Documented examples

The move, and what it needed

The state deposits money in a named account each citizen owns, publishes a course registry with subsidies, and lets individual demand rather than employers decide what gets learned, with top-ups aimed at mid-career workers.

Preconditions

• A single national identity and payments rail to run the accounts on
• A subsidised training market large enough to spend the credit in
• Fiscal surpluses to fund top-ups a decade running

Where else it has been used: France's Compte Personnel de Formation is the closest sibling. Both show the same failure mode of low-value courses chasing the credit, which each has had to prune from its registry.

The move, and what it needed

The state made libraries a statutory municipal duty with national subsidy, kept them free by law including reservations and inter-library loans, and municipalities compete on quality, with the flagship in Helsinki placed opposite parliament as a statement.

Preconditions

• Near-universal literacy and a reading culture that predates the statute
• Municipal finance strong enough to fund a non-mandatory-feeling service
• A language community small enough that the state subsidises publishing too

Where else it has been used: The Nordic neighbours run the same model at slightly lower intensity. Elsewhere the statutory free-of-charge rule is the part that erodes first, and with it the usage.

The move, and what it needed

A federal agency combines funding with peer evaluation and a national standard, so postgraduate programmes coordinate around a common definition of quality instead of growing as isolated local institutions.

Preconditions

• A stable public agency with authority over funding and evaluation
• A research community willing to participate in a shared assessment system
• Long-term public support for postgraduate training

The move, and what it needed

A permanent statistical institution gives education policy a memory and a common set of objects, so schools, students and results can be compared across territories and governments.

Preconditions

• A mandate to collect comparable information across levels of government
• Schools and secretariats able to report through a shared system
• Analytical staff and archival practice that preserve series across reforms

The move, and what it needed

Indonesia used an end-to-end digital application, training marketplace and payment rails to move a skills benefit from central government to workers, while accrediting private providers and changing the scheme after the pandemic.

Preconditions

• A digital identity and payment channel that can verify applicants at scale
• A quality-assurance process for many public and private training providers
• Labour-market feedback strong enough to refresh the course catalogue

Where else it has been used: The design has been studied by Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines. The transferable piece is the operating marketplace and evaluation loop, not the beneficiary total by itself.

The move, and what it needed

France gave individuals a portable training entitlement, then put the account, catalogue, identity checks and payment flow into one national platform managed by the Caisse des Dépôts. The design lets workers choose a course while public employment services and employers can add targeted funding.

Preconditions

• A national entitlement and contribution system that records rights across employers and employment spells
• A trusted digital identity, provider catalogue and payment system that can verify courses and prevent fraud
• Quality assurance and co-funding rules that keep a large open marketplace from becoming a directory of low-value training

Where else it has been used: Individual learning accounts travel when entitlement portability is paired with provider quality controls and guidance; a wallet without trusted course information can increase transactions without increasing skills.

The move, and what it needed

A national network of Centros Qualifica gives adults a common entry point for counselling, recognition and validation of prior learning (RVCC), formal training and a portable qualification record, linking fragmented providers to a visible pathway.

Preconditions

• Local centres with counsellors and assessors able to validate work-based learning
• A qualification framework and records that employers and schools can understand
• Funding and referral links to training providers, employment services and employers

Where else it has been used: Adult-learning systems travel when advice, prior-learning recognition and funded courses form one route; registrations without follow-through can otherwise become a throughput statistic rather than capability.

The move, and what it needed

Novas Oportunidades scaled adult qualification through recognition and validation of prior learning (RVCC), adult education and training (EFA) routes and a national delivery network; when political and fiscal support receded, the infrastructure contracted and a successor programme had to rebuild entry points.

Preconditions

• A national qualification framework that can turn work experience into recognized credits
• Local centres, assessors and training providers able to process large cohorts
• Long-horizon funding and cross-party continuity, because adult-learning capacity is slow to rebuild after a stop

Where else it has been used: The interruption travels as a warning: mass adult-learning systems need continuity and credible standards, or a high-enrolment push can leave a capability gap when the delivery network is withdrawn.

The move, and what it needed

The Ministry of Education assembled university courses on one open platform, letting learners study remotely and connect course participation to formal credit and certification pathways.

Preconditions

• Universities willing to publish reusable course material to a common technical standard
• A credit and assessment framework that makes online study count beyond the platform
• Connectivity and learner support good enough for participation outside campus

Where else it has been used: Open course platforms travel when enrolment can convert into recognised credit or skills; a large catalogue without completion and credential data measures supply more than continuous learning.

The move, and what it needed

Sector authorities levy and coordinate employer-linked training, then place learners into learnerships, skills programmes and workplace experience tied to occupational demand rather than leaving adult learning entirely to formal colleges.

Preconditions

• A statutory levy and sector bodies with a mandate to fund training beyond public campuses
• Employers willing to host learners and assess workplace competence
• Occupational standards and certification routes that make short programmes legible to workers and firms

Where else it has been used: Workplace learning travels when employers share the cost and the credential is recognised across firms; opportunity counts without learner follow-up cannot show whether skills actually accumulated.

The move, and what it needed

A dense network of public education centres offered locally requested courses while HEMBA moved a subset of the same provision online, allowing adult learners to enter through either a physical centre or a national platform.

Preconditions

• A nationwide network of public adult-education centres
• A course catalogue and credential system that can be updated centrally
• Digital infrastructure and instructors able to support online as well as in-person delivery

Where else it has been used: Adult-learning networks travel when local access and a common credential reinforce one another; participation totals need unique-learner and outcome data before they become a capability score.

The move, and what it needed

The presidency decreed a national literacy programme, and the education ministry, and later a social protection directorate, ran it through state-paid instructors in community adult education centres in every district. Enrolment fell by half over a decade as the function moved between ministries and county returns degraded.

