New Vocationalism
The concern to improve education’s supply of labour to employers led to the emergence of what whiteside has called a ‘loose alliance’ of politicians, civil servants, industrialists and trade unionists. This alliance advocated the ‘new vocationalism’.
Vocational education is education for work. The ‘new vocationalism’ of the 1980’s sought to transform education so that it could more effectively meet the economy’s requirements for labour. It challenged the established liberal and academic traditions of British education. The liberal approach to education aimed to develop an indevidual’s full potential in all aspects of life and did not particularly concern itself with education for work. The academic tradition valued knowledge for its own sake and was not concerned with how it was used.
At the heart of the new vocationalism was the belief that education needed to develop the transferable skills relevant to a rapidly changing economy, Knowledge was considered less important than the capacity to learn, communicate and work cooperatively with others.
The alliance argued for a more vocational, more motivating, more student-involving education that would raise the numbers of 16 -19 year olds staying on in education. There were calls for the following kinds of changes:
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Course construction. Modularizing courses into shorter, more flexible units. Specification of objectives, so that students are clear about what they are expected to achieve.
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Skills. A shift of focus from knowledge to skills. The accquisition of ‘core’ skills in communication, problem-solving, and personal management by all students. Where appropriate to the subject, the development of skills in numeracy, information technology and modern-language competence.
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Learning. More emphasis on stutdent-centred learning through project work rather than teaching factual information. Group coopeations rather than individualist competition.
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Assesment. Profiles and records of achievement to recognize what has been achieved and replace traditional grading. Which is demotivation because it values only high grades. Certification that a defined level of competence had been reached. More assessment through coursework rather than examination.
It was no good, however, developing work-relevant skills if they were not valued by the educational system or employers or indeed the students themselves. This was a deep-rooted problem in Britain, where academic qyalificaions had always been more highly valued than voactional ones. The response to this problem was to build a new system of national vocational qualifications (NVQs), which tested not just knowledge but competence in specific work situations. General NVQs (GNVQs) were developed to meet the requirements of groups of related occupations, such as health care, and provide a vocational route into further and higher education. Advance GNVQs or ‘vocational A levels’, as they were called by some, were created to give equality of status with A level and provide a route into higher education through vocational qualifications. Smithers (1994) has described this creation of new qualifications as a ‘quiet revollution’.
The new covationalism may have brought about a quiet revolution but it upset the some on both the Right and Left of politics. It was resisted by Conservative supporters of the academic tradition. They saw the traditional knowledge and and subject-based A level as a ‘gold standard’ that should be defended at all costs. Proposals to change A level and provide a less specialized and broader-based education of the kind favoured by industry and found and found in other countries were defeated in the 1980s. Critics on the Left argued that it subordinated education to the requirements of work in a capitalist economy. It seemed to vindicate the Bowles and Gintis analysis of the relationship between education and the capitalist economy. Was education only for work ?
‘Marketisation’ of Education
The introduction of market principles reflected the government’s general belief that the British economy could be revitalized by allowing market forces to operate more freely. This involved two key interacting processes, greater competition between institutions and greater parental choice.
