In England, there is little agreement on what is the primary purpose of vocational education: is it for training workers to meet the needs of the economy, is it to prepare students for independence as adults or is it for giving a second chance to students who have been unsuccessful in academic education? Moreover, what is it that makes vocational education different from academic education: is it different because it is focused on training for a specific occupation, is it different because it is considered to be easier, or is it simply different because it is not perceived as academic?
Issues like these have rarely been properly addressed in England, but since 2018 Edge Foundation has hosted more than twenty debates on the principles and philosophy of English vocational education to address precisely these kinds of fundamental questions. These events have been lively, stimulating and worthwhile and information about all of them is available here. Now, to allow even more people to engage with these important topics in English vocational education, there will soon be an edited collection of writing based on the Edge debates, published by Routledge. This book of short essays will be called Understanding English Vocational Education: The principles and purpose, and it is being edited by Professor Ben Kotzee from the University of Birmingham and Professor Kevin Orr from the University of Huddersfield.
The Edge debates brought together people from awarding organisations, researchers, teachers from further education colleges, senior sector leaders and many others from England and elsewhere to discuss the ideas and values that underpin vocational education. Even gathering that diverse a group of people is unusual, and it has encouraged assumptions to be challenged, just as we hope the new book will. While new policy initiatives have been central to many discussions at the Edge events, the debates have been distinguished by their focus on what concepts shape policy and practice in English vocational education, not just the detail of some new government initiative.
Similarly, the new book’s consistent emphasis on principles and philosophy will enable readers to look beneath the instability associated with the flux of policy to discover the issues that persist and that may matter most. Among the book’s contributors are many who have presented their perspectives at the Edge debates, including Ken Spours from UCL, Prue Huddleston from Warwick University, Paul Newton from Ofqual and Sian Owen from Pearson. There will also be chapters on the ideas that inform vocational education policy and practice in other countries, with writers from Singapore, Australia and Germany amongst other places. These international chapters will provide comparisons to the English experience, so readers will be able to recognise features that characterise different systems. Other chapter titles include The Idea of ‘Vocational Assessment’, The Discourse of Craft, How We Teach and Why, and The Purposes of Vocational Education.
This book is mainly aimed at practitioners in vocational settings including new or trainee teachers in colleges or private training providers, as well as other professionals entering the sector. Sector leaders and policymakers may also benefit from reading the collection, which is being written to introduce the concepts around an issue and to discuss how those concepts have shaped policy and practice.
The book’s focus on principles and purpose is unique, mirroring the debates from which this collection of writing has emerged.
The editors’ intention is to engage readers who are just encountering these issues, so the writing will be accessible. Nevertheless, we also want to expose the complexity involved in many of these persistently relevant topics which can cut across the economic, cultural and social. The chapter writers are currently submitting their first drafts to the editors, and we plan to hand over the final manuscript to the publisher in the summer. We hope the book will be published in late 2026 or early 2027
Written by
Professor Kevin Orr, University of Huddersfield