Preconditions

• A large adult population that had missed primary school
• A ministry department with paid instructors at district level
• A political mandate that framed literacy as a national campaign rather than a welfare service

The move, and what it needed

The Ministry of Education set national literacy targets and counted learners through its school census, but relied on churches, NGOs and donor projects to host and staff most centres. When those partners withdrew, enrolment fell, and no state budget line replaced them.

Preconditions

• A national school census that reaches non-formal centres
• Religious and NGO networks willing to host classes in every sector
• Public funding for instructors that would hold up when donor projects ended, which is the precondition that failed here

The move, and what it needed

The Ministry of Education built a national adult literacy programme run through regional education bureaus and community learning centres, then let enrolment fall by most of its peak as the programme was restructured and conflict removed whole regions from reporting.

Preconditions

• Regional education bureaus and kebele-level centres able to recruit facilitators and enrol adults at scale
• A national campaign target, here ESDP IV's goal to cut adult illiteracy, that kept enrolment a political priority
• Peace and administrative reach across regions, which the Amhara and Tigray conflicts removed

Where else it has been used: Mass literacy campaigns travel as enrolment drives; the Ethiopian series shows the reach depends on keeping the delivery network funded and present after the campaign target lapses.

The move, and what it needed

Guatemala's Congress gave a joint state-employer institute a compulsory 1% payroll levy, collected by the social security institute, and the institute turned it into a national network of training centres and short courses for workers at every occupational level.

Preconditions

• A formal payroll base large enough to fund training through a levy collected alongside social security contributions
• Employer representation in governance, so firms accept the levy as their own training budget
• Centres in every department, which reach formal workers and leave the large informal workforce mostly outside

Where else it has been used: It follows the Latin American levy-funded training model (SENAI, SENA, INA), and like them it reaches the formal sector far better than informal workers.

The move, and what it needed

The Dominican state, employers and unions run INFOTEP jointly under Law 116-80, financed by an employer payroll contribution, and since 2020 the institute expanded its own centres and virtual offer to push enrolment past one million a year.

Preconditions

• A compulsory employer training levy that gives the institute a revenue base independent of the annual budget contest
• Tripartite governance that keeps employers invested in the course offer
• A dense network of own and partner training centres, plus a virtual platform, to reach provinces outside Santo Domingo

Where else it has been used: INFOTEP belongs to the Latin American levy-funded training family with SENAI and SENA; El Salvador dissolved its counterpart, INSAFORP, in 2023, so the same model travelled and was then unwound next door.

The move, and what it needed

The revolutionary government closed secondary schools for part of 1961 and sent students, teachers and worker brigades to live with illiterate households, after a door-to-door census of illiterates run through mass organizations. It then built follow-on worker-peasant education so the new readers kept studying.

Preconditions

• A census of who could not read, collected house by house through neighborhood and mass organizations
• A state able to suspend schooling and mobilize about a quarter of a million volunteers under one command
• A single primer and teacher manual that untrained volunteers could deliver

Where else it has been used: Cuba exported the method as 'Yo, sí puedo', a radio and video version used in about 30 countries; the exported form replaced the volunteer army with recorded lessons and local facilitators, because the mass mobilization did not travel.

The move, and what it needed

The Commonwealth extended income-contingent loans to vocational diplomas and opened them to private providers with light entry controls; providers and brokers enrolled students at scale, Parliament then legislated the scheme's closure and replaced it with capped loans for approved courses and providers.

Preconditions

• An income-contingent loan system administered through the tax office, so the state could finance study with no upfront fee
• A contestable training market in which private providers drew public money per enrolment
• Regulators (ASQA, ACCC, the department) whose powers and data lagged the growth of enrolments by several years

Where else it has been used: The same demand-driven, provider-paid design produced comparable mis-selling in the United States for-profit college sector and in England's Individual Learning Accounts, which were closed in 2001; each time the fix was to cap the loans and vet the providers, which shrinks reach along with fraud.

The move, and what it needed

Finland's tripartite system funded study leave for experienced workers out of unemployment-insurance contributions, administered by the Employment Fund; the Orpo government then abolished it to cut contributions and public spending, and Parliament passed the repeal in May 2024.

Preconditions

• An earnings-related social insurance fund able to carry an education benefit alongside unemployment cover
• Employer acceptance of statutory study leave, through tripartite bargaining
• A political majority willing to keep paying for it when fiscal consolidation became the priority

Where else it has been used: Other Nordic states have study-leave income support. Finland's abolition shows how a contribution-funded benefit with no constituency outside its users can be dropped in one budget round.

The move, and what it needed

Parliament placed the national labour-retraining fund in a non-state public body governed jointly by the government, employers and unions, which buys courses from training providers and steers them to the unemployed, to workers in firms and to people outside Montevideo.

Preconditions

• A payroll-financed retraining fund that predates the institute and gives it its own budget
• Employer and union confederations willing to co-govern a public body
• A market of training providers the institute can contract instead of teaching itself

Where else it has been used: Tripartite training funds of this kind run across Latin America, from Guatemala's INTECAP to the Dominican Republic's INFOTEP. Uruguay's version is younger and buys training from providers instead of teaching through its own centres.

The move, and what it needed

The state let firms deduct accredited training costs from corporate income tax up to 1% of payroll, with SENCE accrediting courses and intermediaries (OTIC) pooling funds. The volume of training then followed firms' tax appetite rather than a public target, and Hacienda moved to shrink it once DIPRES found no wage effect.

