The present comparative study had its origin in case-studies prepared by sixteen countries in accordance with the activities foreseen in paragraph 1357 of Unesco's Approved Programme and Budget for 1981-83 (document 21C/5 Approved). The studies were also used as background and information papers for an international experts meeting held at Unesco Headquarters, Paris, in June 1982. This meeting concentrated on the policy, planning and administrative aspects of technical and vocational education. It was felt that these three areas deserved greater emphasis and that Unesco would therefore render a service to its Member States by publishing relevant information taken from these studies in the form of a condensed comparative study.

We wish to express our appreciation to all those who prepared these studies along given guidelines, thus greatly facilitating the comparative analysis. We also wish to thank Dr Mary Ann Calkins Pilain, Unesco consultant, who compiled the study.

The views expressed in this book are those of the individuals concerned and do not necessarily reflect those of Unesco. The designations employed and the presentation of the material do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Unesco Secretariat concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

1. Introduction
It has now been nearly a decade since the Member States of Unesco adopted the Revised Recommendation concerning Technical and Vocational Education in 1974. This document, as it was intended to be, was both a summation of thinking at that time and a forward-looking philosophy and guide for the future. It has proved and is still proving its worth as a guide to the development of technical and vocational education despite the many and profound changes that have occurred, both for better and for worse, in approaches to, and implementation of, education, and in the social and economic structures and circumstances to which education must respond. In fact, the Recommendation is more timely than ever, particularly with regard to policy goals, planning approaches and management systems.

Glancing very briefly at the world as it was in 1974 and comparing it with the world as it is today, this timeliness becomes immediately obvious. It still seemed then that with good principles, goodwill, exchange of experience and information, and mutual financial aid, education everywhere could become more democratic, offering better opportunities to all in terms of personality development and career openings and would be an active agent in the development process. Ten years ago it seemed that the economic resources were available to expand technical and vocational education in the interests of economic development, democratization of education and society, and adjustments between education and the employment market.

As it has turned out, the situation is not as simple as all that. The world economy has slumped into recession. The energy crisis is with us and looks as if it will remain a constant factor in one form or another. Wildly fluctuating exchange rates have contributed to a lack of stability in the world economy. These circumstances have affected virtually all countries. Translated into human terms, all these factors have combined to produce a continuing unemployment and underemployment situation in developing countries and the worst employment crisis many industrialized nations have suffered since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Hence, massive unemployment is no longer the lot of the developing countries alone. The unemployment problem in many industrialized and developing nations, as a result of the economic situation combined with profound changes in the employment structure consequent upon technological change, has taken on huge dimensions. This means that countries are obliged to come to grips with the problem of how to prepare young people for employment and how to offer adult workers the means to adapt to structural or technological change and to advance in their careers.

In these circumstances, technical and vocational education could not have higher priority on the current agenda.

Over the last decade, many countries have undertaken reforms of their educational systems. Looking at the reports from those countries on whose experience the present study is based, the record is quite impressive: as will be seen in the following pages, in the late 1970s most countries instituted new legislation and embarked on wide-ranging structural changes in their educational systems to give a larger place to technical and vocational education and training at all levels. These reforms are designed not only to meet development or manpower needs, but also to democratize education in such away as to broaden opportunities for all to develop their capacities to the full, both in individual terms and in terms of their role in society and the working world.

In all of the reforms, a major consensus on policy objectives in technical and vocational education may be detected, thanks in large part, it may be felt, to the Recommendation. The objectives naturally and rightly vary considerably in detail, depending on the traditions and social, political and economic structures of the individual countries as well as on their level of development. It may be fairly said that the international community has in broad terms reached a consensus as to the role and aims of technical and vocational education. The fact that the possibility of drafting a Convention on Technical and Vocational Education for submission to Member States is being studied by Unesco is a reflection of this consensus.

