Journal of Education and Work, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2002 The Evolution of Education and Training Strategies in Singapore, Taiwan and S. Korea: a development model of skill formation D. ASHTON, F. GREEN, J. SUNG & D. JAMES Centre for Labour Market Studies, University of Leicester, 7–9 Salisbury Road, Leicester LE 1 7QR ABSTRACT This paper challenges the conventional explanation of the role of the state in skill formation in the high performing Asian economies as advocated by World Bank economists. It does this through an examination of the institutions which supported benecial strategic state intervention in the process of skill formation in Singapore, Taiwan and S. Korea. These enabled governments to produce a pace of skill formation so high that it achieved within the space of one generation something that took the advanced industrial countries three generations to achieve. Our research has identied a set of government strategies and associated institutional structures in the eld of education and training in these economies which, it is argued, played a crucial role in ensuring that economic growth could proceed without employers experiencing severe skill shortages. We put forward a model of the skill formation process which is dynamic in character, focussing on the relationship between the state and the rapidly changing demand for skills during the process of industrialisation. This model allows us to examine some of the processes which are currently sustaining as well as threatening existing forms of intervention in the area of skill formation, including those related to the nancial crisis of the late 1990s. Introduction In her contribution to the debate which followed the publication of the World Bank report on the ‘East Asian Miracle’ (World Bank, 1993), Alice Amsden proposed that it was time to identify, with more precision, the institutions which supported benecial strategic state interventions in the economy (Amsden, 1994). Such under- standing would, at the least, suggest how similar interventions might be made to work elsewhere. The idea was reiterated in 1995 by Huff (1995) who argued that the ‘key questions’ now became those of how strategic intervention was managed in such a way that these economies were able to grow so rapidly. Although that particular debate has been overtaken by concerns about the impact of globalization and about the causes and consequences of the 1997/8 nancial crisis, the potentially positive impact of the state remains broadly accepted, even by the World Bank itself ISSN 1363-9080 print; 1469-9435 online/02/010005-26 Ó 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/13639080120106695