Preconditions

• A corporate income tax base large enough for a payroll-linked deduction to matter to firms
• An accreditation agency and intermediary bodies able to certify courses and liquidate claims
• Administrative records that let a budget office evaluate impact and argue for cutting a tax expenditure

Where else it has been used: Payroll-levy and tax-credit training schemes are common across Latin America and Europe; the Chilean record shows the usual failure mode, where large firms capture most of the subsidy and low-skill workers in small firms stay out.

The move, and what it needed

The Ministry of Employment and Labor refunded employers from the Employment Insurance fund for training their staff, which drove volume up to a 2018 peak, then cut support for statutory and oversupplied courses and capped remote training to contain cost and quality problems, and participations halved.

Preconditions

• An employment insurance fund with a levy earmarked for vocational development
• A large market of accredited private training providers, including remote courses cheap enough to scale fast
• A ministry willing to trade headline volume for tighter subsidy rules

Where else it has been used: Levy-refund training schemes in many OECD countries show the same arc: volume grows on cheap compliance and remote courses, then falls when the funder tightens eligibility; the volume series alone cannot tell lost capability from removed waste.

The move, and what it needed

The Philippines merged its manpower council, technical-education bureau and apprenticeship office into one authority that sets training regulations, registers public and private providers, funds scholarships and certifies competencies, so a national skills system runs through thousands of local providers under one standard.

Preconditions

• Promulgated competency standards and an assessment-and-certification system employers recognise
• A network of public training institutes plus regulated private providers that reaches every region
• Scholarship funding that can be scaled up and down with labour-market needs without collapsing provider capacity

Where else it has been used: Unified TVET authorities with competency-based certification echo Australia's and Singapore's models; the Philippine case shows the scale such a body can reach while leaving labour-market relevance a separate test.

The move, and what it needed

Panama's government, through a tripartite board chaired by the labour minister, runs one autonomous national training institute with fixed regional centres, mobile courses and, since 2020, a virtual campus, so short courses can be scaled up in a crisis without new institutions.

Preconditions

• A dedicated training levy or budget line that survives changes of government
• A network of regional centres and mobile units that reaches comarcas and rural provinces
• A course registry able to count enrolment and completion by area and centre

Where else it has been used: National training institutes on the SENA and SENAI model are common in Latin America; INADEH's pandemic shift to a virtual campus shows the model scaling through cheap online short courses, which raises the count faster than it raises skills.

The move, and what it needed

Bolivia's Ministry of Education ran a time-bound national literacy campaign with a standardised audiovisual method and local volunteer facilitators in community centres, then converted its graduates into the enrolment base of a standing post-literacy directorate.

Preconditions

• A census-based count of illiterate adults to set targets and find learners
• A ready-made, low-skill teaching method that volunteers could deliver without trained teachers
• Political priority sustained across the campaign years and a ministry unit to inherit the graduates

Where else it has been used: The same Cuban 'Yo, sí puedo' method was used in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador before and alongside Bolivia, with national literacy declarations in each that independent surveys later qualified.

The move, and what it needed

Vietnam's Prime Minister set a national ten-year quota for rural vocational training, and the labour ministry's vocational directorate financed short courses per head through provinces and districts, which commissioned public and private training providers against annual targets.

Preconditions

• A provincial and district administration able to recruit learners and commission courses against a central quota
• A network of district vocational centres and private providers to deliver short courses at volume
• A per-trainee subsidy schedule set centrally, which made the quota financeable

The move, and what it needed

The federal education ministry, with ESF money, handed eligible low-income workers a voucher covering half of a course fee up to 500 euros after a counselling session, putting the purchasing decision in the worker's hands rather than the employer's.

Preconditions

• A large market of accredited private and public training providers able to accept the voucher
• A nationwide network of counselling points to issue vouchers and check eligibility
• Co-financing from the European Social Fund, which tied the programme's life to an EU funding period

Where else it has been used: Individual learning accounts and vouchers were tried widely, from the United Kingdom's ILAs to France's CPF. The German version stayed small and ended; the lesson that travels is that a voucher needs reach and redemption, not issuance, to change participation.

The move, and what it needed

Federal law entitles anyone taking a recognised upgrading qualification to support for course fees and living costs, part grant and part loan, so a skilled worker can leave or reduce work to train for a master or technician certificate without employer sponsorship.

Preconditions

• A codified ladder of upgrading qualifications (Meister, Techniker, Fachwirt) that employers recognise
• Federal and state co-funding under a statutory entitlement rather than a time-limited programme
• Chambers and schools able to run courses and examinations at national scale

Where else it has been used: Austria and Switzerland support similar higher vocational qualifications, but the German entitlement model depends on the Meister system existing first; countries without that ladder have little to attach it to.

The move, and what it needed

The state ring-fenced a payroll levy for vocational training and let every contributing firm reclaim it as a social security rebate for training it organises itself. A tripartite foundation, now FUNDAE, governed by government, employers and unions, verifies the training and publishes coverage.

Preconditions

• A payroll training levy collected through the social security system that can be returned as a rebate
• Social partners willing to co-govern the fund and accept its verification rules
• Enough administrative capacity in firms to organise and report training, which is why micro-enterprise take-up stays low

Where else it has been used: Levy-rebate schemes run in France and Singapore. Spain's coverage split by firm size shows the design reaches employees of large firms far better than workers in small firms, who need the training most.

The move, and what it needed

DHET took provincial adult learning centres into nine national CET colleges to professionalise public adult education. Enrolments kept dwindling, and some centres had lecturers but no students.

Preconditions

• A national department able to fund and accredit adult programmes that adults actually want, not only school-equivalent certificates
• An enrolment record that is audited, so that a decline can be told apart from a data clean-up
• Physical learning centres and outreach in the communities the colleges are meant to serve

Where else it has been used: DHET's response is to tie CET colleges to SETA and National Skills Fund occupational programmes, which grew 118.8 percent in 2023 from a base of 558.

