Teachers’ knowledge and experiences of Information Advice and Guidance: some implications for the current policy context in England

Good information and career guidance about what post-compulsory educational routes are available and where these routes lead is important in ensuring that young people make choices that are most appropriate to their needs and aspirations. Yet the Association of School and College Leaders (2011) express fears that future provision will be inadequate. This paper reports the findings from an on-line survey of 300 secondary school teachers, and follow up telephone interviews with 18 in the South East of England which explored teachers’ experiences of delivering post-compulsory educational and career guidance and their knowledge and confidence in doing so. Results suggest that teachers lack confidence in delivering information, advice and guidance outside their own area of specialism and experience. In particular, teachers knew little in relation to alternative local provision of post-16 education and lacked knowledge of more non-traditional, vocational routes. This paper will therefore raises important policy considerations with respect to supporting teachers’ knowledge, ability and confidence in delivering information in relation to future pathways and career guidance

'Let the Right Ones In!': Widening Participation, Academic Writing and the Standards Debate in Higher Education

This paper challenges the frequently expressed concern, post-1992, that widening participation (WP) has contributed to a general ‘dumbing down’ of higher education in English universities *(Burke, 2005; Leathwood, 2010). In particular, it explores the implications of a long-standing ‘moral panic’ (Cohen, 1972) about the poor quality of students’ academic writing, particularly in the ‘new’ universities, which have been raised in various academic reports and countless media articles. A vampire metaphor is used throughout the paper to highlight ways in which assumptions about these falling standards in undergraduates’ academic writing feed on the foundations of a longstanding, albeit implicit, distrust of the growth in the sector on elitist, ideological grounds. The second half of the paper investigates how academic writing practices, whilst difficult to define, nonetheless wield a ‘disciplinary power’ (Foucault, 1980), over lecturers and students in the academy. This includes a discussion about how a situated, New Literacy Studies (NLS) approach to academic writing development challenges the view that students’ academic writing standards are falling. In contrast, the paper suggests that all universities have a responsibility to acknowledge and develop the different literacies that students, especially widening participation students, bring with them to university. (193

14-16 year olds in further education colleges: lessons for learning and leadership

The views of 14-16 year olds who have undertaken vocational courses in further education, and those of parents and staff raise issues about the ways in which schools and colleges support learning. Staff differ in how they understand vocational education, reflecting not only conceptual differences, but also differences in the market position and interests of their organisation. Nevertheless, the experience of young people in further education is generally seen as very positive. The article suggests that the success is due to a pedagogy which makes use of experiential and social forms of learning in an environment which allows students to connect more fully to a future adult world. The article concludes by exploring the possibilities of making this successful experience more widely available to 14-16 year olds. Government plans are suggested to be inadequate in addressing the degree to which the competitive environment and different cultures will undermine collaborative arrangements

Opportunity and Aspiration, or the Great Deception? The Case of 14-19 Vocational Education

The policy discourse around those young people who are the focus of the 14‑19 agenda in the United Kingdom is one of negativity which frames them as low achievers with low aspirations. In tension with this deficit model, policy offers these young people ‘opportunities’ in the form of a vocational education which, according to the rhetoric, will lead to high-skill, high-paid work and a lifetime of opportunities. Drawing on original empirical research, this article contests the assumption that these young people have low aspirations, arguing that constrained by discourses of negativity and lacking the agency for change, their chances of achieving their aspirations are almost non-existent. Further, it suggests that the rhetoric of ‘opportunity’ is merely smoke and mirrors, a massive deception whereby young people are channelled into the low-pay, low-skill work market in readiness to fulfil economic demands for cheap labour as and when it is needed. It concludes with proposals for change in the 14‑19 and post-compulsory education and training systems which could provide a more equitable and effective framework for young people to achieve their hopes and dreams

Heavy fog in the channel - continent cut off: : reform of upper secondary education from the perspective of English exceptionalism

Recent international studies in upper secondary education (USE) have highlighted the importance and complexities of this phase as it becomes a more universal experience. Here we examine recent trends in USE to provide a context for discussion of the English system, which has been moving from a ‘linked’ to a more ‘tracked’ approach since 2010 through a combination of factors that make it ‘exceptionalist’. We suggest that this change has not been adequately captured in cross-national studies because of its recent nature and because analysis of USE systems has not sufficiently appreciated the multi-dimensional character of this phase of education as it expands. We argue that the wider global trends and pressures in USE are towards integration and unification rather than segregation and tracking. In this context we explore a four-dimensional integrated/unified model for the English USE system that might bring it closer to other systems in the UK and in Europe, thus reducing its exceptionalism and dispelling the ‘fog in the Channel’ [1]. We conclude the paper by arguing that as USE systems expand and become more universal, they require a multi-dimensional analysis and the model discussed here may be appropriate more widely