David Raffe

Pathways Linking Education and Work: A Review of Concepts, Research, and Policy Debates

This paper reviews cross-national research and policy debates about pathways between education and work, and draws on this review to reflect on the utility of the pathways concept itself. It identifies three main uses of the concept: to analyse the relative size and role of general education, school-based vocational education and apprenticeship, respectively, in an effective transition system; to examine the relationships and interconnections between pathways; and to consider how pathways can reflect the perspectives and priorities of individual young people and enable them to manage and control their own itineraries. Pathways can be useful as an organizing concept linking policy and research, provided that the metaphor is used with precision and its unintended meanings are avoided.

The concept of transition system

The term ‘transition system’ describes features of a country’s institutional arrangements which shape young people’s education–work transitions. It explains why national differences in transition processes and outcomes persist despite apparent pressures for convergence. This paper asks how the concept of transition system has been conceptualised and operationalised by researchers, especially quantitative researchers analysing comparative survey data. It uses a four‐level conceptual framework which is implicit in much of this research. Micro‐level transition processes and outcomes (Level 1) may be aggregated or summarised to show national transition patterns (Level 2), which may be explained in terms of dimensions of national institutional variation (Level 3) or typologies of transition systems (Level 4). Research into transition systems can boast of empirical, theoretical and policy‐related achievements, but it has been constrained by data limitations and theoretical eclecticism. It needs to develop theoretical frameworks to explain how transition systems themselves change and to move beyond a view of nation‐states as homogeneous and independent units of analysis.

The Unification of Post-Compulsory Education: Towards a Conceptual Framework

The drive to ‘unify’post-compulsory education and training systems is one of the most important current developments in education policy. However the concept of ‘unification’ lacks clarity, is not widely recognised, and is pursued through different measures in different countries. In this paper we propose a conceptual framework with which to analyse the different meanings of and debates about unification. Using England and Scotland as examples, we show how the framework may be used to analyse existing systems, reform strategies, and processes and pressures for change. The framework is exploratory and will need to be tested and developed in relation to a wider variety of education systems.

Unifying Academic and Vocational Learning: The State of the Debate in England and Scotland

Abstract∗ This article illustrates the potential of ‘home international’ comparisons as a tool for analysing the education systems of the UK. Current policies for post‐compulsory education in Scotland and England seek to unify academic and vocational learning, but follow very different strategies. In Scotland the Higher Still reforms will bring academic and vocational education together in a unified system at 16‐plus; in England the Dearing Review proposes to retain a three‐track system based on A Levels, GNVQs and NVQs, but suggests measures to link them within a more unified framework. The paper compares the contexts of the ‘unification’ debate in the two countries, and describes how policies and debates have developed since the 1970s. The different histories of the unification debate in Scotland and England are reflected not only in different current policies but also in different concepts of a unified system. In England this concept is more political, radical and ambitious, but it focuses more on a cr...

Higher education policy in post-devolution UK: more convergence than divergence?

Many researchers studying the impact of parliamentary devolution conclude that education policies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are diverging. They attribute this to five factors: the redistribution of formal powers associated with devolution; differences in values, ideologies and policy discourses across the four territories; the different composition, interests and policy styles of their policy communities; the different ‘situational logics’ of policy-making and the mutual independence of policy decisions in the different territories. This article reviews trends in higher education (HE) policy across the UK since parliamentary devolution. It focuses on policies for student fees and student support, for widening participation, for supporting research and for the HE contribution to economic development, skills and employability. On balance, it finds as much evidence of policy convergence, or at least of constraints on divergence, as of policy divergence. It argues that each of the five factors claimed to promote divergence can be associated with corresponding pressures for convergence.

