ABSTRACT
The competence-based National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ), being introduced in England and Wales, should carry a government health warning. This chapter explores the inherent flaws in NVQs which cause them to be both liberating and confining as vehicles for helping teenagers in Youth Training achieve their true potential. Increasing unemployment and a decline in manufacturing industry during the 1970s gave greater prominence to the demands for a more accountable education and training system. At its most simple level, the goal of Britain's vocational education and training system has been and continues to be the production of employable people who are capable of gaining and developing the skills needed by industry and commerce. Training which helps to raise general educational standards, and enables trainees to acquire broad technical knowledge and understanding, would provide the base for a more flexible and better informed vocational development; and it would ease the transition to other forms of skilled employment.
