Learning Policy: Towards the Certified Society.

Overview & Synopsis

This book, which traces the emergence of an official state-sanctioned learning policy for education and training in the United Kingdom, examines how the country's government has taken a concerted approach to accomplishing the following two goals: (1) integrating the reproduction of knowledge at all levels in the educational institutions under their control with skill formation in training both in and out of employment and (2) linking education and training to the economy in a systemic manner. The following topics are among those discussed in the book's introduction and five chapters: (1) emergence of learning policy (learning versus unlearning, living and learning); (2) tripartate schooling, 1944-63 (the postwar welfare state settlement, peculiarities of the English system); (3) comprehensive schooling, 1963-76 (comprehensive reform, what went wrong, technical training, and the tertiary option); (4) training without jobs, 1976-87 (the vision of the Manpower Services Commission, the Quango under Margaret Thatcher, the new contracting postwelfare state); (5) education without jobs, 1987-97 (a new settlement of education, higher education in the 1990s, academics' reaction to the new policies, the example of further education); and (6) new learning under new labor (extending the new settlement, the goal of full employability, levels of learning and levels of earning, and "dumbing down"). (Contains 303 references.) (MN)