Preparation for Life?

Vocationalism and the Equal Opportunities Challenge

Sue Heath

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429830518
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1997, this volume contributes to the debate on the ground-breaking Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) introduced by Margaret Thatcher by exploring the implications of its equal opportunities policy. The scheme was announced in 1982, piloted in 1983, extended nationally in 1987 and ended in 1997. It responded to criticisms that the education system was failing to meet the needs of employers and committed to equal opportunities for boys and girls along with increasing access to technology at the genesis of the computing era. The TVEI represented the first major intervention by central Government in curriculum development in England and was organised on a local authority level. The author, Sue Heath, had experienced mixed messages for what students of each gender could expect to achieve and she remained fascinated by the implications of the TVEI for 1980s school curriculums. Based on research begun in 1989, the volume reassesses the significance of the TEVI as a landmark policy in education. Heath examines areas including vocationalism, the issue of gender, implementing the TVEI locally, the curricular experiences of TVEI pupils and whether the TVEI succeeded in preparing students for the world of work and later life.

1 Vocationalism and the ‘Problem’ of Gender

Introduction

Vocationalism in its broadest sense is a standpoint which holds that education should be concerned with the preparation of young people for their post-school lives, although it is perhaps more widely associated in common usage with specific occupational preparation. In this narrower sense, the vocational bias of English education undoubtedly has a long history, with its roots lying in the education of monks and priests (Watts, 1985). During the Industrial Revolution, however, the more elite educational institutions attempted to distance themselves from the newly developing disciplines of scientific and technical education. Instead, they vigorously promoted the liberal ideal of education as a good in itself, leading to disdain for vocational application generally, and industrial manufacture in particular (Weiner, 1981; Watts, 1985). Hunt (1991) argues, however, that in practice there was often a tacit understanding by both liberal idealists and vocationalists that education should, at some level, be concerned with the preparation of young people for adult life. Conflicts arose from differing interpretations of what such a preparation should entail, liberals arguing that education should prepare young people for adult life in a general sense - spiritually and culturally, for example - and vocationalists arguing that education should prepare young people for specific occupational destinations. Antagonism between liberal idealists and vocationalists remains a strong theme within educational debate, a state of affairs which Quicke (1996) attributes to the ‘conflicting imperatives’ model of the relationship between democracy and capitalism:

The contradictions that this gives rise to in schools are often experienced as a conflict between ‘the world of education’ and ‘the world of work’… Although the defining attributes of the capitalist imperative are contested and its nature and social impact can vary with context, the assumption is that both in terms of its current role in the global order and its central philosophical assumptions about human nature it will inevitably conflict with practices driven by the democratic imperative, of which the goals of liberal progressive education are an aspect (Quicke, ibid, pp.49–50).

Over the course of the twentieth century, these tensions have created dilemmas for educational policy makers seeking to develop an appropriate education for boys and girls. For much of the century it was deemed to be self-evident that a boy’s adult life would be taken up in pursuit of a career or profession, but ‘the powerful tendency was for girls’ lives to be seen in terms of role, rather than career’ (Hunt, 1991, p.118). Hunt argues further that vocationalism has consistently posed such a problem for those concerned with the education of girls in the twentieth century, and although in the latter years of the post-war period there was a grudging recognition of the changing role of women, girls’ education was still chiefly concerned with preparation for domestic roles.

This chapter considers the poor track record which vocational education has had with respect to the promotion of gender equality. It starts with a consideration of official policy in the period running up to the Second World War, highlighting the tension between liberal and vocational ideals. It then looks at a series of key policy documents which were written in the two decades after the war, but which shared many of the pre-war assumptions concerning the assumed ‘natural’ interests of boys and girls respectively. The chapter then explores the impact of the Sex Discrimination Act on an educational world slow to take action to challenge gender inequalities, and highlights the eventual response of the Department of Education and Science. Despite a growing awareness during the late 1970s and early 1980s of the increased importance of economic activity to women, the final part of the chapter highlights the tendency of the education system to nonetheless prepare young women for ‘women’s work’. The chapter thus provides a historical backdrop to the introduction of TVEI in 1982 and demonstrates that given the prior track record on equal opportunities within the world of education, it is all the more extraordinary that TVEI emerged in the early 1980s with its colours so clearly nailed to the equal opportunities mast.

