Constructing Vocational Education

Post 14

Research

Group

CONSTRUCTING VOCATIONAL EDUCATION:

FROM TVEI TO GNVQ

David Yeomans

School of Education

University of Leeds

CONTENTS

Page

Abbreviations

Introduction 1

IFrom TVEI to GNVQ: Continuities 3

Diagnosing the problem: an economic discourse 3

Creating a ‘practical’ curriculum 7

Progressivism in TVEI and GNVQ 9

IIFrom TVEI to GNVQ: Discontinuities 15

Political and institutional origins 18

Curricular origins 20

Mode of curricular operation 22

Mode of curriculum development 25

Collaboration and consortia working 26

Scope of curricular change 29

Method of curriculum change 30

Conclusion - Shifting modes of vocational education 32

References 41

ABBREVIATIONS

A levels - GCE Advanced level courses

BTEC - Business and Technology Education Council

C&G - City and Guilds of London Institute

CBI - Confederation of British Industry

CPVE - Certificate of Pre-Vocational Education

DES - Department of Education and Science

DFE - Department for Education

DVE - Diploma of Vocational Education

EBPs - Education Business Partnerships

ED - Employment Department

ESRC - Economic and Social Research Council

FEDA - Further Education Development Agency

FEU - Further Education Unit

GCE - General Certificate of Education

GCSE - General Certificate of Secondary Education

GNVQs - General National Vocational Qualifications

HMCI - Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector

HMI - Her Majesty’s Inspectors

LEA - Local Education Authority

LMS - Local Management of Schools

MSC - Manpower Services Commission

NCC - National Curriculum Council

NCVQ - National Council for Vocational Qualifications

NVQs - National Vocational Qualifications

ROA - Record of Achievement

RSA - Royal Society of Arts

SCAA - School Curriculum and Assessment Authority

SCIP - Schools Council Industry Project

TECs - Training and Enterprise Councils

TVEI - Technical and Vocational Education Initiative

YOPS - Youth Opportunities Scheme

YTS - Youth Training Scheme

INTRODUCTION

This paper draws upon two major ESRC-funded projects, a medium term study of the impact of TVEI and a study of the construction of the GNVQ curriculum[1] as well as several smaller research and evaluation projects concerned with TVEI and GNVQs[2]. The paper compares TVEI and GNVQ and draws out some of the similarities and differences. It will focus upon the different policy and implementation frameworks provided by the two programmes and the implications of these differences for practice. It is important to note at the outset that TVEI and GNVQ had somewhat different aims, scope and methods of procedure and that therefore this paper does not compare like with like in any strict sense. Neither does the paper provide a comprehensive account of the development of vocational education in the 1980s and 1990s since TVEI and GNVQ were only two among a whole series of programmes designed to promote vocational education and training. However, among these various schemes TVEI and GNVQ were the most significant of those aimed at students in full-time education and the comparative approach adopted in the paper throws light on some of the key characteristics of both programmes and assists in evaluating the effectiveness of different approaches to policy and curriculum development.

The introductions of TVEI and GNVQ were separated by less than ten years and operationally the two programmes overlapped within many schools and colleges. However, there were very significant differences in the ways in which TVEI and GNVQ set about tackling deficiencies in vocational education for the 14-19 age group. I shall argue that the discontinuities between them are manifestations of frequent policy shifts, or “policy hysteria” (Stronach and Morris, 1994), in the methods adopted to address policy ‘problems’.

TVEI had its heyday in the period 1983-87 when it set the agenda and made the pace as far as upper secondary education was concerned. From about 1988 however, with the return to prominence of the DES and the promulgation of the National Curriculum, TVEI was increasingly marginalised. Indeed one of the puzzles of TVEI is how it managed to survive and continue to disburse substantial although declining funds for a further ten years (it will end nationally in 1997) despite its star being in decline for a good proportion of that time. GNVQs rose to prominence in the first half of the 1990s and were soon hailed as a success story. More recently however, there has been increasing criticism of GNVQs, their elder sibling NVQs and their parent NCVQ. Their future in the wake of the Dearing review of 16-19 qualifications (Dearing, 1995) seems reasonably secure but they are to be subjected to continuing reform following the Capey Review (NCVQ, 1995) and the merging of NCVQ and SCAA in 1997.

