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"Vocational education"

In Australia, as in many other countries, initiatives are constantly being developed which aim to assist school students’ transition into work. One such initiative, which was introduced towards the end of the 1990s, was the introduction of school-based apprenticeships and traineeships, often referred to by the umbrella term “school-based new apprenticeships” (SBNAs). Students taking part in these programs, normally in the final two years of schooling (Years 11 and 12), combine part-time work, study towards a vocational education and training (VET) qualification, and normal attendance at school. This paper reports on the first large-scale research study of school-based apprentices and trainees, which was carried out in late 2001 through a survey of students involved in the programs. The survey was carried out in the three Australian States with the highest numbers of school-based apprentices and trainees, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia. The paper commences with a description of the nature of school-based apprenticeships and a description of their introduction and rapid growth. It then gives an overview of the young people's jobs, their learning and training, and concludes by discussing four problematic areas. © 2004, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

As the staying-on rate has rocketed, the proportion of 16 and 17year olds undertaking training in the workplace, whether government funded or not, has fallen steadily. If there is now to be a major expansion of apprenticeships, what is to be the driving force behind such a reversal of recent trends? (Berkeley, 2000:10) In many cases, particularly in vocational education and industrial training, we have seen old programmes relaunched under a change of name, but without substantial changes in the patterns of resourcing or incentives for the various participants. (Oates, 2000:20). This chapter aims to do two things. First, it examines the current policy options for securing a healthy, vibrant future for work-based training in England. The main focus is on initial vocational education and training for young entrants to the labour force (those in the 16 to 24 age group). There are many equally, perhaps more, important issues concerning adult learning in the workplace and how this can best be supported, but to do any justice to these would require another chapter. However, we suggest that there may be considerable merit in trying to link policy on initial VET to wider policy options for adult training and, crucially, for reflection on the role of employers in providing training, both for young entrants and adult workers. In geographical terms, the main focus is upon England, though much of the analysis can, in broad terms, be applied throughout the UK. © Individual contributors, 2002.

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.

This article is a critical review of policy and literature relating to vocational education and training (VET) in schools in Australia. Over the past decade in Australia, VET in schools has grown considerably so that not only are nearly half of senior school students now involved, but also VET in schools represents around 10% of total VET activity. In both schools and the VET sector itself, VET in schools was originally marginalised and this article explores its movement from the margins towards the mainstream in both spheres. An overview of the growth of VET in schools in Australia, along with other vocational developments in schools, is given, along with discussion of some of the benefits and challenges of VET in schools, both from a schooling perspective and from a national skills formation perspective. The consequences of the move from margins to mainstream have not yet been fully digested and debate rarely moves beyond consideration of implications for the school sector. The article moves beyond these narrow confines to raise broader questions for the VET sector. © 2004 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This article examines the development of nationally funded vocational education and training (VET) research in Australia since the mid-1990s. The provision of nationally competitive funding through the Australian National Training Authority has led to an explosion of VET research guided by a national strategy that outlines the key priorities for the major stakeholders in the VET system. The article reports on the results of an analysis of Australia's major national competitive grant scheme for VET research from 1997 to 2000, and examines the quality and impact of that research. Issues of quality and impact are crucial to the future of VET research in Australia, and the analysis leads to the conclusion that there is a need for the development of new skills amongst VET researchers to ensure the continuity of the field. © 2004 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

The article examines the reasons why the United Kingdom's approach to vocational education is more confused and impoverished than ever, despite its central importance to contemporary society. Instead of celebrating skill and vocational knowledge, the United Kingdom has embroiled itself in tortuous debates about parity of esteem, while paradoxically attempting to reduce its once well-respected vocational qualifications to a thin gruel of competence-based checklists. In 2003, young people could still find themselves apprenticed to employers who would not be out of place in a novel by Charles Dickens: some play a positive role in young people's lives, while others enslave them. Yet just as in a Dickens novel, we abandon young people to the economic marketplace. A recent government discussion paper on 14-19 education and Training defined vocational education solely in terms of its value to the economy. The author argues, however, that in everyday life, vocational education supports people's need to create artefacts, to improve their surroundings, to fight against becoming de-skilled consumers, to feel part of the natural world, and to demonstrate the true extent of their capabilities. © 2004 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