The impact of a unified curriculum and qualifications system: the Higher Still reform of post‐16 education in Scotland

There is a cross‐national trend towards unified curriculum and qualifications frameworks in upper secondary education, but such reforms face epistemological, political and institutional barriers and ‘unification’ remains a contested issue in many countries, including England. This article examines the experience of the Scottish Higher Still reform, one of the most systematic examples of this trend. It presents data from an Economic and Social Research Council‐funded study which included case studies of schools and colleges, surveys of all secondary schools and colleges in Scotland, analyses of Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) data and interviews with key informants. Higher Stills climbing frame model of provision provided better learning opportunities for different types and levels of students, but its impact on attainment and parity of esteem were more limited. The article concludes that institutional barriers formed the biggest obstacles in the implementation phase, reflected in the contrasting ...

Unifying Academic and Vocational Learning and the idea of a Learning Society

Unifying academic and vocational learning and the concept of a learning society are two of the most important ideas shaping current debates about policies for post‐compulsory education. This paper offers a critical appraisal of the two ideas and their origins, and suggests how they might need to be reformulated if they are to play a more constructive role in policy formulation and analysis. The paper argues that both concepts are multidimensional and that they need to be seen in relationship to each other. It suggests that unifying academic and vocational learning can be seen as a possible means of achieving the goals of a learning society, and that the idea of a learning society itself is a way of conceptualizing future learning demands and their implications for the process of unification.

How stable is the stratification of higher education in England and Scotland

This paper asks whether the institutional hierarchies defined by ‘golden triangle’, other Russell Group, other pre-1992 and post-1992 universities in England, and by ancient, old and new universities in Scotland, have become weaker since the 1990s. Using indicators constructed from Universities and Colleges Admissions Service data for 1996–2010, the article finds a stable hierarchical relationship among the sectors within each country, with some indicators showing a slight widening of status differences between sectors towards the end of the period. The main exception was a slight ‘upgrading’ of new (post-1992) universities in Scotland early in the period. There was little change in the association of institutional sector with social class, but in England the association with private secondary schools became slightly stronger and the association with ethnicity weakened.

‘Staying‐on’ in Full‐Time Education in Scotland, 1985‐1991

Abstract This paper analyses the changing level and distribution of participation in post‐compulsory education among four cohorts of Scottish 16‐year‐olds, from 1984/85 to 1990/91. Staying‐on rates rose from 48% to 63% during this period. They rose relatively fast among those with the lowest attainment in compulsory schooling, and among students whose parents had left school early. Staying‐on rates varied across schools, even among students with the same individual characteristics, and the extent of this variation depended on students’ attainment, gender and parental occupation. Part of the variation could be attributed to the local labour market in which the school was located, but the ‘discouraged worker’ effect of local unemployment rates appeared to decline over the period. Compositional change—the tendency for more 16‐year‐olds to have high attainment or social characteristics associated with staying‐on—accounted for only one third of the rise in staying‐on rates. The paper discusses other explanatio...

Social class, ethnicity and access to higher education in the four countries of the UK: 1996–2010

This paper compares access to full-time undergraduate higher education (HE) by members of less advantaged social classes and ethnic minorities across the four ‘home countries’ of the UK. It uses data on applicants to HE in selected years from 1996 to 2010. In all home countries students from intermediate and working-class backgrounds retained a broadly level share of a rising total participation in HE, while ethnic minorities increased their share. Intermediate- and working-class students were more likely to study within their own home country, as were ethnic-minority students in England, but minority students from Northern Ireland and Scotland were much more likely than white students to study elsewhere (usually England). Some aspects of the admissions process appear to have been ‘unfair’ to lower class applicants; this was the same across the UK although the relative success of applications from colleges and independent schools, which might accentuate or mitigate inequalities, varied across the home countries. In England and Wales, ethnic-minority applicants were less likely to be offered a place but they compensated (only partially in the case of older universities) by gaining entry through clearing; in Scotland they were as likely to be offered a place but less likely to enter HE. The paper discusses the potential of such comparisons for benchmarking and for policy learning. It concludes that the similarities between the home countries are more substantial than their differences, and that administrative and political devolution in the 1990s has had little impact on inequalities in HE. There is no evidence of a significant impact of the divergence between market policies in England and the more social-democratic policies of the devolved administrations.