Government, Markets and Vocational Qualifications

An Anatomy of Policy

Peter Raggatt, Steve Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781135701765
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

During the 1980s and 1990s the elaboration of a reformed system of vocational qualifications was perhaps the most controversial of all the governments efforts to improve the provision of vocational education and training. Based largely on interviews with nearly 100 individuals who were closely involved with these reforms, this book provides an in-depth account of the origins, development and implementation of NVQ and GNVQ policies. In accounting for the progress of vocational qualifications policy three main areas are covered by the book. Firstly the authors look at the origins of the reformed system, then examine the initial implementation of the NVQ and GNVQ policies in the late 1980s and early 1990s and identify the considerable problems that accompanied the reform process. Thirdly, the book focuses on the ways in which the reformed policy was sustained during the 1990s.

1
Vocational Qualifications Past and Present

Introduction

It is necessary to do two things before we begin our investigation into how the recent reforms to the UK’s system of vocational qualifications progressed: we must situate the changes within a broad historical context, and we also need to give an initial indication of their scale and scope. In the first half of this chapter, then, a brief examination of the way in which the vocational qualifications system developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will be provided. Like vocational education and training in general, it evolved in a piecemeal, fragmented manner, for the most part without any interventions by the state. We will then focus on the increasing degree of governmental intervention that characterized vocational education and training during the 1960s and 1970s, and, more specifically, the extent to which the vocational qualifications system was the object of reform. Yet the attempt by the UK government from the mid-1980s onwards to create a single, coherent national framework of competence-based, or related, vocational qualifications—comprising NVQs, SVQs and GNVQs—is indicative of a degree of intervention of a qualitatively different kind. We will therefore provide a a brief introductory analysis of the extent and nature of the reforms and highlight some of the key criticisms that they have attracted.

The Evolution of the Vocational Qualifications System in the UK

Attention has frequently been drawn to the historical weakness of technical and vocational education in the UK, particularly as it has been cited as a cause of relative economic decline in the twentieth century (see for example, Coates, 1994, pp. 46–8). As Keep and Mayhew (1988) have reminded us, concerns about the poor state of technical education and training, and its potentially deleterious impact on economic performance, can be identified as far back as the 1850s. The Samuelson Royal Commission on Technical Instruction, for example, was established in the 1880s ‘to investigate the link between economic performance and the functioning of the education system, and to draw comparisons between Britain and her major competitors’ (Perry, 1976, p. 30). Perhaps the most well-known explanation for the historic low status of technical and vocational education in the UK is that which has been provided by Martin Wiener. Briefly, Wiener (1981) argued that the nineteenth century witnessed the continuing cultural dominance of aristocratic, anti-industrial values in the UK and that the evolving education system, within which traditional academic topics predominated, reflected an unfulfilled bourgeois advance (for a related argument see also Barnett, 1986).

More convincingly, however, Andy Green (1990) has ascribed the weakness of technical and vocational education to the fusion of economic and political factors. The process of industrialization in the UK corresponded with the predominance of a laissez-faire political climate, and the absence of state intervention militated against the development of a coordinated national system of education in the UK in general in the nineteenth century. The primacy of voluntarism meant that technical and vocational education in particular evolved in a loose, incoherent and fragmented way, with the major locus of responsibility falling on the work-based, and exclusive, apprenticeship system—the principal method of skill formation in industry (More, 1980). Apprenticeships, however, were particular to certain industries, dominated by males, based largely on time served rather than the quality of the learning process or the outcomes of training, and restricted to young workers. In addition to apprenticeships, a network of local technical colleges emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century. This constituted a second major feature of the UK’s system of technical and vocational education. Yet, given their localized focus and the absence of any duty upon local authorities to provide a service, it has been observed that ‘technical colleges lacked both resources and prestige’ (Pile, 1979, p. 137). Moreover, Green concluded that, ‘developed in a fragmented and improvised manner; initially of low status, conservatively rooted in workshop and hostile to theoretical knowledge, publicly funded technical education became normatively part-time and institutionally marooned between the workplace and mainstream education. A century later it would still be seen as the Cinderella of the educational system’ (1990, p. 299).

