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This article considers how neoliberalism has created a reductionist view of lifelong learning in the UK focused on upskilling workers for the labour market. This critical policy analysis uses Marx's theory of labour-power, as conceptualised by Glenn Rikowski, to examine the Skills and Post-16 Education Act, 2022 and to identify its ideological roots, its distribution of power, resources and knowledge, and the potential effect it will have on inequality. Findings indicate that while the Act aims to make it easier for adults to study more flexibly, not all adults will have the labour-power attributes and financial resources to access the higher-level qualifications prioritised for funding. This article argues that the Act represents a general deepening of neoliberalism in lifelong learning that will further stratify adult education and increase inequalities. This article concludes that policy has shifted from widening participation in lifelong learning linked to social enrichment and the development of democratic citizenship, to widening participation in higher levels of education and training aimed at enhancing labour-power for the capitalist labour market.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of the change in the vision of vocational education within the scope of the "Modernization of Vocational and Technical Education Project" (MTEM) and "Strengthening the Vocational Education and Training System" (MEGEP) financed by the EU, which was concluded by the Ministry of National Education. Vocational education is a type of education that increases the employability of students by providing vocational skills and is very important in the economic development of countries. Vocational education has gained even more importance in recent years due to the increasing need for human resources. This increasing importance obliges to take some decisions about education locally and to transfer some responsibilities to local administrations as a means of development and development. In addition to this, it is necessary to set standards for each occupational group for an advanced vocational education and citizens to take responsibility for a qualified vocational education. In the relevant literature review, it was seen that there are limited studies that evaluate the policies and practices vocational education that Turkey has been involved in and implemented in the European Union harmonization process in a holistic manner. In this study, which was conducted based on qualitative research method, a holistic single case design was used and the data was analyzed by document analysis method. A total of seven documents were reviewed within the scope of the study. This study evaluates the studies on the development and standardization of the vocational education system through the projects made on this subject and sheds light on the development of the last twenty years.

This qualitative study examined how a selected sample of 15 to 16 year-old Norwegian pupils experience Bildung (all-around development) and education in their schooling, and how those experiences are in coherence with the intended curriculum policy goals as stated in the latest Norwegian curriculum reform. Wolfgang Klafki's operationalisation of Bildung into dimensions of self-determination, co-determination and solidarity were used to examine pupils' experiences regarding Bildung. Further, to compare the pupils' experiences with the intentions of the curriculum policy Gert Biesta's concepts of qualification, socialisation and subjectification were applied. The main findings indicate that students are concerned with Bildung in terms of co-determination, but to a lesser extent with self-determination and solidarity. The pupils are preoccupied with school subjects and that subjects should have a specific functionality for them. The research showed that it is the domain of qualification and socialisation that concerns the students the most, while they are less concerned with the domain of subjectification. It is concluded that in light of the study findings, there seems to be a lack of coherence between the intended education policy goals as stated in the Norwegian core curriculum and the formal school experiences of pupils.

Skills-based education can provide a way forward to sustainable development in a developing country. It is a hopeful scenario that more than 60% of the population of Pakistan is less than 30 years of age and almost half of them are under 15 years of age. It is important for the policymakers and planners to learn from the societies where human resource development is integrated in educational planning at secondary and higher secondary schools level. The paper at hand presents the policy analysis part of a bigger study that was conducted for proposing changes in the current policies and practices of technical and vocational education in Pakistan. To fulfill this purpose three of the best models of technical and vocational education were reviewed and a comparative analysis was conducted to identify the adaptable policy measures in Pakistan. The three models reviewed and compared were from Germany, Switzerland, and South Korea. This paper presents the analysis of policies in the three aforementioned countries including the implementation strategy proposed; as well as lessons learned for improving the policy of technical and vocational education in Pakistan. This article is based on one part of a larger study.

In this study, it is aimed to examine adult education policies in Turkey based on the views of managers, teachers, qualified instructors and trainees and to present a conceptual model for a future-based adult education system. The study is a case study and has the single nested case study design. Adult education policies in Turkey, which is the single case of the study; is considered in the dimensions of policy and strategy, organizational structure and implementation. By using semi-structured interview technique in the study, data on the features of a future-based adult education system were collected from a total of 32 managers, teachers, qualified instructors and trainees who played a role in the adult education system in Turkey and were selected through stratified purposeful sampling. Content analysis, one of the qualitative data analysis methods, was used for the analysis of the data. In consequence of the study, certain findings related to the basic features of a future-based adult education system have been reached particularly in the dimensions of policy and strategy, organizational structure and implementation, educational qualifications, human capital education and sustainable development, organizational autonomy, access and participation, teaching methods and techniques and content. As a result of the study, it is suggested for the implementers that a restructuring process should be initiated towards a productive, employable, self-sufficient and sustainable economic structure in adult education. As for the researchers, quantitative and qualitative studies are also recommended in the dimensions of human capital education, sustainable development, global change and developments, and 21st century skills.

