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This paper focuses on educational provision within vocational training projects for the unemployed. In particular it explores the role of adult basic education, 'liberal' education and 'radical' adult education within British vocational training projects for unemployed women funded by the European Social Fund (ESF). It is based on the case studies of three ESF funded projects. The paper first considers the educational and vocational programmes of the three projects. It then focuses on the implications of the findings with regard to the current changes within ESF policy, the predictions of continued long-term unemployment, the Euro-concept of 'social exclusion' and their combined impact on the post-compulsory vocational sector

This paper provides a critical overview of the development of European education and training policy and its relationship to the discourse of 'equality'. This development reflects significant shifts within the European Union's discourse of economic growth and peaceful unity--that is, the economic and social concerns of the European Commission. Interwoven into both these discourses is the European discourse of 'equality'.In the first section of the paper the historic development of the Commission's education and training policy is considered in relation to the discourses of equal opportunities and social exclusion, paying particular attention to the influence of the Action programmes for equal opportunities between women and men. This is followed by a brief section in which the recent interpretation of EC policy by the UK government is examined. In the final section the focus is on the equality discourse itself and the consequences of its application for under-educated long-term unemployed people. The paper concludes that although the differences between equal opportunities and social exclusion can appear as radical redefinition, they are nevertheless simply discursive shifts in a fundamentally unchanged equality discourse. Their significance, however, lies in the need for such an apparent shift.