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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)

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.