National Consultant - Rewriting and Copy-editing of the Report on “Gender and Social Inclusion in Philippine TVET Sector: A Scoping Review”

1. Background

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is the United Nations agency for the world of work devoted to advancing social justice and promoting decent work. The ILO brings together governments, employers and workers to drive a human-centred approach to the future of work through employment creation, rights at work, social protection and social dialogue.

Increasing urbanization, a growing middle class and a large and young population position the Philippines as a country with strong potential for higher economic growth, global competitiveness and greater poverty reduction. The benefits of this growth, however, have yet to fully trickle-down to its workforce. Unemployment, inequality and skills shortages still hamper the country’s progress.

Meanwhile, this growth trend occurs at a time when technological development, climate change, demographic shifts, and the COVID-19 pandemic are transforming the world of work and creating immense opportunities for upgrading industries and workforce skills in the country.

With an average of two million enrollees each year, the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system has potential to help the country reduce skills gaps and shortages and ultimately improve labour market outcomes. However, the mismatch between TVET graduates’ skills and industry requirements remains a challenge. Meanwhile, the ever-evolving technological advancements call for new sets of skills.

The Skills for Prosperity Project in the Philippines (SfPPhilippines), funded by the UK Global Prosperity Fund and implemented by the International Labour Organization (ILO), works with key government agencies, employers’ organisations, trade unions and other stakeholders to further boost skills development and TVET systems in the country. SfP Philippines aims to enhance national capacity to increase inclusive, mutually beneficial economic development resulting from greater, more equitable employability and productivity by enabling policies and practices that ensure cost-effectiveness, access, and sustained quality of TVET. The Project has four areas of achievement:

 • Enhanced equity. The Project shall facilitate broadening of access to skills development and TVET systems for marginalized groups – prioritizing youth and women – by incorporating gen der and social inclusion as a key element in all activities, and by providing technical advice for the adoption of necessary changes in national, regional and provincial policies, strategies, regulations and institutional arrangements. Additionally, it also develops and applies training approaches that specifically meet the needs of marginalized groups to open up the TVET system to more people in the country.

• Improved quality of skills and TVET systems. It aims to assist in the process of developing upgraded competency standards and of their application to development of TVET programmes curricula, and competency assessment and certification to meet the increasing requirements of the economy for a higher skilled workforce. Additionally, it aims to enhance TVET competency assessment and certification through wider use of digital technologies.

• Enhanced industry relevance of skills and TVET systems. The Project seeks to contribute to labour market information system strengthening, particularly in data collection and analysis of job market demand for skilled workforce. Moreover, it also promotes adoption of lifelong learning principles and recognition of workers who gained professional qualifications through various skills development mechanisms. It also promotes a learner-centred approach in TVET.

• Improved cost-effectiveness of skills development and TVET systems financing. It will review the country’s practices on industry engagement and stakeholder participation in TVET financing, and assists in development and piloting a joint public-private financing mechanism, aiming for greater private sector participation in TVET financing. Ultimately, this initiative will bring about affordability and greater effectiveness of the TVET system.

Using an implementation approach that highlights gender and social inclusion, the Project focuses on three economic sectors recognized for its potential for employment creation particularly for marginalized groups. These are: agricultural sector with focus on food production; construction sector with focus on skills for green building practices; and, information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) sector with focus on skills for the digital economy. The Project also has an area-based project focus with activities to test models at the community level to be implemented in Visayas where development challenges still linger despite the area having registered brisk economic growth comparable to other fast-growing regions in the Philippines.

2. Objective of the consultancy and scope of work

The ILO has produced a report entitled ‘Gender Equality and Social Inclusion in Philippine TVET Sector: A Scoping Review’, targeting primary groups of audience who are the programme’s partners and stakeholders. As a result, the report is still highly technical and lengthy. However, the ILO plans to re-produce the report and make it more digestible, comprehensible and succinct for a wider group of audience including members of the public and the media. Therefore, the ILO aims to engage an External Collaborator to rewrite and copy-edit the report to serve this purpose. ”. The rewriting and copy-editing should ensure the grammar, structure, accuracy and quality of the report and that the same is consistent with the ILO guidelines for published materials.

