Skills Development: Vocational Education
in the Islamic Countries
15
country becomes a beneficiary because these Ugandans remit a substantial amount ofmoney
to their families and we all gain from that” (Imaka & Wesonga, 2017).
According to World Bank data released in April 2016, Uganda received remittances to the tune
of 3.6 trillion shillings from its citizens living and working abroad (Source: Worldbank, 2016).
1.3. Main Factors that Determine the Performance of Vocational Education
1.3.1. Introduction
In today’s world, education is seen to have a significant impact towards one’s growth and
economic development (Hanushek, Schwerdt, Woessmann, & Zhang, 2017; Wolf, 2011).
Literature has also shown a very positive influence of, especially, vocational education and
training (VET) education domain towards economic performance of firms and company (Arthur,
Hisrich, & Cabrera, 2012; CEDEFOP, 2011b; Maclean &Wilson, 2009). Researchers have agreed
that having a well-educated work force is a key element to achieve competitiveness and
prosperity in the job market (Arthur et al., 2012; Maclean& Wilson, 2009, p. 83). A recent study
reported that young individuals undertaking vocational education have a greater opportunity to
get employment than the individuals with general education (Hanushek et al., 2017). Since
vocational education is linked to economic development, its performance may highly affect the
economic growth of the country. Thus, this section is aimed at examining the factors that
determine the performance of vocational education globally.
1.3.2. Policy
One of themost important factors towards vocational education’s performance is policy making
at state or national level. By administering policies for vocational institutions it helps in
classification of objectives and goals that are expected to be attained to improve quality
(Seyfried, 2007). Seyfried (2007) also suggests that the state or nation has to pay extra attention
on the following four roles for ensuring performance of vocational education.
 The state has to formulate and state the goals and objectives in a democratic process by
ensuring partnership among the relevant stakeholders;
 During implementation, the state has to pay attention towards translation of goals and
objectives into performance measures and expected results that can be measuredwith
performance indicators;
 The state has to ensure that monitoring and assessing of the performances and results
achieved are in the light of the previous goals and objectives;
 The state has also to pay attention on feedback on the implementation process to
organize change and provoke improvement.
Thus, the more concrete the formulation of policies towards achieving specific goals and
objectives, the wider the scope and the higher the number of categorieswhich might be used to
measure and determine the performance of vocational education.
The member states of European commission and social partners developed indicators that will
measure the quality of vocational education performance and training:
 Better employability of the labor force;
 Better match between training and demand and supply;
 Better access to vocational education