ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2 we examined the way in which the MSC’s New Training Initiative of 1981 aimed to provide a blueprint for the long-term reconfiguration of vocational education and training in the UK. With the exception of the institution of the YTS, however, behind which there were important political imperatives, in the immediate period following its publication progress was patchy. By 1984, though, the MSC had recognized this lacuna and, through its Adult Training Strategy, for example, it had begun to explore ways in which vocational education and training in general could be modernized. Moreover, largely from a desire to mitigate time-serving arrangements, a number of industry training organizations had also begun to reform-tentatively-their occupational training arrangements, so that they were more explictly founded upon ‘standards’, in line with the New Training Initiative’s recommendations. Thus there were limited moves in the direction of basing training on standards of occupational competence within industry and in the delivery of the MSC’s programmes, although beyond some general suppositions there was little specific understanding among policy-makers of what was meant by the concept of ‘competence’.
