ABSTRACT
The area of young people, education and work is such a broad one, imbued as it is with a range of theoretical perspectives as well as practical issues. These are mediated inevitably by fundamental questions concerning class, race and gender divisions amongst young people, as well as the plethora of questions which pertain to the purpose and role of education in contemporary Britain, and the relation of youth to the labour market and an economy in crisis. In a speech to the Society of Education Officers on 25th January 1985, Lord Young, then Minister Without Portfolio and former Chairman of the Manpower Services Commission, reiterated the view popularly held in many quarters that too many young people were emerging from eleven years of compulsory schooling without a single qualification that employers would accept. 'By the mid-1970s the inter-relationships between youth unemployment, education and training, dormant for decades, reached the centre stage of British political life'.