The large extent to which, historically, the UK’s system of technical education was characterized by laissez-faire, or the ‘play of market forces’, has frequently been noted by commentators (Stringer and Richardson, 1982, p. 23; see also Perry, 1976; Senker, 1992), a greater degree of interventionism during both world wars notwithstanding. The vocational qualifications system, moreover, developed, like technical education in general, in a similarly localized, fragmented and voluntaristic manner. There was no state intervention and an absence of coordination, resulting in the emergence of a diverse pattern of unconnected awards (GES, 1986). The first prominent providers of examinations in technical subjects were the local Mechanics’ Institutes that increasingly became established during the first half of the nineteenth century (Perry, 1976). In 1856 the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) brought many of these Institutes together and, while the intention was to coordinate their efforts, many stayed outside. Dissatisfaction with the state of existing provision among City of London livery companies prompted them to establish a separate organization—City and Guilds of London Institute—in 1878, which took over the RSA’s craft and technical examinations. Thenceforth, the RSA concentrated on providing awards in business and commercial areas. From the 1880s until the 1970s, these two bodies—both of which were private organizations dependent upon examination fees for their income—were the two major national providers of examinations in craft, commercial and technical subjects. Those Mechanics’ Institutes that had kept control of their products in the 1850s gradually came together in six regional examining bodies over the course of the twentieth century, for example the Welsh Joint Education Committee. Apart from the development, from the 1920s onwards, of a series of National Certificates in certain occupations, frequently sponsored by relevant professional bodies, by the 1960s the system of vocational qualifications was substantially the same as that which had been in place at the beginning of the twentieth century. Like vocational education and training in general, there was no proper national system. Moreover, the major national providers were private organizations and their awards either overlapped, or had no connection at all, with the examinations provided by the multiplicity of professional and local awarding bodies.

During the 1960s, however, there was to be a considerable shift in the direction of vocational education and training policy. Apart from support for the unemployed through Government Training Centres and a number of wartime measures, the state had consistently followed a policy of non-intervention in industrial training. Some 70 industries or sections of industry did have nationally agreed training schemes in the post-war period but their activities were not well known, even within their own industries, and had little impact (Sheldrake and Vickerstaff, 1987, p. 27). Concern over the employment prospects of a greater number of young workers entering the labour market led to the establishment of the Carr Committee in 1958. It restricted itself, however, largely to an investigation of the apprenticeship system. The Committee concluded that ‘the responsibility for industrial training of apprentices should rest firmly with industry’ (quoted in Sheldrake and Vickerstaff, 1987, p. 30; c.f. Senker, 1992; Stringer and Richardson, 1982), a view that was endorsed by the then Conservative government. Yet the 1962 White Paper—Industrial Training: Government Proposals—and the subsequent Industrial Training Act (ITA) of 1964 signalled the arrival of a new consensus behind a more interventionist approach to training policy.

The principal outcome of the 1964 ITA was the establishment of a series of Industrial Training Boards (ITBs) during the mid to late 1960s. By the end of that decade, 27 such bodies had come into existence, of which the Engineering Industry Training Board (EITB) was the most prominent and the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) among the most long-lasting. They were empowered to raise levies from firms in their sectors and were expected to use the income that accrued to promote and enhance skills training so that an adequate supply of skilled labour was guaranteed. Not only were employers represented on the newly established ITBs, but trade unions and educational representatives were also entitled to be members. Two connected factors explain the shift from a voluntaristic ethos to a more interventionist approach in training policy. First, by the beginning of the 1960s there was an increasing realization that measures were necessary to combat the UK’s relatively slow economic growth (Senker, 1992). Indeed, this period was characterized by the emergence of more coordinated arrangements and institutions for the management of economic policy in general, the establishment of the National Economic Development Council (NEDC) for example (Middlemas, 1979). Second, policy-makers recognized that ‘laissez-faire attitudes on the part of governments had failed to secure a supply of skilled labour which was adequate for industrial expansion’ (Anderson and Fairley, 1983, pp. 193–4). Some ITBs did make considerable progress in reforming training methods in their sectors. The EITB, for example, attempted to mitigate time-serving arrangements and pioneered a modular approach in its apprenticeship system. It also produced written standards of performance that were used for testing individual trainees. These developments helped to change the apprenticeship system from being a ‘device restricting the supply of labour to a more purely training device’ (Anderson and Fairley, 1983, p. 195; c.f. Perry, 1976). In general, however, the power of ITBs to influence the scale, and particularly the quality, of training was severely constrained because responsibility for it was largely devolved to individual firms (Senker, 1992). Although they were statutorily empowered to impose a training levy on companies in their respective sectors, the ITBs had no power over key decisions, such as the length of apprenticeships or entry requirements, nor could they control the content, structure, organization and assessment of training. As industry-based training boards, moreover, they ‘perpetuated a concentration on industry specific skills instead of fostering awareness of the value of cross-sector transferable skills and thus did little to pave the way for greater flexibility in the labour market’ (Sheldrake and Vickerstaff, 1987, p. 40).

