Challenges of the State Policy of Georgia in Respect to Vocational Education

Tamar Kakutia, Rusudan Chartolani

(International Black Sea University, Georgia)

Abstract: The importance of receiving vocational education for several years for the further social and professional development of a person is recognized by the legislation of almost all countries. Also, necessity of funding vocational education by the state is universally recognized and almost no serious political party in any country of the world puts it under question. However, what should be the optimal volume of funding to achieve the desirable quality of education and the level of availability, to what extent the quality of education depends on the amount of funding, what is the optimal distribution of limited resources for achievement of the best result — there are no definite answers to these questions.
To demonstrate the challenges in the field of vocational education in a structured manner it is important to analyze the volume of funding of vocational education in Georgia, how this volume changed during the recent years and how Georgia is comparable to the countries developed in this regard; how the funding of education and the quality of education in these countries are related to each other; what sources of funding of vocational education exist in Georgia and what is the ratio of private and state expenditures; what mechanisms of funding are used for vocational education in Georgia currently; what is the amount expended by the state for vocational education spent on at the national and institutional level; how Georgia is comparable to developed countries by distribution of expenses. The system of education is one among the institutional systems representing the foundation of the state.
Vocational education system is a point of connection of education and practical activities. Research of objectives and tasks of Vocational education system institutions and improvement of various funding models have been underway in the European countries for a rather long time.
The paper presents the results of the quantitative sociological research. The basic factors which essentially determine the attitude of students to vocational education are identified and analyzed, which on its part is one of the important prerequisites for the formation of a rating system of vocational colleges and for the optimization of the model of their financial support by the state.

Key words: vocational education, professional development, vocational students, funding