Balancing the skills equation

Geoff Hayward is the Associate Director of the ESRC Research Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE) based at the Universities of Oxford and Warwick, and a Lecturer in Educational Studies at the University of Oxford. Susan James is a Research Officer at SKOPE, Department of Educational Studies, University of Oxford.

Governments worldwide assume that national competitiveness can be improved by developing workforce skills. This book critically examines this 'high skills' vision at both policy and practice levels. It challenges an oversimplified policy rhetoric that underestimates the complexity of the processes involved in developing a skilled workforce.

Producing skills: conundrums and possibilities ~ Geoff Hayward, Susan James and Ken Mayhew; Fit for purpose? Fifty years of VET policy in England ~ Geoff Stanton and Bill Bailey; The European policy regarding education and training: a critical assessment ~ Jean-Luc DeMeulemeester and Denis Rochat; 'I can't believe it's not skill': the changing meaning of skill in the UK context and some implications ~ Ewart Keep and Jonathan Payne; Qualifying for a job? An audit of 14-19 education and training ~ Rosa Fernandez and Geoff Hayward; Does apprenticeship still have meaning in the UK? The consequences of voluntarism and sectoral change ~ Alison Fuller and Lorna Unwin; Tradition and reform: modernising the German dual system of vocational education ~ Hubert Ertl; Learning in the work-place: reappraisals and reconceptions ~ Stephen Billett; Interests, arguments and ideologies: employers' involvement in education business partnerships in the US and the UK ~ Suzanne Greenwald; Coherence in higher education and the European labour market: Bologna and beyond ~ Guy Haug; The expansion of higher education: economic necessity or hyper-inflation? Cecile Deer; Conclusion ~ Geoff Hayward and Susan James.