IFROM TVEI TO GNVQ: CONTINUITIES

While there were substantial discontinuities between TVEI and GNVQ there were also some elements of continuity, particularly at the level of broad policy and it is these which are considered in this section.

Diagnosing the problem: an economic discourse

The first element of continuity is that TVEI and GNVQ were both responses to the diagnosis of the weaknesses of vocational education in England and Wales. Both were part of a prolonged attempt to reform and revitalise vocational education. This renewed interest in vocationalism can be traced back to James Callaghan’s 1976 Ruskin College speech, although debates around the content, character and purpose of vocational education and its relationship to, and differentiation from, other forms of education go back much further. The historical record shows that interest in vocational education increases during periods of economic difficulty and the late 1970s and early 1980s were marked by rapidly rising unemployment and the decimation of important sectors of the economy. In the wake of Callaghan’s speech, the subsequent ‘Great Debate’ and the election of a Conservative government a plethora of White Papers were produced containing a wide variety of proposals for the reform of vocational education. Acronyms multiplied as general policy statements were translated into specific programmes and courses - YOPS, YTS, TVEI, CPVE, DVE, NVQs, GNVQs - the list is itself evidence of both continuity and flux - the ‘problem’ remained constant, the means of tackling it ever-changing. This group of projects are widely known collectively as constituting the ‘new vocationalism’ and while this disguises important differences between programmes they contain sufficient common elements to justify the use of a portmanteau term.

TVEI was announced in 1982, began as a pilot scheme in 1983, was extended nationally in 1987 and is due to end in 1997 by which time close on £1billion will have been spent. GNVQs were announced in 1991, began as a pilot scheme in 1992 and were extended nationally in 1993, they now dominate provision of full-time vocational education for 16-18 year olds.

Both programmes were introduced in an attempt to improve the allegedly low quality of vocational education and training which was claimed to be handicapping commerce and industry in the competitive 1980s and 1990s. At a deeper level both were grounded in the broader analysis of English culture provided by Martin Wiener (1981) and Correlli Barnett (1986) in their influential commentaries on the purported anti-industrial bias of the English and of English education. Of course, these sorts of historical and cultural critiques have themselves been subjected to sustained criticism by economic historians (Collins and Robbins, 1990; Rubinstein, 1993). However, for a time the Wiener and Barnett theses became popular among politicians and commentators, probably because a rather selective reading of them supported the attempted Thatcherite cultural and economic revolution.

Both TVEI and GNVQ were grounded in an economic and instrumental discourse in which:

Better vocational education and training = Greater individual productivity = Economic growth

They were part of an attempt to align education more closely to the ‘needs’ of industry and commerce and rectify some of the knowledge, skill and attitude deficits of school leavers. This type of instrumental, economic analysis remains important in political debates about education across the main political parties. There is still relatively little discussion about whether vocational education (or any form of education) should, or can, play the functional role assigned to it by the prevailing instrumental discourse within the economic system. It remains axiomatic for most politicians that education and training, if only we can get it right, will have strong and tangible economic benefits. However, from within this human capital discourse some economists of education have pointed out that establishing the relationship between education and economic development is by no means straightforward and that substantiating causal links between any particular curriculum and subsequent economic outcomes is fraught with even more difficulties. The new vocationalism has also been attacked from outside the human capital discourse. Neo-Marxists, for example, have seen the new vocationalist project as being essentially one of social control - cooling-out, occupying and reconciling potentially unruly youth to a reality of unemployment, ‘schemes’ and temporary employment (Bates and Riseborough, 1993; Bates, 1984). Another type of analysis sees the policy developments in terms of “symbolic action” (Kliebard, 1986) or “witchcraft” (Stronach, 1991), linked to a legitimation crisis and having for policy-makers the advantage of being seen to do ‘something’ about pressing economic and social problems. Outside the academic world however, these critiques of human capital arguments for the development of vocational education have had little impact and the common-sense belief that education in general, and vocational education in particular, will have an economic pay-off remains strong and continues to have a powerful influence on the education policy of the major political parties.