This paper follows on from the previous bulletin (Redford 2022), which covered the education remit of the Parliament's Education, Children and Young Peoples Committee between September 2021 and January 2022. The following bulletin covers the major pieces of work of the Education, Children and Young People Committee from February 2022 to January 2023. [For the previous bulletin, see EJ1367330.]

This article analyses the development and implementation of policies that aim at improving the 'recognition of prior learning' (RPL) in the vocational education and training (VET) systems of Sweden and Switzerland. It argues that the evolution of RPL policies and schemes needs to be analysed in relation to educational expansion, which creates pressure on educational policy makers to provide alternative forms of access to qualifications. It furthermore underlines that actors who have profited from the scarcity value of their educational qualifications are likely to oppose alternative forms of access that would devalue their qualifications through educational inflation. The article's argument thus contrasts with those that attribute the slow expansion of RPL to either a lack of political will or epistemological constraints. Linking the growing political economic literature on skill formation with an Archerian perspective on educational change, the article also shows that, despite the statist and collective skill formation systems having some trends in common, the design and implementation of RPL has evolved differently in each.

This article contributes to a better theoretical understanding of the social processes underlying the development and implementation of schemes to improve the recognition of prior learning (RPL) in vocational education and training (VET). It traces the global diffusion of RPL, and then analyses the formulation of RPL policies and design and implementation of RPL schemes in four case study countries (Bangladesh, North-Macedonia, Sweden and Switzerland). The article draws on historical institutionalism and Margaret Archer's work on educational change to argue that the design and implementation of RPL schemes are strongly dependent on the status of VET qualifications in education systems and labour markets.

Sweden has made great strides in school librarianship, particularly in the area of legislation and policy. School libraries are now mandated, and curriculum indicates where school librarians should play a role. School libraries must be accountable to two sets of agencies, and oversight mainly occurs at the municipal level. The main challenge currently is the lack of school librarians. The author examined the practices of the Borås Högskolan School of Library and Information Science faculty, and collaborated with their school librarian program faculty to address this shortage and the preparation needs of school librarians. Several recommendations emerged from this work.

Continuing to study mathematics throughout schooling is considered important in most developed countries, where mathematics is incorporated within the curriculum until school-leaving age. By comparison, in England, relatively few post-16 (upper secondary) students study mathematics once it becomes optional. Core Maths qualifications, introduced in England in 2014, are intended to help increase post-16 mathematics participation. This paper uses data from a three-year, mixed-methods, longitudinal study to investigate a perceived benefit of the qualifications: the support Core Maths might give to other curriculum subjects in post-16 students' programmes. Amongst teachers and students, we find a widespread conviction that studying Core Maths benefits students' other subjects contemporaneously, whilst in national data from Core Maths students we find no evidence yet of enhanced examination attainment in other qualifications. We suggest that Core Maths impacts positively on students in ways which could be more usefully, and accurately, emphasised in promoting the course.

There have been repeated attempts to establish mathematics qualifications for lower attaining students aged 16 years and over on vocational pathways in England. In 2004, the Tomlinson Report proposed Functional Mathematics and this paper examines the trajectory of this qualification (later Functional Skills mathematics) through analysis of policy literatures over the last twenty years and empirical data from two studies in Further Education colleges. For a time, Functional Skills mathematics flourished and was becoming valued by many stakeholders but the privileging of GCSE Mathematics in recent policy has affected its status and uptake. It is important to understand this waxing and waning trajectory if future skills policy is to have better chances of long-term success. Key challenges include the unsuccessful integration of Functional Skills with the established mathematics curriculum, the difficulty of achieving qualification recognition across the vocational-academic divide and the negative unintended consequences of linked policy decisions. Raising the adult skills base is currently a policy priority in England and understanding these challenges to a skills-based qualification that is more aligned to the needs of vocational education than to schools is important.

