The key to HE and the labour market?

Challenges and opportunities for hybrid qualifications

International Seminar on Hybrid

Qualifications Institute of Education, July 2011Gayna Davey and Alison Fuller

Overview• Policy background: international and national

• Project aims, approach and conceptual orientation

• The study

• Two competing narratives

• Challenges of the middle ground

• Concluding remarks, HQ and the Wolf Review

Policy backdrop: international

• OECD push for increasing participation in upper secondary and higher education to generate more highly skilled labour needed to ‘deliver’ the knowledge economy

• EU push to increase labour market flexibility and and mobility – EQF, increasing emphasis on ‘permeability’ and progression (HQ project)

Policy Backdrop: EnglandWolf Review of vocational education recommended:

• Continuation of general education (English and Maths to at least GCSE L2 for all) as part of vocational pathways

• Reduction in low-level vocational courses with weak educational and labour market currency

• FT route for 16-19s should

– a) not be occupationally specific and

– b) offer potential for progression to further/higher education and skilled LM

• May 2011, government accepts Wolf’s recommendations

The future is ‘hybrid’?• International/national policies seem to be

supporting hybrid approaches to VET via a ‘best of both worlds’ discourse/narrative perceived to accord with YP & families’ aspirations, the needs of the (knowledge) economy, and assumption that hybrid VET can improving social mobility

• Against this developing policy landscape we have been undertaking an EU Leonardo funded project on Hybrid Qualifications: England, Austria, Denmark and Germany

Project aims/working definition of HQ

• To examine the relationship between higher education, vocational education and the labour market, with a particular focus on the opportunities for transition for those with vocational qualifications.

• To explore the availability and currency of ‘hybrid qualifications’ those that are designed or viewed as providing vocational preparation for and access to the labour market and entry to higher education.

• Strong and weak notions of hybrid qualifications

Our approach involves• Locating HQs in contested English qualification landscape and

drawing on ideas about the interrelationships between social and economic institutions, transition pathways and systems literature (e.g. Kerckhoff 2000, Shavit and Muller 2000, Ianelli and Raffe 2007, Raffe 2008)

So thinking about:

• Degree of stratification, standardisation, permeability and progression in upper secondary/tertiary systems – market segmentation (role of awarding bodies)

• Strength of links between education and employment – occupational specificity, demand, regulation, labour market profile and segmentation

English transition pathwaysHas two distinct post-16 pathway ‘logics’ for minority (approx.

40%)

• Education logic - academic route of GCSEs, A levels, Bachelor degree (approx. 1/3 of age cohort)

• Employment logic – Apprenticeship, occupation-specific, employed status (approx. 6% of age cohort, most L2)

Focus on HQ raises questions about transition pathways for majority

• 24% L3 options (e.g. BTEC, A level/VQ combinations)

• 30% pursuing courses up to L2

• The rest NEET or employed (approx. 7%) (Wolf 2011)

HQs in England: potential to occupy distinctive space?

Our focus on approximately a quarter of the age cohort:

• Level 3

• Qualifications - BTEC and OCR ‘Nationals’

• Frameworks - Advanced Diploma, Advanced Apprenticeship

• Combinations – A levels and VQs

The study

Two phases

1. Deskwork and literature review – country report (Davey and Fuller 2010, http://hq-lll.eu)

2. Small-scale empirical study – country report (Davey and Fuller 2011 forthcoming)

• Aim to explore the conceptual understanding and experience of ‘hybridity’ within the educational system, work-based training provision and the labour market

Scope of our fieldwork 18 key informants and two focus groups

• Policy makers: Department for Education and Department for Business Innovation and Science

• Intermediaries: awarding bodies; UCAS (the organisation responsible for processing university applications); National Apprenticeship Service

• Higher education: programme manager, admissions manager, policy expert

• Employers: a number of managers from a large, local public sector employer

• Sixth-form college: senior manager

• Further education college programme managers/admissions managers/lecturers (focus group)

• Students on BTEC National programmes in FE college (focus group)

Who are the target groups?• Those with average or above average attainment, not the

academic high fliers or those with low levels of attainment

“…um most people will have got sort of Bs and mainly Cs kind of grades…” (HE programme leader)

“Our students are people who don’t like exams! …They want to do it in a practical one and that’s way they choose this type of course.” (BTEC lecturer)

“You don’t get the high fliers [on BTEC courses] but I think that a lot of that is down to parents as well.” (BTEC lecturer)

Making sense of HQs: two competing narratives

• Falling between two stools – a dominant discourse

…..but

• The potential for the ‘best of both worlds’ through a powerful brand

Falling between two stools (1)

“I don’t think it’s [hybrid qualification] a great concept, no. I think they are happy accidents if you like um when they do coincide, but because qualifications are designed for a particular purpose you just need to be careful… you end up trying to be all things to all men, and that’s a fatal mistake to make” (Awarding body 2)

Falling between two stools (2)

“…don’t design a vocational qualification and turn it into an academic qualification. You try to serve two masters and you’ve ended up falling between two stools.” (policy expert)

