VOCATIONAL EDUCATION POLICIES IN ANGOLA AND SOUTH AFRICA: VOCATIONAL EDUCATION BEYOND TECHNICAL SKILLS

Abstract

Through a qualitative approach and a critical document analysis method, this article analyzes vocational training policies in Angola and South Africa from an intra-African dialogical perspective. More than a comparison for comparison's sake, it is a proposal for technical and political intervention that presupposes the appropriation and adoption of the most strategic procedures of South Africa's vocational training policy in Angola. The results indicate that, unlike the Angolan authorities, immersed in neoliberal logic, who tend to view vocational education as a means of training cheap and immediate labor to meet the interests of the market and, therefore, the desires of the prevailing business oligarchy – South Africa views vocational education from an inclusive perspective, recognizing differences by developing programs aimed at students who present socioeconomic, psychological, and social integration vulnerabilities. These are measures that can be adopted by the technical and vocational education subsector in Angola, but which, however, must be preceded by profound structural and institutional reforms, such as the democratization of institutions, accompanied by political and administrative deconcentration and decentralization – as well as a break with the neoliberal logic that, guided by the dynamics of class hierarchy, undermines technical and vocational education because it considers it a training subsector intended for the descendants of the working class, aiming at maintaining the status quo.