In 2018, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority amended its regulatory framework in order to formally recognise micro-credentials. The rules provide a definition, credit value limits, and permission to publish on the NZQA website. The rules apply to Tertiary Education Organisations, leaving universities to establish their own micro-credential recognition schemes. There is provision in the rules for international providers, and non-TEO providers working within New Zealand, to seek equivalency for other micro-credentials. A non-doctrinal policy law framework was adopted to assess the adoption of micro-credentials by the NZQA. It included establishing a timeline of vocational education reform, reviewing currently registered micro-credentials, and identifying unresolved issues that may impact upon their future uptake in New Zealand. They include concerns about disaggregation of qualifications, avoidance of unnecessary replication of learning, and managing expectations about the future recognition and valuation of micro-credentials.

State policies regarding workers' education and the education and training of adults and communities have been hugely influenced by the political and ideological perspectives and approaches that have informed such policies from the onset of the post-apartheid period. These approaches have had pervasively negative effects on especially workers' education. Yet, there is a powerful and instructive legacy of theorisation and practice that suggests other possibilities towards the development of a progressive, even radical, agenda for workers' education and its associated forms. These possibilities have been abandoned by the prevailing regime of policy and practice, which could have drawn on the work of trade unions, progressive social movements and organisations, including some of their negative practices. We consider these historical possibilities briefly with a view to opening up a discussion about the possibilities they represent for educational theory and practice.

Established in 2009, Swedish Higher Vocational Education (HVE) gives employers an opportunity to initiate state-funded but locally conceptualised and managed training programmes. This article investigates the system, the ideas used in policy to mandate this arrangement of vocational education and training (VET) and the institutional relations of power and control between stakeholders that it represents. Fourteen Swedish educational policy documents relating to post-secondary VET and the establishment of HVE were analysed. The findings show that policy has placed much of the power and control over HVE with employers and that both public and private education providers are dependent on employers. The system does not create any institutional relations between trade unions and HVE. Nor does it encourage employers to collaborate more comprehensively than locally regarding single programmes, to conceptualise them and their curricula. Hence, the qualifications and positions of HVE graduates in enterprises, unlike those of graduates from initial VET in upper secondary education, are not negotiated by the stakeholders in the conventional Swedish model, where national employers' organisations and trade unions are central actors. The findings also reveal that the HVE students, in policy documents, are construed as input material that, through training, are turned into products with exchange value -- into commodities.

This article examines the purposes UNESCO, OECD and EU historically have attributed to adult education and learning. The aim is to explore changes in international adult education and learning policies from the 1970s until the present day and outline how different international organisations have pushed for specific conceptualisations of what 'adult education and learning is good for'. The analysis draws on Biesta's domains of educational purpose to demonstrate how the functions of adult education and learning have changed as the welfare state has transformed into a neoliberal competition state. Based on an analysis of key policy documents, the article shows how each of the organisations has sought to set an agenda in line with its founding visions. UNESCO pushing for an agenda centred on subjectification and the aim of empowering the individual, but also including strong elements of both qualification and socialisation. OECD, on the other hand, having a more narrow understanding, seeing the purpose of adult education and learning as qualification for the labour market as part of a growth ideology. Finally, EU pushing both socialisation of European citizens and labour market qualifications. The analysis shows how, over the decades, adult education and learning policy has narrowed to focus on a primarily instrumental purpose, which creates new attributed meaning for both the purpose of socialisation and subjectification.

In this article we explore Australian policymaker perspectives on the quality assurance of career development (CD) programmes in schools. We found that Australian policymakers are concerned about the quality of CD provision in schools and have a wide range of approaches that they deploy to ensure and assure quality at the school level. Quality assurance within the country is focused on the qualifications and professionalism of the people delivering career development programmes rather than on systemic or organisational quality. We also found that the range of quality assurance tools that are deployed by such policymakers varies across the different Australian jurisdictions and is influenced by geography, the size of the jurisdiction and the level of priority given to career guidance.