‘Appmpsiate’ Education for Boys and Gids

Official Policy 1900 to 1944

The development of mass education in this country can be traced back to growing concerns over the need for an educated workforce in the wake of rapid industrialisation. In 1870, elementary schools were established for children up to a maximum age of 10, whilst ten years later elementary schooling was made compulsory, with a small means-tested fee. In 1891, elementary fees were waived, and in 1900 free education was extended up to age eleven. Despite efforts to promote wider take-up of secondary education, attendance remained sporadic amongst the poorer sections of society, and if they did attend they were much more likely to be found within the rate-financed technical schools, rather than the or rate-financed schools (Thane, 1982).

Gomersall (1997) provides an account of the gendered nature of education during the nineteenth century, based very much on differentiated curricular experiences for boys and girls, especially amongst children from the working classes. In the early years of the twentieth century, policy makers at the Board of Education were nonetheless keen to place a strong emphasis on the liberal basis of schooling. The 1904 Regulations for Secondary Schools argued for a general curriculum which did not overly emphasise either science, literature or languages, nor subjects which were primarily aimed at a vocational business education. Similarly, the 1905 Code for Higher Elementary Schools clearly stated that higher elementary schooling, which was designed to provide an advanced, practically-oriented education, ‘must not be devoted exclusively to the cultivation of dexterity in the daily routine of a special employment… and must not displace the more general side of Elementary Education’ (quoted in Hunt, 1991). However, in practice the Board’s liberal idealism was undermined by what it regarded as its duty to cater for the ‘special needs’ of girls. The 1904 Regulations for Secondary Schools stated that ‘it is left to school authorities to consider how far the same kind of school curriculum is desirable for girls as to boys… due regard (should be) had to the differences inherent in the nature of the two sexes…’, whilst the 1905 Code noted that ‘a common curriculum for both boys and girls will not as a rule be approved’ and the girls’ curriculum ‘will, as a rule, be expected to include a practical training for home duties’ (ibid). The resulting emphasis on domestic subjects for girls therefore belied any claims to a liberal basis for educational provision:

Girls’ abilities were underrated, they were assumed to have a common vocation, dictated by their gender, even where their scholastic ability (or social status or both) was high, and it was assumed that this vocation demanded training at school. Such training, because of its practical and vocational nature, was less esteemed than, even antithetical to, the highly valued principle of a liberal education (Hunt, 1991, p.69).

Thus there was a tension between the Board of Education’s liberal ideals and the notion of role-directed education. The only way to have overcome this tension would have been to grant domestic subjects equal educational status to other subjects. Liberal educationalists found this impossible to admit, however: to have done so would have publicly undermined the Board’s cherished liberal principles. Moreover, the failure to do so contributed to the view that girls’ domestic subjects were necessarily educationally inferior, a view that is still widely held (Attar, 1990). In the Welsh context, it has been argued that whilst secondary schools for girls were modelled on the academically-orientated curriculum of the English grammar schools, by 1914 there were strong demands that domestic studies should be seen as valid alternatives to mathematics or science (Evans,

In 1920, the Consultative Committee to the Board of Education of England and Wales was asked to consider whether such differentiation in the secondary curriculum was justified. The Committee received a mass of contradictory evidence concerning supposed physical and mental differences between the two sexes. Ultimately, however, the Committee concluded that the existence or otherwise of such differences was in a sense irrelevant: what was relevant was the extent to which boys and girls had different functions to perform, both at secondary age and on leaving school. On the grounds that they did appear to have different functions, it was felt that there was some justification for the continuation of a differentiated curriculum. Consequently, in its 1923 Report, Differentiation of the Curriculum for Boys and Girls Respectively in Secondary Schools, the Committee concluded that whilst the main aims of education were to prepare children to earn their own livings and to be useful citizens, for girls there was a third aim: to prepare them to be ‘makers of homes’ (Hunt, 1987, p.18).

Educational policy and discussion in the pre-war era continued to reflect these assumptions, with many of the major Education Acts being framed principally with the vocational concerns of young men in mind. The curricular experiences of males were overwhelmingly constructed as the educational ‘norm’, and the curricular experiences of females, to use Hunt’s phrase, tended to be constructed as either ‘the norm minus’ or ‘the norm plus’. The raising of the school leaving age to fourteen in 1918, for example, was in part a response to the need for a better skilled workforce (Thane, 1982). That this workforce was envisaged as being predominantly male is evident from the parallel disquiet regarding ‘maternal ignorance’, which resulted in an increased emphasis within girls’ education on practical domestic subjects such as needlework, cookery and ‘housewifery’ (Turnbull, 1987).

