion of the total population 40 living in the out districts between 1960 and 1970, and there has been little change in the prOportion of primary school students attending schools there. Moreover, the two figures are nearly equal for recent years, so, as the high enroll- ment ratio also indicates, the distribution of primary school places follows closely that of the total population. Secon- dary school enrollment, however, presents another picture. The prOportion of places available in the out districts increased from 29 percent to 35 percent over the period 1965 to 1970, but there is still an imbalance between the distri- bution of the total population and the distribution of secon- dary school places. This imbalance is offset slightly by the enrollment of some out district residents in Belize City secondary schools. Table 6.--Percentage of populations residing in out districts, 1965—1970. Year Population 1965 1970 Total Population 64a 67 Primary School Enrollment 66 67b Secondary School Enrollment 29 35 a1960 population. b1969 enrollment. Sources: West Indies Population Centre, Census of British Honduras, 1960. Government of British Honduras, Annual Report of the Education Department, 1964-65; Annual Report of the Education Department, 1969-70. 41 While enrollment statistics are readily available, it is difficult to obtain any accurate information on the number of students going from primary school to secondary school because of the large number of repeaters in the final year of primary school. However, estimates of the magnitude of the transition rate indicate that it has increased from about 40 percent in 1966 to 50 percent in 1970.17 Enrollment in secondary schools has increased from 1,964 students in 1960 to 3,527 in 1970, an increase of 108 percent. So the 1970 enrollment target of 6,550 set in 1964 by the Development Plan 1964-1970 appears to have been unrealistic, but it was characteristic of the type of planning being done throughout the world at that time. More important than a comparison between actual enrollment and target enrollment, however, is a consideration of the size of the pOpulation of secondary school age. For this latter comparison shows how many young peOple are still not receiv- ing a secondary education. The age group between fourteen and seventeen years of age has been chosen for this comparison since it is the four year age group that contains the largest proportion of secondary school students, and since it corresponds to the age of the secondary school student who began primary school at the age of six and moved through the system without l7Timothy Thompson, "The Distribution and Growth of the Secondary School Population in Belize," National Studies (Belize), I, 2 (1973). 42 repeating or skipping. Interpolating from the census data, it is estimated that there were 6,880 in this age group in 1960, and, using the preliminary results of the 1970 census and the United Nations' population projections, the group is estimated to have numbered 11,340 in 1970. This repre- sents an increase of 70 percent as compared with an increase of 33 percent in the total population over the same period. So while the secondary school enrollment has grown 108 per- cent in the decade, the population of secondary school age has also been growing rapidly. As a result the prOportion of the fourteen to seventeen year age group enrolled in secondary school has only increased from 25 percent to 31 percent. Rapid population growth makes heavy demands on the school system if it is just to keep up the current enroll- ment level, and even greater demands if the absolute number of those not in school is to be maintained or decreased. In 1960 about 5,000 secondary school age youths were not in school; by 1970 this had increased more than 50 percent to 7,800. To have maintained the gap at 5,000 would have required an enrollment growth of over 270 percent instead of the 108 percent achieved. The staffing of primary schools provides an impor- tant source of employment for secondary school graduates, so the statistics on staffing presented in Table 7 will be discussed in some detail. Trained teachers are those who 43 Table 7.-—Primary school staffing by teacher qualification, sex, and location, 1969. Location of Teachers Teacher Out Qualification Sex City District Total Male 13 79 92 Trained Female 109 59 168 Both 122 138 260 Male 8 44 52 First Class Female 83 94 177 Both 91 138 229 Male 19 149 168 Other Female 119 261 380 Both 138 410 548 Male 40 272 312 Total ' Female 311 414 725 Both 351 686 1037 Source: Government of British Honduras, Annual Report of the Education Department, 1968-69. have completed a diploma course, usually at the Belize Teachers' College; first class teachers are those who have passed a written examination in professional and academic subjects.18 A secondary school graduate enters the teaching force just below this level and is allowed to sit the exami- nation immediately. Usually some of the papers in academic subjects are waived for the graduate with a good school record. In the total teaching force women outnumber men two 18There is also a second class teacher's examination which is required of teachers who have not had at least four years of secondary education. 44 to one, and women make up more than 89 percent of the school staffs in Belize City. Out district schools employ 87 percent of the men teachers and 57 percent of the women. The city teachers are better trained than rural ones, with 35 percent of the city teachers possessing training as compared with 20 percent of the rural staff. But the trained and first class teachers in the city are almost all women, whereas in the out districts men make up the majority of trained teach- ers and women the majority of the first class teachers.19 Teachers with qualifications below the first class level account for slightly more than one-half of both men and women teachers, but they are unevenly distributed; 89 percent of the men are in rural schools, and only 69 percent of the women. This also means that rural school staffs have only 40 percent qualified at the first class level or above, while city schools have 61 percent with these qualifications. The secondary school staffs have a slight majority of men, and, of the men, 51 percent are university grad— uates while 44 percent of the women are graduates. Overseas volunteers account for about one-third of the graduates; the remainder of the graduate teachers are nationals or foreign 19There may be several explanations for this differ- ence in qualification between the sexes: (1) There are more young women in the rural schools because of the number of entrants into the teaching force and because older women withdraw from the school staffs. (2) Women in rural areas do not have equal access to training because of family obliga- tions. (3) Women in rural areas who receive training are more likely to migrate to the city than men with training. 45 religious personnel. No information is available on the composition of the non-graduate teachers or on the city/ out district distribution of the secondary school teachers. Conclusion Belize, even with its small, diverse population and emigration, still faces an employment problem because of its rapidly growing population. And because of its extensive primary school system and growing secondary school enrollment, this is a problem of finding employment for educated youth. Moreover, agriculture, the sector with the greatest potential for growth and employment generation, is not attracting young people. CHAPTER III THE STUDY To begin a study of the youth employment situation in Belize and to relate this situation to secondary edu- cation, four questions have been formulated: (1) What has been the employment experience of recent graduates? (2) What are the employment expectations of those entering the labor force? (3) Are the expectations of new entrants realistic in view of what has happened to recent graduates? (4) In these circumstances and with a View toward planning the future growth and development of secondary education, what educational policy alternatives are open to Belize? In the next section of this chapter the concerns underlying these questions are set out, and the type of data needed to answer them is described. In the last section of the chapter the choice of respondents and the collection of data are described. First, however, something will be said about the general approach to the problem, the subjects of the inquiry, the rationale for making the study, and the limitations of the study. The study analyzes the youth employment situation in terms of the migration and economic activity of young sec- ondary school graduates and in terms of the aspirations and 46 47 attitudes toward work of those about to enter the labor force. No specific hypotheses have been formulated regard- ing the influence of background variables on the situation. Instead, three differentiating factors, length of time out of school, sex, and place of schooling, are used in presenting the description; the latter is divided into two categories-- city and out district. All three of the factors could be important for youth employment since the distribution of school places and of employment Opportunities changes over time and differs for the sexes and for urban and rural resi- dents. Since these factors differentiate the present situa- tion, policy decisions should take differences based on them into account in shaping the future. Secondary school students and graduates have been selected as subjects for this initial study of youth employ- ment and education in Belize because they have attained the highest level of education available within the country to any appreciable segment of the population. Some of the secondary schools offer Sixth Form studies which go beyond the normal four year secondary school course; but their enrollment is less than one-twentieth of that in secondary schools, so within the country secondary education is ter- minal for all but a small minority. Because Sixth Form studies are usually pursued for two years immediately after finishing secondary school, graduates of these programs can be included as a segment of the total population being 48 studied by taking secondary school graduates who have been out of school for more than two years. The rationale for undertaking this study is to pro- vide data on, and an understanding of, the articulation of secondary education with the occupational structure, that is on both the develOpment of human resources within the schools and on the initial allocation of these resources over the labor force. The secondary school contributes to the development of human resources by the values it communicates and by the knowledge and skills it helps generate; it helps allocate these resources through the aspirations it generates and through the guidance and the certification it gives. While the secondary school is only one of many factors affect- ing the develOpment and allocation of human resources, it is an important factor. It is important not only because of the position it has as a channel through which many are prepared to enter the labor force, but also because it is subject to policy decisions which influence the develOpment and alloca- tion of human resources. In addition, secondary schools deserve particular attention because they take a large pro- portion of the educational budget, yet they do not serve all those capable of benefiting from their help. So data on the articulation of secondary education with the occupational structure, together with studies of the relation between specific educational policies and the occupational structure, are essential for planning the future shape of secondary 49 education and for assessing the contribution of specific educational programs to development. Belize, however, like many countries, does not have reliable information on what happens to its secondary school students after they leave school.1 Census data presently available do not include the relation between the level of education and the age of those in the labor force, nor does the census give data on the occupational structure of the labor force by level of education. Schools do not conduct follow-up studies of their graduates; there is no employment agency to serve these graduates which would produce, either directly or indirectly, information on their employment. This study will supply much of the needed information in this area. Several factors, however, limit the study. First, it describes only one aspect of a complex situation in one country over a specific period of time. Second, for the description to be thorough, considerable data from outside sources, not all of which is presently available, is needed.2 1There is a general lack of up-to-date statistical data. Government reports are slow in being published, and record keeping and reporting is not uniform. 2A thorough study of the youth employment situation is best done against a background of the over-all employment situation. A description of this situation requires up-to-date census data and periodic labor force surveys. Current census data provide a comprehensive View of the total labor force of the country; labor force surveys indicate seasonal and long- term changes in the force. The results of the 1970 census are not yet available, and no periodic surveys are made of the labor force. 50 Another limiting factor, as in any description, is that some aspects are selected for presentation and others are left out. (The next section will explain why the particular aspects presented here are chosen.) As stated in Chapter I, the relation between education and employment is part of a more complex one--the function of education in a society. So, while employment considerations are very important, educa— tional policy decisions must also take into consideration factors such as limited financial resources, pOpular demand, educational goals, political goals, etc. Finally, as a study of one country during a period of change and rapid growth, the study is limited in that the results cannot be readily generalized either over time or to other countries to provide widely applicable solutions. In spite of these limitations, however, the study does establish a base from which further studies can be conducted in Belize, and it illustrates a method of study which can be used elsewhere.3 The Questions and Type of Data Needed The employment experience of recent graduates is described both as it is at the present time and as it has changed since the time of their graduation. This distinc- tion is made because the methods required to gather informa- tion on these two aspects of employment differ considerably. 3The usefulness of using a follow-up or tracer study to examine the youth employment situation is generally recognized (cf. Frederick Harbison, Human Resources as the Wealth of Nations, p. 88). However, there are not many examples to follow in carrying one out. 51 Information on the present status can be collected without direct contact with the graduates involved, while collecting data on past employment requires direct contact. The reasons for collecting both kinds of data will be explained below. The present distribution of recent graduates is described in terms of residence place and position in the economically active population. This latter can be classified in three ways: according to the sector of the economy in which they work, according to the occupation which they perform, or according to their relation to other workers.4 Such a description only requires a report on the current situations of individual graduates and does not require personal responses from graduates. The employment history of a graduate is more complex to describe, but knowledge of the history also gives a more complete picture of the overall employment situation. It fills in the gap between leaving school and the present, and shows how graduates establish themselves in the work force. The employment histories cOllected for this study describe a graduate's entry into the labor force as well as the subse— quent employment career, further education and training, and attitudes toward present employment. 4This classification follows the scheme used by the International Labor Organization (cf. International Labor Office, International Standardisation of Labour Statistics). 52 A description of the articulation of secondary edu- cation with employment should include information on how graduates gain entry into the labor force and data on their; subsequent employment careers and on their attitudes and ! expectations at the time they enter into the labor force. While historical, or retrospective, studies provide data on how recent graduates have entered into the labor force, they cannot determine the attitudes and expectations the gradu- ates had at the time of entering, for past attitudes cannot be reliably determined in retrospect. Moreover, the atti- tudes and expectations of students who are about to enter the labor force are of more immediate importance in planning for the future. So data on the employment expectations of current students were collected by giving them a question- naire which included questions on their occupational and educational aspirations, on the most and least desirable jobs open to them, as well as questions on the factors that they consider important in choosing a job. Some comparisons of the actual achievements of graduates with the expecta- tions and aspirations of students indicate where adjustments and changes should be made in secondary education to help match expectations and opportunities, and they suggest some educational policies for bringing about such changes. In addition, such comparisons provide a means of evaluating 53 the realism of present students and of the schools they are attending.5 The results of a follow-up study of this type have some policy implications for many areas of education, especially vocational guidance, vocational and rural educa- tion. At the same time the results of the analysis illus- trate the limitations of educational policy and the dependence of this aspect of education, the relation of school to work, upon economic and social factors. Few educational policies in this area can be effectively implemented without SUpport- ing economic and social policies. Therefore, formulation of educational policy should not be carried out independent of policy formation in other areas. While the context of this study, then, limits the specific recommendations that can flow from it, areas usually neglected by economists are covered by the study in analyzing the relation between educa— tion and employment from the educator's point of view. 5Lack of realism throughout the small countries of the West Indies, especially in education, is an obstacle to develOpment. "One pressing aim should be the introduction into our community of a great deal more reality about the position of small independent political units in the modern world. What, in socio-political and in economic terms, does it mean for a country with few mineral resources, and depen- dent on foreign markets, to be independent in the world? Under what circumstances can a country with a population of 2.0 or 1.5 (or 0.5 or 0.25) million make its way in the mod- ern world? Is it possible for the separate territories in the West Indies to 'go it alone'—-each and every one in its own way? These are the questions which youngsters must be encouraged to raise." John J. Figueroa, Society, Schools and Progress in the West Indies, p. 96. This lack of realism also appears in the educational planning that is done in the area. 54 Selecting Respondents and Collecting Data The data needed to answer the questions require two distinct groups of respondents: a group about to enter the labor force and a group of recent graduates. Those about to enter the labor force were chosen from the students in the last year of secondary school, since, of all secondary stu- dents, they are the most likely to have given some thought to future employment. The recent graduates were chosen from those who had finished the regular secondary school course at least three years before the study. This was done in order to include secondary graduates who had gone on to a Sixth Form and to allow time for establishment in the labor force. (The lack of school records made it necessary to exclude those who had been out of school for more than five years.) During the period from 1967 to 1969 there was great variation in class size and composition in the out district schools, so at least two graduating classes had to be included in the group of respondents to obtain an adequate representation of graduates from all district schools.6 Graduates who had been out of school three to five years, i.e. graduates of 1967, 1968, and 1969, were finally selected since a third year could be included with little extra effort. The small number of schools, their variation in size, management, and location 6Some of the out district schools were new and just producing their first graduates during these years. One school, for example, graduated seventeen boys and six girls in one year and five boys and two girls in the following year. Another school had no graduating class in 1968. 55 made it impossible to select a representative sample, so all secondary schools were included in the study. Tracing graduates to their place of current employment was done in such a way that it was possible to include the entire class with little more effort than the tracing of a sample would have required. Therefore, the final group of graduates selected for initial tracing included all graduates from all secondary schools in the country for the years 1967 to 1969. Information on the employment status of these grad- uates, while collected over a period of several months, referred to a period of one week, September 17 to 23, 1972. The principal economic activity of the graduates during that week was sought. The week selected was at the beginning of the academic year, so teachers and students were engaged in their usual occupation rather than in some part—time job. The first data required were lists of graduates from the schools for the period being studied. Not all schools maintained permanent records of their students, and not all of those that did kept them in such a way as to make it easy to compile a list of graduates for a given year. This was one factor that limited the years which could be studied. To compile a list of graduates from some of the larger and older schools for a given year would have entailed going through the entire file of permanent records to check each student record for year of graduation, if some other source of this information, such as a graduation program, a yearbook, or newspaper account of graduation had not been available. 