International Comparisons of Vocational Education and Training for Intermediate Skills

Paul Ryan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000586794
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Paul Ryan has brought together the writings of the most prominent British research into vocational preparation in Britain in comparison to the other advanced economies, primarily within the EEC. The book, originally published in 1991, documents various aspects of inadequacy in British practice at the time, concentrating upon intermediate skills, which are of crucial importance for economic performance.

The introduction outlines the strengths and weaknesses of comparative research. Part 1 discusses the use which has been made of it by policy makers in Britain and various aspects of comparative methods in practical comparisons, including an Anglo-Scottish one. Part 2 concerns vocational preparation in connection with productivity and produce markets, noting its importance for economic performance and its dependence upon companies' product choices. Part 3 contains studies of the organization of skills and work and the finance of training within the EEC as a whole. Part 4 comprises studies of training in relation to labour market structures, each of which indicates similar alternatives for training policy in Britain – alternatives whose relevance and political prospects can only be enhanced by the demise of Thatcher government deregulatory policies.

Introduction: Comparative Research on Vocational Education and Training

Une nation commerçante est toujours fort alerte sur ses intérêts, et ne néglige rien des connaissances qui peuvent être utiles à son négoce (Voltaire, Lettres Philosophiques).¹

Introduction

The collection of letters in which Voltaire in 1734 conveyed to French readers his impressions of the leading commercial nation of the time belongs to a long tradition of outlining the practices of another country so as to highlight the shortcomings of one's own and promote their reform. Voltaire found the religious tolerance, political freedom and empirical orientation of English life and thought attractive enough in themselves. But he also contrasted them, implicitly and explicitly, to prevailing French attributes as part of his interest in reforming France. His work contributed in its turn to the subsequent recasting of French institutions.

The boot is on the other foot nowadays in terms of vocational education and training — an area to which the interests of commercial nations are increasingly alive and concerning which useful knowledge is plentiful. The defects of English practice have been widely documented by comparative research. The need for reform is even widely accepted. The problem is which route to take and how far to proceed. French and German practice have become increasingly potent sources of both concern and inspiration, reaching recently up to ministerial level in both leading British political parties.

Although comparative assessments of British education and training practice date back to the last century, such research proliferated during the 1980s. Prais (1981) demonstrated the gulf between the extent of qualification in the British and German labour forces. The recently established 'social effect' school of comparative research on work and skills expanded its range to include Britain (Sorge and Warner, 1980).

Much of the subsequent momentum has derived from the research of S.J. Prais, Hilary Steedman, Karin Wagner and their colleagues at the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR), published with increasing frequency in the Institute's Review as the decade proceded. Studies which compared British productivity in a wide range of sectors — metalworking, woodworking, clothing, hotel and retailing — to that of their German or French counterparts documented large shortfalls in Britain and attributed them largely to the superior vocational preparation of French and German workers.²

The effort has been joined by a wide range of academic, consulting, government and business contributions, some of which are represented in this collection. Comparative research has become an industry in its own right, helping to define problems and suggesting lines along which solutions may be sought.

The Problem of Intermediate Skills

A key British deficiency highlighted by the research of the last decade involves intermediate skills — i.e., those above routine skills but below professional ones. Comparative studies of British productivity find the most pronounced underproduction (and even misutilization) of skills in the intermediate category.

The category 'intermediate skills' is heterogeneous in content and imprecise in its boundaries. Its centre of gravity is what in British industry have traditionally been termed craft and technician skills, along with their analogues in the service sector. In the British context the intermediate category must also be construed to include jobs and occupations for which operational and perceived skill requirements may not be high but where an intermediate level of qualification — as opposed to a lower one or none at all — could raise productivity significantly. In other words, employers may use less intermediate skill than they should in their own interests — a possibility raised by more than one contribution to this volume.

The gap between the extent of intermediate skills in the German and French workforces, on the one hand, and the British, on the other, has increased since the mid-1970s, the period for which Prais documented the Anglo-German gap. It will increase further in the medium term, given that French qualification rates are rising rapidly and that British efforts have concentrated thus far on sub-craft skills. Our efforts come late and still aim low.

The importance of intermediate skills for British economic performance reflects three distinctive attributes. Firstly, such skills are costly to develop, which marks them off from routine skills. Secondly, they are — or could readily become — highly transferable across employers, which marks them off from employer-specific skills, however costly. Thirdly, in Britain they have traditionally been developed predominantly through workplace-based training programmes such as apprenticeship, which marks them off from professional skills.

