Gareth Rees

History, place and the learning society: towards a sociology of lifetime learning

This paper aims to shift the debate on the Learning Society away from the normative focus which has predominated hitherto. Rather than beginning with questions about what a Learning Society ought to constitute, we seek to engage with the patterns of participation in learning through the life‐course and their determinants. Our discussion begins with an examination of the way in which the official discourse of the Learning Society is dominated by human capital theory. The critical evaluation of the latter is thus a serious undertaking. Human capital theory involves an unwarranted abstraction of economic behaviour from social relations more widely; participation in lifetime learning cannot be understood in terms of the narrow calculation of utility maximization. This critique provides the basis for the development of a more satisfactory theoretical account, in which learning behaviour is conceived as the product of individual calculation and active choice, but within parameters set by both access to learning...

‘Status Zero’: a study of jobless school‐leavers in South Wales

ABSTRACT Considerable concern has been expressed over the plight of those young people who, on leaving school, fail to enter a training programme or a job. However, very little systematic research has been carried out on these jobless — or, as we put it, ‘Status Zero’ — school‐leavers. This paper begins to report the results of a study, carried out in a single TEC/LEA area in industrial South Wales, which aims to fill this gap. On the basis of extended interviews with a small group of young people, it shows that, even amongst a group of 16‐ and 17‐year‐olds who experienced extremely disadvantaged post‐school careers, the reasons for their not being in education, training or employment are rather complex. Whilst there are clear continuities between earlier family and educational disadvantage and their post‐school experience, there is no inevitability about these relationships: diversity and contingency are also key elements. Moreover, although there is clear evidence that these young people are distanced f...

Networking for Local Economic Development

The twin themes of ‘globalisation’ and ‘localisation’ have been prominent features in the debate about economic development since the mid-1980s. Paradoxically, as the economy becomes more and more globalised the local dimension of economic development has attracted more and more interest from both scholars and policy-makers. One of the reasons for this apparent paradox is that localities and regions are the day-to-day arenas in which the pressures of economic change have to be negotiated, no matter how global these pressures may be in origin. This process of negotiation takes many forms, but increasingly it assumes the form of private and public actors orchestrating their activities through networks with a view to sharing information, pooling resources and designing joint solutions to common problems. We shall refer to this process as networking, which in very simple terms means the disposition to collaborate to achieve mutually beneficial ends. In the theoretical literature networks are deemed to be an alternative mode of governance to markets and hierarchies. In the network mode of resource allocation, transactions occur neither through arm’s-length exchanges (markets) nor administrative fiat (hierarchies), but through networks of individuals or organisations engaged in reciprocal, preferential and mutually supportive actions, where the basic assumption is that one party is dependent on the resources controlled by another (Powell, 1990; Cooke and Morgan, 1993; Sabel, 1993).

Higher Education in Wales: The (Re‐)emergence of a National System?

This paper explores historical patterns of change in participation in higher education in Wales, using as an organising framework Halsey’s (1992) distinction between higher education as an administrative and as a social system. The nineteenth-century development of Welsh higher education was both part of a distinctive national political project and reflected the specificities of wider Welsh society. Expansion through the early and middle decades of the present century eroded this distinctiveness, as both the governance of Welsh higher education and patterns of student recruitment and participation became increasingly integrated into an ‘England and Wales’ system. The more recent expansion of higher education institutions in Wales, as well as the participation of Welsh students in higher education overall, has further accentuated this social integration into an ‘England and Wales’ system. Currently, Wales exhibits a pattern of participation which is unique amongst the home countries, whereby the Welsh higher education institutions serve very substantial numbers of students from England (and to a much lesser extent elsewhere), whilst a large proportion of Welsh students register at institutions in England. This indicates that there is now a significant disjuncture between an increasingly distinct pattern of governance of Welsh higher education and a pattern of participation which is massively integrated in the ‘England and Wales’ system.

Social change, rural localities and the state: the restructuring of rural wales

Abstract This paper sets out a theoretical framework by means of which contemporary social change in rural localities may be analysed. It emphasises the advantages of theories of restructuring over alternative approaches, and pays particular attention to the role of the state in shaping the pattern of social reorganisation characteristic of contemporary rural change. The main part of the paper constitutes an application of this theoretical framework to an historical analysis of an area of upland Britain — rural Wales. Three phases of development — corresponding to ‘rounds of investment’ — are identified and their characteristics discussed. A fourth phase is suggested as emerging currently, reflecting both the development of a new ‘round of investment’ and the influence of the Thatcherite political project.

The ‘new vocationalism’: Further education and local labour markets

Current policies aimed at promoting a ‘new vocationalism’ through changes in vocational training in further education are based upon a particular functional model of labour market behaviour, which sees the relationships between technical qualifications, training and recruitment to jobs as unproblematic. In fact, however, this model bears little relationship to the realities of actual labour markets, especially given the enormous diversity which exists between economic conditions in different localities. What this implies, therefore, is that there are considerable tensions between the imperatives of a national training strategy, promoted centrally by the Training Commission (and previously by the Manpower Services Commission), and its local implementation mainly by the local education authorities and their colleges of further education. In many local labour markets, far from promoting closer responsiveness to the needs of employers, current policy initiatives may actually be making it more difficult for th...

Society is not Built by Education Alone: alternative routes to a learning society

Abstract This article examines the notion of a learning society in Britain by outlining some of the chief arguments currently being used to advocate the establishment of such a society. These arguments have two main strands – that the standard of education and training has a direct impact on the economy and that therefore expenditure on lifelong learning is an investment that will be recouped, and the claim that there is a lack of justice in the distribution of education and its rewards in Britain today. The article also involves a brief consideration of the extent to which a learning society already exists. Using preliminary findings from a large-scale study of participation in adult education and training over 50 years in industrial South Wales, it concludes that to some extent ‘Learning Society’ is used by policy-makers and academics as a term of convenience. It is an ideal notion (but one with very prosaic targets couched in terms of certification) which helps mask the lack of real progress in some re...

Vocational Education and Training and Regional Development: an analytical framework

Abstract Vocational education and training has been widely identified as a key element in strategies aimed at promoting economic growth and development at both national and regional levels. This paper seeks to examine critically the analytical basis of this policy proposal. The simple relationships which are implied between VET and economic growth are actually highly complex, especially at the regional level. In particular, the impacts of VET are crucially mediated by other aspects of managerial strategy. For ‘less favoured’ regions, where economies are already characterized by low skills levels, firms may adopt managerial strategies which accommodate to these low skills; thereby creating a ‘vicious circle’ of low skills. To break out of the latter implies a much more proactive strategy with respect to VET and regional economic development than has operated historically, whether by influencing managerial strategies themselves or by influencing the kinds of VET undertaken by individuals. Recent changes in ...

Faludi's 'Sociology in Planning Education': A Critical Comment

Professor Faludis paper, `Sociology in Planning Education (Urban Studies, 1976), is a welcome contribution to an important, if neglected, issue, which we hope will open a debate that is long overdue in planning education . It is to be expected that an initial contribution will pose more questions that it answers and this, we believe, is certainly the case with Faludis paper . We offer this comment with a view to clarifying the essential features of the debate . Faludis argument is rather difficult to summarise ; however, its central points appear to be