From core skills to key skills: fast forward or back to the future?

Abstract

Developing learning programmes to enhance the formation of generic skills is an international concern in education and training policy. This paper provides a broad survey of the development of generic skills policy in England from 1975 to 2002, drawing on both the economic and educational literature. It demonstrates that, despite an evident demand for generic skills in the English economy, successive waves of education and training policy intended to stimulate the supply of such skills have failed to deliver the desired results. Such failure is accounted for using a policy instruments and institutions framework. This suggests that the failure of generic skills policy can be attributed to a combination of weak policy design, the interaction of generic skills policy with other market‐led reforms of education and training in England, and broader exogenous socio‐economic trends. The paper concludes that current initiatives to develop key skills for all 16–19 learners in England are unlikely to succeed without substantial changes in the current education policy environment.

Notes

* Corresponding author: University of Oxford, Department of Educational Studies, 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford OX2 6PY, UK. Email: [email protected]

The origin of this term is to be found in the economics rather than the educational literature, with generic skills being defined as general skills that have a productive value in many different firms. Literacy skills such as reading and writing, for example, have this generic quality. By contrast, specific skills, such as knowing how to use a specific piece of machinery to produce a particular item in a firm's production process, are those which only have a productive value in a specific firm (Stevens, 1999).

Generic skills are defined by Hogarth et al. (2001) as being transferable skills that can be used across occupations and they identify the following skills as being generic: basic computer literacy, communication skills, customer handing skills, team working, problem solving, management skills, numeracy and literacy skills.

Advanced IT/software skills and other technical practical skills.

Literacy skills, physical skills, number skills, technical know‐how, high level‐communication, planning skills, client communication, horizontal communication, problem‐solving, checking skills.

Stevens uses the notion of ‘transferable’ skills as those that are of use and value for some limited number of employers who would then have some monopsony power in the market for those skills.

See Jonathan (1987) for an extended discussion of these issues.

A detailed historical account of the first two phases is provided by Oates (1992) and Oates and Fettes (1997). For an account of the reforms from 1997 onwards see Hodgson and Spours (1999 and 2003).

Equivalent administrative data are currently not available for the award of the wider key skills qualifications.

The effect of this assumption is to bias the percentage estimates in Table 2 upwards. If, for example, we assume that 16‐ and 17‐year‐olds each achieve 1.43 key skills qualification, then the proportion of 16‐year‐olds in 2000/2001 achieving Level 1 would be 3.1% as opposed to 4.4%.

See http://www.keyskillssupport.net/ for further details.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Geoff Hayward *

* Corresponding author: University of Oxford, Department of Educational Studies, 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford OX2 6PY, UK. Email: [email protected]