Developing Nations: Technical and Vocational Education

Debate between Baroness Verma and Baroness Uddin

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

Absolutely. Again, the UK should be congratulated on the work that we are doing as a Government to ensure that disability features strongly in all our programmes. On disability in schools, we made a commitment in 2013, as the noble Baroness will be aware, that we will directly fund schools only where there is disability access. The disability review is coming up on 3 December, and, if the noble Baroness is interested, I would be very happy to share the outcome of that with her.

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I know that the noble Baroness is well aware of the work of BRAC in Bangladesh, in particular, in revolutionising women’s employment and entrepreneurship. Can she tell us what work BRAC is doing to advance in that arena to diversify those women’s employment opportunities through technical and vocational training—perhaps including computer training?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I will not specifically go into that programme, because we should be proud of our programme across DfID. That is about increasing employment—productive employment—for women. As I said, they start from school, where we give them the opportunity to gain an education and skills. We can then develop to ensure that they are both productive economically and, where they are unpaid, able to use those skills to develop entrepreneurialism outside their workplaces. I read in a recent report that if we give women opportunities, we can add $28 trillion-worth of value to our global GDP.