Introduction

Policies for vocational education are linked to national aspirations and achievements in economic growth. Thus they are influenced by past successes and failures as well as future hopes. There is an acknowledged strong statistical relationship between educational attainment and economic growth but the relationship is not the simple one of cause and effect. Although knowledge of the precise details of the connection remain imperfect, no political system nowadays can maintain itself long without giving due recognition to the notion that the provision of education services enriches the quality and capacity of labour and in the process improves employability and flexibility and thus the rationality of the labour market.