The move, and what it needed

The state funds a national training agency from a payroll levy on employers and lets it run short, free, open-enrolment courses, in person and online, alongside its longer technical programmes, so any working adult can take a module without a qualification track.

Preconditions

• A dedicated payroll contribution that funds the agency outside annual budget fights.
• A national network of training centres in every region plus a virtual platform to reach rural learners.
• Employers and unions on the governing board, which keeps course content close to jobs.

Where else it has been used: The levy-funded national training agency model is shared with Brazil's SENAI and SENAC, which predate SENA and were a reference for its design.

The move, and what it needed

The State Council set a three-year national training target and released 100 billion yuan from the unemployment insurance fund surplus into ring-fenced provincial accounts, and the human resources ministry paid accredited providers and employers per trainee against a published target catalogue.

Preconditions

• An unemployment insurance fund with a large accumulated surplus that the centre could redirect
• A provincial human resources administration able to accredit providers and verify claims at scale
• Employers and migrant workers reachable through workplace and village channels

Where else it has been used: Singapore's SkillsFuture and Korea's employment insurance training accounts finance adult training from payroll-linked funds; China's version was a time-bound surge rather than an individual entitlement, which is why volume fell when the fund was spent.

The move, and what it needed

Costa Rica built a single national training institute in 1965 and financed it largely from an employer payroll contribution, so INA could run free courses across every region without competing for annual budget allocations; after 2019 its enrolments fell back to roughly the level of the mid-2000s.

Preconditions

• A dedicated, earmarked revenue stream that does not depend on yearly appropriations
• A regional network of training centres able to reach rural planning regions as well as the Central Valley
• A curriculum and certification model that employers recognise, which INA has been redesigning around competencies

Where else it has been used: The payroll-levy training institute is a Latin American family (SENA in Colombia, SENAI in Brazil, INA in Costa Rica). Costa Rica's series shows that the protected revenue keeps the institution alive but does not by itself keep participation from contracting when delivery models change.

The move, and what it needed

The government paid municipalities earmarked grants for adult education places and paid unemployed adults a special education grant at the level of unemployment benefit, so a year of study cost the learner nothing compared with staying on benefits.

Preconditions

• A municipal adult education system (komvux) already present in every municipality
• An unemployment insurance system whose benefit level could be matched by the study grant
• Fiscal room to fund around 100,000 places a year for five years during a recovery from recession

Where else it has been used: Sweden itself relaunched the idea as a new Kunskapslyft in 2015, with vocational adult education rather than general upper secondary courses at its centre.

The move, and what it needed

The Higher Education Authority runs an annual call in which colleges bid to offer short, accredited courses in skills-shortage areas, and the state pays full fees for unemployed applicants and 90 percent for employed ones.

Preconditions

• Higher education institutions willing to build short part-time courses on an annual funding cycle
• A skills-forecasting function to tell the call which shortage areas to fund
• Labour market slack after 2008, which created the demand the programme was built for

The move, and what it needed

The federal government funds states by formula to run adult basic education, high school equivalency preparation and English classes through local providers, and requires every state to report participants and outcomes into one national reporting system.

Preconditions

• A federal formula grant with a state match that keeps every state in the system
• A national reporting system that defines a participant the same way across states
• Local providers, from school districts to community colleges, willing to run low-margin classes

Where else it has been used: Formula-funded adult basic education is common across OECD countries; the American series shows how a stable statute can still deliver a shrinking service when appropriations flatten and accountability rules raise the bar for who counts.

The move, and what it needed

The state replaced a tax deduction for training costs with a first-come grant that any worker or jobseeker could claim once a year from UWV, paid directly to a registered training provider, in fixed application windows with a capped budget.

Preconditions

• A national register of eligible training providers and courses
• An agency with an online portal and identity check able to process tens of thousands of claims in hours
• A fixed annual budget, which made demand visible as queues and exhausted windows

Where else it has been used: Individual training budgets also run in France (CPF) and Singapore (SkillsFuture Credit). The Dutch version shows the failure mode of open first-come windows: budgets ran out within hours, and the scheme was ended after two years.

The move, and what it needed

A federal institute and state adult education institutes run a semi-open model in which volunteers with a small stipend tutor adults in community spaces, and learners sit module examinations when ready, so a credential can be earned without a classroom timetable.

Preconditions

• A modular curriculum and an examination system recognised as equivalent to school certificates
• A large network of subsidised volunteer tutors and community learning spaces
• Federal and state co-financing, since delivery runs through state institutes

Where else it has been used: The semi-open, examination-at-will model resembles Brazil's ENCCEJA and Spain's adult graduation tests. The Mexican case shows the dependence on volunteer tutors, whose numbers rise and fall with the stipend budget.

The move, and what it needed

The national government, through polytechnic centres run by its employment support agency, and the prefectures run free vocational courses for jobseekers and fee-based upskilling for employees, contract much of the jobseeker training to accredited private providers, and route trainees through Hello Work offices.

Preconditions

• A national network of public vocational schools and polytechnic centres
• Unemployment insurance and a training allowance so jobseekers can afford to attend
• Employment offices that refer trainees and track whether they find work

Where else it has been used: Korea's employer training system and Germany's Federal Employment Agency vouchers do similar work. The Japanese model is distinctive for keeping a large public provider of its own beside contracted private training.

The move, and what it needed

The federal education law makes basic education for youths and adults a modality of the public school system, and state and municipal networks deliver it in evening classes, funded through the per-pupil FUNDEB transfers with a lower weight than regular schooling. Enrolment has fallen every year since at least 2020 as networks close evening classes and fewer young adults enter.