“…the sort of 14-19 Diplomas are the classic example where they largely haven’t got much credibility with employers. There’s not much… uptake at Level 3 anyway and so they’re not much use in terms of HE progression… they won’t actually… serve anyone very well.” (BIS)

Best of both worlds (1)

“We’ve always had this sort of… it’s a proper hybrid between the NVQ on one side and the A level on the other. I’ve always thought of this as a vocational qualification… it does bring the opportunity for the practitioner to have the best of both worlds. The rigour of an A Level but the flexibility of an NVQ.” (Awarding body 1)

Best of both worlds (2) “…it prepares you for the industry you’re going into…

you’ve got work experience... units that are relevant to what you’re doing, it all adds up… if it’s higher education or straight on to working.” (BTEC National Diploma student)

“…in Health and Social Care it’s the work experience opportunity, because they get to do 100 hours in real settings which means… they get an opportunity to see what the job might actually entail… and they get a big opportunity to put theory into practice in real working environments.” (Programme leader, BTEC Health & Social Care)

Challenges of the middle ground• Currency and value HE– patchy coverage and often weak value in

UCAS tariff limit (full) access to HE

• Currency and value LM - sectoral recruitment and progression traditions, LM regulation and flexibility, value of qualifications contingent and dynamic

• Market segmentation – importance of ‘brand’ in marketised system

• Lack of standardisation – same programmes experienced differently in same and different institutions (eg work experience, emphasis on HE)

• Linkages between vocational education and employment generally weak, apart from Advanced Apprenticeship: “Employers are convinced because people do it in the workplace. It’s convincing HE that’s the challenge.” (NAS)

• Weak safety net – serendipity

Allows scope for bottom-up, localised practices• Hybrid innovation at degree level: “…it doesn’t matter

how great they are in the degree if they come to us [employers] without an NVQ… so that’s why we decided let’s build an NVQ into the degree” (HE, Health & Social Care)

• Enrichment of L3 programmes: “we do a lot of additional courses… not part of the official course… so they’ve got to do all the coaching qualifications, which means they can actually then go out and coach.” (FE Sport & Leisure)

• Combining AQs and VQs – can add value to academic or vocational transition pathways

• Carving a distinctive HQ space through individual and institutional reputation, networks, trust and reciprocity.

Messages from the research• Our research on HQs challenges the adequacy of characterising

the English transition system as two neatly separable employment and education logics or transition pathways

• There is a big middle space but as yet no clearly defined, or shared understanding of an, alternative ‘logic’ for HQs to follow

• The English ‘system’ allows for a marketised landscape in which ‘hybrid qualifications’ inevitably have to compete for position, often with better understood and valued alternatives

• On the one hand, the limited stratification, specificity and standardisation we have encountered allow for some inter-track permeability, mobility, and progression at Level 3

• On the other these same characteristics generate weak trust relations between upper-secondary and higher education and between education and employment.

HQs & the Wolf Review• Are HQs about to become the key to vocational

reform?

• “16-19 year olds pursuing full-time courses of study should not follow a programme which is entirely ‘occupational’, or based solely on courses which directly reflect, and do not go beyond, the content of National Occupational Standards. Their programmes should also include at least one qualification of substantial size… which offers clear potential for progression either in education or into skilled employment.” (Wolf Report, Recommendation 6)

From rhetoric to reality “Securing our country’s future relies upon us developing our own

world-class education system, from which young people graduate not just with impeccable qualifications and deep subject knowledge but also with the real technical skills they need to succeed.” (Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, 12 May 2011)

• Our study in England and the insights from the experiences in three other countries are revealing the scale of the system challenges required to establish a strong version of HQ.

• As yet, there is little evidence that the Government has the vision and is prepared to engage with the systemic issues that will be necessary if their rhetoric is to generate a ‘best of both worlds’ reality.

References• Davey, G. and Fuller, A. (2010) England country report, available to download at

http://hq-lll.eu/presentations/Countryreports.html

• Davey, G. and Fuller, A. (2011 forthcoming) Best of both worlds or falling between two stools, Country Report, England

• DfE (May 2011) The Wolf Review of Vocational Education: Government Response

• Ianelli, C. and Raffe, D. (2007) Vocational upper-secondary education and the transition from school, European Sociological Review, 23, 1: 49-63

• Kerckhoff, A. (2000) Transition from school to work in comparative perspective, in M. Hallinan, ed, Handbook of the sociology of education, New York: Kluwer

• Maurice, M. et al. (1986) The social foundations of industrial power: A comparison of France and Germany, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

• Raffe, D. (2008) The concept of transition system, Journal of Education and Work, 21, 4: 277-296

• Shavit, Y. and Muller, W. (2000) Vocational Secondary Education, European Societies, 2: 1, 29—50

• Wolf, A. (March 2011) Review of vocational education – the Wolf Report, http://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DFE-00031-2011

For further details about the project, please visit http://hq-lll.eu/ or email a.fuller@soton.ac.uk, gg1@soton.ac.uk