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This article questions the concept of "education for employment", which constructs a discourse of individual and societal benefit in a knowledge-driven economy. Recent policy emphasis in the European Union promotes the expansion of higher education and short-cycle vocational awards such as the intermediate two-year Foundation Degree recently introduced into England and Wales. Studies of vocational education and training (VET) and the knowledge economy have focused largely on the governance of education and on the development and drift of policy. Many VET programmes have also been considered for their classed, raced and gendered take-up and subsequent effect on employment. This article builds on both fields of study to engage with the finer cross-analyses of gender, social class, poverty, race and citizenship. In its analysis of policy texts the article argues that in spite of a discourse of inclusivity, an expanded higher education system has generated new inequalities, deepening social stratification. Drawing on early analyses of national quantitative data sets, it identifies emerging gendered, classed and raced patterns and considers these in relation to occupationally and hierarchically stratified labour markets, both within and without the knowledge economy.

This article is based on a textual analysis of European Commission documents that, from 1993 to 2006, construct the discourses of lifelong learning and the knowledge economy. Exploring an apparent conceptual laxity, it finds absolute consistency in the construction of two categories of learner: the high knowledge-skilled learner (graduate/postgraduate) for the knowledge "economy," and the low knowledge-skilled learner located in (or beyond) the knowledge "society." The low knowledge-skilled learners are not only those "at" risk, they are increasingly constructed as "the" risk. The analysis suggests that the binary classification is initially classed and raced--and only then is it gendered. In contrast, labour market studies of the knowledge economy, providing either gendered or national data, obscure the vital cross-cutting matrix of social class, "race" and age. The article advocates further studies of lifelong learning practices and labour market data based on finely-crossed analyses of social class, poverty, age and race.

Through a discourse of diversity, specialism, equality and choice, selective schooling is again on the UK education agenda. A previous selection policy operated between 1944 and 1964. The argument that some children are more suited to a vocational education and others to an academic one is evident now and then. This paper focuses on the life-histories of four "50-something" women sent to "bilateral" schools in Bristol, England. With children from the same primary school or street, they found themselves on differing sides of a divide between grammar and secondary-modern education. The paper explores the practices through which White working class children received contrasting experiences of the same school, where different gendered-classed identities, aspirations and expectations were constructed. The co-existence of firmly separated grammar and modern streams within one school allows an analysis of everyday practices of selective schooling, of the means by which one was constantly constructed against the other.

The fifty-year retrospective has led to recent media interest in the comprehensive school. Bristol, located in the south-west of England, is frequently portrayed as an early provider. This article draws on documentary evidence and life-history interviews with ex-pupils to explore this claim. It finds that they were not comprehensive schools, but "selective bilaterals" that, despite including grammar and secondary modern "streams" within the same physical site, constructed, through their curricular and non-curricular practices, a rigid divide between the two. The selective schooling of the bilateral consolidated the classificatory practices that began in primary school. Framed by Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, disposition and classificatory practices, it is a study of explicit "selective" schooling that was reliant not only on key moments of selection, and differentiated curricula, but on everyday practices and signifiers of difference. (Contains 1 figure and 1 note.)

Framed by discourses of lifelong learning and widening participation, further education Access to University courses attract mature students from a range of social backgrounds. This paper focuses on eight women students who, to varying degrees, share educational and occupational histories and aspirations. We explore their experiences of the Access programme by referring to developing learner and class identities and related femininities. This transitional phase is not a straightforward one of simply shedding old identities and donning unproblematic new ones, but is instead a period of reflexivity and risk, confusion and contradiction. Based on interviews held on termly basis throughout the one-year course, we draw on an analysis of risk to examine the gendered complexities of transitional class and learner identities and developing educational histories. In so doing, we challenge the assumption that a changing learner identity necessitates a corresponding shifting class identity.