Preconditions

• A national school census that counts every enrolment by modality each year
• State and municipal school networks with buildings and teachers free in the evening
• A per-pupil federal-state funding formula that includes the modality, which also sets the incentive to keep or cut it

The move, and what it needed

The Department for Education funds colleges, local authorities and training providers through a national adult skills budget and later loans and apprenticeship levy funding, and counts every funded learner through a single administrative return. Real-terms cuts to the adult budget and the move of level 3 and above provision onto learner loans roughly halved adult participation within a decade.

Preconditions

• A national network of further education colleges and adult community learning services funded by central government
• A learner-level administrative record that every funded provider must return
• A funding settlement that can be cut without legislation, which is what made the erosion possible

The move, and what it needed

The 2003 General Education Law converted Peru's old adult schools into a separate modality of basic education, delivered by public and private CEBA centres with flexible schedules and counted in the national school census. Enrolment peaked in 2016 and has drifted down since.

Preconditions

• A school census run by the education ministry that reports enrolment by modality
• An existing network of adult and evening schools that could be converted rather than built
• A legal definition that lets learners certify primary and secondary completion outside the regular track

The move, and what it needed

The state and municipalities keep a network of adult gymnasiums and let ordinary schools run evening, distance and part-time departments that teach the national upper secondary curriculum free of charge to adults. When the network shrank, enrolment moved into consolidated schools and departments rather than disappearing.

Preconditions

• A national curriculum and state examinations that are the same for adult and day learners
• School funding that follows a learner into non-stationary study
• A small, digitally administered school system in which consolidating adult schools did not cut access

The move, and what it needed

The Ministry of Labour runs a national network of skill development institutes and provincial offices that deliver short, free upgrading courses to employed workers by occupation group, and publishes per-unit results as open data.

Preconditions

• A labour ministry department with its own training centres in every region
• Occupational skill standards that courses can be built against
• An open-data mandate that makes each unit report applicants, entrants and completers

The move, and what it needed

A federal commission sets adult literacy and non-formal education policy and funds and coordinates state agencies for mass education that run community literacy centres with volunteer and paid facilitators, reporting enrolment upward to the national statistics office.

Preconditions

• State agencies for mass education in every state to run the centres
• Facilitators paid little or nothing, which keeps the count high and the quality uncertain
• An administrative reporting line from centres to the federal commission and on to the statistics office

The move, and what it needed

The federal government channels Employment Insurance Part II money to provinces and territories through bilateral agreements, and each province buys or delivers skills training and apprenticeship support for EI-eligible workers, reporting to a common monitoring framework.

Preconditions

• A contributory unemployment insurance fund large enough to finance active measures
• Provincial employment services able to deliver training under federal money
• An annual monitoring report that counts interventions the same way across 13 jurisdictions

Where else it has been used: Temporary federal top-ups raised volumes for eight years; when the top-up sunset the training budget fell with it, which is the usual fate of active measures financed as supplements rather than baseline.

The move, and what it needed

A levy-funded autonomous training institute, financed by employer and worker contributions, runs its own centres and contracts courses through business chambers and unions, and the supreme audit institution checks its delivery figures each year.

Preconditions

• A payroll levy that gives the institute its own revenue
• Business chambers and unions willing to host company-agreement courses
• An audit office that reviews physical delivery, not only spending

Where else it has been used: The levy-funded national training institute is the Latin American model (SENA, INA, INTECAP, INFOTEP); Honduras's version leans heavily on short courses and outsourced company training.

The move, and what it needed

The labour ministry's training division licenses and supervises a large market of paid vocational courses, sets curricula and state certification exams for more than 350 occupations, and funds a smaller set of courses through referrals from the employment service.

Preconditions

• State certification exams that employers recognise
• Private and franchised training centres that can be supervised
• A referral channel from the employment service for funded places

Where else it has been used: The supervised paid-course model keeps volume up when budgets fail, as in 2020, but it also means the state-funded core is a small fraction of the headline count.

The move, and what it needed

The education ministry runs basic, secondary and vocational second-chance programmes for over-age learners through a national network of centres, many hosted in ordinary schools in the evening, and reports enrolment through the budget-by-results system.

Preconditions

• Schools that can host evening classes for adults
• A ministry directorate dedicated to youth and adult education
• A budget reporting system that asks for physical results, not only spending

The move, and what it needed

The state ran adult literacy campaigns through the education ministry's literacy apparatus, reaching an estimated tenth of the illiterate adult population over five years.

Preconditions

• Volunteer or low-cost literacy facilitators
• Foreign cooperation to fund materials and training
• Enough stability for community classes to meet

The move, and what it needed

Counties and cities with county rights, which own Poland's public secondary schools, keep evening and extramural general secondary classes open for adults who want the same matura a teenager earns, tuition-free and funded through the public education budget.

Preconditions

• A county tier of local government that owns secondary schools and decides which adult classes to open
• A national exam and certificate system that treats an adult's matura the same as a teenager's
• A per-pupil public education budget that follows adult pupils into local-government schools

The move, and what it needed

The higher education ministry uses its national network of community colleges, built for post-secondary vocational certificates, to also run short and part-time courses for local adults, and counts them in its annual statistics.

Preconditions

• A network of public colleges spread across districts, close to where adults live
• Short-course funding inside the college budget so courses can be cheap or free
• A ministry statistics unit that collects part-time enrolment college by college

The move, and what it needed

ANPAL paid employers for working hours converted into training, but only where a collective agreement with the unions set out the cut in hours and the skills plan, which turned a COVID income measure into a negotiated training programme.

Preconditions

• A collective bargaining system able to sign thousands of firm-level agreements quickly
• European Social Fund money to co-finance the wage cost
• Regional bodies able to assess and certify training plans, even if mostly by tacit approval

The move, and what it needed

The Bureau of Non-Formal Education used development-budget projects to fund literacy courses, delivered by district administrations or contracted NGOs, in every district. When a project window closed, delivery stopped until the next project was approved, and after 2022 no adult-scale successor followed.

