ABSTRACT
The conclusion draws together the key themes explored in the book. We conclude that organising separate technical and vocational spaces in post-16 education implies an inherent reproductive logic; that the expansion of higher education has been accompanied by active resistance to students whose backgrounds render them ‘unsuitable’, whilst diversionary forms of tertiary education provide a safety net; that further education policy in England continues to assert the prerogative of employers, whilst their role in workplace learning remains symbolic and rhetorical; that weak understandings of work as a locus of learning in England have focused on socialisation: students are directed to learn to work, rather than to learn at work; that consequently the norms of general education dominate educational practice and status hierarchies; that the ‘technical elites’ achieve their relatively advantaged position only partly by their ability to negotiate superior workplace learning experiences: weak forms of academic and social capital improve their access both to learning opportunities at work and to labour markets; whilst the dominance of general education norms also secures the marginalisation of these groups at higher levels.