56 Most of the schools could provide, from one or another source, lists of graduates for the years chosen, but three schools did not have any lists available. Names of their graduates were gathered from the records of external examination passes published in the Government Gazette; that list was supple- mented by students' recollection of their classmates' names. Information on the current status of graduates was obtained from school principals, teachers, and the graduates themselves. Those who provided the lists of graduates, school principals in most cases, gave information on some of the graduates, and they recommended other contacts, usually staff members of long standing. The dean of the largest Sixth Form provided information on a cross-section of grad- uates from all schools who had attended that institution. Both the Staff List from the Establishment Department, which contained the names of all civil servants, and school managers' lists of teachers provided additional information on graduates. They also provided a means of checking the accuracy of much of the data gathered elsewhere. These two categories, civil servants and teachers, accounted for 60 percent of the graduates working in the country. These initial contacts with principals and teachers provided information on a large number of graduates, especially on graduates from the smaller schools in out district towns. Graduates' home addresses, however, could not be determined from these sources, so once the place of employment of some graduates had been identified they were 57 contacted at work and asked to provide information about their classmates. In Belize City two institutions proved to be good starting places for establishing contacts and collecting data. They were the Teacher Training College, which enrolled graduates from several of the schools through- out the country, and one of the large primary schools, whose staff included graduates from several of the secondary schools. Graduates contacted varied considerably in their ability to provide information about their classmates. Some could identify only a few of those in their own year, while others could give information about large numbers of graduates from all years. In addition to the school principals and some teachers, about sixty graduates were contacted in the process of collecting this information. And much of the information obtained from these individuals was checked against the Staff List and school managers' lists. In the case of large employers such as the banks, one graduate working in such a place could verify the employment status of graduates from several schools reported to be working for that firm. The information gathered on some graduates could not be verified by direct contact or checked against some list. If at least three informants provided the same infor— mation without a conflicting report, the information was accepted as accurate. In the case of a conflicting report, further investigation was made by contacting purported employers or by making further checks with classmates. As a result, information was obtained on over 98 percent of the 58 graduates listed. The very small population of the country is a major factor in this high response rate. The most difficult segment of the population to trace was the group residing out of the country. In some cases graduates in this group had been only temporary residents of Belize while studying, either as foreign students from neighboring countries or as members of families who were not permanent residents of the country, e.g. families of volun- teer workers or foreign advisors. In other cases graduates are temporarily out of the country for further study, but still others have left the country permanently to live else- where. The most that can be determined about some graduates is that they were out of the country. In most cases, however, the country in which they are living can also be determined as well as something about their status either as a student or a non-student. Although the current residence and employment status of almost the entire group of graduates has been determined, sampling had to be used in collecting the employment his- tories because personal contact between the researcher or an assistant and the graduate was required to get this infor- mation. Graduates who were out of the country at the time of the study, or who were in the country but not in the labor force, the latter chiefly housewives, were not included in the pOpulation sampled because the focus of the study is on the employment situation among graduates within the country. A mailed questionnaire was ruled out as a means of obtaining 59 the information because the home addresses of graduates were not easily available and because previous attempts to use mailed questionnaires in the country have yielded extremely low response rates. After several personal interviews with graduates to test the questions, personal interviewing was also ruled out as a method of collecting the data. It was difficult to arrange a suitable time for the interviews and to find a place for an interview that would be both conven— ient and afford some privacy. In most cases neither the home nor the place of work was suitable for a personal interview, so a printed questionnaire was used to collect the information. This was delivered personally to the grad- uate by the researcher or an assistant. Collecting the questionnaires was done by return visit; if after three returns no reply was obtained, the case was usually dropped. The assistants, eight in all, were chosen from among the graduates themselves on the basis of their knowledge of the whereabouts of their classmates and their willingness to participate. They were asked to deliver the questionnaires to graduates from their own school, to explain the purpose of the study, and to collect the completed questionnaires. A sample of one in five, stratified by sex, was drawn from the working population of graduates from each school. By drawing the sample in stages from each school, propor— tional representation of all of the districts was obtained, and the questionnaires could be distributed as soon as the graduates from one school had been traced. In the out 60 district towns this approach made it possible to trace the graduates and collect the questionnaires during a single visit lasting about a week. During the same visit to an out district town a questionnaire was given to all those in the last year of the secondary schools of the town. This was to determine the attitudes and expectations of those who were about to enter the labor market. Since the questionnaire was given during regular school hours, all students were asked to respond. And since, as mentioned above, it was not possible to select a sample of schools for the study, all secondary schools were included. The questionnaire used is modeled after one used by Clignet and Foster in their study of the Ivory Coast and by others in similar studies.7 7Remi Clignet and Philip Foster, The Fortunate Few: A Study of Secondary Schools and Students in the Ivory Coast (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1966); and Mary Jean Bowman, C. Arnold Anderson, and Jerry Olson, Students, Teachers and Opportunity Perceptions in Kenya 1961—1968 (Washington: United States Office of Education Monograph, 1969). CHAPTER IV MIGRATION AND PRESENT EMPLOYMENT OF GRADUATES Over 1,200 recent graduates were traced for the study; this is equivalent to almost 1 percent of the total pOpula- tion of Belize.1 Since leaving school three to five years ago, many of these graduates have moved, some continue to study, others are working, still others could not be located, and a few have died. To describe all of this activity in any detail would be an endless job. The task is to find and to explain the patterns that emerge from this migration, study, and employment, and to relate these to the whole population. This chapter analyzes patterns of migration and employment that emerge when all of the graduates are studied at one point in time, the reference week of September 17 to 23, 1972. (The following chapter, using the employment histories of a sample of these graduates, analyzes data covering the entire period from graduation up to the time of the study.) While more a symptom than a cause of 1The population of Belize in 1972 was approximately 125,000, and 1,226 graduates were traced. However, not all of the graduates resided in the country, so the number traced is equivalent to, but does not make up, 1 percent of the population. 61 62 underdevelopment, migration is closely linked to two major problems facing the less developed countries, the emigration of trained manpower (the "brain drain") and rapid urbaniza- tion. The Committee on the International Migration of Talent concluded that emigration is more an effect than a cause of underdevelOpment, but that its current and potential effects are to be taken seriously.2 According to United States Justice Department figures cited by the committee, Belize is one of the sources of this migration to the United States. In 1965 twelve professionals from Belize went to the United States with immigrant visas, and in 1968 the number was twenty-one. These peOple were but a small part of the total immigration to the United States, but they are equiva- lent to 10 percent of the professionals in Belize as enumer- ated in the 1960 census.3 The second problem, rapid urban- ization, is not as great a problem in Belize as elsewhere, but the pull of the city still draws peOple from the rural areas. Rural residents move to the city while city residents emigrate 2The Committee on the International Migration of Talent, The International Migration of High-Level Manpower (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), p. 670. 3Ibid., pp. 488, 493, 498. These figures are much more alarming when nurses are not counted, for they make up a large part of the professional workers in Belize. Broken down by profession the figures are: Number enum- Number Year(s) of Profession erated 1960 emigrating emigration Physicians 17 4 1963 - 68 Medical Technician 9 4 1965 & 68 Engineers 6 7 1965 & 68 Nurses 301 18 1965 & 68 63 in sufficient numbers so that the growth rates of the two areas have been nearly the same over the past decade. As described in Chapter I, an important goal of the development process is full, productive, and freely chosen employment. An efficient distribution and utilization of human resources within the economy is a key factor in achieving this goal. Analysis of the present employment of graduates as made in this chapter will give some indications of what has to be done to improve this distribution and utilization so as to reach the goal. Migration is analyzed by comparing a graduate's place of schooling with current residence place. A graduate's current residence place is classified either as Belize City, out district, or foreign. For some purposes this latter has been further subdivided into United States, West Indies, and other. Place of schooling is used to define the origin of graduates. Family residence place would have been a better parameter to use because it would have allowed a distinction to be made between students from the towns and those from the villages, but this information is not available from the school records. Since the schools, with one exception,4 are located either in Belize City or in the principal town of each district, and since each school draws its students from 4The exception is Lynam College, a rural secondary school with an agricultural bias, which has since closed. It was the only boarding school in the country at the time of the study. 64 both the town and nearby villages, the six district divisions of the country are used as subdivisions for place of school- ing, but the five out districts are usually grouped together as one, except to distinguish movement from one district to another.5 A graduate's relation to the population of working age is described in several ways. Those residing out of the country are divided into students and non-students; those residing in the country are classified either as not working, as housewives, or as members of the working population. This latter group is further subdivided in three ways. First, it is divided by employment status: employer, own account worker, private sector employee, or government employee. The other two methods of subdividing the working population are by occupational group and by sector of economic activity. The subdivisions used for these follow the International Labor Organization's system referred to earlier.6 These will be described in more detail as they are used. In the analysis of migration and present employment patterns, three factors, length of time out of school, sex, place of schooling, are used to differentiate the graduates. The analysis begins with a discussion of the number of 5Residence place and role in the working pOpulation are the dependent variables; the values they take on have been described. Year of graduation, sex, and place of school- ing are the independent variables. These latter are but a few of the many that can be studied. 6Above, p. 27. 65 graduates traced; then emigration is taken up. The remainder of the chapter describes the population of graduates remain- ing in the country-~their migration and employment status, their occupational and sectoral distribution, and their relation to the total labor force. Graduates Traced As previously stated, the membership of the group being studied is made up of those who finished secondary school in Belize from 1967 to 1969. The distribution of students who finished school during those years is given in Table 8. Table 8.--Graduates listed by year of graduation, place of schooling, and sex. Year of Graduation Place of Schooling Sex 1967 1968 1969 Total Male 108 139 139 386 Belize City Female 160 156 152 468 Both 268 295 291 85 Male 57 77 82 216 Out Districts Female 43 63 78 184 Both 100 140 160 00 Male 165 216 221 602 Entire Country Female 203 219 230 652 Both 368 435 451 1254 Slightly more than one—half of all graduates were women, and 72 percent of the women came from Belize City 66 schools. For men this latter figure was 64 percent. The number of graduates per year increased 20 percent over those three years, and the distribution of graduates closely fol- lows the distribution of the total secondary school enrollment with graduates accounting for about 15 percent of each year's enrollment. This constant figure indicates that during those years there was little variation, either over the country or between the sexes, in dropout rates or in the prOportion of students in each class. Of the 1,254 graduates listed for the three years, 98 percent were traced to their current residence place. The others either were not traced (21) or have died (7). Emigration To give an overall View of the migration of grad- uates, Table 9 classifies all graduates traced according to their current residence place dividing them by sex and place of schooling. The table shows that over one-half of the graduates have moved away from their place of schooling, and that more women than men have remained at their place of schooling. Those who have migrated are divided into two groups, in-country movers and foreign movers. Those in the first group are important for the study of urbanization, and those in the second group for the study of the migration of talent. Discussion of the data in Table 9 will treat the two groups of migrants separately looking at differences by origin and sex within each group. Emigration will be treated 67 .uoflubmflo p50 Hmnuoc6 on Um>ozo .uowuuwwo #50 6566 GA mcfi>flqn .manflwmom muucm 026 Ammm.av mm mm «a he zuom laeov mm mm MA as mamemm sunnsoo Ammmv «m mm ma we 6H6: mnfiucm Aemmv mm Hm oHH Hm Ann 6.. nuom Amway mm mm oma ma nmv 6.. 6H6Emm boauumflo Amamv mm mm ooa em 3mm 6.. 6H6: #50 Ammmv me me o 6.. 6.. mm zuom Immvv 06 we 6 6.. 6.. am mamsmm sufio Anhmv we av m 6.. 6.. vm ma62 muwamm A u zv H6uoe smflmuom poauumflo hpfio DOHHumfio mpfio xom camfiuo p50 muflamm use mNHHmm mun6umfiz muc6nmflzlcoz .Ammm6ucwoummv 606Hm monmoflmmu #cmunno on6 .xow .nflmfiuo mg @6069» mpc6umHE 6:6 muc6umfiancozln.m mHQ6B 68 first; in-country migration will be taken up in the next section where it is analyzed in conjunction with the employ- ment status of graduates. The proportion moving out of the country is slightly higher for women than for men; a larger proportion of city graduates than out district graduates have moved out of the country--42 percent as compared with 31 percent. Migrants from the out districts are divided about equally between in-country and foreign migrants. The ratio of in-country to foreign migrants among city graduates is one to seven. Before attempting to explain this emigration, some- thing must be said about the origin and destination of the emigrants, their year of graduation, and the present employ- ment status of those out of the country. Study abroad is one of the purposes of emigration, but detailed information for the reference week on the status of those out of the country could not be obtained from the informants. Some attempt, however, was made to determine the number who are away studying. If a graduate was reported as studying at a specific school by three different sources without conflict- ing reports, this information was accepted. But if there were conflicting reports, or if no specific school was given, the subject was not classified as a student. A list of Belizean students attending the University of the West Indies was supplied by the University's Extra-Mural Department in Belize, so this group of students could be determined 69 independently of other reports. Other attempts to find inde- pendent checks failed.7 Since the number of conflicting reports on student status was small, the result of this approach has been to understate slightly the number of stu- dents among the graduates out of the country. It has no" effect on the determination of the total volume of emigra- tion. To describe the distribution of students and non- students residing out of the country two tables have been constructed, and some of the highlights of each table will be mentioned before summarizing the emigration trends. The 473 graduates out of the country represent 39 percent of all graduates traced; students account for 11 percent and non-students for the other 28 percent. Taking the group of graduates out of the country as a whole, stu- dents make up 29 percent. Graduates out of the country from Belize City make up almost three-fourths of the total; 70 percent of the men and 80 percent of the women abroad are from Belize City (Table 10). Of those out of the country, 73 percent are in the United States, and another 11 percent are in the West Indies. The proportion of men graduates studying out of the country is relatively constant; the proportion of women shows an increase with time. The overall 7The United States' Consul provided a list of stu— dent visas which had been issued over the past two years. There was, however, no way of telling whether or not the visas had been used. 70 666 ~66 666 mm mm 666 6606 666 m6 666 06 66 666 666666 66606 «mm op ~66 mm pm ~66 6662 666 .mm 66m mw MM 666 6606 mom 66 666 mm m 666 666666 66666661602 6N6 66 66 66 A 606 6662 mmw 66 mm mm mm b6 6606 me 66 66 6 6 66 666666 6666666 mm 66 66 66 om 66 6662 66606 66666666 m66o 6666c 66666H 666666 666 666666 66o 666666 6662 666666 mafiaoonom mo 606Hm monmpflmmm 6:66660 .mnaaoonom mo mo6Hm 6:6 .monmpflmmn 6:66660 .xmm .666666 mg mupcsoo 636 60 660 66666U660|I.oa 6696B 71 proportion of men studying is about two and one-half times that of women (Table 11). Table ll.--Graduates out of the country by status, sex, and year of graduation (percentages). Year of Graduation Sex Status 1967 1968 1969 All Years Student 16 16 17 16 Males Non-Student ii 20 ll 22 Total 47 36 34 38 Student 8 6 5 7 Females Non-Student 31 32 38 33 Total 5 38 33 40 The overall pattern of emigration can be briefly described as one in which (1) emigration increases with time out of school; (2) the flow of graduates out of the country is heaviest among women and city graduates, and (3) the emigration is largely directed to the United States. Two components of the flow can be distinguished. The first is that of graduates who leave the country to study; propor— tionally this component is relatively constant over time for men, and it increases for women as length of time out of school increases. (It is about two and one-half times higher among men than among women.) The second component is the flow of graduates who leave the country and are not studying. 72 This component is greater for women than for men, and it increases noticeably with increased time out of school. Just how many of those studying out of the country will return remains to be seen. Past experience shows that many of those studying in the West Indies return, but the return rate for those studying in the United States is much lower. There is also a stream of migration back into the country from among the non-students. However, in informal discussions with several of the recent graduates contacted for the study they told of plans to leave the country, so the return of non—students will probably be balanced off by icontinued emigration. Allowing for the return of three- fourths of the students and for a balance between the return of non-students and continued emigration, the net out migra- tion of secondary school graduates from Belize will be about 30 percent. Employment Status and Internal Migration While those residing out of the country were divided into students and non-students, Table 12 gives a more detailed classification of the employment status of those residing in the country. The relation between employment status and migration will be analyzed in this section to determine the extent to which the distribution of employment opportunities affects the migration of graduates. First, however, the status of two groups not in the working 73 population, the unemployed and housewives, is examined, and then the types of employment held by graduates are described. Table 12.--Employment status of graduates residing in the country by sex. Employment Status Men Women Both Not workinga l7 8 25 Housewivesa O 47 47 Employers 5 0 5 Own account workers 14 2 16 Private sector employees 148 108 256 Government employees: Civil servants (124) (106) (230) Primary teachers (55)b (119)c (174) Total 179 225 404 Total working population (346) (345) (691) Total 363 390 753 aNot included in the working population. bIncludes ton in training. CIncludes twenty-one in training. The Unemployed As already stated, the problem of youth employment in the less developed countries is not solely one of unem- ployment. Nonetheless, unemployment is an important aspect of the employment situation. At this point in the study, before beginning the analysis of graduates' employment, 74 something will be said about general youth unemployment in Belize. Those listed in Table 12 as not working cannot be labeled as unemployed in the strict sense, since it was not determined whether or not they were actively seeking work, and this is usually considered one of the criteria for clas- sifying a person as unemployed.8 The figures, then, give no measure of unemployment, but they do help set an upper limit to the unemployment level for people in this group. An upper limit to the unemployment rate can be calculated by adding those not accounted for to those not working. This gives an upper limit to unemployment of 7.4 percent for men and 5.7 percent for women in the group. By comparison with the unemployment rates among educated youth found elsewhere, these upper limits are low for a less developed country. Three points, however, should be noted about these limits before they are used to evaluate the youth employ- ment situation in Belize. First, emigration has been a vent for the pressure of numbers which might otherwise result in higher unemployment. If the number of graduates out of the country and not studying were added to the number of those presently working in the country, the working population of men would increase 37 percent, and the working population of women would increase 61 percent. Given the difficulty recent 8The concept of "unemployment" is particularly dif- ficult to define and measure. See International Labor Office, Concepts of Labor Force Underutilisation. 9Turnham, The Employment Problem, p. 47. 75 graduates have encountered in finding work and the employment prospects in those areas where graduates presently find work, it is highly unlikely that the labor force could absorb these graduates without, at least, displacing present workers, e.g. those young primary teachers who have less education. Second, the employment rate among the less well educated may be just as high, or even higher, than among the secondary school graduates. The figures arrived at above are for educated youth. Although no statistics are available from Belize for comparing emigration rates with level of educa- tion attained, evidence from other countries suggests that secondary education is a selective mechanism for migration.l0 So, at the place of schooling, secondary education provides a means of escape from poor employment prospects, while those with less education are less likely to migrate.11 Third, the number of unemployed, this includes those seeking work for the first time, among the more recent graduates is probably higher than among those who have been out of school for some time. The rates arrived at above are for youths who have been out of school for at least three years, so they do not include the most recent graduates who spend considerable time in looking and waiting for their first job. These three factors (high emigration, level of 0Harley Browning, "Migrant Selectivity and the Growth of Large Cities in Developing Societies," p. 301. 11M. G. Smith, "Education and Occupational Choice in Rural Jamaica," p. 352. 