School enterprises and sustainability: Challenges for secondary and vocational education

School enterprises, which combinemarket production with systematic vocational learning, bring conventionalschools and vocational institutes closer to the realities of life, particularly theworld of work and self-employment.The paper: a) examines the issue of school enterprises as part of a larger educationalproject, influenced by the wider social and economic climate and thebigger policy discourses of multilateral and bilateral agencies; b) spells out theconceptual framework as a useful yardstick for analyzing differ-ences on theeffectiveness of school enterprises, and how well they are managed; c) analyzesthe implementation of school enterprises by referring to literature on variousexamples of school enterprises and offers guidelines with regard to the optimalinterlinking between production and learning, as well as the emphasis on thepedagogical value of introducing productive enterprise; d) concludes by lookingat factors that may enhance school enterprise environment, and highlightssome of the basic principles that need to be borne in mind while setting upschool enterprises.