School management gets use of human and material resources to ensure equality of opportunity in education. Financial and information resources as well as staff of the schools may be inadequate. The schools with a wealthy environment can offer rich programs and educational activities to their students, while others aim to apply only basic academic programs and are insufficient to offer additional programs. In this context, this study aims to determine the views of school principals and members of the board of school-parent partnership related to the school economy. The research was designed according to qualitative research method. The phenomenological approach method was used in the research. The data of the study were collected from 12 principals working in different types of high schools through semi-structured interview technique. The research concluded that school principals or members of the board of school-parent partnership have an effective environment, they should be successful in communication and persuasion skills and be sociable; school principals need new regulations to meet the urgent needs of school; the importance of the usefulness of school buildings and therefore paying attention opinions of school principals and teachers in the building process of the schools will lead to the reduction of the school principals' workload in the future and so they allocate time and efforts for improving the academic success of students; reasons that affect donation to the school can be regarding with selfish or unselfish intentions; ways persuading donors such as being honest and keeping words, the power of motivation, producing projects in school.

The distinction between external assessment and internal assessment underpins a major reform to vocational qualifications underway in England. To be approved by the Department for Education, vocational qualifications must now include a minimum proportion of external assessment, regardless of subject. This paper discusses the nature and implications of this constraint on qualification design. First, it clarifies the meaning of external assessment and the key arguments underpinning the reform. Second, it evaluates the use and implementation of this blanket rule. The final section discusses the nature of internal assessment in more detail, highlighting its heterogeneity and potential advantages over external assessment.

A-level music, a qualification taken most often in English and Welsh school contexts around the age of 18, has been a long-standing feature of the musical training of many musicians. Historically bound up with Western European Art Music, the qualification has somewhat broadened its horizons in recent times, though with mixed success in opening up new ways of thinking about music. Recent research has highlighted the seemingly precarious nature of A-level music in many English schools. The reasons for this picture of decline are highly complex and difficult to disentangle, and are part of a much broader diminishing of creative subjects in the school curriculum. Decreasing numbers of A-level music entries run somewhat counter to popular policy discourse, which celebrates flagship announcements of £79 million given to Music Education Hubs in 2019-2020, and 2018 survey results that reported more than 700,000 children learning to play a musical instrument through music hub provision. However, behind these headlines, although there are many children having the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, few continue through to A-level and beyond. Despite its declining numbers, A-level music is recognised as a valuable qualification amongst music teachers, offering something distinct from graded music examinations and other Level 3 musical qualifications. This article presents the results of a recent nationwide survey of A-level music teachers to offer an insight into teacher perceptions of current A-level music specifications, the extent to which it prepares students for entry into higher musical education, and its appropriateness for aspiring young musicians.

We present an analysis regarding Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and their relation with indicators of academic results in bachelor's degree programs offered in state public universities in Mexico. This work is non experimental, cross-sectional, and correlational. The goal is to determine significant relations between variables: educational programs that incorporate telematics in their programs and courses of study, qualifications, withholding rates, completion rates, professional integration, along with graduates and employers satisfaction. The data is formed by 58 universities that presented their Program of Quality Strengthening in Education Institutions (PROFOCIE) projects before Ministry of Public Education (SEP) in 2015; and were processed in the statistic package SPSS, obtaining correlation coefficients. These results showed significant relation to withholding rates and student and graduates satisfaction, even though a significant relation was not found in degree indicators, completion rates, and professional integration.

The engagement of quality assurance in the recognition process of overseas qualifications became an emerging issue in Asian nations with the increased interest in student mobility in the region in the 21st Century. This study explores the links between quality assurance and qualification recognition, and approaches adopted within national regulatory frameworks in the Asia Pacific region from the perspective of quality assurance agencies. Three major findings are obtained. First, governments are primarily responsible for academic qualification recognition in Asia. Second, professional qualification recognition is heavily restricted by governments due to nationalism and protectionism within the job market. Third, a divergence model between quality assurance and qualification recognition exists in the Asian context.

This article considers the concept of Competence as applied to educational theory and policy, and illuminates the possibility of significant variations in meaning. Referring to Wittgenstein's distinctions between transitive and intransitive uses of notions and Holland's description of mastery, the article argues in favour of two senses in which someone can be described as being competent: (i) as expressive of a value judgment; and (ii) as pointing to a person's (formal) qualifications. While the latter opens a path towards different forms of measurements of competence, being competent as a value judgment eludes any such treatment. Making this distinction, it is argued that competence is a less illuminative theoretical term than, for example, the pair of concepts "Bildung" versus "Ausbildung" ((self-)subjectivation vs training), that has been used in the Continental tradition in order to describe a similar distinction. With examples from educational contexts, the article demonstrates that the moment educational theory is using one word for two meanings, this central distinction in education is either concealed or forgotten. Focusing on competence purely as an empirically assessable notion risks playing into the hands of instrumentalising education.