The tripartite system, first recommended by the 1926 Hadow Committee and subsequently built into the implementation of the 1944 Education Act, was similarly explicitly organised on the basis of young people’s likely occupational destinations. The influential Norwood Report (Secondary Schools Examination Council, 1943), which in the run up to the 1944 legislation re-emphasised the supposed benefits of a tripartite structure, did not appear to view women as an integral part of the world of work (Wolpe, 1981). The grammar schools were designed to prepare pupils for white collar and professional occupations, technical schools for technician-level occupations, and secondary modern schools for blue collar occupations. Girls in general, however, were considered to be best suited to the secondary modern school, which would cater for their specific needs as future wives and mothers, rather than future workers, whether at professional or technician level.

‘Natural Interests’ in the Post-War Era

Against the backdrop of these assumptions, the years of the Second World War witnessed a mass mobilisation of women into the labour market. The number of women in the engineering sector, for example, rose from 97,000 in 1939 to 602,000 at the height of the war effort in 1943 (Summerfield, 1989). By 1943 women represented a third of all employees working in the previously male-dominated ‘essential’ industries such as engineering, ship building and public utilities, compared with only 14 per cent in 1939. At the same time, the overall numbers of women in ‘female’ occupational areas, such as textiles and clothing, and food and retail services declined quite substantially. In addition, by 1943 there were almost half a million women in the armed forces.

Summerfield (1989) refutes the popular view that women were systematically excluded from paid labour in the immediate post-war years (Friedan, 1965; Mitchell, 1974). On the contrary, most occupational areas saw a return to pre-war patterns of expanding employment opportunities, with women’s participation in ‘male’ industries continuing to increase not just absolutely but proportionately in comparison with their pre-war involvement. However, it is important to note the extent to which women were affected by horizontal segregation: despite working within ‘male’ industries, women were predominantly employed within female sectors of these industries (Hakim, 1978). Thus, if the war years resulted in a shift in the assumptions and ideologies surrounding women’s paid labour, it was, ‘in the direction of the idea that women could combine paid and domestic work without damage to industrial productivity and without undermining the concept that their first responsibility was to their homes’ (Summerfield, 1989, p.188).

These arguments are important in understanding the subsequent vacuum in post-war policies with regard to women’s education and training, which continued to be based on pre-war assumptions about different vocational concerns. Thus, women’s increasing participation in the labour market was largely ignored - as were their specific educational and training needs. In particular, there was an expansion of clerical and caring work in the post-war period, principally affecting women, yet the training needs of women in these areas were largely neglected. Four official reports from this period stand out as significant in this regard - the Norwood Report (1943), the Crowther Report (1959) and the Newsom Report (1963) in the sphere of education, and the Carr Report (1958) in the sphere of training. All four reports made assumptions about the ‘natural interests’ of boys and girls, the former being dominated by their future occupational roles, the latter dominated by - if not confined to - their future roles as wives and mothers (CCCS, 1981; Wolpe, 1981; Wickham, 1985; Arnot, 1986). Given that the goal of education was viewed by Norwood, Crowther and Newsom as the preparation of children to fit into the adult world as citizens and workers, the assumed divergent interests of boys and girls dictated the necessity of a differentiated curriculum in order to cater for these particular concerns. Moreover, the ‘natural interests’ of girls precluded their involvement in training programmes on leaving school.

Wolpe (1981) argues that The Norwood Report on Curriculum and Examinations in Secondary Schools (Secondary Schools Examinations Council, 1943) clearly regarded women’s war work only as a temporary ‘intrusion’ into the formal economy. Accordingly, the report rejected the view that girls and boys should have access to non-traditional subjects within single-sex schools - ‘such opportunity must be offered to those who desire it through ‘scouting’ or ‘guiding’ or similar interests’ (SSEC, 1943, p.20). It did note, however, that some co-educational schools had a small number of pupils taking non-traditional subjects, ‘which we would bring to the notice of co-educational schools in general’ (ibid). Girls were largely rendered invisible by the bulk of the report, only being explicitly mentioned in a discussion of secondary modern schools. Such schools, as opposed to grammar and technical schools, were seen as providing the most suitable type of education for girls, catering for their specific needs and interests as future wives and mothers.

