The Reconstruction of Post-Compulsory Education and Training in England and Wales

Abstract

Britain has been unusually late in planning any extensive 'third stage' of education beyond the period of compulsory schooling. In practice if not in precept, it seemed to be sufficient to 'educate' an elite in sixth forms, to 'prepare' or 'train' further minorities for technical and white-collar employment, and to leave the majority of young workers to pick up what skills they needed as they went along. The outcome is one of the least-trained workforces in the industrial world (Manpower Services Commission, 1982a, p. 2). The source of that criticism, the Manpower Services Commission (MSC), has itself organised a rapid extension of 'training opportunities', an extension in which local education authorities and the Department of Education and Science (DES) have played only subordinate parts. After years of tinkering with such internal problems as the appropriate curriculum for 'non-academic' sixth formers, the education sector has had to consider a more radical reconstruction of 16-19 provision alongside the hectic activity of a government training agency linked firmly to the Department of Employment (DOE). As falling rolls have coincided with a real decrease in the money available to most local education authorities, so the blurring of traditionally well-defended boundaries between secondary and further education has seemed to promise a more financially 'rational' use of scarce resources. But the more significant boundary has been between those at 16 plus who are retained somewhere in the education system, and the majority who sever all connection with it as soon as they can (Holland, 1979). This has been cited to justify looking elsewhere for the educated, better trained and more adaptable workforce which new technology demands (DOE 1981, p. 4). Yet the main force behind the MSC's Youth Opportunities Programme (YOP) was the growing social and political problem of youth unemployment. What began in 1978 as a programme of vocational preparation and work experience for some 220,000 unemployed school leavers enlisted its millionth 'trainee' in September 1981, now covers half of all those who left school in 1982, and has a target of 630,000 entrants for 1982-83 (MSC, 1982b). What began as a set of emergency measures for five years is tO grow in 1983 into a £1 billion a year Youth Training Scheme intended to guarantee a year's 'foundation training' to all unemployed minimum-age school leavers, while also extending the vocational provision for those who find work (DOE, 1981; MSC, 1981a, 1981b, and 1982a). While the DES is bound to insist on the 'important contributions' to be made to the Scheme from 'the education system', it acknowledges at least implicitly that it is following a 'largely employment-based approach' which it has done little to shape (DES, 1982a).