The role of the private sector in vocational and educational training: developments and success factors in selected countries

Abstract

This Policy Paper analyses the vocational education and training (VET) system in four selected countries ??? namely India, the Republic of Korea, South Africa, and Vietnam. The need for adequately skilled persons is rising in all four countries. And all four countries have identified the VET system ??? in cooperation with the private sector ??? as a key actor to provide such skills. In consequence, all four countries have developed individual and apposite measures to strengthen their VET systems. Even though the four countries are very different in terms of their starting points and their demographic, economic and institutional framework conditions, they all face the same challenge: designing a VET system that makes the country future-proof. On the one hand, such a VET system skills young persons for the labour market and improves their employment prospects. On the other hand, teaching the right skills is a key necessity for a sustainable growth strategy for the economy as a whole and for reacting to current challenges like the ongoing digitalisation of the economy. Since in Germany the German dual training system has a long tradition, it is also introduced as a reference model. The results of the country analyses allow the identification of promising reform options and policy recommendations in VET which also have the potential to be transferred to other countries.