76 education, and length of time out of school) make the upper limits put on unemployment among recent graduates unreliable as a basis for estimates of unemployment among non-graduates and among more recent graduates in Belize. Housewives While the unemployed, that is, those not presently working but seeking work, are included in the labor force, those not seeking work are excluded from it. Housewives, then, are customarily excluded from any enumeration of the working population. They account for 12 percent of the women graduates residing in the country, but it should be noted that the number of women graduates who are married is con- siderably greater. And the number of housewives may be expected to increase with time, since the proportion of housewives in the population traced already shows an increase with time out of school, and since overall labor force par— ticipation rates for women in Belize decline after the age of twenty-four. The participation rate for those with post- primary education, however, is considerably higher than the rate for those with less education, so the decline may not be appreciable. The Working Population Except for those not working and housewives who together make up 10 percent of the graduates in the country, the other graduates in the country are in the working 77 population. Table 12 further classifies those participating in the labor force either as employers, own account workers, government employees, or private sector employees. The first two groups are small and can’be briefly described by listing their members. Most of the graduates, however, find employ- ment in the government or private sector, so the geographi- cal distribution of opportunities for employment in these sectors influences migration. The relation between employ- ment and migration will be analyzed after these types of employment are described. The employers account for less than 2 percent of the working population of men; they are men who have taken over the management of a family business or who have started small businesses on their own. The own account workers, mostly men, include fishermen, taxi drivers, independent salesmen, and seamstresses, but no farmers. This is in contrast with the labor force as a whole where, according to the 1960 census, own account workers made up one—third of the total labor force and are largely engaged in agricul- ture. There has been little migration among employers and own account workers since establishment in these positions is largely dependent upon family ties. Census figures for 1960 show that government and private sector employees make up 64 percent of the total labor force; the rest are own account workers largely in agriculture. However, only 2 percent of the working population of graduates are own account workers, and none 78 are in agriculture. According to the 1960 census, government employees accounted for 23 percent of the men employed and 25 percent of the women, but among the recent graduates traced these figures are 55 percent and 70 percent, respec— tively. Such figures reflect the differences between the distribution of graduates' employment and that of the entire working pOpulation, not changes in the structure of the working population. The graduates working for the government can be fur- ther divided into primary school teachers and civil servants. Although primary teachers are hired by the school managers, their salary is paid by government and their qualifications are assessed by the government, so they are considered govern- ment employees but not civil servants.12 Included in the group of teachers are thirty-one teachers attending the Belize Teachers' College. They have not been classified as students, since they still draw their salary from the govern- ment while attending the two year course, and they are expected to return to teaching after completing the course. Civil servants account for 38 percent of the men employed and for 33 percent of the women employed; private employment absorbs 45 percent of the men and 30 percent of the women. 12Government employees are those whose salary is paid by the government. This includes primary school teach- ers, except those in private primary schools; and it excludes secondary school teachers, except those in the government- run Belize Technical College. Civil servants are those government employees whose position is included in the Staff List. 79 Classification of graduates by employment status gives a general View of the type of work graduates are engaged in; a more detailed discussion of their work will require further classification by occupation and by sector of economic activity. However, employment status also pro— vides a means of analyzing the relation between employment and internal migration. Internal Migration Returning to Table 9 to study internal migration, the pattern typical of many less developed countries appears. Migration from the city to rural areas is slight; movement in the other direction is much heavier. Graduates remaining in the country account for 61 percent of those traced; 47 percent of these have not migrated while the other 14 per- cent have moved. Overall, there are small differences in migration rates between the sexes, but when divided by place of schooling, there are considerable differences. Of grad- uates still in the country who attended school in the out districts, about one-half have moved with a larger propor- tion of men than women moving. However, only two-thirds of this movement has been to the city, and there is considerable inter-district migration as well. The Working POpulation and Internal Migration The magnitude and direction of internal migration depends upon two factors: (1) the location of school places, 80 and (2) the location of employment opportunities. When the two are not distributed in the same way, net movement will be to the areas with more employment opportunities than school places. The location of secondary school places has already been described: 67 percent are in Belize City. The location of employment opportunities varies with the type of employment. Internal migration can be analyzed by looking at the distribution of migrants over types of employment, first as a percentage of those with the same employment status, and then as a percentage of all movers. This is set out in Table 13. Table 13.--In-country migration of employees by sex. In-Country Migrants As a percent of the As a percent Employment employment group of all migrants Group Men Women Men Women Teachers 18 32 10 46 Civil Servants 35 38 52 44 Private Employees 22 8 38 10 All Employees 27 22 100 100 (N = ) (84) (70) The most mobile workers are the men civil servants; 35 percent work away from their place of schooling, and they 81 account for 52 percent of the male movers in the country. Most of this movement has been either to Belize City or to the new capital town of BelmOpan. The movement of women civil servants, which accounts for 44 percent of the women migrants, is similar to that of the men; it is largely to Belize City and Belmopan. Among women the primary school teachers are the most mobile; 32 percent work away from their place of schooling, and they account for 46 percent of all women migrants in the country. About one-half of this movement has been to Belize City, and the other half is about equally divided into movement between out districts and movement out of Belize City. This latter may be explained in part by the number of girls not from Belize City who attended school there and who are now teaching in their home district. Male teachers constitute the smallest and least mobile group; most of their movement has been out of Belize City. This movement of teachers reflects a policy of some school managers to assign beginning men teachers to village schools. The least mobile of the women are private employees; of these only 8 percent work away from their place of school- ing. Most of the movement of men employed in the private sector has been to Belize City. Except for teaching, then, most employment opportunities for young graduates are in Belize City, although the development of the new capital 82 has decentralized government somewhat.l3 Still 75 percent of the men and 72 percent of the women employees not teach- ing have found employment in Belize City, whereas 67 percent of the total population lives in the out districts. So employment opportunities for young graduates, like secondary school places, are not distributed proportionally between the rural and urban pOpulations. Occupational and Sectoral Distribution Two additional ways of analyzing the working popula- tion remain to be considered-~by occupational groups and by sector of economic activity. Both types of classification are helpful in analyzing the relation between secondary edu- cation and employment goals. Classification of workers into occupational groups divides them by the types of skills they use in the labor force. Some of the skills used in employ— ment are developed through secondary education. The skills developed depend upon the school, and the use made of them is determined by labor market factors such as job openings, wages, etc. Classification of workers according to sectors of economic activity shows how they are allocated among agriculture, services, construction, etc. Workers are allocated to different sectors of economic activity through 13As the high enrollment ratio indicates, primary schools are spread throughout the contry. And since the pupil to teacher ratios are similar throughout the country, the distribution of teachers follows that of the total population. 83 the labor market, and the skill level within a sector has an effect on the productivity of that sector. Table 14 indicates the skills used by graduates and their allocation among the various sectors of economic activity. In what follows the distribution of graduates over occupational groups and sectors of economic activity will be examined separately for men and women. Men: Occupations l. The largest occupational grouping of men is the group consisting of administrative, professional, and tech- nical workers, hereafter abbreviated as APT. They possess a variety of skills as the following data indicate: Professional and Managerial Workers l7 Draftsmen and Survey Technicians 18 Technical Workers 28 Primary Teachers14 56 Secondary Teachers 20 The managerial workers are engaged in commerce for the most part, usually in a family business; others have supervisory jobs in the service sector or in construction work. Drafts- men and survey technicians are government employees in the Lands and Public Works Departments. The other technical workers include five farm demonstrators, sixteen laboratory technicians, three communications technicians, and four meteorological officers. Except for the managerial workers 14See note 12. 84 .065660669 066 .668666660 .66660666 u 906 n .6666603 660666069 066 .H6c06666606m .6>w6666666680¢ n 8&66 >66>660< 60 606006 66.6 MIN .6! 6.6 6. B. 6.. 6866 q 6 o o o o o 6606>666 m o o o o m o 6906 o o o o o o o 60666660666666 0 o o o o o o 666666606606 m o o m o o o 66666 066 66 6 mm m m 6 66066660 mma ~06 o o o a o 6966 66603 .66 .666 66.6.. .66 6.6. m. .66 6.6.. 6396 mm ma m o o a o 6606>66 am 0 H o 6 NH 6 0606 ..ma 6 m H o o m 60666660m6.66 ma 0 o o o 0 m6 666666606666 mm o 0 mm o o o 66666 maa mm 0 m6 m n m 66066660 mma 606 m 06 m m 66 6966 662 .6 H6605 6606> 66066606: 60668 66666666: 666666 6666660 @6060 I666 168800 066 I800 066 6066 [0665062 16666 6660666m600 660660669 105666600 .xmm 066 .m6666606 4 60 606066 .05060 6660666m6000 m6 QOH66HS.om m666603 666 06 666660660I|.¢H 6666B 85 and college teachers, almost all workers in this group are government employees. 2. Clerical workers make up the second largest group, and they are more homogeneous in their skills than the preceding group. Almost one-half of them are in the service sector, and fifty of the fifty-five in this sector are government clerks. Of clerical workers in commerce, ninetten are bank clerks, and twenty-three are clerical workers in the large commercial trading companies of the country. The remaining clerical workers are scattered among the other sectors where their duties include timekeeping, bookkeeping, and other types of record keeping, etc. 3. Sales workers in commerce include ten insurance salesmen, nine sales agents for wholesalers and customs agents, and four store salesmen. 4. The agricultural group includes five fishermen and eight family farm workers. No one in this group is an independent farmer. 5. Transport workers include eight bus, truck, or taxi drivers, mostly in the transport sector, and five heavy equipment operators in agriculture. 6. The laborers, craftsmen, and tradesmen exercise a diverse array of skills. The group includes two tailors and a jeweler, all of whom work in family businesses, seven electricians employed by the Electricity Board, and two each of garment factor workers, machinists, mechanics, printers and carpenters, and one welder. 86 7. Service workers include twelve policemen, four entertainers and radio announcers, three air traffic con- trollers, and two social development workers. While there is a great variety in the skills exer- cised by all of these men, there is a high concentration in a few areas such as clerical work and teaching. Some skills are also noticeably absent or under-represented, especially in occupations connected with agriculture and construction. The question of whether the distribution of skills reflects the interests and training of the workers or the demands of the labor market will be taken up later. Men: Sectors Looking at the men in the working population from the sectoral point of view, slightly over one-half are in the service sector, another 22 percent are in commerce, and agriculture accounts for 10 percent. The remaining 16 per— cent are distributed among the other sectors, with the smallest number in the construction and utilities sector. Women: Occupations While the number of women graduates in the working pOpulation is only slightly less than the number of men, the number of different occupations held by the women is considerably less. And so the variety of skills which they use is also less. 87 l. The APT group is smaller for females, and, with only two exceptions, they are all either in health service or in education: Managerial Workers 2 Medical Technicians 3 Nurses 19 Primary Teachers15 121 Secondary Teachers 17 2. Female clerical workers form a slightly smaller, but more homogeneous group than the APT group, and the two account for 96 percent of all female graduates in the work- ing population. The clerical workers can be divided into two groups, 108 secretaries and 52 in other clerical occu- pations. Of the secretaries, 39 percent are in the commer— cial sector and 42 percent are in the service sector. Most of the other clerical workers are also in the commercial sector, especially banking, and, of the clerical workers in the service sector, all but three are government workers. 3-7. The only occupations outside of the APT and clerical groups held by women are held by five sales women in the commercial sector, two social development workers, two religious workers, two seamstresses, and a cook. Women: Sectors The sectoral distribution of female graduates is even more concentrated than that of male graduates. Two 5See note 12. 88 sectors, services and commerce, account for 91 percent of all female employment, with 73 percent in services alone. The other four sectors account for less than 3 percent each. The men and women studied here have received the same kind of education, but the men are using a much greater variety of skills. Such differences between the sexes in skill use reflect the demands of the labor market more than the interests and training of the workers. The allocation of graduates among the sectors of economic activity is largely confined to commerce and services. However, further analysis of the occupational and sectoral distribution of graduates must take into account the occupational and sec- toral distribution of the entire labor force. And this is the tOpic of the next section. Graduate Labor Force and Total Labor Force The 1970 census data will be of great use for further analysis of the data collected in this study, but it is not yet available, so the 1960 census data will be used to make some comparisons. The advantage of census data over data from manpower surveys, etc. is comprehensiveness. More recent data from the manpower surveys conducted in Belize by the International Labor Organization in the mid-sixties are available, but they only give a sectoral division of employment for men and women. Own account workers are excluded, and no data on occupation, education, or age were 89 collected in the surveys. Whereas census data cover all of these aSpects. What the surveys do indicate, however, are changes in the sectoral distribution of the labor force; such changes, together with a growing pOpulation, caution against drawing conclusions from comparisons of the 1960 pOpulation and the 1972 survey data collected here. None- theless, comparisons are of some help in understanding deficiencies in the present deployment of graduates within the labor force, and they raise questions which can be answered when the 1970 data become available. To make these initial comparisons between the labor force as it was in 1960 and the group of recent graduates, two groups have been selected from the labor force: (1) those twenty to twenty-four years old, and (2) those with post- primary education. (No further division for the sectoral and occupational classification, e.g. by age ang_education, is available.) These two groups have been chosen because they are similar to the graduates in different respects, i.e. either in age or in level of education. The comparisons Show differences between (1) the deployment of recent grad- uates over sectors and occupations and that of workers who were of the same age in 1960 and (2) the deployment of recent graduates and that of workers who had a similar or higher level of education in 1960. To make these initial comparisons between the grad- uates and the other two groups, four tables have been 90 constructed. These tables, contained in the Appendix, sep— arate workers by sex and present data on occupational and sectoral divisions. In making the comparisons between the sets of data, an index of difference, abbreviated ID, will be used to facilitate the discussion. When used to compare the percentage distributions of two populations which are divided into the same categories, an ID gives the proportion of one population that would have to be shifted to make the two distributions coincide.l6 The ID's are given in Table 15. Table lS.—-Indices of difference between graduates and comparable groups within the labor force. Group of the Same Sex Within the Labor Force Those 20 to Those with Post- 24 Years Old Primary Education I. Index of Sectoral Difference Men Graduates 52 19 Women Graduates 9 6 II. Index of Occupational Difference Men Graduates 64 32 Women Graduates 48 21 Source: Appendix. 16When the percentages of the two populations in each category are paired and their differences taken, the index of difference is equal to one-half of the sum of the absolute values of the differences. 91 Sectoral Comparisons As Table 15 indicates, the indices of sectoral dif- ference are considerably higher for men than for women, and the differences based on age group comparisons are greater than those based on level of education comparisons. A closer examination of the tables in the Appendix shows that the difference between men graduates and twenty to twenty— four year old men is due to the small number of graduates in agriculture and the large number of graduates in commerce and the services. When the differences between men graduates and those with post—primary education are examined, it is agriculture and the services again that account for the differences. Fewer graduates are in agriculture and more in the service sector. The differences between groups of women are more uniformly distributed; only manufacturing and the service sectors differ by more than 5 percent in the age comparison with graduates predominating in the service sector only. And in the education comparison the differ- are very small and spread'over all of the sectors. Occupational Comparisons The high indices of occupational difference among men are due to the large proportion of graduates in the APT and clerical occupational groups, and to their relative absence in agricultural occupations, and, to a lesser extent, to their absence from the labor and craft group. Differences between men graduates and the group of men with 92 post-primary education follow the same pattern. Women gradutaes in the APT group predominate in the age comparison, but not in the level of education comparison. Differences in this latter are due largely to the predominance of women graduates in the clerical occupations and to their absence from sales occupations. Another major difference in the female age comparison is in the service occupation group where graduates are under-represented. The ID's for sectoral comparisons are higher on all accounts than those for occupational comparisons. This is to be expected since there have been considerable changes in the sectoral composition of the labor force since 1960. There are, however, similar patterns within the two sets of comparisons: ID's for men are higher than those for women, and ID's based on education are lower than those based on age. The first is explained in part because the structure of the male labor force has changed more than that of the female labor force, and the second because the overall pattern of youth employment in 1960 is considerably different from that found among the graduates. All of this gives a clear indication that recent graduates would not fit into the labor force as it was structured in 1960 without, at least, taking into account 93 the interaction between age and level of education}.7 How- ever, the deficiencies of the 1960 census data, both its age and the absence of an education by age classification for occupational and sectoral divisions, make more detailed analyses of the comparisons of little use. Conclusion To evaluate the youth employment situation in Belize in relation to secondary education, this chapter has analyzed the migration and employment of a large group of recent secondary school graduates. High emigration rates play an important part in shaping the situation, and they will probably continue to do so in the future. This emigra- tion can be described as a middle-level brain drain. Like the migration of the highly skilled, it is probably as much a reflection of the poor employment prospects in Belize as it is of the attractiveness of life outside of the country. The effective demand for young secondary school graduates in the labor force is limited to a few occupations and sectors, and much of this employment is found in Belize City. This situation is not conducive to the development of a country which places its hOpes for deveIOpment in agricul— ture, for the agricultural sector does not employ graduates in any numbers. Whether or not the schools can supply 17The absence of such an interaction cannot be assumed in all cases. For example, older university graduates are concentrated mostly in the civil service, but younger ones are in secondary school teaching as well. 94 workers for the agricultural labor force is another question. The answer may lie more with the forces which shape the labor market than with the schools. The next chapter investi- gates the employment experience of recent graduates in order to determine some of the factors that influence a graduate's choice of employment and attitudes toward work. The final chapter will come back to the question of employment in agriculture. CHAPTER V THE EMPLOYMENT AND EDUCATION OF RECENT GRADUATES The present status of recent graduates as presented in Chapter IV gives a View taken at one point in time of the employment situation of the group of graduates traced. Inclusion of graduates from a three year period gives some indication of how this picture has changed over time at least in terms of emigration. A retrospective view is needed to determine what happened to the graduates between leaving school and the present. To obtain this View, employ—' ment histories were collected from a sample of recent grad- uates working in Belize. Since the collection of these histories involved direct contact with a group of graduates, it was also possible to obtain information on their attitudes toward their present work and their expectations for future employment. The selection of the group and the method of collecting the data is described in Chapter III. This chap- ter analyzes the data collected. The first section is a description of the sample; the second section follows the employment histories of the graduates from the time of leav- ing school up to the time of obtaining their first job. Emphasis is placed on this period at the beginning of employ- ment since the study is especially concerned with the 95 96 articulation of secondary education and employment. A third section describes graduates' employment experience from the time of obtaining their first job up to the present. A fourth section describes their present job, and two final sections describe graduates' views on future employment and their future education. The Sample As explained in Chapter III, the sample of graduates questioned about employment was drawn from those traced who were living and working in the country during the reference week of the study. To select the sample the graduates from a school were first traced, then, once those in the working pOpulation had been determined, a sample of one in five was drawn from both men and women. Stratifying the sample by sex was done to insure adequate representation of the sexes. Drawing the sample for each school had the effect of strati- fying the sample by place of school as well, and it also made it possible to begin distributing the questionnaires as soon as the graduates from that school had been traced. Drawing a sample of one in five graduates from the small schools in the out districts yielded, in some cases, a sam- ple slightly higher than 20 percent. This was due to rounding. For example, if a school had thirteen graduates of one sex, a sample of three was taken; this is 23 percent of the group. The accumulation of these excesses made the sample from the out district schools slightly larger than 97 20 percent. The response rate to the questionnaire was also high; only one man and three women failed to answer the questionnaire, and another seven women selected for the sample were not contacted by the assistants. WOmen in Belize City were the last ones to be traced, and assistants did not have sufficient time to distribute and collect the questionnaires from all of those in the sample population for this group. The size and representativeness of the sample by sex and school place is described in Table 16. Table 16.