one - A year of transition in post-compulsory education and training

Summary

This chapter reviews some of the main developments that occurred during the year in the UK and highlights some of the connections and themes. It is, of course, a selective account. First, it focuses on the written and spoken words of legislators and their officials rather than the voices of learners and their teachers. Second, it focuses on the majority of the UK's population, who are adults rather than children. Third, it concentrates not on the education and training of elites (whether in the academy or in the workplace) but on the changes that impact most on the lives of people who gained least from their initial education. Fourth, in a State where the education and training systems of the four component parts are divergent, it does not presume to describe dynamics of relevant policy development within Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – nor indeed the impact of European Union policies.

The central theme – Leitch

There can be few who would deny that 2007 might best be described as ‘the Year of Leitch’. When, in 2004, former insurance company chief executive, Lord Alexander Leitch, accepted an invitation from then-Chancellor, Gordon Brown, to undertake an independent review of the UK's long-term skills needs, he may not have realised just how central his report would prove to be to the start of his patron's premiership.

The report, Prosperity for All in the Global Economy: World Class Skills (Leitch, 2006), appeared in December 2006 and immediately framed subsequent debate. In some ways this was odd since the document itself was seen as a disappointment in several quarters. This was due in part to a sense of déjà vu. The overall analysis seemed often only to rework and update that of earlier initiatives such as the National Training Task Force of 1988 and the National Skills Task Force that had reported six years before (National Skills Task Force, 2000). Some of the most interesting areas opened up in the review's interim report were not carried through to the final one, an example being the analysis of the potential impact of an ageing population on training and labour market supply. In other areas, such as inward and outward migration and how to bring people some distance from the labour market closer to it so that the government could achieve an employment rate of 80%, the report was largely silent.