The External Collaborator will be responsible for the following tasks:

• Improving consistency and structure of content, as necessary;
• Rewriting the report to:
  o ensure a better flow of information;
  o provide clarity of information for general audience;
  o avoid redundancy of contents and overuse of jargons;
• Editing for grammar, usage, spelling, punctuation, and other mechanics of style (edits in track changes);
• Rewriting and editing executive summary, preface and/or foreword;
• Editing tables, figures and lists;
• Editing captions;
• Checking direct quotations, including page references;
• Checking for consistency of mechanics and for internal consistency of facts, including correspondence of data given in graphics and text;
• Checking names of countries and ILO instruments for conformity with house style;
• Putting citations in house style and checking completeness and style of references, including flagging any bibliography references not cited in text;
• Inserting head levels and approximate placement of graphics;
• Correspond with the authorized representative of the ILO in order to clear content issues (if any) with regard to confusing/ambiguous statements, incomplete author citation, missing/unclear data in tables/figures vis-à-vis text discussion, and incomplete information (if any) in specific sections of the report;

• Listing permissions needed; and
• Writing running heads.

3. Professional fees

Fees will be based on cost estimates/bids submitted following ILO prescribed fees for copy-editors depending on the level of difficulty of the text of the publication or material.

4. Editorial process

• ILO will send to the External Collaborator the following:
▪ Raw manuscript 1(in MS Word) to be edited – pertains to the manuscript in an editable format, which has not yet been laid out for printing.
Style guide – pertains to the editing guide to be followed by editor/s; it should follow the ILO House Style Manual, 6th edition.
• At most two rounds of rewriting and editing will be done on the manuscript
▪ 1st round of rewriting and editing – first draft of the rewritten and edited manuscript will be submitted to the ILO as per the agreed schedule of submission. Any clarifications between the External Collaborator and the ILO regarding the content of the manuscript will be addressed at this stage. Together with the edited draft, the External Collaborator will submit comments/ clarifications/questions about the manuscript. The ILO will review the first draft of the manuscript and will submit his/her responses to the queries/clarifications of the External Collaborator. However, if there are no comments/clarifications from both parties during the first draft (upon approval of the ILO), the draft can already be considered ready to be finalized.
▪ 2nd round of editing (if needed) – second draft of the edited manuscript will be submitted to the ILO after the editor receives the ILO’s responses to the queries/clarifications. The ILO’s responses will be incorporated into the 2nd edited draft.

• Finalizing the content of the manuscript
• Contact person - to ensure efficiency of the editorial process, the External Collaborator will correspond with only one representative of the ILO. The representative, in turn, will be the one to correspond with the author should there be any content issues that needs to be cleared with them.

5. Timeline and deliverables

The timeline is from 29 March to 19 April 2021 unless extended by the ILO due to cases beyond the control of the editor/s (e.g., ILO’s late submission of reviewed edited drafts, loss of power due to typhoons, etc.). This period constitutes the production (i.e., copy editing, review and approval of client, finalization) of the manuscript.

Details of the proposed timeline:

Please refer to the attached TOR for the breakdown of deliverables. 

6. Payment Terms

The ILO will only pay for services that have been performed and for deliverables that are successfully completed to the satisfaction of the ILO. The payments will be made according to the following schedule:

• The first payment of PhP ___ (50%) will be made upon receipt of the copy and content edited manuscript with recommendations for revision (if any) on or before 09 April 2021 to the satisfaction of the ILO and presentation of the invoice.

• The second payment of Php ___ (50%) will be made upon receipt of the final manuscript reflecting comments of the ILO on or before 19 April 2021 to the satisfaction of the ILO and presentation of the invoice.

7. Qualifications 

• At least Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of at least two years of professional
experience in writing, copy-editing, communications or journalism.
• Good knowledge and understanding of the economic, social and development issues in the Philippines.
• Capacity to work independently, with minimal supervision, and as part of a team.

8. Requirements

The interested candidates must submit their proposal with the following information: i) qualifications and experience (include resume as an annex); ii) timeline; and iii) proposed budget.

The proposal must be submitted by 12:00nn (Manila time), Friday,19 March 2021 via e-mail at the following address: mnlsfpproject@ilo.org.