Discursive shifts and structural continuities in South African vocational education and training, 1981-1999

This document provides an analysis of the debate around vocational education and training (VET) in primary and secondary schooling in South Africa in the years 1982-1999. The discussion focuses on three critical areas of change in the relationship between education and training (ET) and the demands of a modernising economy. These are: restructuring school-based curricula to reflect a stronger vocational content; restructuring the balance between academic and vocational education in favour of the latter in the general formative phase of compulsory and post-compulsory schooling; and ;lastly, reshaping the roles of both the state and market in the regulation and provisioning of VET.