--Graduates questioned as a percent of the total working pOpulation traced by sex and place of schooling. Place of Schooling Entire Sex Belize City Out Districts Country Men 21 (45)a 21 (28) 21 (73) Women 17 (38) 18 (21) 18 (59) Both Sexes 19 (83) 19 (49) 19 (132) aNumber of graduates in each group. The sample was over drawn from men in Belize City. This was the first group to be traced and the sample from this group was selected before final verification of resi- dence place and employment status had been made, so grad- uates whose status was doubtful were included in the pop- ulation to be sampled. Twenty—three graduates who were first 98 reported as working in the country, or whose residence place and status were doubtful, later proved to have left the country. Of these only two had been drawn for the sample, so the verification reduced the total population, but it did not reduce the sample size prOportionately. A high response rate and excesses due to rounding explain the sample size for out district men. A similar result would have been obtained for the out district women if all had been contacted and had responded. The sample provides an adequate repre- sentation of the graduates by year of graduation: the per- centages of each year in the sample are twenty, seventeen, and seventeen for 1967, 1968, and 1969, respectively. The sample is also representative of the city and out district residents, as distinct from those who attended school in those places. While there has been some migration between these two areas, as Table 9 indicates, migration among the sample members has not been as marked.1 To summarize, the sample, stratified by sex and place of schooling, provides an adequate representation of men and women graduates from both city and out district 1Seven of those questioned (five men and two women) moved from the city to the out districts, and another seven (four men and three women) moved from the out districts to the city. Considering the difference in the sizes of the groups, one in seven (14 percent) of the out district grad- uates questioned moved to the city and only one in twelve (8 percent) of the city graduates queStioned have moved to the out districts. This compares with the figures for the in country migration of all graduates in the working popu- lation which are 30 percent to the city and 10 percent to the out districts. 99 schools. In addition, it provides an adequate representation of graduates from each year. Transition from School to First Job Since the remaining sections of this chapter analyze data derived from the employment questionnaires, a brief description of the questionnaire will be presented before describing the transition from school to first job. The first part of the questionnaire determined some background information on the respondents--their age, birth place, marital status, etc. Next they were asked to describe what they had done since finishing secondary school--the schools they had attended and the jobs they had held, giving dates and places for all. A third part asked specifically about further education in the form of extension, correspondence, and summer courses. The fourth part centered on respon— dents' present jobs, and the fifth on their first job. Finally, a sixth part asked about some of their attitudes toward future employment. The transition from school to work is an important aspect of the youth employment situation. When the transi- tion takes a long time, unemployment increases as more stu- dents finish school and start looking for work before the previous group of graduates have found employment. An earlier study in India, for example, found that the majority of the unemployed youths with education were looking for their first job, and that on the average a secondary school 100 graduate spent at least six months looking for work.2 When the outcome of the transition from school to work is a failure to achieve previous expectations, the result is frustration and discontent. And when the job attained does not utilize many of the skills or much of the training received in school, the result is a waste of training. To discuss this transition from school to work, as well as later job changes, it is necessary to keep in mind the distinction between the labor market and the labor force. The labor market is the collection of processes and insti- tutions relating to the purchase and sale of labor services. It includes such things as employment services, hiring practices, wage scales, etc. The labor force refers to the workers, to the group of people engaged in supplying labor services. The two are clearly not the same. One of the basic problems of secondary education in Belize, as in many other countries, is the school's failure to prepare stu- dents for participation in the labor market while preparing them for membership in the labor force. The lack of guid- ance programs and guidance counselors, or careers masters, is evidence of this failure to prepare students for the labor market. There are, however, some notable exceptions in which teachers have made personal efforts to provide 2Directorate General of Employment and Training, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Employment of Matricu— lates: A Case Study (New Delhi: Government of India, 1963), p. 27. 101 guidance for their students, and more recently some schools have begun holding career days for their students. Starting Work Graduates' experience in starting work is studied here to assess the performance of the schools in preparing students for participation in the labor market. Respondents were asked to recall when they began preparing to partici- pate in the labor market and to identify those who were most helpful in this preparation. Then they were asked to recall their original job preferences and to describe their first job. (It is not possible to determine how time and subse— quent work experience have modified students' recollections of their original preferences.) The assumptions underly— ing these questions are as follows: If schools are prepar- ing students for participation in the labor market, students will have begun thinking about the kind of work they want to do before leaving school, and school personnel will have had some impact on their job decisions. If vocational guidance is realistic, it will help a student choose the kind of job he can get, and if it is effective it will help him get the kind of job he chose. The respondents were first asked to indicate when they began thinking about the kind of work they wanted to do, whether it was before leaving school, at the time of leaving school, or after leaving school. Only 54 percent of those questioned started thinking about work before 102 leaving school. The differences in responses are greater between the sexes than when the group is divided according to place of schooling. Women, especially those in the city, are more likely to have thought about a job before leaving school, and men, especially those in the out districts, are more likely to have put it off until after leaving school. Just the opposite might have been expected since a greater variety of jobs are open to men than women. Since even a minimal amount of vocational guidance would encourage a student to start thinking about his or her future work, the responses indicate that the schools did not prepare many students to participate in the labor market; this is especially true for men in both city and out district schools. An indication of the sources of advice students use in deciding what kind of work they want to do comes from their responses to the next question: "When you were deciding what work you wanted to do, who helped you most in making up your mind?" The responses show little differ- ence by sex or school place. However, they indicate that teachers play a small role in this decision, and that fam— ily members are much more important. The responses given to these two questions give no evidence that the schools have prepared students, especially the men, for participation in the labor market. 103 First Job Wanted When asked to recall the kind of work they first wanted to do, many of those questioned did not respond; some said that they had had no preference, and others were vague in their responses. Table 17 describes the responses. Altogether vague or missing responses accounted for 28 percent of the total; a larger proportion of men than women, and a larger proportion of city than out district grad- uates, gave this type of response. The responses show rather modest expectations when the numbers wanting either further study or professional occupations are considered. It should be recalled, however, that these responses come from the group of graduates still residing and working in the country three to five years after finishing secondary school. Those out of the country, students as well as non-students, may have had greater expectations. Of those wanting further study, none went on to a Sixth Form, but ten wanting other kinds of jobs did go on to a Sixth Form. The variety of jobs wanted by men is slightly greater than those wanted by women; this reflects the actual structure of opportuni- ties. Among those wanting to be teachers, city men have the lowest representations, only two out of forty-five wanted teaching positions, while about one in four of the other groups wanted to teach. The men from the city are more likely to have wanted to be technical workers, trades- men, or clerical workers. Technical work, especially 104 Table l7.--Jobs wanted and jobs obtained by graduates. Job Obtained Tech- Sales and Teach- Total nical Clerical ing Other (Wanted) Job Wanted (1) (2) (3) (4) Men: Further Study and Professional 2 2 5 l 10 Technical _6_a 7 2 1 16 Sales & Clerical 1 6 5 l 13 Teaching 0 1 Z l 9 Agricultural l O l O 2 Vague, not Stated l 15 4 3 23 Total Obtained ll 31 24 7 73 Women: Further Study and Professional 0 l l O 2 Technical 9 11 2 0 l3 Sales & Clerical 0 13 2 O 15 Teaching 0 5 13 O 15 Vague, not Stated l 8 5 0 14 Total Obtained l 38 20 0 59 aUnderlined entries are those who obtained the type of job wanted. 105 nursing, also attracted a large proportion of women from the city. First Job Obtained About one-half of each of the groups of graduates questioned obtained a single type of job; for urban grad— uates of both sexes, it was clerical work; and for out district graduates, it was teaching. These two categories account for almost all of the women in the sample and for more than 80 percent of the out district men. Only the men in the city show much dispersion in the type of jobs obtained; teachers and clerical workers account for 71 per— cent, technical workers for 18 percent, and the remainder are in miscellaneous jobs. A comparison of job wanted and job obtained is given by sex in Table 17. The underlined entries are the numbers who obtained the kind of job they wanted. Of the men who expressed a definite preference for a specific job after leaving school, 38 percent obtained the type of job wanted; the figure for women was 51 percent. In the dis- cussion that follows, each part of the table will be exam- ined separately by looking at the original desire of those who obtained a specific type of job, i.e. column by column. Mpp.—-l. Of the eleven men in technical jobs, six wanted that kind of work; two had wanted either further study or professional jobs, and the others, three in all, came from the reamining categories except teaching. No one 106 who wanted teaching took up a technical job. 2. Those whose first job was clerical made up 42 percent of the male sample. Six of them originally wanted that kind of work, but seven had wanted some kind of technical work. The largest group of clerical workers, fifteen in all, came from those who had only vague notions of the kind of work they wanted after leaving school, so clerical work provided employment for over one-half of those who had no definite notion of what they wanted to do. 3. Theinumber in the sample who began as teachers is somewhat less than the number who began as clerical workers, and only seven of the twenty—four who began as teachers originally wanted to teach. Five of the others wanted clerical positions, four were vague, two wanted technical jobs, and five wanted further study or a professional job. The latter five made up one-half of those who wanted either further study or professional work. 4. The column titled "other" lists the occupation of those whose first job did not fall into the categories given; they include tradesmen and laborers. Overall, the lack of correspondence between jobs wanted and jobs obtained reveals a shortcoming in the Oper- ation of the labor market for men. Technical jobs were over subscribed; only six of the sixteen wanting technical jobs were among the eleven who got them. Clerical jobs were under subscribed, but again only six of the thirteen who wanted clerical jobs obtained them while thirty—one took up clerical jobs. Only in teaching was there a 107 relatively good fit between the number of wanting and the number obtaining teaching positions. Seven of the nine who wanted teaching as a first job actually took it up. Under subscription, however, may be the cause of this, for while only nine wanted to teach, twenty-four actually took it up. nggp.-—The variety of occupations which the women took up is considerably less than that for men, for there are really only two major occupational groups open to women, teaching and clerical work. Together they account for 89 percent of the working population of the women traced, and in the sample they account for all but one of those ques— tioned. (In this respect the sample is not representative.) The small numbers of occupations open to women may account for their being more definite in stating the kind of job they wanted at first. Only one of the women in the sample took up a technical job (nursing). Most of those who stated that they wanted such a job, usually nursing, began instead as clerical workers. They formed the second largest com- ponent of this group, eleven in all, and those who actually wanted clerical work were only slightly more numerous-- thirteen in all. The remainder of the workers who began in clerical and sales jobs either wanted to be teachers or did not have a clearly stated preference. As with men, the majority of those who did not have a clearly stated pref- erence took up clerical positions. Some, however, took up teaching. And one-half of those who began as teachers had originally stated that such had been their preference. 108 Technical occupations were greatly over subscribed, but the other major preferred categories, clerical occupations and teaching positions, were under subscribed. As a result, most of those who had wanted to enter these occupations were able to do so. Summary ‘ By studying students as they move from school to their first job, it has been possible to analyze the effec- tiveness of the schools in preparing students for participa- tion in the labor market. The analysis shows that the schools have not been effective in this area. Many did not start thinking about the kind of work they wanted to do while in school, and teachers have not had an impact on vocational decisions. In addition, the analysis shows that the schools have neglected to prepare students to partici— pate effectively in the labor market. One-half of the students expressing interest in a specific job did not obtain that kind of job, even though there were Openings. These shortcomings are taken up in the final chapter where recommendations are made for vocational guidance. The next section analyzes the activity of students once they have begun to participate in the labor market. Employment History of Graduates The employment history of an individual graduate is the series of jobs he has held. To collect data on them, 109 graduates were asked to list the positions they had held, describing the jobs and giving the dates and places of employment. Given the small number of histories collected relative to the large number of variables involved in these histories, it is difficult to analyze them thoroughly. So the analysis is restricted to job changes and occupational stability. Both of these are of use in describing the employment situation because the first indicates the mobil— ity of graduates within the working population, and the second indicates the types of job changes graduates make. Job Changes Given occasional job changes by graduates, the average number of jobs held by a fixed group of graduates obviously increases with time. Now, if labor market condi- tions do not change, and if the propensity to change jobs does not differ from one class to another, the average number of jobs ever held by all members of an earlier class will be greater than the average number of jobs ever held by all members of a class which left school more recently. Under these assumptions, if the average number of jobs held by members of a class is plotted against the length of time they have been out of school, the resulting figure will be a broken line, the segments of which have positive slopes (upward to the right). Figure 1 shows the average number of jobs ever held by the groups of graduates in the sample plotted against year of graduation. The expectedppattern Average Number of Jobs Held 110 C D E Key: A = all graduates B = city men C = city women D = out district men E = out district women 4 5 (1968) (1967) Years Out of School (Year of Graduation) Figure l.--Average number of jobs held by graduates. 111 does not appear. The pattern is one of an increase followed by a decrease in the average number of jObs ever held; on the average the members of the class of 1968 have held more jobs than members of the other two classes.3 Two explanations of the overall pattern are possible. First, it may be that the employment experience of the three classes has been different. The class of 1968 has had a greater prOpensity to change jobs. But there is no evi- dence available from this study either to support or to reject this explanation. Second, graduates dissatisfied with their employment situation are more inclined to change jobs frequently. Those dissatisfied with their situation in Belize are more likely to emigrate. Therefore emigra- tion is higher among those who have changed jobs frequently than among those who have changed their jobs less frequently. If this is the case, as time goes on the graduates who have had many jobs are more likely to emigrate, and, thus, by leaving the population they thereby reduce the average 3In the overall pattern the class of 1968 has held more jobs on the average than either the class of 1967 or 1969. Thus, the average number of jobs ever held is greater for those who have been out of school for four years than for those who have been out only three years, but it is also greater than the average number of jobs ever held by those who have been out for five years. This overall pat- tern is repeated in the principal subgroups, the city men and city women. These two groups account for 63 percent of the sample. Only the out district men tend to conform to the expected pattern. The smallest group, the out district women, shows a decrease from 1969 to 1968, and then an increase from 1968 to 1967. But the small size of the groups involved makes these changes less significant. (The out district women account for only 16 percent of the grad- uates questioned.) 112 number of jobs ever held by those still remaining within the country. Now, since emigration increases with length of time out of school, the dissatisfied (that is, those who have had many jobs) are continually leaving the pOpulation. As a result, the average number of jobs ever held by a group experiencing emigration may actually not increase. Since the pattern of a slight increase followed by a decrease in average number of jobs ever held holds for those groups with the highest emigration rates, there is further reason to believe that emigration, rather than graduating class differences, explains the changes in average number of jobs ever held. Occupational Stability Just giving the number of jobs held does not give any indication of the kind of job changes involved. A graduate who switches from a clerical job to a teaching position has made a more radical change than one who goes from one clerical job to another. In the first case, the change was from one occupational group to another; in the second case the change was within the same occupational group. To distinguish between these types of occupational changes the relation between the first job held and the present job of graduates is studied by occupational group. Jobs have been divided into three large occupational groupings: technical, sales/clerical, teaching. Job changes within one of these groups are not the same as those by which a 113 graduate moves from one group to another. Inter—group movement is more radical in that the new job requires skills which differ considerably from those used in the old job. The results for the major occupational groupings are given in Table 18. Table 18.--Occupational stability of graduates. Percent of Group Always in Same Job Occupational Group Males Females Technical Workers 64% ... (100% = ) (11) Sales and Clerical Workers 68% 82% (100% = ) (31) (38) Teachers 75% 100% (100% = ) (24) (20) The higher occupational stability among women is to be expected since there are fewer jobs Open to them. But it is remarkable that none of the women who began as teachers have taken up other kinds of jobs, especially since only one- half of those who began as teachers listed that as the job they first wanted, while 18 percent of those who began in sales and clerical jobs have gone into teaching or some other type of work. Teaching shows the greatest stability among men as well. The least stable group has been those men who 114 began in technical jobs, yet this is the group that requires the most highly specialized skills. These statistics on occupational stability have a drawback in that they compare employment situations at two points in a graduate's history without taking into account what happens in between and without considering the varying length of this period. The end of the period is the same for all graduates, the reference week in September, 1972, but the period began in June of 1967 for some and after June of 1969 for others. To get some idea of how job changes take place over time, two homogeneous groups have been studied over time. The first of these groups is the group of teachers; the second is the group of civil servants. Both of these forms of employment offer career opportuni- ties for graduates. A worker beginning in either group can advance in the profession or service through a series of positions which involve greater responsibility, higher pay, and more security. To describe changes in the membership of these two groups three rates are presented. First is the current participation rate; this is the ratio of the number cur— rently in the group to the number of graduates in the work- ing population. Second is the cumulative participation rate; this is the ratio of the number who have ever been in the group to the number of graduates in the working population. Third is the dropout rate; this is the ratio of the number who have ever been in the occupation at any time, but are 115 no longer in it, to the number who have ever been in the group. The dropout rate is not the same as the arithmetic difference between the first two rates. This would indi- cate the absolute number who have dropped out, but it would not relate that number to the actual number who had ever been in the group as the drOpout rate does. Table 19 gives the participation and dropout rates for teachers and the other government workers. Looking at the participation rates for teachers, the cumulative par— ticipation rate of .49 indicates that almost onewhalf of the graduates questioned have taught at one time or another. The dropout rate has been .20, that is, one in five of those who have ever taught are no longer doing so. This gives a current participation rate of .39. The cumulative partici— pation rate is highest among out district women and second highest among out district men; these same two groups have the highest current participation rates as well. Out dis— trict men, however, also have the highest dropout rate; while out district women have the lowest drOpout rate. And, in general, women teachers have lower dropout rates than men teachers. Among the graduates questioned, civil servants currently account for 20 percent; at one time or another, 29 percent have been in government service. Cumulative and current participation rates are highest among city women and out district men. The high drOpout rate for out dis- trict women is due to the small numbers involved; only three of them ever worked for government, and two have left the 116 Table l9.