These three attributes not only help to bound the domain of intermediate skills. They also explain why the defects of British vocational preparation have been most marked at intermediate level. Costly transferable skills are the ones for which market failure is liable to be most serious (Ryan, 1984). Employer provision of training is discouraged by a range of informational, contractual and organizational difficulties; employee self-sponsorship, by those of finance, insurance and attitude. Such obstacles are potentially general, but manifestations of the problem differ across countries and different ways of dealing with it have been adopted. The problem is particularly serious in Britain and this country has proved relatively unsuccessful at designing policies to counter it.

The resulting long term economic damage has been indicated at sectoral level by the NIESR research. The short to medium term aggregate consequences have also been serious. Rising shortages of craft and technical skills in industry and construction, reflected in long and increasing job vacancy durations, contributed during the recovery of 1986-9 to the resurgence of wage inflation and the rapid deterioration of the visible trade balance. They thereby helped precipitate yet another 'stop/go' curtailment of growth which, as it slowly curbs inflationary and trade problems, rewidens the productivity gap between Britain and its major trading partners.

There is clearly much more to British economic problems than shortages of intermediate skills. The country would however address its economic difficulties from a much better position could it ensure an adequate supply and an appropriate mix of such skills (Steedman, Mason and Wagner, 1991).

The problem of intermediate skills also touches on issues of equity. Inadequate skill development in Britain itself reflects an education system which has become notorious for, as it has been put, failing more than half of its young participants; and an industrial system still relatively reliant upon 'low trust' and 'low skill' strategies, in which dependence upon shop-floor skills is, as reported in chapter 6 below, often a matter of unease rather than relief to management. The weakness of the country's intermediate skills stock is part of the weakness of opportunities for individuals outside high ability or socially advantaged groups to improve their lot, whether through schooling or through training and promotion within employment.

Scope of Volume

This collection represents the convergence of three factors: the mushrooming of comparative research on vocational preparation, concern about enduring supply side constraints upon British economic performance and long-standing interest in the political economy of intermediate skills. Such interests led to the holding of the 1989 Manchester seminar to discuss recent research in the area.

The seminar was attended in roughly equal numbers by academics and public officials. Financial constraints and a strong response from national academics led to a distinct insularity in the organization of the seminar. Coverage was limited to research involving Britain; contributions and attendance, to persons based primarily or wholly in Britain. The absence of foreign comparative researchers interested in this country — a group less numerous than its British counterpart but one which has already distinguished itself — meant the absence from the proceedings of the perspective from abroad.

The main area of comparative interest amongst Britons, judging by these contributions, is Germany, rather than France; and, more generally, the EC, rather than Sweden or the USA, which are both unrepresented.³ French practice is notably underrepresented in this volume relative to its place in the comparative research of both the last decade and probably the present one as well. The appeal of German vocational preparation to British research is underlined by its presence in six out of the eight studies in this volume which report on a specific comparative research project. Interest in Germany is motivated partly by its economic and vocational successes and partly by a sense that effective learning may be feasible, given important institutional similarities to Britain — notably in the predominance of the workplace in industrial training.

Although the volume consists for the most part of studies which conform to the rubric contained in the title, three deviations are evident. Firstly, the focus is widened from vocational to all education in the studies which deal with Scotland, Japan and Canada, reflecting the important vocational implications of general education in those countries. Secondly, there is little on vocational secondary education. Comparative assessments of, e.g., the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative or work experience programmes for school students would have been appropriate to this volume but eluded editorial search.⁴ Finally, the range of skills represented here extends outside the intermediate category in the case of professional engineers in Germany and Japan. However, in the former case the links to intermediate skills are direct and important; in the latter, indirect only but that seems a small price to pay for coverage of key aspects of Japanese institutions.

Contents of Volume

The first section of the book concerns usage and methods in international comparisons. Ewart Keep reviews in chapter 1 the effects of comparative research on policy towards vocational education and training (VET) in Britain during the last decade. International comparisons have generated an abundance of results relevant to VET policy. They have also had a pivotal role in defining perceptions of the problems to which policy response is required. At the same time, only uneven and disappointing use has been made of their findings. In particular, British policy makers have ignored the social and institutional context of particular VET attributes which they seek to import, thereby jeopardizing the success of the effort.

Three factors are advanced to account for the defective influence on British policy of comparative research. The first is a high-speed, ad hoc approach to policy development, in which new VET schemes come and go in successive short life-cycles, and which copies rather than learns from foreign approaches. The second is 'ideological filtering': leaving out the lessons that conflict with political preconception, however integral they may be to VET success abroad. Statutory backing for and social partnership in VET institutions are two notable casualties in this area. The third is 'interest accommodation', particularly the influence upon the government of covert employer resistance to the implications of comparative research.

Keep argues that three...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction: Comparative Research on Vocational Education and Training
• Index