ABSTRACT
Factories needed people to be trained, however rudimentarily. Children were prepared for factory work and associated clerical skills in schools which looked like factories and for a long time were as regimented. Work and education were organised and managed on strict hierarchical patterns of control. Training fitted into that world as a way of referring to skills required for clearly-defined jobs. Pre-eminently those requirements are for men and women to accept responsibility for what they do at work. So education needs to provide for people taking responsibility for their own learning. Timetabled classes alone cannot do that. Wherever learning from experience takes place, APEL can encourage it, extend it through the motivation which comes from recognition, identify and shape it ready for assessment and accreditation, all because it is simply a way of paying due regard to the facility of human beings as learners.
