Skilling the Unskilled: Access to work-based learning and the lifelong learning agenda

Abstract

European and national policy debates are emphasising the need to establish a culture of lifelong learning in order to promote workers' adaptability and employability. The emphasis on the need for individuals to take responsibility for their own learning fails to address patterns of inequality in access to work-based learning. Unskilled workers are least likely to receive formal training in the workplace and they are often those whose experience of formal schooling has been poor and are unlikely to access learning outside the workplace on their own initiative. The article has a dual focus: on the nature of work which is considered to have a low skill content and on the individuals who occupy these positions in the organisation of production because of their low level of educational qualification and/or their status as subordinate members of society. The extent to which access to learning is seen as linked to problems faced by the individual or the context of the work environment has consequences for the ways in which patterns of inequality in access are reproduced or can be challenged. It examines contemporary changes in the nature of unskilled work and its consequences for managers' and trade unions' training strategies. This forms the background for an assessment of the likely impact of the Labour government's policy on learning opportunities for adults in the workplace, based on a reading of the report of the National Advisory Committee for Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning (Fryer, 1997) and the Green Paper 'The Learning Age: a rennaissance for a new Britain' (DfEE, 1998).