Increasing criticism of the ITB system, particularly from small employers who were hostile to the levy-grant arrangement, induced the incoming Conservative government of 1970 to promise to review its operation. The subsequent Employment and Training Act of 1973 introduced an exemption to the levy-grant mechanism and reduced some of the bureaucracy associated with the working of the ITB network. Much more significantly, however, though it is doubtful that this was realized at the time, the Act provided for the establishment of a national training agency which would not only coordinate the work of the ITBs and run public employment services, but would also help to forecast and strategically provide for skill changes. The Manpower Services Commission (MSC) was set up as a body independent of government to coordinate the work of the Training Services Division and Employment Services Division of the Department of Employment (DE), although they were soon to become integrated within the organization itself, and its operations were overseen by commissioners from the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the local authorities. As later chapters will show, before its demise in 1987 the MSC played a strong, interventionist role in promoting vocational education and training in general, and the reform of vocational qualifications in particular.

However, before the MSC turned its attention to this area during the 1960s and 1970s, some measures were taken to improve the system of vocational qualifications in the UK. In 1961, for example, the government issued a White Paper— Better Opportunities in Technical Education—which among other things prompted the introduction of craft and technician courses, leading to National Certificates and Diplomas for the latter, to run alongside the already existing National Certificates (GES, 1986; GES, 1990). The Haslegrave Committee, moreover, met between 1967 and 1969, under the auspices of the Department of Education and Science (DES), to consider ways of further improving the provision of business and technical awards. There appear to have been a number of imperatives for these attempts at reform. In the first place, the 1959 Crowther Report had identified a need for a broader curriculum at age 15 and above, given its recommendation that the school leaving age be increased (Perry, 1976). Second, the complexity and incoherence of the system of awards, the organic way in which National Certificates had developed in particular, militated against progression and understanding. Courses leading to National Certificates, moreover, were characterized by high drop-out and failure rates (GES, 1986). Third, the growing significance of the tertiary sector led to an increased awareness of the importance of suitable training in business and commercial subjects where employment opportunities were growing. There was a ‘multiplicity of examinations and qualifications’ in these areas, however (Perry, 1976, p. 228). The final factor was the establishment of the ITBs. These encouraged a more formal approach to training in many sectors and, while this led to increased demand for appropriate qualifications, which some ITBs developed themselves (Gospel, 1995), it not only made the system more complicated, but it also directed attention to the ‘haphazard and generally unsatisfactory’ arrangements for individuals in sectors not covered by them (GES, 1990, p. 5).

Following the recommendations of the Haslegrave Committee, in 1973 the government set up a Technician Education Council (TEC) and a Business Education Council (BEC) a year later. The principal remit of these bodies, which were later to come together as the Business and Technician Education Council (BTEC) in 1983, was to coordinate and enhance the provision of higher-level vocational awards within a single, standard framework. To this end, TEC, for example, became responsible for endorsing the National Certificates and Diplomas that had hitherto been the sole responsibility of a multiplicity of awarding bodies. According to the official history of BTEC, the ‘Government’s remit for TEC was to establish a unified system for technical education which did away with the plethora of previous technician level qualifications. Alignment to a standard framework rather than adhering to standardization was the watchword’ (BTEC, 1994, p. 1). Although City and Guilds initially provided BEC and TEC with administrative and organizational support, under contract from the DES, it lost responsibility for much of its higher level provision to the latter body, leading it to concentrate increasingly on craft level awards. This separation of responsibilities is one indication that the rationalization of the vocational qualifications system envisaged by Haslegrave never really progressed very far. More seriously perhaps, rather than improving the coordination of existing provision, TEC appears to have set about developing a ‘pattern involving new levels of qualifications based on the validation of college-devised curricula, syllabuses and examinations within its own new framework’ (Stevens, 1993, p. 141; c.f. BTEC, 1994).