The problem facing technical and vocational education today is not one of basic principles guiding policy. These are for the most part agreed upon both internationally and on a national basis. The crux of the current problem in terms of policy is rather what specific policy objectives should be set so as to improve the situation in a given country and how to set these objectives. The most important issue is to define realistic objectives and then implement them. This implementation in the first instance involves creating the necessary structures for planning and managing technical and vocational education with feedback into the policy-making process. But structures, which can be nicely designed on paper, cannot do the job alone. Something has to be done to ensure that they function. And so the present study is addressed to basic questions of mechanics and production. A machine may be beautifully designed, but unless there is an energy input to drive it, it is useless. Again, it may be beautifully designed and moreover produce, but if the output is useless then it is simply a technological anomaly. If it is designed for one purpose only and this purpose becomes obsolete, then the machine becomes obsolete. In the present instance, the energy input is human talent, ingenuity and drive, and the output is, or should be, human capacities, capabilities and fulfilled aspirations. The research and development involved are by no means easy.

This study will look at some of the machinery for formulating and implementing technical and vocational educational policy. It will focus on the planning process, the lines of co-ordination between education and employment, management of technical and vocational education systems, including deployment of resources, and the means of policy and planning adjustments as a result of evaluation and feedback.

The study has a very specific background: its origin was the International Experts Meeting on Policy, Planning and Administration of Technical and Vocational Education held by Unesco in Paris from 7 to 11 June 1982. Participants were invited to exchange views in an individual capacity and make recommendations for future Unesco activities. The meeting brought together representatives from twenty-one countries - Algeria, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, United Republic of Cameroon, Cuba, France, German Democratic Republic, Federal Republic of Germany, India, Jamaica, Jordan, Mozambique, Nigeria, Peru, Sudan, United Republic of Tanzania, USSR, United States and Socialist Republic of Viet Nam - as well as observers from other international organizations, such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), and a non-governmental organization: the International Association of Educational and Vocational Guidance.

The meeting's deliberations were based on a general discussion paper prepared by the Unesco secretariat and three analytic working papers prepared by international experts in the field: K. Gopalan, 'Management and Administration of Technical and Vocational Education at Secondary and Post-Secondary Levels in its International Context'; W. Purgand, 'Policy and Planning in Technical and Vocational Education'; and W. W. Stevenson, The Role of Economic Analysis in Vocational Education Planning'. The meeting furthermore had available to it thirteen country studies prepared according to the guidelines set out in Appendix III. The countries concerned were: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Chile, Czechoslovakia, Ecuador, Gambia, Ghana, Ireland, Lesotho, Netherlands, Sudan and Turkey.

The meeting made it possible to collect a wealth of information provided by these studies, along with the stimulating analyses of the policy and planning processes, educational management techniques as applied to technical and vocational education, and cost effectiveness submitted by the three international experts. Other country studies along the same lines have since become available from India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. These have also been used in the present study.

This book was designed with a fivefold objective in view. In the first instance it is intended to make the information gathered as a result of the meeting available to a wider audience in accordance with a major Unesco objective and with one of the express recommendations of the meeting that 'the systematic exchange of information, ideas and experiences in the field of technical and vocational education is of great importance and should be further expanded'. Secondly, the book is designed to provide a comparative study of technical and vocational education policy, planning and administration in sixteen countries on the basis of material that is especially rich and up to date and which represents countries of all regions and at all levels of development. In the third place the study aims to offer a view of the current state of policy, planning and administration in technical and vocational education and to discern trends on the basis of this comparison. The fourth objective is to analyse the problems involved, with particular attention to development problems. Lastly, consideration is given to the question of what might be done through international co-operation to help solve these problems.

