Managing reform congestion in skills systems

Skills reforms can accumulate faster than institutions can plan, coordinate and implement them. This policy brief introduces reform congestion: the point at which the number, pace and interdependence of reforms exceed the capacity of institutions and stakeholders to plan strategically, prioritise, design, coordinate, finance, implement and learn from them effectively. It proposes a portfolio approach combining mapping, explicit prioritisation, sequencing, capacity protection and implementation monitoring, supported by a practical traffic-light diagnostic. Illustrations from Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia demonstrate its practical relevance, while the framework is intended for application across ETF partner countries and beyond.