--Participation and dropout rates for teachers and other government workers. Current Cumulative Participa- Participa— Dropout tion Ratea tion Ratea Ratea I. Teachers Men Belize City .24 .31 .21 Out District .47 .67 .32 Entire Country .33 .45 .27 WOmen Belize City .32 .37 .14 Out District .71 .81 .12 Entire Country .46 .53 .13 Both Belize City .28 .34 .18 Out District .57 .74 .22 Entire Country .39 .49 .20 II. Other Government Workers Men Belize City .13 .25 .45 Out District .32 .36 .10 Entire Country .20 .29 .29 Women Belize City .29 .37 .21 Out District .05 .14 .67 Entire Country .20 .29 .30 Both Belize City .21 .30 .32 Out District .20 .27 .23 Entire Country .20 .29 .29 aSee text for an explanation of the rates. 117 service. The three rates for civil servants are uniform over the place of schooling division and between the sexes. Cumulative participation rates for city residents are about the same for both groups, but the current participation rates are lower. So the drOpout rates in the city are lower for teachers than for civil servants, but they are the same for workers in the out districts. Summary The preceding analysis distinguishes different types of occupational mobility and shows some differences in mobil— ity among different groups of graduates. As a whole, young graduates show considerable occupational mobility; overall those who change their jobs most often are probably the ones most likely to emigrate. Job changes may be either within an occupational group or between groups; a change from one occupational group to another involves a more radical shift in the skills used than a change within a group. The analysis shows that men have been more radical in their changes than women partly because of the limited kinds of jobs open to women. Those men who began as technical workers are as mobile as either teachers or clerical workers even though this group is the most specialized of the three. The implications of this finding for planning vocational education will be taken up in the last chapter. The analysis also shows that dropout rates among civil servants are higher than among teachers, espeCially among women. For men the teacher 118 dropout rates are highest in the out districts while for civil servants they are higher in the city. Workers' atti- tudes toward their jobs, which is the subject of the next Section, help explain these differences. Attitudes Toward Present Job The present occupations of the graduates questioned have already been described in the previous section. This section analyzes their attitudes toward these jobs and explains some of the differences in drOpout rates and par- ticipation rates. The young people questioned were asked to describe their present job by selecting from a check list of twenty-five items those which applied to their present job. This method is similar to that used by Maizels and others in studies of young British workers. The items selected are drawn from the list used by Maizels4 and from conversations with young workers in Belize. The question form was originally adepted for use in a personal interview; it was retained, even after the latter approach was rejected, because it is easy to answer; it has given reliable results elsewhere, and it produces a considerable amount of useful information. Individual . . . 5 responses may also be examined for internal conSistency. 4Joan Maizels, Adolescent Needs and the Transition from School to Work (London: Athlone Press, 1970). 5 O O I -! ‘ Three questionnaires were discarded because of inconsistent reSponses, e.g. checking boring and inter— esting. 119 The items are divided into three groups as Table 20 indie cates: (1) interest factors, (2) demand factors, (3) econ— omic factors. The responses given by the workers are exam- ined for differences between the sexes, differences between out district and city workers, and for differences among occupational groups. The latter have been divided into teachers, clerical workers, and other workers. The small number of respondents in the third group, all but one of whom are males, makes comparison among these three groups difficult. So the discussion will examine differences between teachers and clerical workers and between other workers and all males. Since the reSpondents are free to check as many or as few items as they wish, differences in the preportion of subgroups selecting an item will be distorted if one sub— group has a tendency to check more items than the other. The average number of items checked by individuals in each group indicates that such exaggerations are present in this data. There is, however, considerable variance in the scores for the different items. Four items were checked by more than two—thirds of the respondents—~ippgp- esting, responsible, keeps you busy, and steady work; twelve items were selected by less than one-third of the respondents. The discussion that follows compares the attitudes of the subgroups. In general, men describe their jobs as being routine; they find their jobs less challenging and rewarding 120 Table 20.-—Present employment as described by graduates. (percent selecting each item). All Sex Placea Occupationb M F C OD TR CK OT Interest Factors: (a) positive Interesting 73 65 81 69 75 80 68 71 Takes initiative 58 56 59 53 61 61 53 59 Have to use your head 55 55 55 59 52 60 32 59 Do variety of tasks 52 52 53 47 57 42 60 65 Have to concentrate 50 48 52 41 56 52 50 41 Suits talents and abilities 37 40 33 41 34 38 37 35 Skilled work 24 28 21 25 24 24 18 47 Takes special skill 19 21 15 22 16 3O 12 12 (b) negative Need less education 27 41 9 22 29 8 37 47 Need more education 23 24 23 33 18 38 12 24 Not enough skill required 12 18 3 10 13 10 10 24 Badly organized 8 ll 5 4 10 4 8 l8 Boring 7 ll 2 6 8 0 10 18 Demand Factors: Responsible 82 80 83 82 82 84 82 82 Keeps you busy 72 61 85 77 68 82 72 41 Competitive 28 A 32 22 37 23 30 27 29 Long hours 19 21 15 25 15 20 18 18 Heavy work l6 13 19 8 20 14 18 12 Difficult 12 13 10 16 9 22 3 12 Economic Characteristics: Steady work 69 65 74 71 67 7O 80 29 Teaches you some- thing useful 52 55 47 53 51 56 47 18 Secure job ‘48 50 47 45 51 30 65 47 Chance for promotion 47 51 41 49 45 44 48 53 Poorly paid 34 44 21 43 28 54 23 12 Well paid 20 16 24 12 25 10 33 12 (N = ) (128) (7l)(57) (49)(79) (50)(60)(18) aPlace: c = City, CD = Out District. Clerk, OT = Other. Occupation: TR Teacher, CK 121 than do women. Fewer men that women find their jobs inter— esting and men's jobs keep them less busy. At the same .time, more men than women find their jobs poorly paid, and think that they could do the same job with less education. Part of men's view of their jobs as routine may be due to the jobs themselves, but they are also more likely to see in their jobs a chance for promotion, so the routineness can be attributed partly to impatience with their present employment and to a desire for advancement. Women, who have a more narrow range of employment opportunities open to them, may have lower expectations, be less desirous of advance- ment, and so be less likely to regard their jobs as routine. While more graduates from city schools than from out district schools find a variety and demand for concen- tration in their work, fewer city graduates see themselves as under educated or poorly paid. This reflects out district students' greater expectations, not a lower quality of education or different employment situations. For, as measured by examination results, the quality of education does not differ greatly between city and out district schools, and pay scales fcr teachers and civil servants, as well as for most large private employers, are uniform over the country. Since there are fewer opportunities for secondary education in the rural areas, and since the chance for secondary education is a more recent phenomenon, higher expectations among out district graduates are more likely than among city graduates. 122 Among occupational groups, teachers are more likely to describe their jobs as being more stimulating and chal- lenging than clerks. They rate interesting, have to use your head, takes special skills, need more education to do it, and difficult higher and boring lower than do clerical workers. Clerical workers, on the other hand, score their jobs higher on the positive economic characteristics of steady, secure, chance forppromotion, and well paid, and lower on poorlyppaid. The other workers find their work offers more variety, and it is more likely to be skilled work. Fewer say that it is poorly paid, but it is not steady, nor is it instructive. When the drOpout rates dis— cussed in the previous section are compared with attitudes toward jobs, lower dropout rates are associated with higher positive interest and demand factors rather than with posi- tive economic characteristics. Future Employment Up to this point, analysis has been confined to the present and past experience of the graduates. This section moves the analysis forward by looking at graduates' views on future employment. Rather than looking at future employ- ment in general, emphasis is placed on determining what graduates expect their present job to lead to and on the factors which make some jobs more desirable than others. To assess graduates' views on future employment, a series of questions was asked to determine what they think 123 of their prospects for advancement in their present job and to determine their opinions on the factors that will influ- ence future employment selection. Expegtations for Present Job Graduates were asked to rank their chances for advancement in their present job on a five point scale. (A high score corresponds to a high chance of advancement.) They showed considerable uniformity of opinion. The only notable difference was between men and women clerks; women scored their chances for promotion higher than the men. Advancement in their present job, however, may not be what some graduates are seeking. So all were asked what they hoped their present job would lead to. The responses to this open-ended question are summarized in Table 21. Table 21.--What graduates hepe their present job will lead to (percentages). Hope for Males Females Both Sexes Present Job C OD T C OD T C OD T Promotion 35 36 36 21 14 19 29 27 28 Study or diploma 16 32 22 24 38 29 19 35 25 Self-improvement l6 14 15 5 19 10 11 16 13 Security 4 0 3 O 5 2 2 2 2 No hOpe for it 7 4 5 0 0 0 4 l 3 Not stated 22 l4 19 50 24 40 35 18 29 Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 99 100 (N = ) (45)(28)(73) (38)(21)(59) (83)(49)(132) Key: C = City, OD = Out District, T = Entire Country. 124 More than one-fourth of the graduates do hope their job will lead to a promotion, but an equal number did not reply to the question, indicating, perhaps, that they have no def- inite hOpes for their present job. Another one—fourth of the respondents hOpe that their jobs will lead to further study. And about one-eighth stated that they hope that their job will result in self-improvement of some sort. When these responses are broken down by sex, it is more the men who hOpe for promotion and the women who have no definite reply to the question. However, as stated above, the women rate their chances of advancement at least as high as do men. This discrepancy between estimates of chances for promotion and not responding to the present question is explained in part by the tendency of women to withdraw from the labor force as they get older and begin to raise families. They do not look at the long—range employment prospects of their jobs. When divided by residence place, more of the out district graduates have hopes for promotion than those in the city. It is largely the high preportion of rural men who hOpe for promotion that contributes to the difference by residence place. Those hoping for further study or a diploma are teachers for the most part, so out district graduates, 56 percent of whom are teachers, rate high in this area. Graduates' views on what it takes to get ahead in a job were determined by asking them to select from a list of 125 items the one statement which best described their View. The items were: academic achievement and intelligence, per- formance on the job, social contacts and skills, age, and seniority. In their responses, almost two—thirds said that job performance was the most important factor, and they described this performance in terms of efficiency rather than hard work. A substantial minority replied that social contacts and skills, especially the ability to get along with people, are the most important factors. Academic achievement and intelligence, however, are considered impor- tant only by a small minority, and even fewer say that age and seniority are important. There are no substantial dif- ferences in the replies of the various subgroups. Future Employment Selection Most of the graduates traced are employed in the large scale sector; in Belize this is restricted largely to the government, including teaching, the banks, and to the large commercial firms. Future growth of employment oppor- tunities in this sector is not likely to keep up with the increasing numbers of secondary school graduates, so employ- ment will have to be sought elsewhere. This will require a revision of the incentives associated with jobs in both the large and small scale sectors, and a change in graduates' attitudes toward these jobs. To determine the relative importance of incentives, what workers hepe for from their present job cannot merely be projected into the future. For 126 what they hope for from their present job is restricted by the constraints of their present situation. Their present job may not offer any of the benefits and advantages they would really like. So graduates were given a list of fac— tors which they might consider in looking for a new job and asked to rank them on a three point scale. (A high score indicates a high importance.) The results are given in Table 22. Table 22.-~Graduates' scoring of job factors. Men Women Both Sexes Job Factor C OD T C OD T C OD T Security 2.6 2.5 2.5 2.6 2.6 2.6 2.6 2.5 2.6 Promotion chances 2.5 2.6 2.5 2.3 2.6 2.4 2.4 2.6 2.5 Working conditions 2.3 2.5 2.4 2.5 2.5 2.5 2.4 2.5 2.4 Skills required 2.3 2.5 2.4 2.4 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.4 2.4 Starting pay 2.0 2.1 2.1 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.1 2.0 Place of job 1.5 1.7 1.6 1.8 2.3 2.0 1.7 2.0 1.8 Key: C = City, OD = Out District, T = Total. The results show only small differences in the scores and general agreement on the last three items. Job security was the highest ranked item within all the basic groups except among the out district men. Opportunities for 127 promotion and working conditions were the next pair on all lists except for the city women, but there was not agreement as to their order. Skills required was fourth on most lists, followed by starting pay and location. Few of the workers, then, are risk takers. Their responses, except for city women, indicate a long-range view of the employment situa— tion. Security and advancement are more important than starting pay or the demands a job makes on their skills. These responses are based on the graduates' experi- ence which has been in the large scale sector. As described above, they see promotion in this sector as largely dependent upon job performance and upon skill in getting along with peOple. In working in the small scale sector, or in start- ing their own enterprise, they would beworking on a scale where family ties and initial resources seem to be more important than hard work and intelligence. So their View on what it takes to get ahead in a job with a large firm may differ from their View of what it takes to start their own business. Clignet and Foster found this to be true in the Ivory Coast where "the students' View of the qualities necessary to start a business is totally at variance with attitudes concerning success in the existing [large scale] labor market."6 However, when asked what the most important thing to have in order to start a business on their own, more graduates in Belize gave importance to hard work or, 6 p. 168. Remi Clignet and Philip Foster, The Fortunate Few, 128 to a lesser extent, to a good education than to having capital or to having relatives in the business. This is especially true of women, whereas the men are about equally divided in their selection of these factors. Apparently, then, graduates, especially women, see success in their own enterprise more in terms of their own employment experience than in terms of a highly ascriptive society. So there is no significant difference in perspective when they view their position in large scale employment and their position as small scale entrepreneurs. Summary This analysis has shown that graduates' hopes for their present job and their eXpectations for future employ— ment have a long-range perspective. The more immediate rewards of a job, such as skill use and starting pay, are less important to graduates than job security and oppor— tunities for promotion. This latter they see as being determined by their own job performance. However, since intelligence and academic achievement do not rank high as being means of getting ahead, and since the skills a job requires do not make a job particularly attractive, the link between education and employment needs further study. Educational History of Graduates The continuing educational experience of secondary school graduates, or the lack of such experience, is just 129 as important as employment experience for studying the link between secondary education and employment. So the final section of this chapter describes the participation of graduates in various educational programs since leaving secondary school, and it probes their attitudes toward participation in such programs. First, however, the type of secondary education which these graduates have received is described. Secondary Education The first class of graduates traced began secondary school around 1963; the period from that time until 1969, when the last class traced finished school, was a time of expansion and change in secondary education in Belize. In 1964 a UNESCO educational planning mission came to the country; their report,7 issued in September of that year, recommended an expansion and reorganization of the Belize Technical College to meet what it called the pressing demand for technicians, craftsmen, and technical subject teachers. This reorganization did not take place as planned, and the demand for these workers has not materialized. The report also criticized the classical bias of the secondary schools' curricula and recommended that the curricula of the secondary schools be broadened to include practical and science courses as well as business and commercial courses. The curriculum 7Educational Planning Mission to British Honduras, Report (Paris: UNESCO, 1964). 130 has been broadened in many schools, and much of this bias has been eliminated. The recommended annual output of the technical courses for the period studied here (1967 to 1969) was 30 technical workers and 90 craftsmen, or 360 technicians and craft work— ers for the three year period. This output was called con- servative in light of the projected needs, but it amounts to more than the total number of men graduates for those years now in the working pepulation of Belize. There is no evidence from the actual employment of secondary school graduates to indicate that such a demand for technicians and craftsmen existed. Only forty-six of the graduates traced are engaged in technical work, and nineteen are in the crafts and trades. Admittedly, the graduates do not have the educational qualifications that the technicians and craftsmen would have had, but if there were a pressing demand of such proportions, it would have been enough to attract more than it did to this kind of work. There is no indica— tion in the UNESCO report as to the origin of the figures; they appear to be the result of a manpower projection. Such projections, however, are not based on effective demand; the considerations which led to the projected need did not take into account wage scales, working conditions, the abil- ity of potential employers to hire those workers, etc. As an indicator of the classical bias of the secon— dary curricula, the UNESCO report cited the number of 131 students taking Latin as compared with the number taking science subjects. And, indeed, in 1964 the Cambridge Ordi— nary Level examination in Latin was taken by seventy students while only twenty—one took Physics and twenty—one took Biology. By 1969 no one sat for the examination in Latin; the number taking science examinations increased, and the curriculum had been broadened.8 This broadened curriculum was not intended by UNESCO to be vocational in the sense of providing immediate preparation for a job in a particular craft, that was only to have been done by Belize Technical College in its revised program which was never instigated. And apparently the broadened curriculum has not changed the employment aspirations of graduates. Indeed, as Foster and others argue, curricular changes are not effective means of altering vocational aspirations. Rather, it is the students' perceptions of occupational opportunities that determine aspirations. These perceptions are determined largely by the economic and social characteristics of the occupations—— the wages, working conditions, job security and prestige, etc. 8In 1969, thirty-one took the examination in Physics and 130 took Biology. Of all students enrolled in secondary school in 1969, 48 percent were taking General Science, 25 percent Biology, and of the girls 47 percent were taking cookery; practical subjects such as woodworking, and metal work enrolled 12 percent of the boys, and 10 percent were taking agricultural science; 21 percent of the girls were taking typewriting and 3 percent of the boys were taking either commerce or bookkeeping. 132 To learn something of how recent graduates have made use of the practical courses they have taken, they were given a list of subjects and asked to indicate which ones they had taken while in secondary school. The responses show that there is little connection between the courses taken and jobs held. Of the men, almost one-half had taken some type of practical course, and more than one-half had taken commercial courses. Seventy percent of the women had taken commercial courses. So the classical bias is not in evi— dence among the graduates questioned. Courses apparently put to the most use, for both men and women, are the com— mercial ones; more clerks have taken these courses than workers in the other occupational groups. Those who have had practical courses are equally represented in teaching and other jobs. Few of the jobs in this latter category make direct use of the skills taught in such courses. Further Education The number of graduates who have left the country to study was examined in Chapter IV, but some of those presently in the country also have continued their education beyond secondary school. For the purposes of this discussion, it will be helpful to distinguish two types of further educa— tion available within the country: formal and non—formal. While many attempts have been made to give these terms pre— cise meanings, no one set of definitions has been agreed upon. The descriptions given by Harbison are sufficient for purposes 133 of this study: Formal education connotes age-specific, full-time, classroom attendance in a linear graded system geared to certificates, diplomas, degrees or other formal credentials. Non-formal education and training is loosely defined as skill and knowledge generation taking place outside the formal schooling system.9 The questionnaires collected information on the further formal and non-formal education of the graduates, as well as information on their attitudes toward participating in such programs. These latter will be discussed in the final part of this section. First, however, the further formal and non-formal education of the graduates will be described. For those remaining in the country, opportunities for formal post-secondary education are limited to teacher training programs and Sixth Form studies. Of the 132 gradu- ates questioned, twenty-nine had received some further formal education, and all but six of these were teachers. Of the forty primary school teachers questioned, seven had attended a twenty week training course to prepare for the First Class Teachers' Examination, five had taken the two year diploma course, and six were still in this latter course. Five of the ten secondary school teachers questioned had taken Sixth Form studies. In all of these categories, slightly more men that women received formal education. Of the non-teachers, some of the clerical workers had obtained further education; 9Frederick Harbison, Human Resources as the Wealth of Nations, p. 52. 