While the DES, then, had attempted to introduce a greater degree of coherence into the system of vocational qualifications, progress was limited due to the tension that existed between City and Guilds and TEC (BTEC).¹ A prominent example of this occurred during the early 1980s. In an attempt to boost the quality of vocational preparation, as well as to try to fend off increasing intervention by the MSC in this area, the DES initiated a new award, the Certificate of Pre-Vocational Education (CPVE), to be overseen by a joint board comprising BTEC, City and Guilds and the RSA, although the RSA’s involvement was short-lived. It was launched in September 1985 and was ‘intended to provide a broad programme of vocationally related education for 16- to 17-year-olds, to develop skills which will be of relevance in employment, and also to give students an understanding of the world of work’ (GES, 1990, p. 26). Although City and Guilds withdrew some of its foundation courses to accommodate the CPVE, BTEC launched a new competing qualification, the ‘First’, in three subjects a year later, a development that caused a considerable amount of dismay amongst its partners (BTEC, 1994). Eventually BTEC compromised by agreeing to restrict its First awards to students aged 17 and over. Nevertheless, this example shows the difficulty the DES faced in trying to promote a coherent system of vocational awards, given the mass of competing interest groups that operated in this field. Further to this, we must not forget the existence of six Regional Examining Bodies which, after ‘years of unsatisfactory relationships’, reached agreement with City and Guilds over the development of a ‘unified system’ of craft technician awards only in 1979 (GES, 1986, p. 21), or the prominent role played by other substantial providers of vocational qualifications, for example the RSA. Scotland, moreover, was left outside the scope of the Hasle-grave review. Here two organizations—SCOTEC and SCOTBEC (later to be merged as SCOTVEC—the Scottish Vocational Education Council) were established as examining bodies—TEC and BEC only validated courses (GES, 1990).

By the mid-1980s, then, notwithstanding some limited intervention by the DES to promote coherence, the system of vocational qualifications in the UK continued to be characterized by a voluntaristic ethos in which the principle of competition was upheld. Major national providers, such as City and Guilds and the RSA, were private bodies dependent upon certification fees for their income. BTEC, moreover, while it was nominally under the suzerainty of the DES, was keen to establish an independent role for itself. Such a state of affairs appeared readily defensible. The examining and validating bodies could not only point to high and rising levels of take-up for their respective offerings—in 1983–84 BTEC had over 180,000 registrations (GES, 1986)—but also to the large extent to which their products met the needs of individual students and employers. For example, advisory committees comprising representatives from both education and industry were responsible for monitoring the content of City and Guilds awards (Bush, 1993).

The Reformed System of Vocational Qualifications

The move towards a reformed system of vocational qualifications was initiated by the MSC during the early to mid-1980s. The origins, development and implementation of this policy will be the subject of in-depth analysis in the chapters that follow. It is important, however, briefly to highlight the following: the principal features of the reformed system; the extent of the progress that was made in implementing the new qualifications; and some of the major critical interventions directed at them. In 1985 the UK government established a Working Group, sponsored by the MSC and the DES, to examine, and make recommendations for, the improvement of the system of vocational qualifications in England and Wales. The Review of Vocational Qualifications in England and Wales (RVQ) proposed that a new National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ) be established, which would be charged with the responsibility of developing and overseeing a framework of National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs). Furthermore, it was recommended that an NVQ should be ‘a statement of competence, clearly relevant to work and intended to facilitate entry into, and progression in, employment, further education and training, issued by a recognised body to an individual’ (MSC/DES, 1986, p. 17). Following the report of the Working Group the government issued a White Paper—Working Together: Education and Training (DE/DES, 1986)—which broadly accepted its recommendations. The NCVQ itself was instituted in the autumn of 1986, and it was given the ‘vital’ task of reforming ‘the present heterogeneous pattern of vocational qualifications’ in England and Wales (DE/DES, 1986. p. 16). The NCV...