Educational policy makers’ views on secondary education relevance to the world of work in Iran: a critical reflection on 1990s educational reform

This paper reports the results of a qualitative study about the effectiveness of major reforms taken place in 1990s towards closing down the gap between general upper secondary education and the economy in Iran. The study aimed to analyse questions such as: To what extent dose Iranian secondary education meet current and future needs of labour market? How satisfied are employers and other key stakeholders with the quality of high school graduates in the workplace? And what are the most important further steps that policy makers should take into the account to complete the reform process of secondary education successfully? Field work using a series of semi-structured interviews was carried out with senior policy makers in the Ministry of Education. The research findings indicate that there is no systematic employers’ involvement in debates and decision are made about educational improvement causing a weak cooperation and partnerships between education and businesses. Also there is still a big gap between what is taught in schools and what employers require leading to the greater degree of dissatisfaction among employers