Apprenticeships in the UK: from the industrial-relation via market-led and social inclusion models

as literacy, numeracy, Information Technology, problem-solving, team working etc, in
education and in the workplace. The former emphasized conformity to a pre-given standard
while the latter were assumed to offer employers, employees/learners a ‘shared language’ to
facilitate the transfer of competence from one context to another (Mansfield & Mitchell,
1996, p. 236) and to support higher level study and progression into higher education
(Gospel, 1998, p. 442-3). Another tension was between the idea that knowledge was only
relevant in vocational qualifications to the extent that it underpinned competence and the
widespread recognition that this was an unduly narrow conception of the role of knowledge in
the context of a knowledge economy (Fuller & Unwin, 2002; National Skills Task Force,
cited in DfEE, 2000; Modern Apprenticeship Advisory Committee, 2001). Thus, the MA was
forever trying to square the circle between the then Conservative government’s desire to
reassure employers about the standard of competence represented by NVQs and the
government’s concern to prepare develop a less occupationally-specific and more flexible
workforce. Furthermore, the tension between knowledge

Social inclusion model

Against this background, New Labour announced not long after its election ‘a further reform
and expansion of the work-based route as the primary vehicle for “upskilling” new entrants to
the UK workforce’ (Payne, 2002, p. 264; p. 266). The government’s underlying intention was
to reduce the population of ‘status zero’ (those young people not in education, employment or
in receipt of benefits) (Payne, 2002, p. 266) by putting them into work-based training. This
new policy focus meant that apprenticeship was now expected to play a major part in
combating ‘social exclusion’. The strategy, as Fuller and Unwin (2003b, p. 22) observe was:

a continuation of the same policy of social inclusion which has governed youth training
schemes since the early 1980s. The strategy has been to concentrate on volume, in terms of
apprentice numbers and participating sectors, rather than on skill formation in those sectors
which might be said to be important for economic growth.

Apprenticeship was defined in the Blueprint for Apprenticeships (2005) as ‘a model for a
holistic learning process’, which ‘should be directly accessible to those from age 16 who
possess the required entry criteria’ (LSC, 2005a), and offered as Level 2 and Level 3
qualification. By learning the Blueprint meant, that apprenticeship would serve an educational
purpose as ‘an alternative progression route from school to higher education’ and a vocational
purpose as a method of developing a ‘wide range of job-specific and transferable learning’
(LSC, 2005a), rather than as a model of skill formation within specific occupational areas.
Furthermore, the inclusion of Technical Certificates (TCs) in the Blueprint to ensure that the
knowledge-based elements of NVQs were formally taught and tested was primarily a strategy

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