Preconditions

• A standing bureau with a district presence to plan and monitor courses
• Development-budget approval for each time-bound project, often with donor co-finance
• NGOs or district administrations able to run community learning centres at scale

Where else it has been used: Time-bound literacy campaigns financed project by project were common across South Asia in the 1990s. The pattern they share is the one here: large one-off reach, then a gap when the project closes.

The move, and what it needed

The Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development ran adult literacy classes through district community development officers and volunteer instructors. Enrolment fell after 2004 while government releases fell only from Shs 3.61bn to 3.08bn a year, so the source does not explain the fall.

Preconditions

• District community development staff in every local government
• Volunteer instructors willing to teach for little or no pay
• A protected budget line that outlasts donor and poverty-fund cycles

The move, and what it needed

The Ministry of Education ran literacy circles of up to 30 learners in primary school buildings in the evenings, staffed by facilitators and coordinated through local government. Enrolment fell by more than half within a decade as funding and facilitator support thinned.

Preconditions

• A primary school in every village to host evening classes
• A local government coordinator for adult education in each ward and district
• Recurrent funding for facilitators that survives the end of a campaign, which is what eroded

Where else it has been used: Tanzania's 1970s mass literacy campaign is the earlier, larger version of the same move. The literacy gains it is credited with were also reported to slip back in the 1980s and 1990s.

The move, and what it needed

The Ministry of Education's Non-Formal Education Division ran 21-month local-language literacy classes in every region through volunteer facilitators, scaled them with an IDA credit to about 200,000 to 300,000 enrolments per batch, and then carried the programme on a government budget line that funded a fraction of that after 2006.

Preconditions

• A volunteer facilitator network and primers in 15 Ghanaian languages
• External credit financing most of the cost at peak
• A domestic budget line large enough to replace the donor share, which is what did not happen

The move, and what it needed

The education ministry ran adult literacy through a dedicated service and a network of centres staffed by volunteer or low-paid animateurs. That network contracted by about a quarter in the decade after 2015 while primary enrolment expanded.

Preconditions

• A standing budget line for animateurs and materials, which a volunteer-based network lacks
• Partner NGOs and donors whose project cycles keep centres open, so closures follow funding cycles
• Demand from adults who can take time out of informal work, which literacy alone rarely pays for

The move, and what it needed

The ministry created FONAENF in 2002 to pool state and donor money and pay NGOs and associations to run literacy centres under the faire-faire strategy, so the state finances and supervises while operators deliver. Because each year's allocation decides how many centres open, cuts in the budget line and the spread of insecurity reduced the number of centres and learners almost immediately.

Preconditions

• A pooled fund with donor co-financing and a pipeline of contracted local operators in every region
• An annual budget allocation large enough to open thousands of centres each campaign
• Enough security in rural areas for centres to open and learners to attend, which the country lost after 2016

The move, and what it needed

The ministry responsible for community development runs adult literacy as a standing national programme. It organises classes of about 25 learners through district community development officers and volunteer instructors that communities choose, and NGOs and churches run parallel classes under the same policy.

Preconditions

• A field network of district community development staff to open and supervise classes in every district
• Volunteers with at least primary schooling willing to teach for little or no pay
• A recurrent budget line, however small, that survives changes of ministry

The move, and what it needed

A statutory training institute under the education ministry runs a national network of training centres that sell evening and part-time courses to workers alongside its full-time and apprenticeship programmes, and publishes centre-by-centre enrolment each year.

Preconditions

• A network of public training centres spread across the island
• A national qualifications framework that part-time courses lead into
• Employers and a training levy that make part-time study affordable

The move, and what it needed

The state set up a distance-learning college that lets anyone who left school without the senior secondary certificate register for individual subjects, study from printed and online materials and attend weekend tutorials at centres across the regions, then sit the national examinations.

Preconditions

• A national examination that any registered candidate can sit regardless of age
• A network of tutorial centres in schools used after hours
• Public subsidy keeping per-subject fees low

The move, and what it needed

The education ministry runs literacy and adult primary classes in community centres staffed by paid or volunteer literacy teachers, counts the learners in its annual school census alongside children, and publishes the totals by province.

Preconditions

• A national adult education directorate with provincial and district officers
• Literacy teachers paid a stipend or volunteering in each community
• An annual school census that also reaches non-formal centres

Where else it has been used: The same census shows the programme concentrated in Nampula, Tete and Sofala in 2025; a programme that depends on stipended community teachers is the first to shrink when the education budget is squeezed.

The move, and what it needed

The labour ministry's training institute runs its own centres and mobile units, licenses private providers into one national system, and adds an accelerated short-course programme, then counts enrolment, passes and dropouts across all of them in an annual yearbook.

Preconditions

• A licensing regime that brings private training centres into the national count
• Mobile and rural units that reach trainees outside the main cities
• A ministry statistics office that publishes the returns with the national statistics institute

The move, and what it needed

A tripartite public training institute financed by an employer payroll levy runs training centres in the provinces for employees and job seekers, and the employment ministry holds it to an annual performance contract with a numeric training target reviewed mid-year.

Preconditions

• An employer training levy collected from formal firms
• A network of provincial training centres with workshops
• A ministry performance-contract regime that sets and reviews numeric targets

The move, and what it needed

The public employment service buys and runs courses for registered jobseekers, from basic skills to vocational qualifications, and pays an allowance while they attend.

