Debating high skills and joined-up policy

Abstract

Debates about governance both within and outside of the South African state are increasingly turning to the question of coordination failure and the inability of government to make interventions in key problem areas which require the inputs and actions of several government departments and agencies acting in concert with each other. Too often, the opposite occurs - 'the silo effect', where government departments work in isolation, unable and in some cases, unwilling to act on the interdependencies that straddle their governance responsibilities.

In this monograph, Andre Kraak introduces the debate about the importance of state coordination or joining up in the area of education and work. He does so, firstly, by adapting the highly influential British scholarship on high skills societies to South Africa's inherited low skills development trajectory. Secondly, he invites the leading scholars behind the high skills thesis - Hugh Lauder, David Ashton and Phillip Brown to debate some of the issues of `joined up? Government, cross-sectoral state coordination and the importance of high skills in the South African context.