The Vocational School Fallacy Revised - Technical Secondary Schoold in Egypt

Abstract

Egypt based its development aspirations, more than most countries in Africa and Asia, upon the expansion of an extensive system of technical schools. This policy was directly linked to the Nasser experiment of centrally planned industrialisation. However, despite the gradually increasing role of private sector participation in the economy over the past 25 years, in both its formal and informal versions, no effort was made to adjust the system to the needs of these employers. Similarly, despite the dwindling role of manufacturing and the fall in investment, no effort was made to limit the expansion of the system to a size that would guarantee the absorption of graduates by industry. Instead, enrolments increased at a faster pace throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. This paper documents the growth of technical education in Egypt and argues that the particular pattern followed had little to do with a rational planning exercise and was not focused on how to provide young people with workplace relevant skills. Instead it was related to haphazard efforts that would divert students aspiring for higher education. Today technical secondary school graduates are the group of the population hit most by the inadequacies of the education system, as attested by their high unemployment rates.