Preconditions

• An unemployment insurance system that pays a training allowance
• A purchasing budget and a market of adult education providers
• Case workers who can assign jobseekers to courses

Where else it has been used: Most public employment services run this model; Austria keeps the training stock at about a fifth of everyone the AMS counts as unemployed or in training (76,496 of 394,036 in 2025, our division), a high share by European standards.

The move, and what it needed

A levy-funded public authority reimburses employers part of the cost of training their staff, in their own firm or through accredited training centres, against a list of priority themes agreed with the social partners.

Preconditions

• A payroll levy that gives the authority its own income
• Accredited private training centres able to run courses across sectors
• Social partners on the authority's board who agree the training priorities

Where else it has been used: Levy-grant systems of this kind run in Malaysia, South Africa (zaf-seta-wbl) and Latin America (gtm-intecap, dom-infotep); Cyprus's is among the oldest in Europe and shows the usual sensitivity of claims to the subsidy rate.

The move, and what it needed

The state funds short, employer-relevant vocational courses for skilled and unskilled adults, designed by the social partners and delivered by vocational schools and AMU centres, with an allowance paid during the course.

Preconditions

• Social partners who agree on course content through sector committees
• A national network of vocational schools and training centres
• Wage compensation or allowances so workers can attend during working hours

Where else it has been used: AMU is the reference model of a social-partner adult training system; Denmark's own trajectory shows that participation follows the price set for users and the allowance, as in fin-adult-education-allowance.

The move, and what it needed

The public employment service gives unemployed and employed adults a voucher that pays for an accredited short programme chosen from a national catalogue of skills, booked through an online application.

Preconditions

• A catalogue of accredited providers and programmes tied to a national qualifications framework
• A digital application through which adults apply and providers are paid
• Temporary EU recovery funding large enough to open vouchers to employed people

Where else it has been used: Voucher and individual learning account schemes in the corpus include France's CPF (fra-cpf), Singapore's SkillsFuture (sgp-skillsfuture) and the Dutch STAP budget (nld-stap-budget), which was abolished; Croatia's is the newest and its continuation after the recovery plan is not yet funded.

The move, and what it needed

The national education agency bought places on formal and non-formal programmes from colleges, universities and vocational schools and offered them to employed adults in competitive rounds, with EU money paying almost the whole fee.

Preconditions

• European Social Fund money large enough to cover 90 to 100 percent of fees
• Education institutions willing to adapt programmes for working adults, including distance formats
• A national agency able to run open application rounds and pay providers

Where else it has been used: Portugal's Novas Oportunidades (prt-novas-oportunidades) and Croatia's vouchers (hrv-vauceri) are other EU-funded adult training pushes; Latvia's ended with its funding period and was replaced by a different instrument, individual learning accounts.

The move, and what it needed

National law gives every adult who lacks it a right to primary and lower secondary education, and the municipality must provide it free, reporting participants to the national municipal statistics system.

Preconditions

• A statutory individual right that municipalities must honour regardless of budget
• Municipal adult education centres, often combined with Norwegian language teaching for immigrants
• A common municipal reporting system (KOSTRA) that counts participants the same way everywhere

Where else it has been used: Sweden's Komvux and Estonia's adult gymnasiums (est-adult-gymnasiums) rest on the same idea of a legal right to second-chance schooling; Norway's version is small because few native-born adults lack compulsory schooling.

The move, and what it needed

Labour offices let registered jobseekers pick an accredited course and provider themselves, approve a contract, and reimburse the fee and travel costs once the course is completed.

Preconditions

• A market of accredited adult training providers across regions
• Labour offices with case workers able to assess applications individually
• EU co-financing to pay course fees in full

Where else it has been used: The demand-led design resembles voucher systems such as hrv-vauceri, with the difference that the Slovak office pays after completion rather than issuing a voucher up front.

The move, and what it needed

The state accredits upper secondary programmes adapted for adults, delivered part-time by secondary schools and folk high schools (ljudske univerze), so adults can earn the same vocational or general qualification as young people.

Preconditions

• A national qualification framework that lets adult programmes award the same certificates as youth schooling
• A network of folk high schools and school adult units in every region
• Public co-funding or employer payment of fees, which adults otherwise bear

Where else it has been used: Poland's licea dla dorosłych (pol-licea-dla-doroslych) and Estonia's adult gymnasiums (est-adult-gymnasiums) are the same instrument; the Slovenian series shows the usual dip in the pandemic and a partial recovery.

The move, and what it needed

The national employment and skills agency runs regional public training centres that offer short national and provider-level vocational courses, free for registered jobseekers and paid for others.

Preconditions

• A network of regional public training centres under the employment agency
• A national catalogue of short qualifications that centres can certify
• Referral from employment offices so jobseekers reach free places

The move, and what it needed

The national employment agency issues training vouchers to unemployed, inactive and employed adults, who choose a licensed provider, and pays the provider on completion, with EU recovery and social funds paying for most of the volume.

Preconditions

• A register of licensed vocational training providers under the national VET agency
• An online voucher application system run through the labour offices
• EU funding lines (RRF, ESF+) large enough to pay for courses at national scale

The move, and what it needed

The employment agency gives registered unemployed people a training voucher redeemable with an approved provider through an online platform, and reports enrolments and graduates monthly.

Preconditions

• A register of approved vocational training providers in the regions
• An online voucher platform linked to the unemployment register
• A state budget line for active measures under the employment law

The move, and what it needed

The national employment agency sets an annual national training plan and delivers it mainly through its own regional adult training centres, free for the registered unemployed and paid for others.

Preconditions

• An unemployment insurance budget that can pay course costs
• A network of regional adult training centres run by the agency
• County agencies that refer registered jobseekers into courses

Where else it has been used: Romania's plan targets fell with delivery (28,877 places planned for 2023, 24,440 for 2025), so the agency planned the decline as well as reporting it.

