Sustainable development of region and its human capital, formation of an open-minded intelligent personality and quality workforce is affected by a number of objective factors. Development depends greatly on the expanding role of education and increasing performance efficiency of the education system. The goal of the research is to examine the theoretical aspects of the competency model, analyse the functions of education in economics and formation of human competencies, as well as analyse the development of education quality and services in the context of sustainable development. Research methods are the analysis and synthesis of scientific literature, as well as logical and comparative analysis. The results show that socio-economic nature of education in forming human capital can be expressed as a set of regularities that refers to formation and functioning of labour force (human resources) and corresponds to the present needs and opportunities.