Frank Coffield

Breaking the Consensus: lifelong learning as social control

Abstract This article rejects the powerful consensus in the UK and beyond to the effect that lifelong learning is a wonder drug which, on its own, will solve a wide range of educational, social and political ills. The main features of the consensus are encapsulated in a few central tenets and their influence demonstrated by a few representative quotations. Ten key problems with the consensus are listed and this analysis ¦prompts the question, if the thesis is so poor, why is it so popular? Alternative visions of the learning society and of lifelong learning are then presented, including a sceptical version of lifelong learning as social control, which treats lifelong learning not as a self‐evident good but as contested terrain between employers, unions and the state. Finally, some reflections are offered on possible ways forward. Both the critique of the dominant consensus and the suggestions for policy have been shaped by the Economic and Social Research Councils Learning Society Programme and by the fi...

Why the McKinsey reports will not improve school systems

In the last four years McKinsey and Company have produced two highly influential reports on how to improve school systems. The first McKinsey report How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top has since its publication in 2007 been used to justify change in educational policy and practice in England and many other countries. The second How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better, released in late 2010, is a more substantial tome which is likely to have an even greater impact. This article subjects both reports to a close examination and finds them deficient in 10 respects. The detailed critique is preceded by a few general remarks about their reception, influence and main arguments.

Modernisation and the Role of Policy Levers in the Learning and Skills Sector.

This paper examines the changing use of policy levers in the English postcompulsory education and training system, often referred to as the learning and skills sector (LSS). Policy steering by governments has increased significantly in recent years, bringing with it the development of new forms of arms‐length regulation. In the English context, these changes were expressed during the 1980s and 1990s through neoliberal New Public Management and, since 1997, have been extended through the New Labour government’s project to further ‘modernise’ public services. We look here at the changing use of policy levers (focussing in particular on the role of targets, funding, inspection, planning and initiatives) over three historical phases, paying particular attention to developments since the formation of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) in 2001. We conclude by considering the range of responses adopted by education professionals in this era of ‘modernisation’.

Endless change in the learning and skills sector: the impact on teaching staff

This paper explores the impact of change on tutors and managers in 24 learning sites in England, in vocational courses at Level 1 or Level 2 1 in further education (FE) colleges and in basic skills provision in adult community education and workplaces. We discuss the views of these participants in the research project, The Impact of Policy on Learning and Inclusion in the Learning and Skills Sector, funded through the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) of the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), in relation to other research on professionals in the sector. We then consider in turn the diversity in a group of tutors and managers we interviewed; their perceptions of the sources of change in their sector; and changes in the learner groups with whom they work. Three examples of changes affecting staff, and their responses to those changes, are then discussed, one from each of the research contexts: FE colleges, adult and community learning (ACL) and work‐based learning (WBL). We raise serious questions about the pace of policy‐led change, the management of change and professionals’ responses to turbulence in the sector, and stress the need to consider the impact on staff, and to listen to those who work closely with learners.

From the Decade of the Enterprise Culture to the Decade of the TECs

Abstract This article looks back at the rise of the enterprise movement in the 1980s and forward to the establishment and performance of 82 Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) in England and Wales during the 1990s. Both strategies are thought to be part of an ideological project of the Conservative Government to transform Britains economy and education by means of the enterprise culture. The main intiatives designed to promote such a culture are described, the concept of enterprise as used on enterprise courses is examined and the conclusion drawn that there is no generic skill of enterprise whose essence can be distilled and taught A number of crucialissues in relation to the new TECs (the need for a national plan for education, training and employment, the commitment of employers, future remit, accountability and representation, etc.) are discussed and some constructive suggestions made. The next ten years will show whether TECs prove to be an ambitious, forward‐looking and productive strategy or a...

How policy impacts on practice and how practice does not impact on policy

The TLRP project reported on in this article attempts to understand how the Learning and Skills sector functions. It traces how education and training policy percolates down through many levels in the English system and how these levels interact, or fail to interact. The authors first focus upon how policy impacts upon the interests of three groups of learners: unemployed people in adult and community learning centres, adult employees in work-based learning and younger learners on Level 1 and Level 2 courses in further education. They focus next upon how professionals in these three settings struggle to cope with two sets of pressures upon them: those exerted by government and a broader set of professional, institutional and local factors. They describe in particular how managers and tutors mediate national policy and translate it (and sometimes mistranslate it) into local plans and practices. Finally, the authors criticise the new government model of public service reform for failing to harness the knowledge, good will and energy of staff working in the sector, and for ignoring what constitutes the main finding of the research: the central importance of the relationship between tutor and students.

