Cooperative Training as a Means of School to Work Transition in Addis Ababa

This study aimed at investigating cooperative training situation of Addis Ababa City Administration vis-à-vis school-to-work transition (SWT). Recently, there is drastic educational expansion in Ethiopia at all levels. However, the education system needs to travel a long distance to improve the quality and graduates employability. Moreover, schools focus on knowledge with inadequate consideration for value and skill formation. Training programs were also not related to small and medium enterprise (SME) development. In light of this background, the study tries to examine historical context and current practices including challenges and opportunities of cooperative training. In order to address these problems, qualitative approach was employed with some quantitative information from documents and agencies responsible for cooperative training. Interview was used to investigate challenges and opportunities during cooperative training. The data from the interview were transcribed for analysis. The findings revealed that cooperative training as a social learning has contributed for development of practical skill and work behavior. Since in this method, cost shared by companies, it created opportunity for youngsters to earn their living. Nevertheless, weak linkage between vocational colleges/institutes and cooperative training providers and limited capacity of companies to place trainees exacerbated the problem. In a different vein, the increasing trend of cooperative training coverage displayed a setback in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic and started to revive as of 2021. Consequently, the cooperative training coverage in 2022 found to be 73.12%. Of these, 86% of the graduates were found to be competent on CoC occupational test and 80% of them secured job. Hence, even though there are positive developments in preparing strategies, manuals and guidelines for cooperative training, its implementation is considered as weak in terms of structure, network, coordination, and resources.