ABSTRACT
Each local authority in Britain was eventually permitted to run a TVEI pilot project-typically based in a small number of schools, in conjunction with a local further education college, and on ‘experimental’ cohorts of 200/250 pupils drawn from consecutive school year groups. But local diversity was encouraged. These were planned as pilot projects from which education authorities were meant to learn. The emphasis on innovation in TVEI, the scope for schools and projects to try out different approaches, and the distinction (at least in most early projects) between an ‘experimental group’ of TVEI students and ‘control group’ of non-TVEI students: all these factors combined with the published aims of TVEI to give the initiative something of the character of a scientific experiment. It was a scientific venture, moreover, on which the three worlds of research, policy and practice worked together.