Explores the European Commission's discourse of gendered equality regarding economic growth and social exclusion, considering its effect on education and training policy. The paper reviews recent commission-policy documents that include discourses of economic growth and peace; explores the relationship between discourses of economic growth, peace, and equality; and discusses recent trends which force unemployed people to attend training programs. (SM)

Discusses the European Social Fund's influence on unemployed women's vocational training. The United Kingdom prioritizes some training applications (traditional male manual skills) over others (training for advancement in traditional female jobs and crucial new technological skills). Occupational gendering and regendering keeps women in low-status, low-pay, and low-prospect jobs. (RLC)

In this editorial the authors comment on the meaning of "lifelong learning" as perceived by the European Union and in Great Britain. The two perceptions share much common ground. Both believe that lifelong learning is directly related to knowledge work and see it in terms of raising the economic status of young men and women. The article also examines aspects of gender, class and race in the pursuit of continuing education. In the U.K. lifelong learning is inextricably linked to the labor market and the development of skills and training for the purposes of enhancing income.

This paper explores the relationship between education, social exclusion and globalization, especially as it is found in the policies of the emergent supranational 'state' or sub-global bloc. The paper leads to an analysis of the discourse of social exclusion, and focuses on the part that education and training (ET) policies play in the individualization, pathologization and criminalization of socially excluded people. Following an initial sketch of the concept of globalization, the paper considers the development of supranational and nation state ET policy. The next section provides a brief sketch of the historic development of supranational ET policy. The final section returns to the main theme of the paper, namely education and the discourse of social exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the implications of the discourse of equal opportunities upon the training policies of the European Social Fund (ESF). Drawing on research findings, the paper focuses on the structures and processes by which the discourse of equal opportunities specifically influences the ESF's Objective 3 vocational training policies for unemployed women. The gender exclusivity of the discourse and lack of class or race analysis leads to the ESF's persistent emphasis on training unemployed working-class women in non-traditional manual skills. The paper has particular implications for those involved in ESF funded training who might, like the women in the case study, be experiencing feelings of unease and self-doubt concerning the achievable outcomes. The argument presented in this paper is that the discourse of equal opportunities itself mitgates against anything more than tokenistic success in terms of training related employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article draws exclusively on European Commission and Member State education and training policy, framed by social and economic policy, to consider their implication for under-educated, long-term unemployed people. The article contextualises European compulsory and post-compulsory education and training within the economic and social policies of the European Commission (EC). The article focuses on the EC's White Paper on Education and Training and on the consideration of the EC's main funding structure for training unemployed people--the European Social Fund (ESF). In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, these policies and structures are subsequently interpreted and further contextualised by individual Member State (MS) governments. The article argues that the late 20th century economic and demographic changes frame both compulsory and post-compulsory education and training policies. The policies recognize these global factors, and repeatedly use the concept of social exclusion to refer to the resulting group based inequalities.

The article explores the ways in which European education and training policies are used in the construction of the European Union. Two central dynamics of tension are identified which are then explored within the education and training related discourses of the European Commission and the Member State governments, The first is the European Union-Member State dynamic, the second is the economic-social dynamic. From within this focus on educational and vocational policy the broad underlying themes of pluralism, values and curriculum change are considered. Three levels of pluralism are identified within the current construction of the European Union. Each level displays differing aspects of the power relationships existing between differing groups, institutions, nation states and economic interests. From the beginning of the European Economic Community in 1958, vocational training policy, linked with the European Social Fund (ESF), has played a consistent role in relation to the economy. Recently, training policy has related more to social issues as well. Compulsory education was finally brought into the European framework through the Maastricht Treaty (1992). Until Maastricht any policies affecting education have been developed through the openings provided either by vocational training, employment or the provision for equal opportunities for men and women. Within the discourses of liberal-democracy, educational and vocational policies play an important constructing role.

Discusses Michel Foucault's localization of power in a women's training center setting in Europe. Discussions on reverse-discourse; Influence of race, class and sexual preference on power, privilege and inequality.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]