The EC discourse on vocational training
- how a “common vocational training policy” turned into a lifelong learning strategy
Abstract: The aim of this article is to the trace the discourse on vocational training in the European Community from the 1950s until 2002 where the Copenhagen Declaration is adopted. The argument is that vocational training has served as a lever for a gradual expansion of the policy field into both general education and higher education and for establishing a European discourse on lifelong learning. This article outlines the genealogy of the EC vocational training policy and describes the discursive alignments which brought the policy from a “common vocational training policy” (Article 128, Treaty of Rome) to the lifelong learning strategy in which vocational training is to play a special role as inclusion mechanism of disadvantaged groups into the labour market.
Introduction
Contrary to what many assume, vocational training has been a community policy area since the adoption of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and in the 1960s ambitious, but contested principles for a “common vocational training policy” were formulated by the Commission. As a policy field, vocational training has played an important role in the gradual expansion of European Community[1] cooperation and powers into the areas of general and higher education. Article 128 (Treaty of Rome) in conjunction with Article 48 on workers’ free movement has served as a lever for making education and training a common European policy field – despite resistance from the Member States. Today, education and training has legitimately become a European policy field which feeds directly into national policies on vocational education and training. For example, at the moment many Member States are preparing the introduction of a national qualification framework (or the adoption of an existing one) in order to be able to benchmark against the European Qualification Framework for Lifelong Learning. [2] But how did these changes come about, from national resistance to a “common vocational training policy” in the 1960s to national implementation of a common European policy in the 2000s?
The aim of this article is to trace the genealogy of vocational training[3] policies in the European Community in order to describe how the EC vocational training discourse has developed from the 1950s until today. The article will show how vocational training as a policy area included in the Treaty of Rome has served as a lever to expand community policy within the areas of both education and training. The vocational training policy at community level will be traced from 1951 until 2002 mapping the discursive construction of vocational training; the perceived role of vocational training in European policy; and the technologies of Europeanisation. [4]
The article is divided into three sections. In the first section, I shall briefly outline main concepts and considerations on theory and method. The second section provides the genealogy of a vocational training policy in the European Community, and in the third section, I analyse change and continuity within the three themes of the discursive construction of vocational training; its perceived role; and the technologies of Europeanisation.
Method
The article is based on a diachronic discursive reading of policy documents from the early 1950s until 2002.[5]The aim is to understand how vocational training has been constructed within EC policies over time and hereby understand current policy development. In the article, I perceive policy as a discourse and looks into the changes in this discourse and the technologies through which the policy is to be implemented. Understanding policy as a discourse is about what can be said and thought, who can speak, when, where and with what authority. A discourse establishes “regimes of truth” through which people govern themselves and others. It articulates and constrains the possibilities and probabilities of interpretation and enactment. The effect of a policy is that it changes the possibilities we have for thinking “otherwise”(Ball, 1993, p. 14). In this case, the discourse establishes the European Community as a natural arena for policy-making for education and training. In the 1960s, a common vocational training policy was to be contested as the national education system was considered as an important element in national sovereignty. Today, national vocational education and training policies have become so entangled with the EC policies that it no longer makes sense to look only at national institutions, national policies and national structures in order to understand vocational education and training.
Europeanisation is one of the key concepts in this article. Since the late 1990s, this concept has gained ground on the detriment of harmonisation, reflecting an increased awareness of the complexity of the relationship(s) between the European Union, the MemberStates and the educational institutions. Harmonisation implies the top-down adoption of European regulation which is directly applicable in the Member States. Europeanisation describes the interconnectedness between European and national policies on the basis of common objectives, common concepts, common tools, benchmarks, etc. Whereas harmonisation implies that European legislation precedes national legislation, Europeanisation means the adaptation or transformation of national policies and legislation along the lines of European policies and processes. In the article, I suggest the concept of “technology of Europeanisation” as a concept to capture European modes of governance and/or policy instruments which lead to changes or transformations in national policies.