The Crowther Report, 15 to 18 (Central Advisory Council for Education [England], 1959), was concerned with a review of educational provision for 15–18 year olds, ‘in relation to the changing social and industrial needs of our society and the needs of the individual citizen’ (CACE, 1959, p.xxvii). This was a reference to the increase in the levels of skills demanded by industry and the corresponding decrease in the numbers of unskilled jobs during this period. The report noted that young women were less likely to take up part-time training and other educational opportunities for early leavers (those who left school at 15), and that this was a good reason in itself for raising the minimum leaving age. However, they attributed these differences to the ‘fact’ that ‘the bulk of women’s employment is not in fields where considerable technical knowledge is required’ (ibid, p.124), a function of the ‘special interests of women’ in early marriage and parenthood. Indeed, at one point it was argued that ‘the prospect of courtship and marriage should rightly influence the education of the adolescent girl… her direct interest in dress, personal experience and in problems of human relations should be given a central place in her education’ (ibid, p.34). Whilst the Crowther Report undoubtedly shared many of the assumptions of the Norwood Report, it at least accepted that women were involved in paid labour. However, the report relegated them to jobs not requiring ‘considerable technical knowledge’, thereby ignoring the thousands of women who had developed a high level of technical skill in the context of in-service training rather than in part-time courses (Wolpe, 1981, p.151).

The Newsom Report, Half Our Future (Central Advisory Council for Education, 1963), was concerned with the education of 13–16 years olds of average or less than average ability, again with regard to the need for a better qualified and more highly skilled workforce. The report did acknowledge the changing role of women and the challenge that this posed to young women:

This is a century which has seen, and is still seeing, marked changes in the status and economic role of women. Girls themselves need to be made aware of the new opportunities which may be open to them, and boys and girls will be faced with a new concept of partnership in personal relations at work and in marriage (CACE, 1963, p.28).

However, the report later outlined what it considered to be the primary concern of young women: ‘For all girls, too, there is a group of interests relating to what many, perhaps most of them, would regard as their most important vocational concern, marriage’ (ibid, p.37). The role of the school in preparing girls for this particular ‘vocation’ was clearly spelt out within the report, particularly the need for older girls to realise ‘that there is more to marriage than feeding the family and bathing the baby, and that they will themselves have a key role in establishing the standards of the home and in educating their children’ (ibid, p.137). Thus, once again, girls were assumed to have a ‘natural interest’ in domestic roles, and even when possible occupations for women were mentioned - despite the earlier comment about the new opportunities opening up for women - it was in terms of traditional female areas clerical work, catering, retail and the clothing industry.

Common to all three reports is the way in which they consistently ignored the mounting evidence of the increased importance of women workers within the economy, albeit largely in part-time rather than full-time posts (Elliott, 1991) and, conversely, the increasing importance to women of assuming wider roles within society (Wickham, 1985). By 1961, for example, 30 per cent of women aged 20 to 64 were working full-time, whilst amongst women aged 15 to 59, 47 per cent were working either full-time or part-time (Hakim, 1993). Such participation rates are hardly marginal, yet,

where (the report writers) have considered educational problems for girls as distinct from those of boys they have revealed that they have presupposed what will and should be the lives of girls as adults. In other words, they have shown that they accept implicitly the dominant cultural values of society and have disregarded in the main the stark substantive data of the situation - they have been guided by their ideological assumptions rather than by a disciplined analysis (Wolpe, 1981, p.143).

This same ideological blinkering was also evident in the Can Report, Training for Skills: The Recruitment and Training of Young Workers in Industry, (Ministry of Labour,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Vocationalism and the ‘problem’ of gender
• 2 Education feminism and the school-work interface
• 3 TVEI and equal opportunities
• 4 Implementing TVEI at the local level
• 5 Managing equal opportunities
• 6 The curricular experiences of TVEI pupils
• 7 TVEI and the ‘world of work’
• 8 Post-16 destinations: A ‘touchstone’ for measuring progress?
• 9 Into the labour market: Preparation for life?
• 10 The legacy of TVEI
• Appendix 1: A note on method
• Bibliography
• Index