The training and education of doctors is a complex process. The traditional apprenticeship model of clinical medical education following a pre-clinical sciences curriculum had many strengths and produced a doctor who met the needs of several generations of patients. More recently, medical training has been criticised for not adapting to the more holistic needs of contemporary society, whilst the scientific literature has highlighted deficiencies in both the procedural and humanistic clinical skills of newly qualified doctors. External bodies have called for radical curriculum reforms and failure to deliver risks increasing political interference. Apprenticeship style training has largely been abandoned as insufficiently systematic in its methods and educational responses have focused on the process of learning. Modified curricula emphasise a humanistic and student-centred approach. Although implementation is widespread, there is little evidence that the finished product is better equipped to meet the demands of postgraduate medical practice. The General Medical Council has defined the desired outcomes of the undergraduate programme. Supporting the best of apprenticeship with contemporary process models offers optimum opportunity for practicebased learning within a systematic curriculum framework. If rapid change is to be achieved, however, then assessment offers an accepted and powerful driver for medical behavioural change. Combining practice-based learning and appropriate formative assessment of generic and vocational endpoints offers the means of effecting changes in both learning behaviour and medical practice that meet the needs of today's patient. © 2004 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Social partnerships that respond to and address local needs are becoming an increasingly significant feature of public policy, particularly in Europe and more recently Australia. The trend is also being actively promoted through the development planning agencies such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, UNESCO and World Bank. The common policy intent is to devolve decision-making to the local level where action consequences are more immediate and more readily realised than in more centralised forms of governance. Working to secure mutuality of interests and reconciliation of conflicting interests among client groups then becomes the hallmark of mature service delivery. This article sets out the conceptual terrain for ‘new’ social partnerships in terms of their prospect of building communities through participation in vocational education and training (VET). It initially identifies some of the qualities and characteristics of ‘new’ social partnerships being enacted in VET, their achievements and contributions to community building. In doing so, it highlights some bases for judging the successes and threats to these social partnerships, and to appraise the extent to which they have shifted conceptions of learning beyond traditional institutional spaces occupied by centralised policy formulation and provision of VET through education institutions. A principal concern is to identify strategies for making social partnerships work better in supporting localised decision-making and opportunities for VET to be enacted in ways to support both communities and individuals. © 2004 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

INTRODUCTION Since the Second World War, many economic historians have come to see human capital as a weakness of the British economy since the late nineteenth century, particularly when compared with the United States and Germany. Although there is an element of truth in this, it is important not to exaggerate the British shortcomings in this area, particularly in the period before 1945. Britain can be seen as falling between an emphasis in the United States on formal education and a German emphasis on vocational training, but the extent of human capital gaps varied with the country of comparison, the time period and the sector of the economy. There is strong evidence of a British shortfall in formal education compared with other rich countries including Germany as well as the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. However, Britain closed the gap in primary schooling during the late nineteenth century, and although the United States moved to a system of mass secondary education and rapidly expanded higher education in the first half of the twentieth century, Britain's increase in secondary schooling during this period was not unimpressive and remained on a par with Germany's. Although the modern German system of vocational training was already well established in industry and to a lesser extent in services by the early twentieth century, Britain still provided a supply of skilled workers for industry, through the system of apprenticeships, and for services, through professional qualifications, that far exceeded the supply of vocational training in the United States. © Cambridge University Press 2004 and 2008.

Introduction: This paper reports an evaluation of the West Midlands Key Skills initiative that provides a framework for learning during vocational training (VT). Method: The 48 vocational dental practitioners (VDPs) who began their VT in August 2001 in the West Midlands were surveyed at the start and end of training (45 completed both surveys). They rated their confidence and experience in the 31 components of the Six Key Skills on visual analogue scales. Views were elicited in a survey of both VDPs (47 returns) and their general practice trainers (44 returns). Semi-structured interviews were also held with a stratified sample of 9 trainers and all four VT advisors. Results: In terms of VDP progress, a statistically significant increase in confidence and experience was found in each of the 31 components. Six themes were identified in the views data. (i) Supporting the development of Key Skills; (ii) workload implications; (iii) the ‘right’ six? (iv) links with the advanced diploma (MFGDP(UK)); (v) assessment of VT; and, (vi) consistency and quality assurance. Conclusion: VT successfully develops the confidence and experience of newly qualified dentists in the Six Key Skills and has been well received by the majority of VDPs, trainers and advisors in the West Midlands. © 2004, Nature Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.