ABSTRACT
As in other sectors of education in Britain, the domain of post-school education has experienced widespread and revolutionary structural change over the last 25 years. There has been a technical rationalisation of all aspects of provision in line with neo-liberal and instrumentalist doctrines which has resulted in a marginalisation of values in relation to curriculum, teaching and the ends of education. All this has brought about a centrally imposed and highly deterministic conception of education and training which is unduly economistic and concerned almost exclusively with employability skills and current industrial demands. Under the influence of this new technicism, values are either neutralised-implying a spurious consensus about education, society and nationhood-or marginalised as questions of educational purposes, processes of learning and the nature of studentship are overlooked in the drive to achieve national targets for education and training (NTETs).
