ABSTRACT

A key area of educational research is the transition from school to work. There has been considerable change to policy and practice in this area in England and Wales, over the past few years. For example, the school curriculum prior to the transition has been transformed by the introduction of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and the National Curriculum. The post-16 alternatives to work at 16+ now focus on the new General National Vocational Qualifications (GNVQs) alongside the long-established A levels. There have also been dramatic changes in the patterns of progression between the ages of 16 and 19. Far more young people now stay on in full-time education. It is as common now to leave education at 17+ as at 16+. Very few teenagers move straight from school to a job. The numbers on youth training schemes have steadily diminished. Indeed, the nature of youth training has itself changed. The Youth Training Scheme (YTS) has become Youth Training (YT). Training or Youth Credits (see below) and the Modern Apprenticeship have been introduced. There has also been a transformation in the management of post-16 education and training, with an emphasis on measurement of outcomes, contract compliance and inspection, in a context of deliberately created ‘quasi-markets’ supposedly driven by ‘customer choice’ (cf. Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1995). To many people working in the area, there seems to be no end to these continual changes.