Learners in the English Learning and Skills Sector: the implications of half‐right policy assumptions

Abstract

The English Learning and Skills Sector (LSS) contains a highly diverse range of learners and covers all aspects of post‐16 learning with the exception of higher education. In the research on which this paper is based we are concerned with the effects of policy on three types of learners—unemployed adults attempting to improve their basic skills in community learning settings, younger learners on Level 1 and 2 courses in further education colleges, and employees in basic skills provision in the workplace. What is distinctive about all three groups is that they have historically failed in, or been failed by, compulsory education. What is interesting is that they are constructed as ‘problem learners’ in learning and skills sector policy documents. We use data from 194 learner interviews, conducted during 2004/5, in 24 learning sites in London and the North East of England, to argue that government policy assumptions about these learners may only be ‘half right’. We argue that such assumptions might be leading to half‐right policy based on incomplete understandings or surface views of learner needs that are more politically constructed than real. We suggest that policy‐makers should focus more on systemic problems in the learning and skills sector and less on problematising groups of learners.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

1. This point is well made by Zoe Fowler (2004) in her PhD thesis, which examines the way that the Skills for Life strategy was developed.

2. The authors wish to acknowledge the funding of ‘The Impact of Policy on Learning and Inclusion in the New Learning and Skills Sector’ by the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme—reference number RES 139‐25‐0105.

3. The eight work‐based learning sites in our research include learners who are:

•	Care workers providing home care services for elderly and disabled people from specific ethnic minority communities;
•	Employees in a bus garage (mainly drivers, but also including mechanics, cleaners and office workers);
•	Laundry workers in an SME providing cleaning services for the hospitality and catering industry;
•	Local authority employees, including refuse collectors, manual labourers, cleaners, street lighting engineers, gardeners and plasterers;
•	Production line workers in a processed food factory;
•	Younger learners on Apprenticeships, working in a doctor’s surgery, a recruitment agency, a training provider and a trade association library.

4. In the London sample, there are a number of learners who have been educated in African schools who do not have the same feeling of alienation from their previous schooling.