Vocational education and training and regional development in Brazil

In 2008, Brazil established a complex intersectoral policy, leading to an unprecedented overall and inland expansion of Vocational Education and Training. Federal institutions went from 140 units, built over 100 years, to 654 units in 2020, 600 of which are campuses belonging to the Federal Institutes of Education, Science and Technology. This paper analyses Federal Institutes as an institutional model that seeks to establish itself, through vocational education and training, as a vector of regional development, promoting the dynamization of local productive and innovative systems. It incorporates the premises of the Triple Helix model, presenting a different perspective to those that have historically guided Brazilian educational policies. This is a qualitative study with a descriptive and correlational nature, although it also relies on public statistical databases to gather evidence pointing to the positive impact of the Federal Institutes on regional development.