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The article rests on the reading of policy documents from the European Community from the 1950s until today. These documents have been partly selected from the EUR-Lex database partly from other databases (such as the Cedefop Bibliographical Database and the Archive of European Integration at PittsburghUniversity). The policy documents encompass both legal documents and policy reports and consequently, their status differs. However, it is important to note that my aim is not to establish whether the documents are legally enforceable but to read them as part of the establishing of a common EU(ropean) discourse about vocational training. [6] Furthermore, I have used secondary literature describing the history of education and training in the European Community (e.g. Neave, 1984; Pépin, 2006, Towards a history of vocational education and training (VET) in Europe in a comparative perspective, 2004).
The genealogy of the vocational training policy in the European Community
In this section, I trace the vocational training policy in the European Community from the 1950s until the 2000s. The aim is to show how small alignments in the discourse leads to the lifelong learning strategy of the 1990s which includes both education and training. The main drivers are the objective of establishing the free movement of workers and hereby a European labour market.
1951 to 1957: Cooperation and knowledge exchange
The genealogy of a vocational training policy in the European Community can take its starting point before the Community was even founded. Common ground was established already during the years of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The main driver for European cooperation was the policy objective of establishing a common market for coal and steel. Mobility of workers within these two sectors, and hereby the transnational recognition of vocational qualifications, was perceived as essential in attaining this objective. From this point and onwards, mobility and transnational recognition of vocational qualifications have been central issues driving a common vocational training policy.
The conceptualisation of vocational training was closely linked to the coal and steel industries as these constituted the conditions of possibility for ECSC policy-making. The discourse about vocational training was narrow and specifically focused on the skill requirements of workers within these industries (see e.g. Mechi, 2004, "Project Memorandum sure les Problèmes relatifs à la Formation Professionnelle des Travilleurs des Industries de la Communauté", 1957). The approach to vocational training was a sector approach in which cooperation and coordination developed at Community level. This approach continued into the 1960s where agriculture and transportation were sectors included in Community policy, and is still current today where a sector approach can be found in the establishment of credit transfer and mutual recognition of qualifications.
The policy ambitions were to some extent modest as they primarily aimed at mapping national approaches to vocational training within the two sectors and analysing the changes affecting the industries. [7] The main technologies were the formation of transnational groups of experts, policy-makers, and representatives for the social partners, and the policy rested on the idea of exchange of experience and policy learning. Study visits to the different Member States, the UK and the US were one of the main means of developing common ground ("Project Memorandum sure les Problèmes relatifs à la Formation Professionnelle des Travilleurs des Industries de la Communauté", 1957). The underlying rationality was scientific-rational with an emphasis of identifying “good practices” and that research can come up with solutions to social and political problems. To some extent, the method of the 1950s was similar to the present day’s open method of coordination. [8] However, the policy was limited to the coal and steel sectors and was not followed up by the development of common instruments, common indicators and there were no agreement on convergence between European and national policy objectives.
1957 to 1973: Supranationalism vs. intergovernmentalism
In 1957, the European Economic Community was established. The EEC included the original six Member States of the ECSC but the objective was more far-reaching: the establishment of an economic community and – in time – “an ever closer union among the people of Europe” ("Treaty of Rome", 1957). [9] The main drivers behind a EC vocational training policy remained the issues of mobility and transnational transfer of vocational qualifications.
In the Treaty of Rome, Article 128, Chapter 2 of the Treaty of Rome dealing with the European Social Fund, vocational training is laid down as a common policy area. [10]
“The Council shall, acting on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the Economic and Social Committee, lay down general principles for implementing a common vocational training policy capable of contributing to the harmonious development of the national economies and of the common market”. (Treaty of Rome)
Vocational training was hereby established as a legal area for EC action, which was not the case for general and higher education. In the 1960s, however, action was not to be the most prominent trait of the area as most proposals within Article 128 were to be contested by the Member States as a reaction against the attempts to harmonise the area. [11] The Member States insisted on their sovereignty in matters of vocational training and during the 1960s, the vocational training policy became an object of push and pull between the Commission and the MemberStates.
In 1961, the Commission formulated 10 principles for implementing a common vocational training policy. Behind the principles was a strong wish on the part of the Commission for a harmonisation of vocational training in Europe and therefore the principles were to be mandatory and not to be implemented according to national rules (Petrini, p. 26). The Commission was pushing for the introduction of the “community method” within vocational training whereby policies are laid down in regulations or directives which are enforced by the Commission and the European Court of Justice. Furthermore, in the first draft of the principles, the Commission was authorised to make proposals to the Council which the Council could only reject by unanimous agreement.