134 three attended a Sixth Form; one, a former teacher, had taken the twenty week course; and two others received training abroad. Overall, 23 percent of the men questioned and 19 percent of the women received formal postnsecondary education. As Table 23 indicates, Opportunities for nonnformal education in Belize are greater than for formal education, and so is participation. Some of the differences in partici— pation, especially differences between city residents and out district residents, are due to the distribution of Opportunities; other differences are due to varying partici- pation rates. Of all the graduates questioned, 42 percent had not participated in non-formal education activities. The preportion not participating in any program remains about the same when graduates are divided by sex, but when place of schooling is used to divide the graduates a dif- ference appears. Over one-half of the out district grad- uates have not participated in any outside study, and about one-third of the city graduates have not participated. This difference reflects the distribution of Opportunities, not interest, as the breakdown by type of course indicates. Business and commercial courses are readily accessible to residents of Belize City, but they are rarely offered in the out districts. This type of course is more popular among women than men. The large number of women working as sec— retaries explains this since many of the courses offered are 135 Table 23.—~Percentage of graduates participating in nonn formal education programs (multiple responses). ‘7 Men WOmen Both Sexes Type of Course C OD T C OD T C OD T Business and Commer- cial Extension Courses 31 0 19 45 14 34 37 6 26 Examination Oriented Exten- tion Courses 24 4 16 40 24 34 31 12 24 Examination Oriented Corres- pondence Courses 9 ll 10 0 0 O 5 6 5 Technical Correspondence Courses 9 7 8 O 0 O 5 4 4 Summer Teachers' Courses 4 29 14 5 24 12 5 27 13 Foreign Training Programs 11 0 7 0 0 0 6 0 4 Miscellaneous in Country Courses 0 l4 5 0 5 2 0 10 4 Non—Participants 31 57 41 40 52 44 35 55 42 (N = ) (45)(28)(73) (38)(21>(59> (83) (49) (132) Key: C = City, OD = Out District, T = Entire Country. 136 in typing and shorthand. Bookkeeping is also offered; it is the most pOpular course of this type among men. The examina— tion oriented courses prepare students for external examina— tions such as the Cambridge Ordinary Level English Language Examination, or similar examinationsianpanish, mathematics, etc. These are the examinations which are first taken at the end of secondary school, so those taking examination oriented courses are trying to improve their secondary school creden— tials. Good credentials enhance their chances of getting a better job since many employers, especially the government, look for workers with good examination records. Again, women are more likely to take the extension courses, but none of them are taking correspondence courses for examinations or for any other subjects. The imbalance in opportunities for further education shows up in the large prOportion of city graduates taking» extension courses and in the higher prOportion of out district graduates participating in summer courses for teachers. This difference is also due, in part, to the larger proportion of teachers among the out district graduates. Another indica— tion of the imbalance of Opportunities is the number of out district graduates who have participated in other kinds of courses. These are miscellaneous courses in public speaking, homemaking, etc. which are occasionally organized in some of the district towns. When the differences between the participation of men and women are examined, there is evidence that women are 137 more likely to participate in extension courses than men, but that men are more likely to take cOrrespondence courses, and that foreign training schemes are open only to men. This latter is to be expected in view of the limited employ— ment Opportunities Open to women. Attitudes Toward Further EducatiOn To probe the attitudes of graduates toward partici— pation in further education of the type just discussed, a check list of statements was drawn up after preliminary dis- cussions with some graduates. The question format is sim— ilar to that described in Table 19. These statements represent a variety of Opinions about further education, but the responses did not reveal many differences between those who had participated and those who had not. Table 24 lists the reSponses, dividing them into four groups. The first group of statements expresses conditional approval of the courses; the second group expresses disapproval; the third group gives alternative pursuits for graduates; the last group is a collection of miscellaneous statements. Three—fourths of all those questioned would partici— pate if the courses helped them improve themselves. The proportion checking this item was the same for participants and non—participants. The next most frequently checked item related to doing one's job better. Participants checked this item more often than non—participants. 138 Table 24.--Graduates' attitudes toward further education (percent selecting each item). Previous Partici- pation Sex Place All Yes No M F C OD Conditional Approval: Would go if course... Is useful to job 54 55 54 50 60 54 55 Helps improve self 74 75 74 70 80 72 79 Helps do job better 69 74 64 67 72 67 72 Helps get certificate 50 59 38 50 50 46 57 Is interesting 49 52 46 47 52 42 61 Leads to pay raise 47 55 36 50 42 45 50 Helps get better job 44 49 38 46 42 45 44 Fees are paid 12 12 12’ 17 4 8 l7 Disapproval: Courses are... Too expensive 21 17 26 23 18 18 26 Not needed for work 17 23 10 23 10 19 15 For smart ones 7 7. 6 10 2 9 2 A waste of time 4 1 4 4 4 3 7 Boring 1 0 2 l 1 0 2 For school 8 9 6 7 8 7 9 Alternatives Study on my own l8 17 20 23 12 19 17 Prefer sports 8 7' 8 10 4 8 7 Miscellaneous Would like to know more 74 78 70 71 78 76 72 Not available here l7 16 20 20 14 5 37 Too tired after work 12 9 16 ll 12 14 9 Not at right time 8 4 14 10 6 7 11 (N = ) (120) (64) (56) (70) (50) (74) (46) ac = City, on = Out District. 139 The greatest difference between participants and non-participants is their response to the item would go if course helps get certificate; one-half of those questioned found this a motivating factor, and two-thirds of those who checked this item had participated in such a course. Getting a pay raise is an equally motivating factor for participation, more so than interesting courses or even improving one's chances of getting a better job. Having fees paid is not a strong conditioning factor, although one-fifth said that the courses cost too much. The alterna- tives of self-study and athletic activity did not receive many responses, nor is there much difference between par- ticipants and non-participants on these items. When responses were studied for differences between the sexes, the only differences that appeared were in the higher response rate of males to the following items: 293 needed for work, study on my own, and a lower response rate on is useful to_job. Out district respondents expressed approval more often than city respondents for courses which are interesting and lead to a certificate. Summary The educational histories of the graduates from the time they were in secondary school until the present puts the relation between education and employment in sharper focus. The graduates were in school during a time of change in secondary education, and they experienced a broader 140 curriculum than earlier students. The education they did receive, however, cannot be called vocational, except in the broad sense of general preparation for work. The analysis 4 also shows that many have continued their education within the country, but that the opportunities to do this in the out districts are limited. The types of courses taken and the attitudes of graduates toward them indicate that the attraction of the certificate is still strong. Further education is also attractive if it is seen as a means of self—improvement and occupational betterment. CHAPTER VI ATTITUDES OF PRESENT STUDENTS TOWARD EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT Up to this point the youth employment situation in Belize has been assessed largely in light of the experience of those now participating in the labor force. However, the attitudes of those seeking positions in the labor force are also of importance for an analysis of the link between secondary education and employment. Since young workers with some years of experience in the labor force cannot be expected at this time to give reliable information on what their aspirations and expectations for employment were at the time they entered the labor force, a new group of respondents (is required. Students in the last year of secondary school were selected for this part of the study. Students' aspira- tions and expectations influence both their decision whether to seek work or pursue further study, and their decision as to the kind of work they seek. A detailed study of their aspirations and expectations will not be undertaken here. Only those aspects that further the specific aim of this study are considered. As already stated, this aim has been to analyze the link between secondary education and employ- ment with a View toward providing a reasonable empirical basis 141 142 upon which those with authority could formulate secondary school policy in the areas of vocational guidance, vocational education, and rural education. Therefore, only those aspects of attitudes and expectations that have some influence on "job seeking" activities will be analyzed. Such activities are obviously influenced by students' attitudes and expec- tations, and vocational guidance may or may not have had any influence on job seeking. Job seeking is also an essential part of the link between employment and either vocational or rural education. After presenting a preliminary description of the distribution of respondents (a description which follows immediately), this chapter analyzes students' attitudes toward education, both as to what they expect from secondary school and as to their aspirations for further education. The second part of the chapter reports upon and assesses students' occupational expectations and aspirations. Finally, the chapter concludes with an analysis of some aspects of jobs that influence occupational choice. In all of this the focus is on the jpb seeking activities of students. The data analyzed are derived from a questionnaire given by the author to students in the last year of secon- dary school. The questionnaire was administered during school hours and taken by about 93 percent of the final year students. (At one school it was not possible to make arrangements to administer the questionnaire to all students. in the last year, so approximately fifty students, both boys 143 and girls, did not take it.) Among the respondents, 563 in all, there are fourteen girls for every ten boys, and nine— teen city students for every ten out district students. Boys and girls in the out districts are abOut equally rep- resented; in the city schools there are seventeen girls for every ten boys. Table 25.--Percentage distribution of respondents to student questionnaire. Location of School Out City District Total Boys 24 (134)a 18 (101) 42 (235) Girls 41 (234) 17 ( 94) 58 (328) A11 Respondents 65 (368) 35 (195) 100 (563) aNumbers in parentheses give the number of respon- dents. Attitudes Toward Education The attitudes toward education considered here include both attitudes toward the benefits of secondary education and attitudes toward further education. Students' job seeking activities are likely to be influenced by both these sets of attitudes. For example, if students see secon- dary education more as preparation for further schooling than as preparation for employment, then they will try to continue their education rather than seek employment; if in 144 seeking employment a particular kind of job is seen as embodying a reward which was expected from having completed secondary school, graduates will seek that job, rather than another. The Rewards of Secondary Education As described earlier, secondary schools in Belize have eXpanded greatly in the past decade, and the pressure for further expansion continues unabated.1 In view of this increasing demand, the question as to what values students see in their education takes on even greater importance, for it is reasonable to assume (1) that students expect some rewards from their schooling, and (2) that the types of rewards they seek affect the jobs they seek. The rewards may take several forms. They can be personal or communal, immediate or delayed, tangible or intangible. Gaining the respect of others, for example, could be classified as a personal and immediate reward that some may seek from attend— ing secondary school. To acquire a secondary education because it allows one to contribute to the develOpment of the country is another type of reward that may be sought; it could be classified as a communal reward. Finally, a well- paid job is a delayed but tangible reward that some may seek from a secondary education. 1To meet this pressure the Government has Opened two Junior Secondary schools in Belize City and revised the curriculum of the Belize Technical College to take in stu— dents from the Junior Secondary schools. 145 In answering the questionnaire, students rejected the view that they sought secondary education as a means of gaining the respect of others. The less immediate rewards achieved by developing their talents and abilities and by being able to contribute to the development of the country motivate a substantial number of students; fewer students hOpe to find the rewards of their education in either a well-paid or an interesting job. Boys' and girls‘ attitudes do not differ markedly, but with respect to the responses of city and out district students important differences are revealed. For example, more out district students have a com- munal outlook; 50 percent of the out district students reSponded that they consider contributing to the develop- ment of the country to be the most important reason for attending secondary school. Only 30 percent of the city respondents responded in a similar way. On the other hand, city students place more emphasis on job related reasons for attending school, especially on getting a well—paid job. For this study the fact that out district students see ability to contribute to the develOpment of the country as a reward accruing to them from secondary education is espec— ially important. This finding will be taken up again in the last chapter in the discussion of rural education. 146 Table 26.-—Most important reason for attending secondary school (percent). Location of School Reason Selected City Digtgict Total To gain respect 1 l 1 To get an interesting job 12 13 12 To get a well-paid job 22 7 '16 To contribute to the development of Belize 30 49 37 To develop talents and abilities 34 29 33 Not stated . l l 1 Total 100 j 100 100 (N = ) (368) (195), »(563) Students' Desire for Further Training Some critics of formal education claim that schooling at one level prepares for schooling at the next higher level, and little else; or they claim that schooling only instills the desire for more school. This criticism of schools has some factual basis in Belize where 84 percent of the students in the last year of secondary school expressed a desire to continue their education. In view of the number of places Open to them, the desire to continue studying is unrealistic for most of these students. The only formal post—secondary education available in the country is at the Sixth Form level, 147 and the number of openings at this level is about 100 each year. This means that four out of five of the respondents wanting to continue in school will not be able to do so in the country. For financial reasons, study abroadn—the only other alternative--is not open to many students. Scholarships to foreign universities are awarded only to those students in Belize who have completed Sixth Form studies. Those wish- ing to study abroad immediately after finishing secondary school must finance their own study, and this is beyond the means of the majority. In View of the limited number of openings in the Sixth Forms of Belize, it might be expected that, even though students want to continue studying, they would see that their chances are slight. However, 65 percent of those wanting to go on see their chances as being gggd_or even certain. Based on the number of places available, only One in three of those who say that their chances are gpgd_or certain will in fact be able to continue. When broken down by sex and place of schooling, more boys than girls want to continue, and girls in the city schools are the least desirous of continuing. Overall the prOportion of\students wanting to continue is only slightly higher among out district students, although the proportion saying that they have a good chance of contin- uing is lower among out district students. The students' lack of realism about their chances to continue school may result either from overestimating their ability or from a lack of knowledge of Sixth Form entrance 148 requirements. Entrance into Sixth Form studies in Belize is based on academic achievement as measured by the school record of the student and by the number of external examina— tion passes he has attained. Government scholarships are available to almost all of those who pass a sufficient number of external examinations and meet all the other entrance requirements. Given the limited number of openings in Sixth Forms, an applicant would have to be at least in the upper quarter of his class to be admitted to further studies. (Only 18 percent of all students questioned rank themselves in the upper quarter of their class; this is equivalent to the number of places available.) However, many who rank them- selves lower also say that they have a good chance of con— tinuing school. So lack of awareness of the actual require- ments for further studies, rather than overestimation of their personal ability, explains why students overestimate their chances to continue school. These overestimates affect the students' job seeking activities. For, as mentioned above, entrance into a Sixth Form is based partly on external examination results. Exam- inations are given in June (at the end of the school year), but results are not available until early in September at the beginning of the next school year. Many graduates with unrealistic expectations who will not be admitted to further studies spend their time waiting for examination results instead of looking for jobs, or, in some cases, even thinking 149 about employment. Improved vocational guidance could supply some of the realism currently lacking in many students. Occupational Aspirations and Expectations Where opportunities for post-secondary education are as limited as they are in Belize, further schooling is usually thought of as preparing for specific high—level occupations (such as doctor, lawyer, engineer). When one considers the large numbers wanting to go on for further education, the numbers aspiring to high—level occupations may be correSpondingly high. This is all the more to be expected since the respondents were asked what occupation they would prefer if there were no constraints on their choice. Occupational aspirations were not, however, as high as had been expected. Jobs such as doctor, lawyer, and engineer-~jobs ordinarily classified as "professional"—~ accounted for only 19 percent of the students‘ choices.2 It appears, then, that many students do not associate their desire for higher education with aspirations for high-level jobs, but that they see further education as an end in itself. In view of the limited resources of Belize, such an attitude is a luxury which the government cannot afford to finance. 2Another 10 percent of the respondents aspired to technical jobs such as draftsman of medical technician. Teaching, especially in secondary schools, was the choice of 15 percent of the students. Of the girls, 28 percent wanted secretarial jobs and 12 percent wanted to be nurses; of the boys 13 percent wanted jobs in various trades. 150 The students were also asked to estimate their chances of getting the kind of job they wanted and to give reasons for choosing the job they did. Only 31 percent say that their chances are not very good or poor (the other responses were good and very good). Moreover, when these responses are broken down by the kind of job wanted, no notable differences appear either with regard to the estimate of their rank in class or to the estimate of their chance of getting the job. Reasons given for choosing these jobs are, in many cases, general. Over one-fourth say they would choose a job because it is interesting. One-fourth of the girls, moreover, profess to choose jobs because they are of service to others; this is especially true of those choosing nursing. Boys are less likely to cite service to others as a reason for job choice, but they do say that they choose jobs because they meet a need of the country; those who want to be doctors give this reason most frequently. It appears, then, that some students' aspirations are undifferentiated and vague, indi- cating they have not given much thought to the relation between school and work. Other students see service and meeting national needs as compelling reasons for choosing a job, but they see these motives as being realized only in medical work. Vocational guidance could show students that there are many other jobs which meet national needs. This will be all the more true in rural areas if suitable jobs can be generated in agriculture. 151 By allowing students to state freely the 923 job they want most of all, many jobs that students ordinarily take up are not mentioned. A more restrictive question is needed to assess students' attitudes toward many of the jobs Open to them immediately upon finishing school. For this purpose the questionnaire required students to select from a list of jobs the one job they found most desirable and the one they found least desirable. The jobs on the list (see Tables 27 and 28) were selected from those that recent graduates have obtained. The boys responses show that three groups of occupa- tions are particularly unattractive: the ”miscellaneous" group which includes policemen and taxi drivers, food pro— duction workers, and sales positions. (It should be noted, however, that most of those responding negatively to a job in the food production worker category selected fisherman, not small farmer, as the least desirable occupation.) The desirability of farming as an occupation is not as low as it might appear to be. Another feature of the responses recorded in Table 27 is the large number of respon— dents, especially those from city schools, who selected a trade or craft as the most desirable occupation. Over one— fourth of the respondents selected such a job as being the most desirable for them. This substantiates for Belize what Foster found in his study in Ghana3: disdain for manual 3Philip Foster, "The Vocational School Fallacy in DevelOpment Planning," p. 407. 152 ‘rable 27.--Job desirability—~boys (percent selecting each job). Location of School Occupational Groupa City Out District Total A. Most Desirable Job: Sales 1 l ‘ ' 1 Technical 16 14 15 Clerical 22 l4 19 Food Production 5 4 5 Teaching 21 32 26 Trade and Craft 28 26 27 Miscellaneous 1 3 2 Not Stated .4 6 5 Total 100 100 100 (N = ) (134) (101) (235) B. Least Desirable Job: Sales 18 l3 16 Technical 1 1 1 Clerical 8 4 6 Food Production 22 29 25 Teaching 4 2 3 Trade and Craft 11 6 9 Miscellaneous 31 39 34 Not Stated 5 6 6 Total 100 100 100 (N = ) (134) (101) (235) aJobs in each group: Sales: agency salesman, insurance salesman, store clerk. Technical: farm demonstrator, survey technician. Clerical: bank clerk, bookkeeper, government clerk, office worker. Food Production: fisherman, small farmer. Teaching: secondary school teacher, primary school teacher. Trade and Craft: auto mechanic, carpenter, electrician, tailor, welder. Miscellaneous: policeman, taxi driver. 153 Table 28.