Ken Duncan

Ken has over twenty years’ experience of conceptualising, managing and evaluating VET projects in many parts of the world, including projects concerning collaboration between government and industry and VET policy development.

From 2001 to 2019, he managed a public-private partnership aimed at strengthening VET in South Africa by linking public VET colleges to industry, Initiating and implementing proof-of-concept projects in skills development for employment and feeding lessons from these interventions into public policies and programmes. He has helped conceptualise, implement or evaluate VET-related programmes in Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. On the basis of this experience, he has published several research papers and spoken at numerous conferences on VET.

Since 2013 Ken has served on the South African government’s National Artisan Development Advisory Body, the apex policy advice forum on matters relating to artisan training. From 2017 to 2019, he was the technical advisor on VET to Business Unity South Africa (the apex organisation of private-sector business) and from January 2016 to July 2017, served on a Ministerial Task Team charged with developing a plan for implementing the recommendations of the South African government’s White Paper on Post-School Education and Training. Before that, in 2012-13, Ken was chairperson of a Ministerial Task Team for establishing South Africa’s national institute of vocational and continuing education and training.

Ken has a Master’s degree from Rhodes University (South Africa) in the evaluation of education programmes and a Bachelor’s degree and Higher Diploma in Education from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.