The move, and what it needed

The public employment service buys short vocational courses for registered unemployed people from a catalogue it procures each year, and since the adult education law only from providers accredited as publicly recognised adult education organisers.

Preconditions

• A national catalogue of training matched to local vacancies
• Enough accredited private and public training providers in each district
• A procurement cycle that closes early enough in the year for courses to run

Where else it has been used: Tying public training money to an accreditation register raises quality on paper; Serbia's 2025 report shows the cost when the register is thinner than the demand.

The move, and what it needed

The social affairs ministry runs a national adult education centre that hires contract teachers to give literacy and post-literacy classes in every governorate, and reports learners by governorate and cycle in its performance budget.

Preconditions

• A performance-budgeting system that makes ministries report indicators and enrolment annually
• A pool of contract teachers paid from the ministry budget
• Local venues and regional coordinators close to rural learners, especially women

The move, and what it needed

A national agency funds and certifies literacy classes that associations, the religious affairs ministry and other departments run in villages, mosques and neighbourhoods, and counts registrants each programme year.

Preconditions

• A dense civil-society network able to host classes close to where adults live
• State subsidy that pays associations per class, with EU budget support at the margin
• A registration system that collects counts by programme, region, sex and residence

The move, and what it needed

The labour ministry paid regional employment centres and accredited providers to train target groups of adults in short courses tied to regional demand, under a national project with quarterly reporting to the deputy prime minister.

Preconditions

• A national project budget line with targets reported quarterly to the centre of government
• Regional employment centres able to enrol and refer trainees
• A pool of accredited training providers, including universities and colleges

The move, and what it needed

The employment ministry built a network of regional training monocentres and district vocational centres that give registered unemployed people short, free skill courses, and counts graduates centrally.

Preconditions

• A labour ministry with a district-level presence and registration of the unemployed
• Budget for free short courses and for equipping training centres
• Donor co-financing for equipment and curricula in the early years

The move, and what it needed

The employment agency selects vulnerable jobseekers into a self-employment programme, trains them to write a business plan, and transfers start-up assets to those whose plans pass, with mentoring visits afterwards.

Preconditions

• A registry of vulnerable jobseekers and a selection process for applicants
• Contracted business trainers able to run batches across regions
• Budget for in-kind asset transfers, here partly loan-financed

The move, and what it needed

A statutory trust collects a payroll levy from employers and spends it on free institutional, community and workplace training and on a second-chance secondary diploma, setting enrolment targets every year.

Preconditions

• A payroll levy collected by the tax authority and ring-fenced for training
• A network of training institutions and community sites across the island
• A national qualifications framework (NVQ-J) so short courses lead to recognised certificates

The move, and what it needed

The education ministry bought short courses from accredited private and public providers and paid them per trainee, with part of the payment withheld until the trainee was verified as employed six months later, and paid more for women, disadvantaged youth and the poorest districts.

Preconditions

• A pool of private training providers able to open courses in rural districts at short notice
• A joint monitoring team to check enrolment, completion and employment before payment
• A skills testing body (NSTB) to certify trades nationally

Where else it has been used: The model came from the Swiss-funded Employment Fund and ran through EVENT I before EVENT II; each version was a time-bound donor project, which is the weakness the pattern carries.

The move, and what it needed

The Tertiary Education Commission funds short, often non-credit community courses for adults through tertiary providers, and the education ministry counts enrolments each year from provider returns.

Preconditions

• A dedicated ACE funding pool inside the tertiary funding system
• Providers with community reach willing to run low-margin courses
• A single student enrolment return that captures non-credit learners

Where else it has been used: Headcount halved while study load held, so the remaining ACE places went to fewer people taking longer courses; whether that was a deliberate shift toward longer, credit-bearing courses is not shown by the table.

The move, and what it needed

A federal commission recruited local teachers to run six-month literacy centres in villages, mostly for women, funded from the federal development budget; when that budget line lapsed, delivery fell to small donor-funded rounds.

Preconditions

• A federal agency with district offices able to recruit and supervise thousands of local teachers
• A recurring development-budget allocation, since each centre runs only one cohort
• A political mandate for adult literacy that survives the devolution of education to provinces

Where else it has been used: Bangladesh's Bureau of Non-Formal Education ran the same project-by-project model (bgd-adult-literacy) and shows the same pattern of large reach followed by a gap when funding windows close.

The move, and what it needed

The state funds a training company that runs short vocational and life-skills courses in centres across both islands for young people outside work and school, and reports enrolment against a yearly target in the budget's social sector review.

Preconditions

• A recurrent transfer from the budget, which in a hydrocarbon economy moves with energy revenue
• Training centres spread across districts, including Tobago
• A national vocational qualification (CVQ/NEC) that short courses can certify against

Where else it has been used: Caribbean youth training agencies founded in the 1980s (HEART in Jamaica, YTEPP in Trinidad and Tobago) share the design. YTEPP depends on a yearly budget transfer that fell after 2016, while Jamaica's levy-financed HEART reported growing enrolment (jam-heart-nsta).

The move, and what it needed

The federal government let employees suspend their contract for training and had the AMS pay an unemployment-benefit-level allowance out of the unemployment insurance fund; parliament then cut the allowance outright when costs tripled and evaluations found weak employment effects.

Preconditions

• An unemployment insurance fund large enough to carry a training benefit without a separate appropriation
• Labour law that lets an employee suspend a contract by agreement and return to the job
• Loose eligibility on course content, which drove both growth and the case for abolition

Where else it has been used: The successor scheme keeps the leave but caps the budget at 150 million euros a year, tightens eligibility and makes higher-earning employees' employers co-fund the allowance, which is the targeting the Court of Audit asked for in 2023.