However, while there has been continuity in diagnosis of the alleged deficiencies which needed to be tackled there has been constant change in the specific methods and policy choices selected to tackle these deficiencies. After a 15 year period of unprecedented, feverish activity the achievements (if any) of the new vocationalist programmes remain uncertain. Still the cry goes up from politicians and employers that the British workforce is inadequately educated and trained. Still unflattering comparisons are made with our partners/competitors in Europe and further afield (Prais, 1995; Smithers, 1993). Still the search is on for a more effective system of vocational education and training.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to evaluate the validity of the analysis upon which the new vocationalism has been built, my intention here is simply to establish a strong element of continuity in the diagnosis of the ‘problem’ which both TVEI and GNVQ (and the other new vocationalist programmes) were designed to overcome and to suggest that both were firmly grounded in what has become a hegemonic, economic and instrumentalist discourse. This raises important questions about the extent to which this discourse places limits upon what can be achieved in practice in the programmes.

Creating a ‘practical’ curriculum

The second area of continuity between TVEI and GNVQ lies in the attempt to create a broad-based ‘practical’ curriculum. That is, one which is neither academic and discipline and content-driven in the way of A levels nor skills-driven as in the old, occupationalist vocationalism. The concept of the practical curriculum draws upon ideas of a broad or liberal vocationalism (Silver and Brennan, 1988) and takes account of the emergence of new forms of knowledge and changes in the nature of work. This version of the practical curriculum has a broad educational focus and has won support from educationalists (e.g. Chitty, 1991; Pring, 1990,; Spours and Young, 1988). It also articulates well with the Education for Capability movement launched by the RSA in the 1980s which was based on a critique of the academic curriculum and a call for a more modern, practical alternative (Burgess, 1986). Earlier antecedents for calls for a practical curriculum lay in the Crowther Report’s concept of the ‘alternative road’ and the ‘rehabilitation of the practical’ (McCulloch, 1984) and in the still earlier curriculum theories of Whitehead and Dewey. Thus there is a respectable philosophical and epistemological case to be made for a practical curriculum which is neither narrowly academic nor occupationalist. However, many issues remain to be addressed concerning its detailed implementation and targeting. Assuming it was possible to begin to elaborate a practical curriculum was this to be a dimension or orientation to be embodied in all school subjects, in some subjects or would subjects as currently constructed become obsolete? Was the practical curriculum to be an essential element of the curriculum for all students at all ages or was it to be limited to certain students at particular ages? These and many other questions remain to be tackled. The history of technical schools (McCulloch, 1989; Sanderson, 1994), the development of school technology (McCulloch, Jenkins and Layton, 1985; Penfold, 1988) and the story of TVEI itself (Gleeson and McLean, 1994; Merson, 1992) show that the development of a practical curriculum is no easy task.

Progressivism in TVEI and GNVQ

The third area of continuity between TVEI and GNVQ lay in their promotion of versions of progressivism. This commitment to progressivism was evident in the TVEI Aims with their references to students “using their skills and knowledge to solve real world problems” and “developing initiative, motivation and enterprise as well as problem-solving skills and other aspects of personal development”. In GNVQ the progressivism is apparent in the strong emphasis on student independence in learning in the grading criteria. Jessup (1995) states that:

A further important aspect of the GNVQ curriculum ( . . . ) is that students take greater responsibility for their own learning. This feature, valued by higher education and employers, allows the use of flexible and efficient learning modes and makes effective use of teacher time and physical resources. (p.42)

He contrasts this with what he calls the “traditional approach” which, he claims has a “much narrower focus on learning”, with a frequently “didactic nature” emphasising “learning about rather than learning how to” (emphasis in the original).