-—Job desirability—~girls (percent selecting each job). Location of School Occupational Groupa City Out District Total A. Most Desirable Job: Sales 0 0 0 Technical 26 31 27 Clerical 17 21 18 Secretarial 38 17 32 Teaching 17 25 19 Miscellaneous 2 5 3 Not Stated 0 1 1 Total 100 100 100 (N = ) (234) (94) (328) ----—---—--------—-.--—_--———---------—----_--——-——‘-—-———-_- B. Least Desirable Job: Sales 36 26 33 Technical 10 15 12 Clerical 6 l3 8 Secretarial l 2 2 Teaching 5 ll 6 Miscellaneous 41 32 38 Not Stated, l l 1 Total 100 100 100 (N = ) (234) (94) (328) aJobs in each occupational group: Sales: saleswoman. Technical: nurse, medical technician. Clerical: bank clerk, bookkeeper, government clerk, office worker. Secretarial: secretary, receptionist. Teaching: secondary school teacher, primary school teacher. Miscellaneous: policewoman, seamstress. 154 work is not an explanation for the absence of graduates from manual occupations, neither is it a product of formal edu- cation. The responses also show that teaching, especially secondary school teaching, is a more sought after occupation in the out districts than in the city. This is an indica— tion of the greater prestige associated with secondary edu- cation in the out districts where it is more scarce than in the city where more secondary school places are available. Responses of girls indicate that the occupations of saleswoman, seamstress, and policewoman are gpdesirable to most students. As the freely chosen responses discussed earlier indicate, secretarial work is sought by many girls, especially those in city schools. Medical service jobs, such as nurse or medical technician, are also frequent choices; some, however, see these as undesirable largely because of their aversion to hospitals or sickness. The distribution of students' choices as to the most desirable job and the distribution of jobs actually obtained by recent graduates diverge considerably as is indicated by a comparisOn of Tables 14 and 27(28) for men (women). The Interest shown by boys in trades and the lack of graduates engaged in such occupations clearly illustrates this. There is no evi- dence to indicate that this divergence is the result of changing personal interests of graduates; rather it appears to reflect differences between students’ interests and job opportunities in the country. Besides personal interest, 155 .which itself is influenced by other factors, many external factors influence the final outcome of job seeking—njob Openings, pay, working conditions, security, etc. Taken together, these factors determine the effective demand for a particular occupation. And, as stated before, the distri- bution of occupations among previous graduates reflects the effective demand for skills more than occupational interest. Compared with the broad spectrum of job interests Shown in the questionnaires, students' actual job seeking activity has a narrow range of outcomes. The constraints that limit the types of jobs students take up lie both in the students themselves and in the labor market: in the students because of their lack of preparation for participation in the labor market, in the labor market because of the absence of an effective demand for some of the jobs students are inter— ested in. Elements of an Effective Demand Many different factors determine what constitutes an effective demand to which an individual seeking work will respond--wages, working conditions, skills required, security, etc. The relative importance graduates place on some of these factors has already been examined. In the questionnaire this effort was continued with the students. Their responses show that students and graduates differ. This difference is probably the result of the graduates' work experience, since the students appear to be more 156 idealistic in their outlook than graduates. Students' responses show that throughout the country, and especially in the city, they think it very important to consider the abilities and training a job requires. And students, especially those in the out districts, give considerable weight to considerations of the contribution a job can make to the develOpment of the country. Graduates, on the other hand, give greatest weight to such personally rewarding fac— tors as job security and the chance for promotion a job offers. It appears, then, that young students seeking work, more than graduates, could be attracted to jobs that chal— lenge their skills and that they see as making a contribu— tion to the develOpment of the country. Rural develOpment schemes that offer challenging employment to students in the out districts, therefore, should be able to attract these students if they know the possibilities of employment the schemes offer. Such jobs would be competing with traditional and better known jobs such as clerical work and teaching. So, with students' willingness to migrate to take up the traditional forms of work, the proximity of jobs to home will not be enough; jobs in the out districts must be seen as challenging and useful to the country if they are to attract students. Conclusion Students' job seeking activities are influenced by what they expect from secondary education and by their 157 eexpectations for further education. The values they see accruing to them from their schooling—-being able to develOp their talents and abilities, being able to contribute to the develOpment of the country—-are congruent with the develOpment aims of the country; they can and should be cap— italized upon. Students' aspirations and expectations for further education, however, are not realistic and appear to be based, in part, on a lack of information; schools or other agencies should provide them with this information. The occupational aspirations of many secondary students are undifferentiated and vague; vocational guidance could help refine these. But there are also some elements of these aspirations and expectations that can be capitalized upon for develOpment, especially among out district students. To do this an effective demand must be generated for jobs that provide productive employment for graduates in the rural areas. CHAPTER VII CONCLUSION The last three chapters presented a detailed analy— sis of the employment situation facing recent secondary school graduates in Belize. In this chapter the results of this analysis are considered against the background pre- Sented in Chapter II and evaluated with respect to some of the goals outlined in Chapter I. The first part reiterates some Specific goals of the develOpment process in Belize and the constraints on achieving them. Then, using the results of the study, it analyzes one of the principal obstacles to attaining these goals, especially the goal of full, productive, and freely chosen employment. In the second part, measures which educators can take to remove this obstacle are proposed. Develgpment in Belize: Goals and Obstacles The concept of develOpment which underlies this study is a process to which the country of Belize is committed. As the Government states in a pamphlet describing the Sgygp Year DevelOpment Plan (1964-1970), the objectives of the plan are to: (i) increase national income, (ii) increase employment opportunities, 158 159 8 (iii) balance the recurrent budget and if possible, provide a surplus for contribution towards capital formation, (iv) make total exports exceed the imports of con- sumption goods. The emphasis of the plan is on agriculture and the services which will contribute most to agricultural development namely education, cooperatives, marketing, community development and communication. . . . Improvement of social services such as housing, water, sewerage and medical services are important to the economic efficiency of the country and due importance is given to them in the Plan. It will be appreciated that when funds are limited priorities have to be worked out. The specific objectives considered in this study have been emphasized in this passage. The objective of increased employment opportunities was developed more fully in Chapter I; it means aiming for the goal of full, productive, and freely chosen employment. Chapter II has described the agricultural potential of the country, and emphasis throughout has been on the role of education. In any discussion of the goals of development for Belize, especially its goals for education and employment, two constraining factors common to most developing countries must be kept in mind--rapid population growth and limited resources. A third constraint on the development of Belize, which it does not share with many less developed nations, is its small population. The country has too few peOple to be independent in any full sense. The constraints these three factors impose on develOpment pervade the entire development lBelizean Seven Year Development Plan, 1964-1970 (Belize: Government Printer, n.d.)p P. 9. 160 process. To illustrate this, some of the constraints they place on the develOpment of education and the achievement of employment goals will be spelled out. Even though Belize is an underpOpulated country, rapid pgpulation_growth is a con— straint on both education and employment because of the age structure which results when growth is due almost entirely to natural increase. Births, not immigration or a lowering of the death rate, have been the source of much of this increase. Having 49 percent of the pOpulation under fifteen years of age makes heavy demands for the provision of edu— cation and health services, and it means that each year more and more jobs must be found for the growing number of young people entering the labor force. Limited natural resources restrict the ways in which the country can develop; hence, they limit the kinds of employment the country can provide. Large-scale industrialization is out of the question; most of the employment will have to be provided in the agricule tural sector. Limited financial resources make it necessary to set limits and priorities for the provision of school places and for the provision of other services such as employ- ment services and social security schemes. Limited humgp resources further restrict the quality and quantity of the services which can be provided. A country withausfew people as Belize must employ an abnormally high prOportion of its labor force in the administration of its government, and it does not have a sufficiently large population to support most types of specialized education. These are just some of 161 .the ways in which rapid population growth, limited resources, and a small pOpulation restrict the development of Belize. Population movements, both emigration and internal migration, are an indication of the problems of development which Belize faces. The government and people have invested heavily in education; a higher percentage of people in Belize have attended primary and secondary school than in many less developed countries, so trained manpower is one of the country's greatest resources. Many, however, have either left the country or moved away from the rural areas which are the potential growth points of the country. Emigration among recent graduates is extremely high. This represents a loss of trained and enterprising young people who might otherwise have put their education to use in the country. Nonetheless, there are some positive aspects to emigration as well. The emigrants contribute to the support of their families in Belize, and by leaving they reduce the effect of rapid pOp— ulation growth on the labor force, thereby reducing unemploy— ment. On the whole, however, it appears that high emigration of graduates is a loss to the country, not a gain. High emigration which draws prOportionately larger numbers from the city than the out districts has lessened the visible impact of migration to the city——high urban unemployment, crowded housing, etc.-—by reducing the net growth rate of the city. But the real impact of migration from the out districts to the city is felt in the out districts which are . being deprived of skilled manpower. One effect of this movement 162 of trained manpower, especially graduates, is on the distri— bution of skills in the labor force. Emigration of graduates, by drawing off those with the highest level of education widely obtainable in the country, reduces the overall educational level of the labor force, thereby probably lowering its pro— ductivity. Migration of graduates to the city creates an imbalance in the distribution of skills within the labor force. The agricultural sector, which the develOpment plan empha— sizes, does not attract its share of skilled people.w Only 3.7 percent of all graduates traced, including emigrants (6.2 percent excluding emigrants), are in the agricultural sector as compared with 40 percent in the total labor force (1960 census). These three factors, emigration, migration to the city, and the maldistribution of skills within the labor force, provide evidence that the goals of development are far from being realized even in view of the constraints of rapid population growth, limited resources, and a small population. School enrollments in Belize are keeping up with pOpulation growth, but the country's limited resources are not being used efficiently. Human resources are lost through emigration and, indirectly, the financial resources used for their edun cation are also lost to the country. As a result, one of Belize's most important natural resources, its agricultural potential, is not being developed. Although the three factors just mentioned are obstacles to the goals of development, they cannot be removed 163 directly in any effective and justifiable way. (The govern— ment respects the right of the peOple to free movement.) They must be removed by eliminating their cause, which is, to a large extent, the failure of the labor market to proH vide an effective demand for the prOper kind of employment and the lack of a supply to meet such a demand when it does occur. This is the obstacle; it is one of both demand and supply. An effective demand for employment provides jobs that will keep workers in the country, especially in the rural areas, and it attracts them to jobs in the more important sectors such as agriculture. Only by the genera— tion of an effective demand for such jobs can full, produc— tive, and freely chosen employment be attained. At the same time, a supply must be provided to meet the demand. There are, then, two aspects of the Operation of the labor market which must be looked after to achieve the employment goal: (1) the generation of employment Opportunities, (2) the generation in individuals of the knowledge, interest, and ability needed to take up this employment. Both are neces— sary to achieve the goal; develOping one without the other is a misuse of scarce resources. If jobs are generated, but no one is interested in them or able to do them, they go unfilled. If interest and ability to perform a particular kind of work are generated, but no jobs are available, workers use their skills elsewhere, either in another job for which they are less well suited, or in another place where suitable employment Opportunities do exist. The 164 .generation of employment opportunities is more the province of economic planners; generation of knowledge, interest, and ability in potential workers is the task of educators. Policies to achieve each must be co—ordinated. It must be strongly emphasized that schools and educators alone cannot do the job. Generation of employment Opportunities must accompany the schools' efforts. Otherwise the schools) efforts will be wasted. To illustrate the relation between these two aspects, recall the UNESCO planning team's goal for training technical and craft workers in Belize. It is for— tunate that this program was pgp_implemented, for no accom— panying efforts for employment generation were recommended, and the subsequent employment of graduates indicates that employment opportunities for technical and craft workers did not exist in anywhere near the number they were assumed to. If the program had been implemented, large numbers of tech— nicians and craftsmen would have been trained at considerable eXpense only to find themselves without suitable jobs. The results would have been either emigration or employment in a job which did not require these specialized skills. In the next section emphasis is on the contribution education in Belize, especially secondary education, can make in generating the labor supply which an effective demand requires. Specific recommendations can be made in the first part on vocational guidance because it deals with adjusting secondary schools to the existing demand for labor. Never- theless vocational guidance can be developed only to a limited 165 extent in the face of the existing demand; at the same time such guidance may create an awareness of the limitations of the present situation if it is carried out in a way that involves those outside the schools. In the second part of the section, which deals with vocational education and rural develOpment, specific recommendations are dependent upon decisions and plans yet to be made. The conclusions arrived at in this part are not specific recommendations; they iden- tify potential points for develOpment; they point out the limited contribution education can make in the present cirn cumstances, and they show the dependence upon overall develOpment policy of further educational development in these areas. Secondary_Education and Employment One of the more obvious problems uncovered by the analysis in the preceding chapters is the secondary schools' failure to prepare students for participation in the labor market. Students lack the knowledge and skills needed to obtain the kinds of jobs they want. While in school many did not even start thinking about the kind of work they wanted to do. And one-half of the students expressing interest in a specific job did not obtain it even though there were Openings. The schools should prepare their students for par— ticipation in the labor market both for the benefit of present students and for the benefit of future students. 166 By expressly preparing graduates for participation in the labor market, educators become aware of the relation between the actual results of their efforts to prepare students for employment and the expectations employers have for the schools' efforts. By comparing both the quality of graduates and the quality of schoOl programs with the requirements of the labor market, educators can evaluate their efforts. And by making them aware of the demands Of the labor market, the comparison provides educators with a means of knowing what is expected of the schools. The results of this feedback may be either an adjustment by the schools to meet these expectations or an attempt to alter them. For example, educators may learn that graduates lack some of the basic ‘mathematical skills needed for most employment and thereby be encouraged to improve their instruction in this area so as to make their graduates more productive workers. Or they may find that some employer expects graduates to possess a particular skill such as the ability to use tennplace logan rithms which no other employer requires. The schools should then try to alter the employer's expectations. This feedback may also open up new areas in which the schools can direct their efforts in the future. Graduates will obviously bene- fit from such preparation, for it will give them more freedom in their choice of a job, thereby enabling them to make fuller use of their education and training in a way that will be meaningful to them. 167 Having recognized the general need to prepare stu— dents for participation in the labor market, one approach to meeting the need is to look elsewhere for a model that can be used. Two different models might be examined, the United States' model of vocational guidance officers within the schools,2 or the British model of a Youth Employment Service outside of the schools.3 However, before trying to import a foreign scheme to meet the needs of Belize, the functioning of the models should be examined and the local needs further specified. Vocational guidance as practiced in the more advanced countries is based on the existence of many employment oppor- tunities for young peOple, and it assumes the existence of facilities for further training. Employers‘ selection tech~ niques are also relatively advanced. Vocational guidance in these countries seeks to help young people find and choose work which they find interesting and which suits their talents and abilities. To describe the situation in terms of the goals being sought here, vocational guidance is carried out in a situation where full and productive employment is much more a reality than it is in the less developed countries. Its function in the more advanced countries is to facilitate 2A history of vocational guidance in the United States is given in Eli Ginzberg, et al., Career Guidance: Who Needs It, Who Provides It, Who Gets It (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1971), pp. 23-37. 3The Youth Employment Service in Great Britain is evaluated in Nancy B. Keene, The Employment of Young WOrkers (London: Batsford, 1969). 168 freely chosen employment. Lindsey argues4 that a broader notion of preparation for participation in the labor market is needed in the less developed countries because of employ- ment conditions there. Because of rapid population growth there are not enough Opportunities in the traditional forms of employment Open to young people; graduates may not be aware of alternative forms of employment; opportunities for further training are limited or non—existent, and job selection techniques are based on irrelevant criteria. And for Belize in particular the variety of jobs available within the country is very limited. In short, the employment sit— uation facing graduates may be deficient on all three counts: full employment within the traditional occupations is not poSsible; productive employment is limited by the skills graduates have and the jobs they know about; and freely chosen employment is impossible because of selection tech— niques used by employers, because of the limited variety of jobs available, and because students lack the skills required to participate in the labor market. This does not mean that the goal of full, productive, and freely chosen employment should be abandoned and voca— tional guidance forgotten. Preparation of students for such a labor market is only one part of a broader effort which must be mounted to improve the Operation of the labor market 4C. H. Lindsey, "Vocational Guidance in Developing Countries," in Youth and DevelOpment in the Caribbean, 169 and to make possible the kind of employment aimed at. Edu— cators must participate in this effort on all fronts, not just within the traditional framework of personal counseling on an individual basis, as vocational guidance is usually conceived. Such a proposal is not as foreign to the function of the schools as it might seem at first. For there are several means of preparing students for participation in the labor market which, at the same time, improve or educate the labor market as well. Each of these efforts has at least two groups of beneficiaries, one being the students, and the other being teachers, parents, employers, or government, etc. The suggested activities which follow are drawn from Lindsey's list; they have been selected and modified in view of the situation in Belize. Many of the activities recom- mended here will have to be initiated by teachers, but they should be carried out by the students themselves in order to stimulate their interest and to develop in them an awareness of the employment situation which they face. Collection of accurate information is not the only, or even the primary, aim of these activities. But the data collected should be evaluated and kept for further development. With technical assistance other activities can be carried out by groups of teachers; these will be listed also. The present study pro— vides a base line for many of these activities; the data presented in previous chapters were given in some detail so as to provide background material for the activities sug- gested below. 170 Activities which students can undertake are: l. Compiling a list of employers in the community, giving the kinds of jobs they provide. This will stimulate interest and develOp an awareness of employment possibili— ties. 2. Conducting follow-up studies of ex-students, both graduates and drOp-outs, by having fourth form students interview them using a simple form constructed after class discussion. Special emphasis should be placed on the emi- gration problem to determine why some students emigrate. 3. Collecting examples of self-employment as engaged in by graduates for use in class discussion. 4. Organizing career days in which employers' representatives, representatives of the Labor Department, trade union leaders, etc. meet with students to discuss employment possibilities. 5. Organizing tours of farms and industries to acquaint students with work situations. 6. Conducting class exercises—~discussions, ques— tionnaires, etc.