The further education and skills policy has been a priority for all governments over the past decades. As a result, it has been subject to countless iterations in attempts to respond to frequent changes and threats in the local, national and global economy. The stakes are high. The IMF predicted that the UK economy is going to shrink this year, placing the country on the last place in the G7 league. As one of the speakers at the conference on the future of work and wellbeing commented, UK has an employment rather than unemployment crisis, with vacancies outnumbering unemployed people for the first time. The urgent need to get everyone into work underlies several recent initiatives from employers’ support fund for T Level industry placements (operational from April 2023) to extending apprenticeships opportunities to social minority groups such as prisoners or people with special learning needs with whom employers (with a few notable exceptions) have been reluctant to engage. Other government initiatives such as the Lifelong Learning Bill or the intention to cut benefits for those who do not show an interest in reskilling are further evidence for the determination to address the labour shortage aggravated by the pandemic, shifts in attitudes towards work and the country’s departure from the European Union. How successful these initiatives will be, remains to be seen.
For the past 30 years or so, many initiatives have been stubborn to produce the intended outcomes. Frequent policy changes have created uncertainty in the sector and acted as a barrier to achieving the impact for which they have been designed. As Ewart Keep, an Oxford scholar who has spent decades studying the FE & skills policies remarked, this policy ‘merry-go-round’ has led to a ‘level of instability within the English vocational education and training (VET) … unusual within the developed world.’ But the shortage of active people is not just a number. At the conference on the future of work and wellbeing, Nobel prize winner Christopher Pissarides remarked that culture is another factor, noting that culture is slow to change. It includes aspects such as the low prestige of further education, another barrier to young people (and their parents) being enticed by the prospect of vocational training. Achieving parity of esteem is particularly difficult despite initiatives to blur the boundaries between further education and higher education. The education division in the country of John Stuart Mill, and of Jeremy Bentham (the father of utilitarianism as a pathway to happiness), has deeper roots than one might think. As philosopher Philip Kitcher writes in his recent book ‘The Main Enterprise of the World’, professional training (including law, medicine and engineering) had no place in Mill’s concept of education which he considered a class privilege, disregarding that Oxford University ‘grew out of guilds’ (law, medicine, theology) and general studies followed.
The attitude towards work in a consumerist, utilitarian society in which people are valued for what they consume and not for what they produce as Bauman argued, are other barriers difficult to tackle through law. But although cultural change may be slow, factors which influence behaviour changes push students, employers and employees into unchartered territories. The potential of AI to help or harm education (and work) is one such example. While AI can (in theory) provide individualised learning, help every student to achieve their potential and ultimately create diverse workplaces, ChatGTP may become the free version of essay mills banned in 2022 by the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. Whether we like it or not, technology has the power to speed up things in ways which may or may not be under policy makers’ control. These developments might push for cooperation between all those who have a role to play in decision making both in industry and in the public sector.
Strikes and the great resignation reflect workers’ voice and exit strategies in Albert Hirschman’s description of struggles for better pay, terms and conditions. In the same way the Black Death led to a rise in farmers’ salaries, Covid and the current strikes may lead not just to better pay but also to fairer terms and conditions. Frameworks such as the Fair Work framework in Scotland or ‘the good work charter’ advocated by the Institute for the Future of Work promoting dignity, non-discrimination and participation at work are rational responses to a society in which people’s choices and expectations in relation to work have changed. It is what the human rights framework has advocated for nearly a century and it is ultimately about how we treat each other. We may come to the conclusion that respect for one’s dignity is more precious than consumerist happiness and that it may be the pathway to a sustainable, eudaemonic, post consumerist future. One in which AI does not do our homework or takes away our jobs but helps us live more balanced life.
Dr Mariela Neagu is Postdoctoral Researcher at SKOPE carrying out research for the Nuffield Project, ‘Comparing UK policies, outcomes and inequalities in post-16 education & training.’