ESF funded training for unemployed women: policy aims and implementation

The European Social Fund (ESF) provides funding for vocational training projects for unemployed women aged over 25. This research traces the development of ESF policies and interpretations from within the European Commission and the British government from 1958 to 1993. The position of women within the European and British labour markets provides the basis of the evaluation of the ESF's aim to increase employability through training linked to the needs of the labour market. The study is based on a gender, class and race analysis from within a perspective of British socialist feminism. The research follows an inductive, essentially grounded-theory method of research, where each stage is determined by the emergent dominant category of the previous stage. There are three stages: firstly, interviews with the women 'workers' on an ESF funded vocational training project for unemployed women. The non-traditional manual skills training provision was typical of many such projects throughout the 1980s. Secondly, a document based study of policy documents and interpretations. The third stage concentrates on the position of women within the European and British labour markets. The finding is that working-class women are trained for occupations of continual decline, and are not trained for the growth occupations of new technology. Neither are they trained towards improving their hierarchical position. The discourse of equal opportunities emerges as a central theme throughout the thesis, from the case study onwards. The final analysis of its impact on vocational training policy is that equal opportunities policies, whilst providing access to specific non-traditional manual skills, nevertheless, through the inherent lack of class analysis, actually closes or hinders access to other training and employment opportunities, thereby meeting both the needs of capitalism and of patriarchy

ESF funded training for unemployed women: policy aims and implementation

The European Social Fund (ESF) provides funding for vocational training projects for unemployed women aged over 25. This research traces the development of ESF policies and interpretations from within the European Commission and the British government from 1958 to 1993. The position of women within the European and British labour markets provides the basis of the evaluation of the ESF's aim to increase employability through training linked to the needs of the labour market. The study is based on a gender, class and race analysis from within a perspective of British socialist feminism. The research follows an inductive, essentially grounded-theory method of research, where each stage is determined by the emergent dominant category of the previous stage. There are three stages: firstly, interviews with the women 'workers' on an ESF funded vocational training project for unemployed women. The non-traditional manual skills training provision was typical of many such projects throughout the 1980s. Secondly, a document based study of policy documents and interpretations. The third stage concentrates on the position of women within the European and British labour markets. The finding is that working-class women are trained for occupations of continual decline, and are not trained for the growth occupations of new technology. Neither are they trained towards improving their hierarchical position. The discourse of equal opportunities emerges as a central theme throughout the thesis, from the case study onwards. The final analysis of its impact on vocational training policy is that equal opportunities policies, whilst providing access to specific non-traditional manual skills, nevertheless, through the inherent lack of class analysis, actually closes or hinders access to other training and employment opportunities, thereby meeting both the needs of capitalism and of patriarchy

Gender, foundation degrees and the knowledge economy

This article questions the concept of ‘education for employment’, which constructs a discourse of individual and societal benefit in a knowledge‐driven economy. Recent policy emphasis in the European Union promotes the expansion of higher education and short‐cycle vocational awards such as the intermediate two‐year Foundation Degree recently introduced into England and Wales. Studies of vocational education and training (VET) and the knowledge economy have focused largely on the governance of education and on the development and drift of policy. Many VET programmes have also been considered for their classed, raced and gendered take‐up and subsequent effect on employment. This article builds on both fields of study to engage with the finer cross‐analyses of gender, social class, poverty, race and citizenship. In its analysis of policy texts the article argues that in spite of a discourse of inclusivity, an expanded higher education system has generated new inequalities, deepening social stratification. Drawing on early analyses of national quantitative data sets, it identifies emerging gendered, classed and raced patterns and considers these in relation to occupationally and hierarchically stratified labour markets, both within and without the knowledge economy

The everyday classificatory practices of selective schooling: A fifty-year retrospective

The fifty-year retrospective has led to recent media interest in the comprehensive school. Bristol, located in the south-west of England, is frequently portrayed as an early provider. This article draws on documentary evidence and life-history interviews with ex-pupils to explore this claim. It finds that they were not comprehensive schools, but selective bilaterals that, despite including grammar and secondary modern streams within the same physical site, constructed, through their curricular and non-curricular practices, a rigid divide between the two. The selective schooling of the bilateral consolidated the classificatory practices that began in primary school. Framed by Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, disposition and classificatory practices, it is a study of explicit selective schooling that was reliant not only on key moments of selection, and differentiated curricula, but on everyday practices and signifiers of difference. © 2006, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Further education participation, European expansion and European erasure

From within the context of the planned expansion of the European Union (EU) to include the 12 applicant states from central and eastern Europe and the predicted reduction of the European financial support given to the UK, the article draws on empirical data to explore the impact of the European Social Fund (ESF) on the further education sector and the process of widening participation. Despite the significance of the ESF in implementing vocational education and training (VET) policy, it has been consistently erased by both the Conservative and Labour administrations. Whereas this erasure can be traced back to Britain's membership in 1973, the focus of the article is on the period 1997-2000, for Labour's Welfare to Work policies draw heavily on the financial support given by the EU through the ESF. It is suggested that, whereas the continued erasure of the Fund can be contextualised by the continued (and politically contentious) membership of the EU, its public erasure enables it to play a vital, flexible and unaccountable role in the VET policies of Conservative and Labour administrations

The European Social Fund and the EU: Flexibility, growth, stability

This book is based on an original and sustained analysis of European Commission policy texts related to the European Social Fund (ESF) and its broader educational, socio-economic and political context. The work is based on a rigorous library and internet search covering 1957 to 2000. The critical discursive analysis provides a theorization of the significance of vocational education and training policy within the wider socio-economic and political construction of the European Union, in particular the policy-making and implementing relationship between the Commission and the Member State

Lifelong learning and the knowledge economy: Those that know and those that do not - The discourse of the European Union

This article is based on a textual analysis of European Commission documents that, from 1993 to 2006, construct the discourses of lifelong learning and the knowledge economy. Exploring an apparent conceptual laxity, it finds absolute consistency in the construction of two categories of learner: the high knowledge-skilled learner (graduate/postgraduate) for the knowledge economy , and the low knowledge-skilled learner located in (or beyond) the knowledge society . The low knowledge-skilled learners are not only those at risk, they are increasingly constructed as the risk. The analysis suggests that the binary classification is initially classed and raced - and only then is it gendered. In contrast, labour market studies of the knowledge economy, providing either gendered or national data, obscure the vital cross-cutting matrix of social class, 'race' and age. The article advocates further studies of lifelong learning practices and labour market data based on finely-crossed analyses of social class, poverty, age and race. © 2006 British Educational Research Association

Working-class women on an Access course: Risk, opportunity and (re)constructing identities

Framed by discourses of lifelong learning and widening participation, further education Access to University courses attract mature students from a range of social backgrounds. This paper focuses on eight women students who, to varying degrees, share educational and occupational histories and aspirations. We explore their experiences of the Access programme by referring to developing learner and class identities and related femininities. This transitional phase is not a straightforward one of simply shedding old identities and donning unproblematic new ones, but is instead a period of reflexivity and risk, confusion and contradiction. Based on interviews held on termly basis throughout the one-year course, we draw on an analysis of risk to examine the gendered complexities of transitional class and learner identities and developing educational histories. In so doing, we challenge the assumption that a changing learner identity necessitates a corresponding shifting class identity