The concrete experience of the sixteen countries involved is the very foundation of the study. The second chapter therefore presents those countries in terms of the structures now in place for policy-making and planning in technical and vocational education along with those for co-ordinating with manpower and development planning and with training systems outside the formal education system. Where appropriate, the structural analysis also deals with the framework for research, evaluation and feedback in the system. This analysis is presented in diagrammatic form to facilitate comparison, and the accompanying commentary draws attention to salient features that do not necessarily stand out in a flow chart. In order to grasp the context of this organization 'at the top', the reader may wish to refer to Appendix II, which presents, again in diagram form, the overall educational system of each country studied, and the place of technical and vocational education within those systems. For purposes of further comparison, the reader may also wish to refer to an earlier Unesco study in this same series, Developments in Technical and Vocational Education: a Comparative Study (1978). Although this earlier study deals with the technical and vocational education systems in general, the educational systems and the policy, planning and administrative structures of the twenty-one countries involved in the study are presented in the same form as will be found in these pages, while the guidelines for preparing the country studies were very similar indeed. The chapter in this earlier study entitled 'Policy, Planning and Administration' may then be taken as a companion to the present study and as a justification for its focus.

The third chapter of the present study looks more closely into the policy-making and planning processes of the countries concerned. This is followed by a presentation of the administrative process, with particular attention to the management principles and methods applied. The study then turns, in the fifth chapter, to the problem of financing and cost efficiency, the solid rock against which many a wave of ideals, good intentions and innovation has broken. Following this the study looks to future trends and development problems as they arise out of the material presented, and then deals with what is being done and what could be done through international co-operation to strengthen policy, planning and management in technical and vocational education so as to achieve the objectives for which all are striving.

2. National frameworks for policy, planning and administration

Sound structures, properly co-ordinated, are of fundamental importance if appropriate policies for technical and vocational education are to be set and, above all, implemented through sound planning and management. Repetition of the word 'sound' is intentional but perhaps calls for some explanation. The soundness of a structure is relative, although some basic engineering and architectural principles are universal, from the pyramids to modern skyscrapers. The foundations must be solid, the various parts coherent, the structure must serve its purpose and it must serve the values of the society for which it was intended and by which it was built. Otherwise it will either fall apart or be abandoned. In the following pages we will see structures that have been in place for thirty, forty or fifty years, and others that have not yet seen their tenth, or even their second, birthday. The only criteria for judgement are: do they or will they work, do they or will they hold up for this particular country and society.

The diagrams of the structures in place for policy-making, planning and administration in technical and vocational education that appear on the following pages are the basis for the rest of the study. These structures vary greatly in type and complexity from country to country, depending on the levels of development, the size of the country, whether its general governmental structure is centralized or follows a federal pattern, and the historical development of its educational system. The material provided and diagrams presented by some of the countries concerned in this study were highly detailed: these have been simplified to bring out the salient features of the system. Other presentations were very succinct and where possible these have been expanded on the basis of information provided elsewhere in the particular country study concerned. In other words, the following schematic representation already represents an analysis of the situation.

Several points should be borne in mind. Structural diagrams can indicate levels of hierarchy, show certain relationships of function or show where a function is not provided. They cannot show scale nor indicate how or whether the structures function. Some systems do not easily admit of diagramming or can be slightly distorted by such an approach because of the plethora of private or public agencies and community groups involved in the policy-making and planning process with no hierarchical relation to one another. Although these systems may not seem ideal on paper, they may nevertheless work very well indeed.

FIG. 1. Algeria is in the process of reorganizing its whole approach to technical and vocational education within the framework of the current five-year plan so that not all the policy-making and administrative structures required are as yet in place. Since 1972, the thrust of policy has been to create a common system of basic education consisting of nine years' compulsory schooling for all. In the course of these reforms, vocational schools training qualified workers at secondary level were done away with and schools for technician education created at the upper secondary level. In fact this programme has been little implemented, and accordingly the Secretariat of State for Secondary and Technical Education was recently created to strengthen technical education and training at secondary and post-secondary levels. This unit will work closely with other ministries interested in technical and vocational education, either because they engage in it directly through their own institutes of technology or because they hire graduates. The secretariat will also work closely with industry in organizing the practical training required if young people are to achieve qualifications that have validity in the work place. The body primarily responsible for co-ordinating all these efforts is the Ministry of Planning and National Development, which also has major responsibility for allocating investments.