A recent government move to increase numbers of students taking post-16 (post-compulsory) mathematics in England saw 2930 students being awarded the first Core Maths (CM) qualifications in 2016, the number rising to 9027 in 2019. This paper uses qualitative data, from a study investigating the successes and challenges of these new qualifications in their initial period of implementation, to explore perspectives on how the new qualification is being positioned within the existing post-16 curriculum structure. First- and second-order effects of the policy are considered, particularly in relation to the dichotomy between CM and the longstanding, highly academic, A-level Mathematics. Our findings reveal a positive regard for many aspects of CM. However, the systemic processes by which certain students are manoeuvred onto the CM course, and the resulting opportunities for progression of those students, could be interpreted as restrictive, despite the benefits for students of new opportunities for pursuing mathematics study.

As the prevalence of service-learning (S-L) within higher education institutions grows across the globe, it makes sense to explore, describe and discuss the recent situation in Spain. As a relatively new pedagogy, S-L has gained prominence in Spanish higher education since its emergence in the early 2000s, and it is increasingly used. This article analyses S-L in higher education in Spain with the purpose of understanding the expression of this promising teaching strategy. The paper is based on documentary analysis of key documents from the last official conference of the S-L that took place in Bilbao (2013). Data was analyzed using thematic analysis and grounded theory, with Atlas.Ti. The process of data analysis was based on a thematic framework of three categories: [1] S-L University Qualifications, [2] S-L Institutionalization status, and [3] S-L Possibilities and Positive effects. This analysis can deepen understanding of the S-L pedagogy, improve practice and create a framework for future research.

Much has been written about the sustained attempts by successive governments to professionalise the early years sector over the past 20 years in England. A feature of these policy interventions has been to focus on creating a graduate workforce to improve academic outcomes for young children. In this article, the authors draw on data from their recent Froebel Trust-funded project, which involved interviews with 33 early years practitioners, to first explore the challenges facing state-maintained early years settings in contrasting geographical contexts in England, including rural, suburban and urban, as they work towards achieving compliance with the recent policy aim of one graduate in each of their settings. Second, the authors use policy enactment theory to inform their analysis of senior staff members' perceptions of tensions and opportunities created by having a graduate workforce in state-maintained early years settings. Third, the authors tentatively explore how to reconceptualise staff education and training with existing, experienced early years staff that would re-emphasise Froebel-informed approaches to enable practitioners to theorise their practice in a move towards what the authors have termed in this article as 'developmental professionalism'. The data shows that there is uneven access to higher education in contrasting geographical contexts for those professionals seeking to gain graduate status, and the authors examine the implications of this for early years practitioners and managers attempting to access graduate qualifications.

Inspired by Ontario's burgeoning interest in postsecondary student mobility, this article examines how elements of Europe's Bologna Process can help bridge the college--university divide of Ontario's postsecondary system. Via discourse analysis of relevant qualification frameworks and program standards, it argues that the current system disadvantages students by failing to recognize that the Ontario advanced (three-year) diploma in Architectural Technology is equivalent to a baccalaureate-level qualification in the international context. The article concludes by discussing the larger significance of these findings in terms of ongoing debates about the "changing places" (HESA, 2012) of degrees in the Canadian higher education system.

The construction of European education policy builds on a widely shared goal of transparency in qualifications, upheld by the popular narrative of mobile students endowed with scholarships from the EU Erasmus programme, which allow them to transfer credit points between universities and across national borders. EU education policy is increasingly inscribed in National Qualification Frameworks (NQF). Their European umbrella is coined the European Qualification Framework (EQF), which is linked to a discourse on or even shift to Learning Outcomes; functioning as a tool for the displacement of input to output categories in education systems with a view to make qualifications more transparent. This form of governance situates Learning Outcomes as a tool for policy reform that intentionally should affect all educational and administrative levels of European education. The article shows that the multitude of governance instruments used to promote a shift to Learning Outcomes are so varied that EU education policy has no apparent need of new instruments for this purpose. The fact that Learning Outcomes are linked to EU policy instruments of the Open Method of policy-Coordination and destined for several sectors of education, increases the likelihood that they will be translated into modified learning practices. Yet, there is a danger that governance of Learning Outcomes succumbs to a pitfall of declaratorily placing Learning Outcomes in the middle of learning practices in all subsectors of education, without sufficiently proving their real novelty and regulatory functions.