The language used in education shapes policy, practice, and perceptions. Edge’s latest series asks, ‘What’s in a word?’ and scrutinises the impact of the terminology we commonly employ.
Employer engagement within the education and training system has a long history, both in terms of employers’ formal and informal involvement, increasingly so throughout the past one hundred years However, the language used to describe these relationships has subtly varied over the last 40 years. Is anything signified within policy documents by specific terms and phrases such as: ‘employer-led’ (see Field, 1999); ‘employers at the heart of the system’ (see Huddleston and Laczik, 2012); or ‘employers in the driving seat’ (Huddleston and Laczik, 2018)? The most recent reprise of this familiar refrain ‘a partnership with employers at its heart’ appeared in the King’s Speech (2024) when describing the proposed establishment of Skills England. To what extent are these the same thing - or is it laziness in policy drafting?
A useful starting point would be a clearer identification of what is intended when seeking to enlist employers’ engagement with the education and training system. Is it an ‘arm’s length’ activity, for example giving careers talks, or is it a sustained and deeper commitment, for example involvement in the development of technical qualifications? Employer engagement covers many different activities, the majority of which are not employer-led. They are invitations, even exhortations, to join the party on a voluntary basis but there is no regulatory requirement for them to do so (Gleeson and Keep, 2004; Keep, 2020). The term is also used in different contexts. For example, within general education, activities are unlikely to be employer-led but may include some form of partnership arrangement sometimes driven by schools’ or colleges’ requirement to fulfil work placement targets (within 16-19 ‘enrichment’ activity). Within vocational and technical education there has been an increasing emphasis on the role of employers within qualification development, joining employer boards, designing ‘live projects’, even participating in student assessment (T Levels being a current example). The extent to which such activities can be truly employer-led is questionable since much of this involves technical expertise in pedagogy, qualifications, and assessment. Of course, employers can always make suggestions, but that is different from taking a leading role or being ‘in the driving seat’.
Another problem arises when attempting to reach consensus on ‘what employers want’. ‘Employer-led’ assumes some shared understanding and vision of what is required. Employers are not a homogeneous group, the requirements in one sector may be quite different from the needs of another (Huddleston and Keep, 1999). What employers increasingly require is a combination of key subject knowledge, interpersonal skills and competencies (variously formulated as lists of ‘employability skills’[JP1] [PH2] ) and, ideally, work experience or work-based learning (Andrews and Higson, 2008; Priest, 2019). This aspiration is to some extent expressed within the Apprenticeship Standards ‘skills, knowledge and behaviours’. To describe policy as employer-led suggests that consensus has been reached with employers as gatekeepers. Employer-led does not imply that all gates have been cleared, there are still several layers of scrutiny and regulation to overleap and, from an employer perspective, disappointments to be overcome (Ertl and Stasz, 2010).
Employers and training: what caused the parting of the ways?
In all these variations of employer engagement, the employer is an external player to training and needs to be brought into the education process. But this is far from the historical default. The guilds and livery companies provide an early example of employer-led education and training predominant in Europe between the 11th and 16th centuries. Guilds acted as gatekeepers to a trade or craft, including the training of apprentices. No formal system of qualifications, as we would recognise them today, existed. Achievement depended upon time served, completion of a masterpiece, a licence to practice and the initiation and socialisation of the individual to the craft or trade. A further example of employer-led activity is provided by the establishment in 1878 of the City and Guilds of London Institute in response to the need expressed by its founding livery companies ‘to support individuals and businesses by improving professional training under a national system of technical education’ (City and Guilds, 2020). Through the new Institute, the teaching of technical and practical subjects was encouraged, and employers were heavily engaged in syllabus design and examinations. (Huddleston, 2020)
The advent of compulsory education and the subsequent raising of school leaving ages, to fourteen under the 1918 Education Act; to 15 in 1926 (Haddow Report); to 16 in 1972 and to eighteen by 2015, required urgent consideration of what provision should be available to these young people. Given the importance of ensuring that taxpayer funded education expansion was accountable to national goals such as economic growth, there were concerns through the 1960s and beyond that the quality of provision by employers was variable. For example, one commission argued that an ‘apprenticeship is a farce and provides less training than a properly constituted course lasting only a few months’ (1968). Securing formalised quality necessitated the state organised expertise of educational professionals, and later greater accountability and monitoring apparatus.
This, however, introduced a tension between provision and employers’ expectations. Employers, it was hoped, would provide opportunities for young people to have direct experience of the workplace through placements, access to careers information, and other work-related activity, as promoted in the Newsom Report, 1963. However, there was no statutory duty on employers to engage. Subsequently, and increasingly, interventions have been government-led, with the hope that employers would rally to the call, so that the so-called education-industry divide might be bridged (Field, 2019). However, as Green (1997) suggests effective systems require co-operation between all social partners in the provision of vocational education and training rather than the voluntarist model in England. Within this context it is difficult to support the contention that interventions are employer-led.
Conclusions
The use of the term employer-led should be avoided unless it implies significant involvement and even then, employers are usually invitees rather than hosts at the table. More clarity is required in policy drafting to ensure that what is implied by ‘employer-led’ is understood by those involved in delivery and practice on the ground. Historically, there has been a disconnection between them.
Little can be truly employer-led because of the complexity of the task and of the expertise and commitment required in time and resource. It is dependent upon a coalition of the willing, mainly large companies with dedicated personnel, or as one FE construction lecturer recently reported from an employer board: ‘those who shout the loudest’ (private interview with author). However, there are many forms of involvement and partnership that employers can have with the education and training system, although not ‘in the driving seat’. Some challenges exist since engagement is on a voluntary basis. If they are invited, there must be clarity about what is being asked of them, or not asked of them, the time commitment involved and the potential benefits that accrue to companies, employers, and employees from such engagement (Huddleston and Branch-Haddow, 2022). The term employer-led suggests significant active involvement and control over outcomes, not just involvement in consultation. Is this what employers are being asked to do? Or are they merely making up numbers to fulfil policy goals – not star guests but B-listers?
Prue Huddleston is Emeritus Professor and formerly Director of the Centre for Education and Industry, University of Warwick. She is a Governor and Chair of Academic Quality and Standards Committee at Birmingham Metropolitan College. Her research interests include: 14-19 curriculum, vocational education and qualifications and work-related learning. She has published widely on vocational pedagogy and assessment. Before joining the University of Warwick, she worked within the FE sector, as a teacher and manager, also within community and outreach education.
Next time: Ben Blackledge, WorldSkills UK, considers: ‘Is there a problem with ‘Vocational’ and ‘Technical’?
References
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