ABSTRACT
General vocational education for young people has been overshadowed by high-profile policy interest in apprenticeship and participation in higher education (HE) in England under recent governments. Nevertheless, though not at the centre of public attention, the quality, content and purpose of vocational education has been subject to major national review and reform in the past five years. In 2011, The Wolf Report was published. Its purpose was ‘to consider how we can improve vocational education for 14–19 year olds and thereby promote successful progression into the labour market and into higher-level education and training routes’ (Wolf, 2011: 19). In 2015, the UK’s Department of Business, Innovation and Skills announced that the ‘technical and professional education revolution continues’, with plans to introduce twenty new professional and technical routes, following a review led by Lord Sainsbury reporting in 2016. 1 These reviews draw attention to the question of what knowledge should form part of general vocational qualifications and how it is decided. This chapter looks at this question by examining how knowledge is constructed in and through the practices of teaching and learning in general vocational education in England. The term general vocational education is used to refer to qualifications that are associated with a broad vocational area that are intended to be applied or practice oriented, but which primarily take place in educational settings.
