The many stakeholders are involved in the skills training of youth, who should carry the bigger burden of equipping young people with the needed labour market skills? Secondary school educators? Post-secondary institutions? Employers? Certainly it must be all of the above, right?

Studies show that two main incentives drive countries in the industrialized world to improve conditions of transition from school to work; a ‘push’ factor, to reduce youth unemployment and a ‘pull’ factor of expected future labour market requirements (i.e. a move toward a high skilled ‘learning-intensive’ economy) (Stern and Wagner, 1999).

While policies influence the transition patterns, countries in which employers take more responsibility for training are more successful in reducing unemployment and countries who attempt to equip students with relevant skills at the school level (i.e. in technical and vocational institutes) rather than after they enter the labour market at the work level are less successful.

In Saudi, while on the job training is on the rise (See Droob and Saifi programs), the push to improve and diversify technical and vocational schools is also on the rise, and efforts to increase young people’s awareness of the benefits of TVET is starting at an earlier age.

As the context in Saudi is very different from that of European industrialized economies, how can we ensure that we are benefitting from lessons learned, while avoiding the pitfalls of policy-borrowing outside of the local realities?