ABSTRACT
Having spent 20 years immersed in the policy and development work associated with large-scale innovation and transformation of the UK education and training system, I have in recent years become increasingly concerned about three things: the rapidity of change and turnover in major innovations; the lack of transparency in the origins of innovations (mitigated only to a degree by the Freedom of Information Act); and the lack of safeguards for those learners caught up in major system innovation. Rather than these being three separate things, my involvement in policy development on mass innovations – as head of research first at the National Council for Vocational Qualifications and then the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority – forced a stark recognition that they are intimately linked. This chapter examines these linkages but places a spotlight on the ethical issues relating to safeguards for learners.
