The Technical and Vocational Education Initiative and school autonomy in the management of curriculum change

Abstract

This paper arises out of wider, ESRC‐funded research on the legacy of the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) in a national sample of original pilot schools. The paper draws on two periods of fieldwork in the schools, the first in 1985 and 1986, the second in 1991 and 1992. This methodology allows the adoption of a longitudinal perspective in studying TVEI.

The paper focuses on attempts to manage curriculum change through TVEI. This was to be achieved through the novel means of providing funds in return for contractual commitments by local education authorities to implement programmes which met the national TVEI aims and criteria specified by the Manpower Services Commission (this method of allocating resources became known as categorical funding).

The paper begins with a brief description of TVEI and draws important distinctions between the pilot and extension phases of the Initiative. This is followed by a review of the claims for, and critiques of, the categorical funding mechanism. The rationale and rhetoric of TVEI management is then compared with the practice in the schools. The data reveal a considerable gap between rhetoric and reality. The boundaries of TVEI are shown to have become increasingly blurred and to have allowed considerable scope for local variations. Arrangements for monitoring and reviewing are revealed as something of a facade. The procedures and criteria through which TVEI resources were distributed within the schools are shown to have been subject to a whole range of contextual factors, rather than being governed by identifiable TVEI aims and criteria. TVEI management was pervaded by complicity between participants at various levels and strong pressures to proclaim ‘successes’ and highlight ‘good practice’. A picture of the domestication and subversion of TVEI emerges from the data. Explanations are offered for this state of affairs and the paper concludes by summarizing the reasons for the comparative failure of categorical funding to bring about the changes sought by the political originators of TVEI.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ralph P. Williams

Ralph P. Williams is a Senior Lecturer and David J. Yeomans is a Research Fellow in the School of Education, University of Leeds.