Introduction. Over the past six decades, modular education has been an important didactic approach in modern international and domestic education, and is one of the factors of its development. The purpose of the article is to characterize this important scientific phenomenon, which has a significant impact on the nature and quality of general and vocational education. Methods. In the process of work, the authors used methods of analyzing theoretical and methodological literature on the subject of research, studying pedagogical practice, as well as a systematic historical approach to characterizing the studied pedagogical phenomenon. Results. Modular education appeared in European, and then in Soviet, didactics in the second half of the XX century as a kind of response to the need of society to find new, more advanced and relatively fast ways to train professional personnel. The basis of modular learning is the division of the content of the studied educational material into small parts, called modules. This approach allows students to study individual parts of the content at a pace convenient for them and in accordance with their own schedule. The modular approach involves a significant change in the position of the teacher and the trainees in the direction of greater independence of the latter, the development of their responsibility and creativity. To a much greater extent, this approach is applicable in professional educational institutions, primarily higher ones, but in recent years it has also found application in the practice of advanced teachers of general education institutions. KEYWORDS Conclusion. As the conducted research shows, and pedagogical practice proves, the modular system of general and vocational education is able to significantly improve the efficiency and quality of training of school graduates and specialists, and to a certain extent act as a didactic tool that ensures the development of a creative and active personality. Of course, the introduction of modular training requires a certain organizational and methodological restructuring of the educational process, which inevitably affects the issues of planning the work of teachers, preparing the necessary laboratory base for the frontal conduct of testing and creative work of trainees, forming a contingent of students and students taking into account the capacity of laboratories, developing appropriate methodological support.