ABSTRACT
The Report of the independent National Commission on Education, 'Learning to Succeed' also adopted a pluralistic model of society combined with treatments of citizenship which are more open to maximal readings, but also failed to acknowledge the contested conceptual frameworks within which notions of citizenship are discussed and operationalised. The Commission's work had some influence on the re-emergence of education for citizenship as a cross-curriculum theme in the framing of the National Curriculum. Competence and citizenship are thus intertwined in the notions of work and education as social practices. Youth and community work in any society will reflect the development of that society, historically, politically and economically. Contextualised vocational learning need not be so confined and confining. Competence can be seen as an outcome of learning which has been ‘contextualised’, that is learning which has taken place in an environment similar to that in which the learner seeks to practise.
