Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Education + Training, Volume 52, Issue 1

Later on this year I will have completed 20 years as Editor of Education+Training. Some might say 19 too many! But it is time for a change and I intend to stand down as Editor at the end of the year. Thus, this will be my final editorial. In this last reflection I want to make three, broadly interrelated points and in doing so set something of an agenda, or challenge, for the next era of the journal.

I suspect readers of Education+Training will not need reminding of the sort of headline I note below, but nonetheless it warrants repeating:

• Fears over “lost generation” as recession hits young people hardest (www.24dash.com; 12 August 2009).

Much of the discourse around the current economic recession seems to revolve around bankers’ bonuses. If I had a pound, a dollar or a euro for every time the bonus system is discussed in the context of a news item on the recession I would be enjoying a similar level of remuneration to this oddly dysfunctional occupational sector. Let’s be clear what current research indicates. In the UK, for example, unemployment rates amongst the under-25s are more than double the national average. For new graduates unemployment is currently at a 12-year high and continues to rise. In Europe, within the highly regarded VET systems of Switzerland, Germany and Austria labour market changes are resulting in serious strains and tensions. On a global scale 50 per cent of the world’s unemployed are young people. Unemployment and underemployment amongst young people is not the preserve of the relatively unskilled and unqualified.

This is the context in which transition from school/college to work is taking place. The harsh realities of the labour market often seem overlooked. Glib assertions from governments about employability, more and better “vocational”education and training, etc., are rolled out as the solutions, as if a nicely typed CV and a firm handshake or a school/college project on “modern manufacturing” somehow provide a passport to challenging and developmental opportunities in the so-called knowledge economy. For some this may be the case,but for many it is a myth. For large numbers of young people, including many graduates, the nature of work beyond school/college is such that employment offers few opportunities for the capabilities and attributes developed through their formal education to be fully utilised.

In my first editorial for Education + Training in 1991 I explored,perhaps unsurprisingly, tensions around the juxtaposition of “education”with “training”. Some of the scenery has undoubtedly changed, but centre stage the transition processes affecting young people still provide the journal’s raison d’être. The terminological tensions noted in my first editorial resurface with a vengeance in this first issue of the 52nd volume. Perhaps the labels are a bit different: enterprise,entrepreneurship, employability, internship, but essentially similar questions prevail. For example, education about the world of work or training for the world of work?

Critically, in today’s world the transition from education to work is more complex. In the UK 20 years ago work experience for secondary school students was relatively rare. It is now compulsory. Twenty years ago few students worked during their degree programme. Now it is the norm. How should we view such practices? Many argue that we should seek to manage these activities as part of the transition process because there are key skills to be learned. But perhaps this experience is more appropriately viewed as a process of attitude and identity formation. There is a danger that the formal architecture of the transition systems that have emerged across Europe and elsewhere, with a focus on processes of skill-acquisition, the “tool-bag” approach,overlooks and devalues the potentially more important process of simply finding out what it is like to be employed. What does it mean to be employed, to follow a work routine day in day out, to be “managed”;and, critically, providing an opportunity to begin to “test”expectations and claims of what they can and can’t do in the context of an occupational setting.

Certainly I remain perplexed about simplistic assumptions about employability. Employability, whatever it is, cannot be “taught” in the classroom and on this basis is it appropriate that the workplace simply becomes another “classroom”? I have some sympathy with the view of Michael Skapinker (Financial Times, 28 July 2009), who argues that it is time to “tear down the rotten edifice of internships” and “start again”, questioning the value of artificial and contrived work experience events highly dependent upon “who you know”. To experience work,whilst in full time education, is potentially enormously valuable for subsequent employment and career development. But it must be real work, however mind-numbingly boring or (for the lucky few) challenging and exciting, this may be.

Thirdly, I want to raise a disappointment. It remains the case that only a small proportion of Education+Training articles are written by what might be called “practitioners”. Given the rhetoric about continuous professional development within many workplaces and ongoing tensions between the worlds of academia and industry/commerce, this is both disappointing and, to a degree, surprising. Somewhat similarly, an overwhelming majority of articles continue to be sourced from within and around the HE curriculum. This is the dominant “site” for Education+Training articles, rather than from sites of learning such as the classroom of final year school students, the“shop floor” of those engaged in apprenticeship, the desk of those designing workplace learning for school leavers and college graduates, the inside of the job shop or careers “room”, the induction “room”,the office/desk of the newly recruited graduate … and so on. There is a challenge here that Education+Training needs to address and I wish my successor good luck with this challenge.

I cannot thank everyone in person for their help on my 20-year-long Education+Trainingjourney. But the following do warrant special mention: Jeff Gold and Vicky Harte(Leeds Metropolitan University); David Pollitt (formerly of the University of Bradford); Erica Smith (University of Ballarat, Australia); Tom Clarke(University of Technology, Sydney); and Vikki Smith (City & Guilds). And,last but not least, my “comrade in adversity” Harry Matlay (Editor of the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development), not only for the superb contribution he has made to Education+Training with ten“VET and Small Business” focused Special Issues, but also for his personal support through occasional periods of disenchantment with the whole business of research and publication. So, to these good folk and indeed to all of those who have subscribed, read, and contributed to Education+Trainingover the years: my thanks and my best wishes.

Rick Holden