Editorial

Citation

Holden, R. (2002), "Editorial", Education + Training, Vol. 44 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2002.00444aaa.001

Editorial

In October I attended a conference in Switzerland, more on the deliberations of which in a moment. The location of the conference was timely because in the summer my cuckoo clock, purchased on my first trip abroad as a child, had finally succumbed to old age. The cuckoo had long since ceased to function but the clock itself was testament to the skills of the Swiss in this domain. I was anxious to purchase a replacement and on doing so after the conference, was struck by the similarity to its predecessor. Indeed I would challenge anyone to identify anything different about these two timepieces, other than perhaps the strength of cuckoo itself; alarmingly ear piercing in the new clock.

I take some comfort in finding things like this that haven't really changed in nearly 40 years. In sharp contrast, change was very much a theme of the conference itself. The conference title was "Transitions"; the aim being to discuss how young people make the transition from school to work and professional life. This was my first experience of a conference abroad where not only was the principal medium not English, but also where the audience was predominantly not from the UK. It was refreshing and eye opening to view a familiar problem through, as it were, a new pair of glasses. Thinking back, although hampered somewhat by language difficulties, a key theme sticks in my mind. Several presenters referenced, with some pride, a relatively stable and coherent relationship between education and work, and between educational qualifications and the labour market, within Switzerland (just like their cuckoo clocks perhaps?). It was considered to be a more or less defining feature also of systems in Germany and France. However, at the same time, the relative stability was perceived as increasingly under some pressure. In contrast, UK systems were perceived as ones characterised by relative turbulence. (Unwittingly at the time of submitting a proposed paper to the conference, but perhaps reflecting an uncanny subconscious sense of future timing, the title of my paper at the conference was "Graduate transition into SME employment: a road to nowhere"!) In relation to the perceived challenges I detected a real sensitivity, a real desire and determination to understand the forces at play. Indeed, "transition" appears to be very much at the heart of a European research agenda in this context of the relationship between learning and work.

This sensitivity, this focus, seems lacking in the UK. The relationship between school, further and higher education, and employment or, to put it rather differently, between "academic learning" and "workplace learning", is not as developed as it is in countries like Germany and Switzerland. However, in the context of a UK target for 50 per cent of young people to participate in HE and the rapidly, highly visible, changing nature of work, it is surely an imperative that we raise the profile of this interrelationship. Not, I hasten to add, with a purpose of seeing how we can move closer to a European model but simply to understand the relationship better; to view it in a more positive light, as a rich dynamic, rather than as a source of conflict and antagonism. The UK government's VET agenda appears to have shifted from "training" to "lifelong learning". Fine. But I remain suspicious that this agenda is too narrowly and simplistically focused upon widening participation. What should be central is this very theme of transition; transitions within the education system, transitions from education to employment, and transitions within adult and continuing education.

Incidentally my 17-year-old son provides a much more immediate (and worrying) perspective on transition. "Either that bloody cuckoo goes or I do !".

With these thoughts I welcome readers to the 44th volume of Education + Training

Rick Holden