Books. Young People's Perspectives on Education, Training and Employment

Citation

(2001), "Books. Young People's Perspectives on Education, Training and Employment", Education + Training, Vol. 43 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2001.00443gad.001

Books. Young People's Perspectives on Education, Training and Employment

Books

Young People's Perspectives on Education, Training and Employment

Lorna Unwin and Jerry WellingtonKogan Page2001ISBN 0 7494 3122 9Keywords: Young people, Education, Training, Employment

The post-16 education and training landscape remains one that is far from clear and coherent. There are a number of competing routes of varying status and value. Unwin and Wellington aim to give the reader some insight into the young people's perceptions and understanding about the latter years at school, the transition from school/college to work and about work and further learning. The authors rightly claim that this exposes: "the often-messy reality behind much education and training rhetoric".

By way of context the book provides us with a critique of the post-16 options available to young people as they reach the minimum school leaving age. One such route is to leave school, seek employment, but continue with some form of education and training. The Modern Apprenticeship (MA) programme reflects this pathway and it is to the "voices" of young people on this programme that the book devotes most attention. A consensus seems to be evident that apprentices wanted to combine, in one pathway "job + pay + training/studying + qualifications".

The interviews and extracts presented in the book provide a fascinating account of tensions that exist around a whole range of work and learning issues such as theory and practice, support mechanisms and gender issues. One apprentice neatly exposes a contradiction between the formal requirements of his vocational qualification and the imperatives of work.

… it was the hydraulics one … it says "take a pump apart, repair the pump, put it back together and test it". Well we don't do that, the pumps broken – out of the door another one – in there, it's … you know. And I said to my man look can I take the pump apart and have a look at it so I did, but he said "you can't put it back into production because you need a test certificate for that. If it blows up out there and damages someone I'm responsible". So it was then shipped out. So what I've done is completely useless because no one knows if it works or not. So the NVQ bears no resemblance to the workplace.

The authors note the positive rhetoric over MAs in terms of the Government's overall approach to vocational education and training (VET) in the UK. However, they draw some strong criticisms of its actual practice. One such is the "astonishing variability in the quality". A second is that the "cards are all in the employer's hands". Recent developments such as the Learning and Skills Councils further reinforce the power of the employer in terms of young person training post-school. The authors argue powerfully that whilst a work-based route is attractive to young people, greater efforts need to develop work-based pathways that place young people with employers whose own needs are in line with the demands and expectations of those pathways and who can provide a workplace environment that is conducive to apprentice-style training. Whilst acknowledging that it would be contrary to the Government's voluntary approach to VET, the question of restricting employers involvement in programmes such as Modern Apprenticeship, to help ensure quality, is raised.

Overall the book sets itself a very ambitious agenda in seeking to address what young people have to say about their experience of the worlds of education, training and employment. This aim is probably over-ambitious. There is one chapter of the book which focuses upon key skills within schools and colleges and which draws useful observations pointing to an ambivalence within the curriculum. However, it is the reflections on the work-based route post-16 which emerges as the dominant theme and which enables the authors to draw perceptive and challenging questions for both academics and policy makers. Ultimately it is this critique, based on the voice of the youngsters themselves, that makes this an important and effective contribution.