Vocational education and training in Britain: a small business perspective

Beginning with the 1970s, policy makers, academics and industrial commentators in Britain have increasingly focused their attention on the development of the domestic small business sector. The macro‐economic potential of this sector of the economy had progressively come to be viewed as the panacea to Britain’s “relative” economic decline. Very soon, however, it had become obvious that in comparison with those of other industrially developed nations, the British labour force was poorly educated and trained. This paper explores the dynamics of workplace training in the small business sector of the British economy. The study upon which this paper is based involved three complementary research methods. It included an investigative telephone survey during which attitudinal, sectoral and compositional data on training were collected from 2,000 randomly selected businesses from the West Midlands region of Great Britain. Although the vast majority of respondents claimed to hold positive attitudes to training, a large proportion of them admitted not to have provided any during the 12 months prior to the interviews. According to them, this apparent “training paradox” has its roots in a number of “directly” and “indirectly” relevant factors. Significantly, the vast majority of respondents felt that in recent years training policies in Britain lacked the necessary focus, coherence and continuity. A number of tentative recommendations are suggested, which could benefit the concerted efforts of the present Labour government directed at this important area of economic policy.