EFFICIENCY AND EQUITY IN VOCATIONAL-EDUCATION AND TRAINING POLICIES

Access to vocational education and training (VET) is an important determinant of income and wealth distribution, but skill transfers are usually inequitably distributed across classes, and gender and ethnic groups. Public education often intervenes inequitably and inefficiently. Skill needs arising from profound changes in the world economy contrast with much VET provision still based on crafts, assembly-line manufacture and traditional agriculture. This article reviews the complex, often competing aims involved in achieving efficient and equitable VET, and offers a methodology to measure a VET system's effect on efficiency and equity and to select criteria for the allocation of public resources to meet these ends.