ABSTRACT
It is necessary to do two things before we begin our investigation into how the recent reforms to the UK’s system of vocational qualifications progressed: we must situate the changes within a broad historical context, and we also need to give an initial indication of their scale and scope. In the first half of this chapter, then, a brief examination of the way in which the vocational qualifications system developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will be provided. Like vocational education and training in general, it evolved in a piecemeal, fragmented manner, for the most part without any interventions by the state. We will then focus on the increasing degree of governmental intervention that characterized vocational education and training during the 1960s and 1970s, and, more specifically, the extent to which the vocational qualifications system was the object of reform. Yet the attempt by the UK government from the mid-1980s onwards to create a single, coherent national framework of competence-based, or related, vocational qualifications-comprising NVQs, SVQs and GNVQs-is indicative of a degree of intervention of a qualitatively different kind. We will therefore provide a a brief introductory analysis of the extent and nature of the reforms and highlight some of the key criticisms that they have attracted.
