SECONDARY VOCATIONAL EDUCATION IN SERVICE OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND SOCIETY DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Fast social–political and economic changes European societies have been faced with in the last few decades have had a significant influence on educational changes, highlighting the needs for the reform of educational systems and their adapting to the new needs of economy and society. For this reason, more attention is paid to the issues of reform processes regarding the area of secondary vocational education in professional literature. Such practice is being conditioned by the fact that modernization of this important segment of educational system, having in mind its direct connection to economy and business world, presents a crucial assumption of an overall social and economic development of every country. For the reasons mentioned above, this paper deals with problems in the reform of vocational education in Serbia, and vocational education is being discussed from the context of economic growth and society development. The aim of this paper is to point out the importance of economic value of education as well as importance of investments in human resources. Theoretical elaboration and set tasks have forced the use of descriptive, comparative-historic and analytical-synthetic method, as well as the use of content analysis. Analysis results, however, indicate that even though today’s education economic value of education is undisputed, educational system in our country still faces a multitude of problems and challenges posed by modern society.