The Prime Minister, speaking at the official opening of a vocational college in Crawley, said the UK had to invest in its "human capital" if it was to survive in the global economy.
Mr Blair met students at Central Sussex College, formed when Crawley College and Haywards Heath College merged to form one of the country's leading training centres for 14 to 18-year-old pupils.
He joked with youngsters learning to be plumbers, saying to one who was fixing a tap: "I am always looking to learn but I am definitely not trying that."
With more than 1,000 staff and 18,000 full and part-time students, Central Sussex College is in the middle of a £30 million investment scheme.
It already has centres of excellence in care, construction and retail while training centres for engineering and cultural industries will follow.
Mr Blair said the importance of investing in vocational colleges was as important as putting money into schools and universities.
And he said such centres were vital in the battle to keep up with rapidly developing countries across the world.
"Where ever you are in the world today, education and training in schools is going to be the future," he said.
"Countries cannot succeed unless they develop their own human capital. I was in China and India recently, and what was interesting was that these countries, which we think of as cheap-labour, low wage countries, are now moving into highly skilled areas. To put it in context, China is producing 600,000 science and computer graduates every year. That's the size of all the EU nations put together. All the time we are in a race to keep up. It's the way the world is."