The principles were not adopted until 1963, and then in a watered-down version where the Member States retained the competence within the policy field. Nonetheless, the principles broadened the conceptualisation of vocational training to include “all vocational training of young persons and adults who might be or already are employed in posts up to supervisory level”. Furthermore, in the first principle, section c) it is stated that the common policy should have as objective “to broaden vocational training on the basis of a general education, to an extent sufficient to encourage the harmonious development of the personality and to meet requirements arising from technical progress, new methods of production and social and economic developments […]. In section d), the importance of “civic education” is mentioned, and in e) the link between general education and vocational training is mentioned ("Council Decision of 2 April 1963 laying down general principles for implementing a common vocational training policy"). Despite the fact that the principles were never realised in actual policy-making during the 1960s, they opened the ground for an expansion of the policy area as the discourses on “general education”, “civic education” and “personal development” were made possible. They hereby pointed forwards and towards the 1970s broadening of the policy area to include education.
At the end of the 1960s, a push towards formulating and implementing a common vocational training policy arose again, this time on the initiative of the Member States who were facing common problems such as matching the supply of skills and labour market demands, and long-term unemployment. As a consequence, the Member States pushed for common studies and research, and the exchange of experiences at a community level (Petrini, p. 35). In a sense, this was a return to the policy co-operation of the 1950s where the High Authority co-ordinated the common efforts within the field but where vocational training policy was considered a national policy area. From 1969, intergovernmentalism was to mark cooperation within the field of vocational training and by 1971, the Council adopted a new action programme ("General guidelines for drawing up a Community action programme on vocational training", 1971). The new action programme did not take the common policy as far as had been anticipated in the ten general principles.
Petrini (2006) mentions a number of reasons for the failed attempts to draw up a common vocational training policy in the 1960s: the reluctance to cede powers to the Community, the integrationist policy of the Commission and the dialectic between intergovernmental and supranational pressures. Another way of explaining the failure of the policy is the lack of a defined common problem among the Member States. The 1960s were characterised by the economic boom, the education boom and increased welfare in Europe. Only Italy which had problems of massive unemployment pushed for a common vocational training policy whereas the other Member States not facing these problems withdrew from the common policy. In a sense, there was no incentive to pool national sovereignty within the community.
1973 to 1985: European expansion of the policy field
By 1973, the context changed and hereby the possibilities for drawing up a common EC policy on vocational training changed. Keynesian economic policies failed and all national governments faced the problems of stagflation and unemployment. [12] Especially, youth unemployment became a major problem and the problems of transition between basic education and vocational training were a common concern. In 1973, the European Community was expanded from 6 to 9 Member States, which increased the complexity of EC policy-making.
During the period 1973 to 1985, important changes took place and EC policy measures were introduced which in the long run changed the room for manoeuvre in drawing up a common education and training policy at community level. Barriers between education and training in the traditional sense started to be gradually broken down in the Community policy (Fogg & Jones, 1985). It is also the decade where the concept of “permanent education” found its way into the EC policy documents, paving the way for a lifelong learning strategy 25 years later, and where vocational training was awarded the role of integration of young unemployed people into society (school-work transition). During this period, major institutions were set up: a Directorate-General for Research, Science and Education (1973), the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (1975) and the action programme for education (1976).
In 1973, the Commission appointed an expert, Henri Janne, former Belgian Minister of Education and then a Professor at the Free University of Brussels, to explore the ideas of expanding the policy area into general education. The report was to have an important influence on the future developments within the policy field. [13] First of all, the report pointed to the fact that “intergovernmental procedures and community solutions are visibly in opposition to each other”. A common policy within the field of both education and training was needed if the objectives for the realisation of an internal market were to be attained. In the report, Janne underlined the interconnectedness between vocational training, education and economic development and the provisions of the Treaty of Rome dealing with the equivalence of degrees, the right of establishment and the free movement of labour as a basis for moving towards a common policy within the field of education and training at a European level. Furthermore, he described the blurring of borders between vocational training and general education,