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In higher education, workforce development is often described as work based learning
and is increasingly recognised as a field of study. Defining workforce development as
workbased learning enables higher education in particular to incorporate the learning
people do for, in and through work.1 Carol Costley points out:
International Journal of Training Research
Volume 1, Number 2, 2003 pp 11-41
12 International Journal of Training Research Some universities have been involved in work based learning for a long
time, for example,through placements and sandwich courses. Some
universities have structured courses where continuing professional
development with the knowledge gained through experience is accepted
implicitly. Others use the processes of accrediting prior and experiential
learning (APEL) to formally recognise such knowledge.
Learning contracts are becoming familiar instruments. These activities
are variously described as work based, work related, placement
activities, elective modules, independent study, APEL, reach out,
CPD, and work based learning among others. It is worth noting that
work based learning in higher education is nearly always part of an
existing university programme with its own disciplinary frameworks and
approaches to higher education. Learning outcomes and criteria for
assessment are therefore within the subject knowledge born of research
and scholarly activities that already are embedded in the universities.
(Costley, 2001)
What is difficult to understand is the lack of engagement by higher education in
workforce development that is meeting the needs of learning people do for, in and
through work. Perhaps Butcher, from the Learning and Teaching Support Network
(LTSN) Generic Centre, leading on employability along with ESECT2 in higher
education, has identified the problem.
We somehow seem to be incapable of learning from experience.
Succeeding generations of employers are still marooned in tedious
development project steering committees whose proceedings take place
in academic jargon. Frustrated academics are still struggling to secure
placements and projects with the very companies who are lambasting the
quality of their graduates’ work readiness. (UVAC, 2002)
There is no doubt higher education has been highly successful in developing and
delivering entry to work programs that are qualifying people for work at all levels,
however, all work based, continuous professional development, retraining, part-time
provision, learning diagnostics, assessment and certification remain marginal. Why is
this, when the case for the national economic and social demands for a highly skilled
national workforce are as strident as ever?
In this context, it is noticeable that initiatives such as NVQs and graduate
apprenticeships have failed to become integral components of higher education.
Similarly, although considerable effort has been made to develop work based learning,
particularly by institutions such as Middlesex University, Anglia Polytechnic
University, and other members of the University Vocational Awards Council, it has
been achieved through the individual and organisational desire to respond to local and
Employment and workforce development -
regional needs, despite the paucity of coincident policy directive from agencies with
responsibility for business, skills, education and learning.
Public funding schemes persist in being unsympathetic to this activity however it
is defined, and mechanisms to connect business needs with higher education are
disorganised and confusing.
The NVQ and national occupational standards are the
only mechanism we have left to overcome these barriers.
Following several reviews of education and training, National Vocational Qualifications
(NVQs) entered the UK’s education and training arena in 1986 to respond to an ad
hoc vocational qualification landscape built up since 1945 with a typically British
approach of adding more qualifications without the rationalisation of existing awards,
or reappraisal of the approvals and recognition procedures which were increasingly
varied and inconsistent. As a result, it was increasingly failing to deliver a highly
skilled workforce in response to global competitiveness and discouraging the
unemployed to acquire the contemporary skills employers required.
However, the introduction of a national scheme, NVQ, that brought education and
training together, led to passionate and polarised reactions. One opponent claimed
that the movement ‘was perpetuating a disaster of epic proportions’ (Smithers, 1993)
and Hyland (1994, p.116) considered NVQs to be behind ‘an utterly impoverished
and dehumanised approach to vocational education’. Advocates of NVQs such as
Hillier (1995) accused academics of running scared and argued that by concentrating
on the true skills and knowledge needed to perform jobs the economy would benefit.
With over 3 million NVQs achieved since 1986 it is time to reconsider the value
of NVQs, particularly national occupational standards, in the light of the increased
emphasis on the role of higher education in workforce development, and graduate
employability, resulting from the introduction of mass higher education in the UK.
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