Continuous vocational training (CVT) as an identified and formalised field of policy and practice is a recent creation, and by no means a settled one. Informal training in the workplace, as well as codified training through apprenticeship, has, of course, existed for centuries in most European countries, where it was associated with forms of control of access to the crafts and to mechanisms of social promotion at work (Winterton and Winterton, 1994). However, even though structures of social dialogue and funding were initiated by the state and established both in France in 1959 and in Britain in 1964, CVT has taken on a radically different aspect in the last 30 years, and mostly in the last 15 years, during which it has become associated with a different kind of change, that is, change and restructuring for competitiveness and flexibility. Although the rationales of social promotion, and even that of permanent education as a right still survive, clearly the rationale just mentioned has become dominant and has meant a change in the main players as well, as the enterprise became the key decision maker in relation to the implementation and use made of CVT. This change has slowly evolved throughout Europe (Kaiserbruger et al., 1996). © 2002 Compilation, original and editorial material, The Open University. All rights reserved.
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