Transforming Education and Training in the Post-Apartheid Period: Revisiting the Education, Training and Labour Market Axis

Abstract

This chapter locates the changes in South Africa’s education and training provision within the context of the change in the political economy and its recent attempt at an insertion into the global economic market. It deals with a brief examination of the debate surrounding globalisation as a lever into the subsequent debates that characterised the evolution of education and training policy in South Africa. The chapter aims to investigate the links made by policy documents between education, training and the labour market. Economic growth in South Africa had been declining since the 1970s and by the mid-1980s had dropped below population growth. The world is experiencing rapid changes in the labour market, including changing sectoral composition of employment, the increased participation of women in the workforce, and the rising skills level of the workforce. Educational policy in South Africa has become one element of broader economic policy as a new human capital view of education has taken hold.