‘The heart of what we do’: policies on teaching, learning and assessment in the learning and skills sector

One of the stated aims of government policy in England is to put teaching, training and learning at the heart of the learning and skills system. This paper provides a critical review of policies on teaching, learning and assessment in the learning and skills sector over the past five years. It draws upon data collected and analysed in the early stages of an ESRC‐funded Teaching and Learning Research Programme project. 1 Using evidence from policy sources, we argue that despite policy rhetoric about devolution of responsibility to the ‘front line’, the dominant ‘images’ that government has of putting teaching, learning and assessment at the heart of the learning and skills sector involves a narrow concept of learning and skills; an idealization of learner agency lacking an appreciation of the pivotal role of the learner–tutor relationship and a top‐down view of change in which central government agencies are relied on to secure education standards.

Britain's continuing failure to train: the birth pangs of a new policy

This article provides an account of the latest official attempt in the UK to generate both a new analysis of the underlying causes of under-investment in workforce development and a new policy to rectify the weaknesses. The account is based on the participation of the present author who was a member of the Performance and Innovation Units (PIU) Academic Panel on workforce development during 2001. First, the establishment and remit of the PIU are briefly introduced, and the methods and outcomes (so far) from the particular project on workforce development are then described and assessed. At the very least, this article may help to dispel the erroneous speculations about the work of this PIU team (on workforce development), which have already been published in the educational press (e.g. Beckett 2001). The separate normative worlds of policy-makers and researchers are then explored; and finally, some general conclusions are drawn from the authors experience about the competing models of Britains future, which lie behind the policy debates and which are likely to have relevance beyond the specific field of workforce development.

Mediation, translation and local ecologies: understanding the impact of policy levers on FE colleges

This article reports the views of managers and tutors on the role of policy ‘levers’ on teaching, learning, and inclusion in colleges of Further Education (FE) in our research project, ‘The impact of policy on learning and inclusion in the Learning and Skills Sector (LSS)’. Using data from five research visits conducted over two years in eight FE learning sites, we explore the processes by which colleges ‘mediate’ and ‘translate’ national policy levers and how this affects their ability to respond to local need. The paper tentatively develops three related concepts/metaphors to explain the complexity of the policy/college interface—‘the process of mediation’, ‘acts of translation’ and ‘local ecologies’. We found that policy levers interacted with a complex set of national, local and institutional factors as colleges responded to pressures from the external environment and turned these into internal plans, systems and practices. We conclude by suggesting that national policy‐makers, who design national policy levers, may not be fully aware of these complexities and we make the case for the benefits of greater local control over policy levers, where these interactions are better understood.

A new learning and skills landscape? The central role of the Learning and Skills Council

This is the first paper from a project which is part of the Economic and Social Research Councils programme of research into ‘Teaching and learning’. The project, entitled ‘The impact of policy on learning and inclusion in the new learning and skills sector’, explores what impact the efforts to create a single learning and skills system are having on teaching, learning, assessment and inclusion for three marginalized groups of post‐16 learners. Drawing primarily on policy documents and 62 in‐depth interviews with national, regional and local policy‐makers in England, the paper points to a complex, confusing and constantly changing landscape. In particular, it deals with the formation, early years and recent reorganization of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), its roles, relations with government, its rather limited power, its partnerships and likely futures. While the formation of a more unified learning and skills system is broadly seen as a necessary step in overcoming the fragmentation and inequalities of the previous post‐16 sector, interviewees also highlighted problems, some of which may not simply abate with the passing of time. Political expectations of change are high, but the LSC and its partners are expected to carry through ‘transformational’ strategies without the necessary ‘tools for the job’. In addition, some features of the learning and skills sector policy landscape still remain unreformed or need to be reorganized. The LSC and its partners are at the receiving end of a series of policy drivers (e.g. planning, funding, targets, inspection and initiatives) that may have partial or even perverse effects on the groups of marginalized learners we are studying.