Debates about 'governance' both within and outside of the South African state are increasingly turning to the question of 'coordination failure' - the inability of government to make interventions in key problem areas which require the inputs and actions of several government departments and agencies acting in concert with each other. Too often, the opposite occurs - the silo effect - where government departments work in isolation, unable and in some cases, unwilling to act on the interdependencies that straddle their governance responsibilities. In this monograph, the author introduces the debate about the importance of state coordination or 'joining up' in the area of 'education and work'. He does so, firstly, by adapting the highly influential British scholarship on 'high skills societies' to South Africa's inherited 'low skills' development trajectory.