Section 3 Access, participation and diversity questions in relation to different forms of post-compulsory further and higher education: Learners’ transition from vocational education and training to higher education

The current debate on widening participation in relation to Vocational Education and Training (VET) needs to consider two issues. First, as we saw in the introduction, educational participation beyond the compulsory school age has increased in the UK since 1945, with a massive increase in participation in full-time provision between 1985 and 1994. The increase can partly be attributed to the increased availability of vocationally oriented qualifications aimed at 16 year olds. Definitions of what constitutes ‘vocational qualifications’ differ greatly in terms of what they classify as ‘vocational’. The analysis here follows pragmatic considerations which are based on classifications of qualifications as used by UCAS because this is regarded as the only sensible way to interpret qualification backgrounds on the basis of access datasets compiled by UCAS.