ABSTRACT
At this point in our account it is necessary to consider the origins and development of GNVQ (General National Vocational Qualification) policy. GNVQs were developed as broad-based vocational qualifications appropriate for young people, to be delivered in schools and colleges in a number of occupational areas and to prepare candidates for employment and/or higher education. Their essential characteristics were noted in Chapter 1, as were some of the major problems that emerged once they came on stream from 1992 93 onwards. Concerns were raised about the heavy burden of assessment in GNVQs, the reliability of the assessment and grading procedures, and the high drop-out rates among other things. In this chapter we will show that these problems can largely be ascribed to the way in which GNVQ policy was originated during the late 1980s and early 1990s.1 GNVQs themselves, though they were then known only as ‘general NVQs’, were formally launched in the 1991 White Paper, Education and Training for the 21st Century (DES/DE, 1991). But we shall go back further than that to examine how they were orginally conceptualized as a separate policy aim of both the DE and the NCVQ. We will then go on to investigate how the proposals came to appeal to ministers and officials in the DES. They then provided the impetus for the advancement of GNVQs, and with the cooperation and input of three major national awarding bodies, the NCVQ was subsequently given the remit to develop and design the new awards.