Emblematic terms for this progressivism include: student-centred learning, active learning, flexible learning, the negotiated curriculum, the work-related curriculum, action planning and recording achievement all of which have featured in TVEI and/or GNVQ. In this context progressivism is closely related to the concept of the practical curriculum, which through its rejection of the transmission of both disciplinary knowledge and occupationalist skills as its basis, implies a more active role for the learner.

In some respects the persistence of elements of progressivism in the new vocationalism is surprising, coming as it does at a time when progressivism more generally has been under attack from Conservative politicians, commentators and right wing think-tanks as the source of many evils in education. In contrast to the current climate, in the 1970s and early 1980s moves to more progressive pedagogy in secondary and further education were given a degree of official and quasi-official support through HMI, local authorities and curriculum development bodies such as the Schools Council and the FEU. The evidence for actual changes in pedagogical practice in schools and colleges is patchy but there are grounds for thinking that there was a gradual and uneven shift across a range of subjects and courses towards more student-centred approaches. It was ironic that I recently heard a teacher of GNVQ Business enthuse that the course was the nearest thing she had come across in secondary education to “good primary practice” when that very practice to which she aspired has been under sustained attack and blamed for many of the alleged deficiencies of primary education. It is interesting that this shift to more student-centred methods in secondary schools and further education colleges has not aroused the ire of the traditionalists in the way progressive teaching in primary schools has done. This is perhaps because the ideology of progressive teaching at secondary and post-compulsory levels is much less well articulated and visible than is the case at primary level and also because in the 1980s much of the progressive rhetoric was related to vocational education - had independent learning been stressed in GCE A levels to the extent it has been in GNVQs I suspect a great deal more opposition to the concept and its practice would have been heard.

In recent years much of the official and quasi-official support for progressivism has been eroded. The Schools Council and the FEU have been abolished. LEA advisory services have been greatly reduced and their role redefined. HMI are much reduced in number and influence and the current HMCI has adopted a much more traditionalist line on teaching methods than his two immediate predecessors. It has only been within the context of TVEI and GNVQ that progressivism has continued to enjoy at least a degree of official sanction and even there it now sometimes seems to be the sin that dare not speak its name.

The support for a degree and version of progressivism within the new vocationalism can be partly attributed to the claims for recent economic changes from a Fordist to a post-Fordist economy. Much of the support for the new vocationalism has come from employers organisations, with the CBI in the forefront of arguing for a more modern, flexible, less academic curriculum built around the concept of core skills (CBI, 1989). Some employers, academics and commentators claim there have been important shifts in the nature of the labour market, the organisational structures of firms and actual work practices. In place of the old time-served craft workers, semi-skilled machine minders and unskilled labourers supervised by foremen and charge hands, with job demarcations jealously guarded by Luddite trade unions and acquiesced to by complacent or incompetent managers, the brave new post-Fordist world offers a vision of autonomous, flexible, motivated team workers with all the implications this entails for the curriculum. There is a good deal of disagreement on the extent of post-Fordism and upon its progressive characteristics (e.g. Avis, 1996; Brown and Lauder, 1995; Hickox and Moore, 1992; Jones and Hatcher, 1994). Some claim that these changes are deconstructing the division between mental and manual labour and opening up the possibility of work becoming a genuinely creative undertaking for far more people than was possible under Fordism. Alternative viewpoints argue that post-Fordism is far less prevalent than is claimed and that even where it exists the flexibility and autonomy of post-Fordist workers remains limited. After all another key slogan of the 1980s was ‘Management’s right to manage’. ‘Compliant/creative workers’ were required to be creative in the interests of the firm (Cathcart and Esland, 1985).