FIG. 2. As may be seen from the preceding diagram, in Argentina a special body responsible for technical and vocational education, the National Council of Technical and Vocational Education (CONET), is integrated into the organizational structure of the Ministry of Education and Culture. Originally constituted in 1959 to oversee technical education within the school system, the authority and functions of this body were considerably enlarged in 1971 to include training. It is an autonomous agency with its own structures and can consult the Executive Authority directly through the Ministry of Education. A special department of planning is responsible for curriculum development and for gearing programmes to manpower needs. The lines of direct connection to educational and training units are through the two respective inspectorates and the regional inspectorates under them, which are responsible for executing the programmes and norms adopted in the institutions and units coming within CONET's jurisdiction. CONET also performs a standard-setting function for technical and vocational education in institutions outside its direct jurisdiction, in terms of access of graduates of these institutions to post-secondary education in institutions which are under its jurisdiction.

CONET's governing board is appointed by the Executive Authority and includes the President and seven other members, three representing technical teachers' associations, two representing associations of enterprises, one representative from the Ministry of Labour, and one representative of industrial training staff associations.

CONET as a whole is responsible for planning, co-ordinating, implementing and evaluating technical and vocational education and training and for co-ordinating school and training centre programmes with the needs of the economy.

FIG. 3. Australia is a federal country with responsibility for education shared between the national authorities and the individual state governments. The national structures for policy-making, planning, coordinating and managing education are roughly paralleled by state structures, where most of the responsibility lies. Because of this federal pattern and the autonomy of the states in educational matters, educational structures have not developed along uniform lines and so vary from state to state. The structure of South Australia is given as an example.

As may be seen from the structural diagram, technical and vocational education is the responsibility of TAFE, the Department of Technical and Further Education. The TAFEs in individual states receive advice and some of their funds through the TAFE Council at national level. Virtually all technical and vocational education and training in Australia is offered at post-secondary level (see Appendix II), so that TAFE comes within the purview of tertiary education, although the institutions under its authority are distinguished from higher-education institutions: the colleges of advanced education and the universities. The Tertiary Education Authority is responsible for co-ordinating TAFE with higher education. The newly established (1981) Industrial and Commercial Training Commission, under the state Ministry for Industrial Affairs, is the agency through which manpower-planning and employment will be co-ordinated with education.

FIG. 4. Chile, like a number of other countries dealt with in the present study, is in the process of reforming its educational system. One of the main objectives of this reform, as may be seen from the structural diagram, is to decentralize the system, giving increased responsibility to regional and local authorities so as to render the system more flexible and more responsive to changing conditions. The policy-making and planning structures for technical and vocational education within the formal system are fully integrated with those for general education. The national-level structures are responsible for overall policy and planning and for accreditation of institutions and programmes, decisions which will be influenced by feedback from the Regional Secretariats of Education. In line with this policy of flexibility and response, the government is engaged in action in two other directions: encouraging private bodies and groups to create technical and vocational education institutions subject to accreditation and supervision by the state, and creating more flexibility within the various modules of the educational system (see Appendix II).

Vocational training for early school-leavers, apprenticeship schemes and many adult education schemes are mostly organized and managed by the National Training Institute (INACAP) for industrial occupations, along with similar institutions for agricultural occupations.

FIG. 5. In Czechoslovakia policy-making, planning and administration for technical and vocational education are fully integrated into a total education system. Overall educational policy is determined by the Federal Assembly of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the legislative bodies of the two federated republics, which have similar structures for education. Policy is centrally administered by the federal government and the Ministries of Education of the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic. The Ministries of Education administer the universities and research institutes directly, while all other educational institutions and installations are administered by the departments of education of the National Committees. The National Committees have special responsibility for coordination of educational activities of all kinds and for co-ordination with enterprises and public organizations.

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