Vocational Courses have spread their wings very much in recent years.
Once the province of those wishing to learn a manual trade, the term now applies right across the employment spectrum and firms place high priority on candidates who have undertaken such a course.
Vocational training is related to the old apprenticeship style of learning a trade. Old style it may be, but forty years ago I counted myself lucky to be an indentured apprentice, and I am still in the same profession today.
With our current world-wide recession and daily news of more people losing their jobs, many workers are re-training for new vocations, often vastly different to anything they have done before.
It can be a stimulating new challenge which diversifies skills and opens up a new window of opportunity.
Most vocational training is provided at local institutes or colleges of technology. The type of training changed over the course of the 20th century and now exists in industries such as tourism, retail, information technology, funeral services, cosmetics and many cottage industries.
The system of vocational education in the UK initially developed independently of the state, with bodies such as the RSA and City & Guilds setting examinations for technical subjects. The Education Act 1944 made provision for a Tripartite System of grammar schools, secondary technical schools and secondary modern schools, but by 1975 only 0.5% of British senior pupils were in technical schools, compared to two-thirds of the equivalent German age group.
Successive recent British Governments have made attempts to promote and expand vocational education. In the 1970s, the Business and Technology Education Council was founded to confer further and higher education awards, particularly to polytechnics. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Conservative Government promoted the Youth Training Scheme, National Vocational Qualifications and General National Vocational Qualifications. However, youth training was marginalised as the proportion of young people staying on in full-time education increased.
In 1994, publicly-funded Modern Apprenticeships were introduced to provide “quality training on a work-based (educational) route”. Numbers of apprentices have grown in recent years and the Department for Children, Schools and Families has stated its intention to make apprenticeships a “mainstream” part of England’s education system.
It is a vast subject, with an equally vast number of choices. Many people in their Third Age have benefited, in fact a friend of mine had to quit show business in her fifties and is now an NVQ Assessor!
Graham Smith for Third Age.
Written by Editor.
