SOCIAL SKILLS FROM MASS HIGHER EDUCATION: RETHINKING THE COMPANY-BASED INITIAL TRAINING PARADIGM

Abstract

Ulis is an essay in the literal sense that it is tentative. I wantto argue in it that we need to rethink the relationship in the UK between education, initial vocational training, and the functioning of labour markets. This is because the reality of dra matic recent and on-going changes in post-16 education—towards sharply increasingpost-16 stay ing-on and university participation rates—and in skills requirements of companies in the UK—towards broad social and organizational skills—bears little relation to the focus of labour market policy and of much academic debate on initial training, particularly for 16and 17-year-old school leavers. The basic mistake in UK policy development has been a failure to understand that the UK does not have the underlying socio-eco n mic institutions which both Germany and Japan have and which are needed for an effective system of company-based initial training. Nor, for that matter, does the US, and it is suggested here, that we should look closely at America, as an economy with similar underlying socio-economic institu tions to our own, if we are to understand recent changes in UK education and labour-maiket pat te ns. What the UK has to learn from the US is the