--to discover what aspirations and expectaa tions students have for employment and migration. 7. Conducting surveys of parents' views on employ— ment and discussing the results in class. 8. Engaging in "role-playing“ for job interviewing; writing and evaluating letters of application. In addition to helping students undertake activities of this kind, teachers should help students keep records on 171 these activities and compile the data gained from them for use by later classes. Those teachers who show interest in these activities and who have material to contribute as a result of their work should be brought together for a summer workshOp in order to pool their ideas and, with assistance, to develop further programs and material which can be used in all schools. Such material should include programs and visual aids for studying the employment situation in Belize-- charts to illustrate relations between population growth, employment, emigration, and the expansion of education; material on employment Opportunities in special areas such as agriculture, etc. They should organize efforts to pub— licize the employment situation to others, aiming at specific audiences such as fellow teachers, parents, and employers. Means of doing this include school staff meetings, meetings and discussions with parents and with groups of employers and union representatives. These latter can be arranged through organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce, the Cane Farmers' Association, the Citrus Growers‘ Association, and labor unions. The prOposals just made for vocational guidance are intended to help schools adapt to the existing situation and at the same time to develop awareness among students, teachers, parents, and employers of the chief limitation inherent in the employment situation-~the lack of effective demand. Awareness of the limitations of a situation is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for changing it. 172 Besides lack of awareness, inability is also an obstacle to change. And the schools are unable, of themselves, to generate effective demand for the kind of employment needed in Belize. When one considers the problems of vocational educa— tion and secondary education in the rural areas, the picture is even more limited. Schools can do little more than"adjust to the present situation. These final comments point out the limited contribution to the employment goal that edu- cation, especially vocational education and secondary educa— tion in the rural areas, can make in the present circumstances; and they identify some points with potential for develOpment. First, however, something will be said about the general strategy for development underlying these considerations. If develOpment as conceived of in this study is to take place, emphasis must be placed on people—~their aspira— tions, motivations, needs, and, above all, their abilities to utilize existing resources. To do this, one must take into account simultaneously a whole range of problems and identify the major obstacles to their solution. Then those with the power to do so must make efforts to eliminate these obstacles. Priority must be given to eliminating the major obstacles whether they arise from ignorance, inability, or unwillingness. Following the line of least resistance by emphasizing only those programs or projects easy to carry out may only distort "develOpment" and create new problems. The expansion of formal education is a case in point. Compared 173 with other problems such as income distribution or employment generation, it is relatively easy to provide more school places; but government money and effort spent on school expansion might be better spent on such things as improving a tax system or providing better agricultural extension ser— vices. At the same time, rapid expansion of schools can also lead to a deteriOration in the quality of education. What has been said about providing more school places can also be said about expanding either vocational education or secon- dary schools in rural areas. It may be relatively easy to provide more school places in either; but, as the following paragraphs show, the principal obstacle to the goal of full, productive, and freely chosen employment is not the lack of school places. Secondary schools in and of themselves can contribute little to £311 employment. However, given the high primary school enrollment in Belize and the limited employment Oppor- tunities in the country, education is a major employer of its own product. Obstacles to the full employment of graduates in Belize do not lie primarily within the schools; they lie in the inability of the economy to provide enough attractive employment Opportunities for graduates. As a result, many graduates emigrate to find employment. Neither vocational education nor increased Opportunities for secondary educa— tion in the rural areas will contribute much of themselves to full employment. Those who have had sOme semblance of vocational training do not use it. Current students are 174 interested in trades and crafts, but there is no evidence from the employment of recent graduates to show that they can find employment in these occupations. Increased secon— dary education in rural areas will contribute more to migration than to full employment. Thus, it will drain the out districts of the talent they need for development. Secondary education can, however, contribute to increasing the productivity of existing employment if the quality of the education given develOps competent employees possessing the prOper skills. Improved secretarial and business courses, as well as some preparation for teaching, would increase the productivity of most actual or prospec— tive employees. This function of secondary education, how- ever, is limited by the existing demand for employment. The overall productivity of employment which is also a part of productive employment depends upon matching the distribution of skills over the sectors of economic activity with the potential contributions of the sectors to the welfare of the country. Agriculture is the sector with the greatest poten— tial in Belize; its improvement is a prior condition for a better food supply, for greater income, and for more employ— ment. Agriculture should have a share in the skills of the labor force commensurate to its potential and importance, but it does not. Analysis of the specific obstacles to improved productivity in agriculture in Belize is beyond the scope of this study. What appear to be lacking are means and incentives to increase productivity. Lack of 175 vocational education in secondary schools will not be an obstacle until demand for the workers such courses might train comes into being. No evidence exists to suggest that changes in school curricula will alter employment aspira— tions. And, given the lack of incentives in agriculture, increased Opportunities for secondary education in the out districts may only draw more young people away from farms into such traditional forms of employment as teaching and clerical work. Schools can contribute most to freely chosen employ- ment. Vocational guidance which takes on the scope previously outlined will be the most important means of achieving this. But even in this area, there are obstacles to freely chosen employment outside the schools' control. Most obviously, the narrow range and limited number of employment Opportuni- ties in Belize limits the contribution schools can make to freely chosen employment. Increased Opportunities for further education and training will increase the range of opportuni— ties open to many graduates. Increased vocational education will broaden the range of skills graduates can acquire in school, but it will not give them more freedom in their choice of an occupation if there are no real incentives to use these skills in productive work. Increased opportunities for secondary education in the rural areas may Open more employ~ ment Opportunities to those who attend rural secondary schools, thereby giving more young people greater freedom of choice. Priorities must be set, however. One advantage accruing to a 176 few (greater freedom of occupational choice as a result of secondary education) cannot justify an expenditure of human and financial resources that might otherwise be used to bene— fit larger numbers over a longer period of time. Long—range benefits for larger numbers would, for example, result from a comparable expenditure on agricultural extension in the same areas. Foster's summary, based upon studies in a different cultural and economic setting, is appropriate here: . . . In the initial stages technical and vocational education is the cart rather than the horse in economic growth, and its development depends upon real and per- ceived Opportunities in the economy. The provision of vocational education must be directly related to those points at which some develOpment is already apparent and where demand for skills is beginning to manifest itself.5 This study has revealed some potential points of development within the schools upon which overall development policy in Belize should build. The willingness of students and graduates, especially in the rural areas, to contribute to the develOpment of the Country is one such point. But students have a narrow and traditional view of which occun pations can contribute to this development. Therefore, although the curriculum of secondary education may not change occupational aspirations, it can help the students develop a more realistic vision of life in the country. Part of this vision is understanding the agricultural potential of the country and the importance of this potential for the future develOpment of the country. Schools can help students become aware of this potential in many ways: through courses 177 in social studies and the sciences, and through visiting and studying successful examples of such developments as the lobster fishing co-Operatives and Mennonite farms. In their responses to items on the questionnaire, students showed an interest in trades and crafts, but no attractive employment Opportunities exist in many of these areas; and vocational education will not create them. One school program is contributing to a solution of this prob- lem. In co-Operation with the Electricity Board this school offers a night course for practising electricians in order to upgrade the members of the trade. It is hoped that these electricians can be upgraded sufficiently and that the qualn ity of their work will improve enough to increase their earn- ing ability and to make the occupation a more attractive one. At the same time the program gives teachers contact with workers and knowledge of the problems with which they work and the mistakes they make. Educators can use this knowledge in designing a suitable curriculum for beginning students. The program in this particular school was made possible because the Electricity Board is the major employer of elec— tricians. Other trades are less well organized, but trade unions and contractors could be approached to initiate simi— 1ar programs for the contruction trades, and the Public Works Department could be contacted to encourage introducing a program in auto mechanics. BIBLIOGRAPHY 178 BIBLIOGRAPHY Books Berg, Ivar. Education and Jobs: The Great Training Robbery. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971. Blaug, Mark. An Introduction to the Economics of Education. London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1970. Blaug, Mark; Layard, Richard; and Woodhall, Maureen. The Causes of Graduate Unemployment in India. London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1969. Blaug, Mark; Preston, M.; and Ziderman, A. The Utilization of Educated Manpower in Industryi_A Preliminary Report. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1967. Brembeck, Cole, and Thompson, Timothy. New Strategies for -_ Educational Development. Lexington: D. C. Heath Lexington Books, 1973. Callaway, Archibald. Educational Planning and Unemployed Youth. Paris: UNESCO: International Institute of Educational Planning, 1971. ‘ Carey-Jones, N. S. The Pattern of a Dependent Economy: The National Income of British Honduras. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953. Clegern, Wayne M. British Honduras: Colonial Dead End, 1859-1900. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967. Clignet, Remi, and Foster, Philip. The Fortunate Few: A Study of Secondary Schools and Students in the Ivory Coast. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1966. Colonial Office. Report of the British Guiana and British Honduras Settlement Commission. London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1948. Committee on the International Migration of Talent. Egg International Migration of High-Level Manpower: Its Impact on the Development Process. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970. 179 180 Commonwealth Caribbean Regional Youth Seminar. Youth and Development inthe Caribbean. London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 1970. Coombs, Philip H. The World Edugational Crisis: A Systems Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Cronbach, Lee, and Suppes, Patrick. Research for Tomorrow's Schools: Disciplined Inquiry for Education. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Directorate General of Employment and Training, Ministry of Labour and Employment. Employment of Matriculates: A Case Study. New Delhi: Government of India, 1963. Eicher, Carl, et a1. Employment Generation in African Agriculture. East Lansing: Michigan State Univer- sity, Institute of International Agriculture, 1970. Faure, Edgar. Learning to Be: The WOrldgf Education Today and Tomorrow. Paris: UNESCO, 1972. Figueroa, John J. Society, Schools and Progress in the West Indies. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1971. Foster, Philip. Education and Social Change in Ghana. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. Ginzberg, Eli. Career Guidance: Who Needs It, Who Provides It, Who Gets It. New York: MCGraw-Hill Book Co., 1971. Ginzberg, Eli; Ginsberg, Sol; Axelrod, Sidney; and Herma, John. Occupational Ch01ce: An Approach to General Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1963. Griffiths, V. L. The Problems of Rural Education. Paris: International Institute of Educational Planning, 1968. Harbison, Frederick. Human Resources as the Wealth of Nations. London: Oxford University Press, 1973. Humphries, R. A. The Diplomatic History of British Honduras, 1638—l90l.—_London: Oxford University Press, 1961. International Labour Office. Concepts of Labour Force Underutilisation. Geneva: International Labour Office, 1971. . Employment and Economic Growth Studies and Reports, New Series, No. 67. Geneva: International Labour Office, 1964. 181 . Employment, Incomes, and Eguality: A Strategy for Epcreasing Productive Employment in Kenya. Geneva: International Labour Office, 1972. . The International Standardisation of Labour Statistics, Studies’and Reports, New Seriesy NO. 53. Geneva: International Labour Office, 1959. . Matching Employment Opportunities and Expectations: A Programme of Action for Ceylon. Geneva: Inter- national Labour Office, L972. - . Towards Full Employment: A Programme for Colombia Prepared by an Inter-Agency Team Organised by_the International Labour Office. Geneva: PIHternational Labour Office, 1970. . The World Employment Programme. Geneva: Inter- national Labour Office, 1960. Keene, Nancy B. The Employment of Young Workers. London: Batsford, 1969. Maizels, Joan. Adolescent Needs and the Transitiomifrom School to Work. London: Athlone Press, 1970. Myrdal, Gunnar. The Challenge of World Poverty: A World Anti-Poverty Program in Outline. New York: Pantheon Books, 1970. Peach, Ceri. West Indian Migration to Britain. London: Oxford University Press, 1968. Pearson, Lester B. Partners in DevelOpment: Report of the Commission on International Development. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969. Reed, Nelson. The Caste War of Yucatan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964. Roberts, Kenneth. From School to Work: A Study of the Youth Employment Service. Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1971. Sawatzky, Harry L. They Sought A Country: Mennonite Coloni- zation in Mexico. Berkeley: University of Cali- fornia Press, 1971. Singer, Hans, and Schiavo-Campo, Salvatore. Perspectives of Economic Development. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1970. 182 Staley, Eugene. Planning Occupational Education and Train- ing for Development. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971. Taylor, Douglas. The Black Carib of British Honduras. New York: Werner Gren Foundation for AnthrOpological Research, 1951. Turnham, David. The Employment Problem in Less Developed Countries. Paris: Organization for Economic Co- operation and Development, 1971. United Nations. Children and Youth in National Development. New York: United Nations Children's Fund, n.d. . United Nations Demographic Yearbook, 1970. New York: United Nations, 1971. . World Economic Survey, 1959. New York: United Nations Economic Council, 1960. . World Economic Survey, 1968. New York: United Nations Social and Economic Council, 1969. Waddell, D. A. G. British Honduras, A Historical and Con- temporary Survey. London: Oxford University Press, 1961. Wright, A. C. S.; Romney, D. H.; Arbuckle, R. H.; and Vial, V. E. Land in British Honduras: Report of the British Honduras Land Use Survey Team. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1959. Articles Bjork, Robert. "POpulation, Education and Modernization." Education in National Development. Edited by Don Adams. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971. Bowman, Mary J., and Anderson, C. Arnold. "Concerning the Role of Education in Development." Old Societies and New States. Edited by Clifford Geertz. New York: The Free Press, 1963. Browning, Harley. "Migration Selectivity and the Growth of Large Cities in Developing Societies." Rapid Popu- lation Growth: Consequences and Policy Implications. Edited by National Academy of Sciences. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971. 183 Byrnes, Francis C., and Byrnes, Kerry J. "Agricultural Extension and Education in Developing Countries." Ruraljpevelopment in a Changing WOrld. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1971. Foster, Philip. "The Vocational School Fallacy in Development Planning." Economics of Education. Edited by Mark Blaug. Baltimore: Penguin, 1968. Goodlad, John. "Educational Research and the Changing Role of the Secondary School." International Review of Education, XVIII, 3 (1972), 324-38. International Labour Office. "Resolution Concerning Employ- ment Policy, 28 June 1961." International Labour Office Official Bulletin, XLIV, 1 (1961), 29—34. Keyfitz, Nathan. "Age Distribution as a Challenge to DevelOp- ment." American Journal of Sociology, LXX, 6 (May, 1965), 659-68. Lindsey, C. H. "Vocational Guidance in Developing Countries." Youth and Development in the Caribbean Commonwealth. Caribbean Regional Youth Seminar. London: Common- wealth Secretariate, 1970. Moller, Herbert. "Youth as a Force in the Modern World." Comparatiye Studies in Society and History, X (April, The New York Times, March 12, 1972. Rosenmar, Leopold. "New Theoretical Approaches to the Socio- logical Study Of Young People." International Social Science Journal, XXIV, 2 (1972), 242-64. Seers, Dudley. "Challenges to DevelOpment Theories and Strategies." International Development 1969: Chal- lenges to Prevalent Ideas on Development. Proceed- ings of the Eleventh World Conference of the Society for International Development. Edited by K. B. Madhara. Washington: Society for International Development, 1970. Smith, M. G. "Education and Occupational Choice in Rural Jamaica." Social and Economic Studies, IX (Sep- tember, 1960), 332-54. Smith, Raymond T. "Culture and Social Structure in the Caribbean: Some Recent Work on Family and Kinship Studies." Cpmparative Studies in Society and His— tory, VI (October, 1963), 24-46. 184 Thompson, Timothy. "The Distribution and Growth of the Secondary School Population in Belize.“ National Studies (Belize), I, 2 (March, 1973), 15-20. Vaizey, John. "Demographic Consideration in Integrated Planning of Educational Levels." Proceedings of the WOrld Popplation Conference. Volume IV. New York: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 1967. ' Weiner, Myron. "Political Demography: An Inquiry into the Political Consequences of Population Change." Ra id Population Growth: Consequences and Policy Implica— tions. Edited by National Academy of Sciences. Baltimore: Johns HOpkins Press, 1971. Weitz, Raanan. "Toward a New Approach: Introduction and Conclusions." Rural Developmgnt in a Changing World. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1971. Official Publications Government of British Honduras. Abstract of Statistics, May, 1961. Belize City, n.d. . Annual Abstract of Statistics No. 6. Belize: Government Printer, 1968. . Annual Report of the Education Department for the School Year 1963-64. Belize City, n.d. . Annual Report of the Education Department for the School Year 1964-65. Belize: Government Printer, n.d. . Annual Report of the Education Department for the Year 1966. Belize: Government Printer, n.d. . Annual Report of the Department of Education for the School Year 1966-1967. Belize City, n.d. . Annual Report of the Department of Education for the School Year 1967-68. Belize City, n.d. . Department of Education Triennial Report 1952- . Development Plan, 1964-1970. Belize: Government Printer, n.d. 185 . Manpower Assessment Report. 2 vols. Belize: Government Printer, 1964. . Manpower Report No. 1, March-September, 1965. Belize City, n.d. . Manpower Report, March 1966. Belize City, n.d. . Staff List. Belize: Government Printer, 1972. United Nations. A Development Plan for British Honduras. New York: United Nations Commissioner for Technical Assistance—~Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 1963. West Indies Population Centre. Census of British Honduras: 1960. Jamaica: Government Printer, 1964. APPENDIX SECTORAL AND OCCUPATIONAL DIVISION OF THE LABOR FORCE 186 187 The four tables presented here provide the data from which the indices of difference discussed in Chapter IV are computed. All four tables have the same format. The data in the first five columns come from the 1960 census; those in the last column were collected in the present study. Column 1 gives the proportion of the male or female labor force in each subndivision; columns 2 and 3 show dis— tributions of twenty to twenty—four year olds over the divi— sions. The first column ofthe pair shows the prOportion of twenty to twenty-four year olds in each division; the diSB tribution of the age group over all of the divisions is given in the second column of the pair. Columns 4 and 5 repeat the format of columns 2 and 3, using those with post—primary education as the group in place of the twenty to twenty—four year olds. Finally, column 6 gives the distribution of the recent graduates traced for this study. Appendix Table 188 l.--Sectoral division of labor force, men. COLUMNa Sector 1 2 3 4 5 6 Agriculture & Fishing 47.1 12.8 43.3 . 20.0 10.1 Manufacturing 15.4 14.6 16.2 . 13.0 6.6 Construction & Utilities . 11.6 7.1 6.0 3.8 Commerce . 11.4 . 24.5 13.9 22.0 Transport & Communication 5.6 14.6 5.9 9.9 4.8 6.1 Services 11.0 20.5 16.2 44.5 41.7 51.4 Other 4.3 16.4 5.0 1.9 0.6 0.0 TOTAL 100.0 13.9 99.9 11.8 100.0 100.0 aSee text for explanation of column headings. Appendix Table 2.--Sectoral division of labor force, women. COLUMNa Sector 1 2 3 4 5 6 Agriculture & Fishing 10.3 7.3 4.5 1.9 . . Manufacturing 11.2 15.4 9.8 15.7 . . Construction & Utilities 0.4 29.4 0.6 35.3 0.6 1.8 Commerce 12.9 22.7 16.7 31.6 18.0 18.8 Transport & Communication 1.0 22.9 1.4 60.4 2.8 1.8 Services 63.6 18.4 67.0 24.8 70.0 72.5 TOTAL 99.9 17.5 100.0 22.5 100.1 100.0 aSee text for explanation of column headings. Appendix Table 189 3.--Occupational division of labor force, men. COLUMNa Occupational Group 1 2 3 4 5 6 APT 4.5 16.1 5.2 58.0 22.4 40.2 Clerical 3.9 19.8 5.6 58.1 19.2 33.2 Sales 6.4 10.2 4.7 24.1 13.1 6.6 Agriculture 45.5 12.7 41.4 4.4 17.0 3.8 Transport 6.2 16.9 7.5 8.4 4.6 3.8 Laborer & Craftsman 29.0 14.1 29.4 6.7 16.5 6.1 Services 4.5 19.2 6.2 19.1 7.3 6.3 TOTAL 100.0 13.9 100.0 11.8 100.1 100.0 aSee text for explanation of column headings. Appendix Table 4.--Cccupational division of labor force, women. COLUMNa Occupational Group 1 2 3 4 5 6 APT 19.9 24.8 28.0 54.9 47.6 47.5 Clerical 8.5 39.9 19.2 72.7 27.3 48.1 Sales 11.4 19.6 12.8 22.6 11.4 1.5 Agriculture 10.6 7.1 4.3 1.4 0.7 0.0 Transport 0.3 19.4 0.9 40.0 1.3 0.0 Laborer & Craftswoman 11.2 13.2 8.5 11.5 5.8 0.6 Services 37.6 12.2 26.3 3.5 5.9 2.4 TOTAL 100.0 17.5 00.0 22.5 100.0 100.1 aSee text for explanation of column headings. MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 1N\IJIWIHI(ll(llNW"(WWW)"!IHIIHIINIIIH 3 1293 03177 4080