In its economic forecasting publication (DfEE 1999b), the Government outlined its plans to fund
more higher education places in the period up to 2001. However, less has been said about how
the supply of students will be generated to underpin this expansion. If the new higher education
target is to be met, without compromising entry standards, there will be a need to address the
slow down in participation of 16-19 year olds and to stimulate demand for higher education
places from older learners.
This paper suggests that achieving these aims will mean more than simply increasing the supply
of higher education places and diversifying the nature of higher education provision. It will
require a more strategic range of both education and labour market policies to support the
development of a more effective and connective mixed education and training system for the 21 st
century.
Historical trends in participation and achievement - the problem of
‘system slowdown’
Statistics on participation and attainment among 16-19 year olds suggest that the post-compulsory
education and training system in the UK has, over the last five years, moved into a distinctive
new phase which we term ‘system slowdown’. This describes a situation in which there is little
or no growth in many of the major participation and attainment indicators for 16-19 year old.
This period of system slowdown started in 1994 with the peaking of participation rates in full-
time education at 16, following several years of strong growth. In the years since, this plateauing
trend has moved to full-time participation rates at 17 and 18 years and more recently to higher
education participation rates and to participation and qualification completion rates in the work-
based route. The phenomenon also affects attainment rates in 16-19 qualifications, though to a
lesser extent. The historical significance of this current trend can best be understood when
compared with earlier phases of participation and attainment in the mid-1980s and the early
1990s.
Phase 1: A low participation system (1983-1987)
After rises in all forms of education and training of 16-19 year olds in the late 1970s and early
1980s, as a result of the shrinking of the youth labour market, both part-time and full-time
participation rates began to peak in the mid-1980s. Finegold & Soskice (1988) reflected on the
‘plateauing period’ of the mid-1980s when developing their seminal ‘low skills equilibrium’
thesis which described an inter-locking set of system factors that resulted in low levels of
education and training outputs in the UK. The education and training system at this time was also
described as a ‘low participation’ system (Raffe 1992). The major features of this low skills and
low participation system were low rates of participation in full-time education at 16+ (below 50
per cent) compared with other OECD countries (OECD 1996); relatively high levels of
participation (25 per cent) in unemployment related work-based training, such as the Youth
Training Scheme (YTS) and static attainment rates in the 16-19 age group (Spours 1995).