Training and Enterprise in England and Wales: A Critical Review

Abstract

The 1988 Government White Paper ’Employment for the 1990s’ proposed the establishment of Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) throughout England and Wales, to promote and support small businesses and self‐employment, and to plan and deliver training in their local areas. Placing the responsibility for the formulation and delivery of training almost entirely in the hands of local private sector employers, the TEC initiative has proved to be a highly controversial and contested area of policy. Accordingly, it has attracted a sizeable multi‐disciplinary academic literature which variously portray it as either innovative and revolutionary, or a retrograde high‐risk strategy. This paper commences by placing TECs in the long‐term historical context of previous national and local training measures in England and Wales, which is surely essential to any assessment of the extent to which they mark a novel and relevant modem response to contemporary training and labour force requirements, or a mere re‐working of obsolete government policies and responses to high unemployment levels. This is followed by a brief discussion of the emergence, and state encouragement, of an ‘enterprise culture’ in the 1980s. Against this background, the final section of the paper outlines the establishment of TECs, providing examples of their operation, and reviews the body of literature regarding their potential and actual strengths and weaknesses. It is argued that the historical contextualisation of TECs is fundamental to any evaluation of the extent to which they are an appropriate revolution in training and enterprise, or simply a newly packaged continuation of earlier, discredited, training policies and initiatives.