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Context: An enhanced role for work-based learning is advocated increasingly widely across industrialised countries and by international Vocational Education and Training (VET) policies. However, this is framed differently in each country by long-term policy orientations that reflect VET's relationship with wider economic and social formations. These national differences reflect path dependency but also distinctive responses to contemporary challenges such as globalisation. In England, recent reforms strengthening workplace learning are constrained by existing patterns of skill formation and may be shaped by further market liberalisation and divergence from social and economic policies in Europe. Approach: The study examined the relationship between greater emphasis on workplace learning in England and societal change, addressing the research question: how are early experiences of work in England, as part of young people's full-time education programmes, positioning them for future employment? Case studies were organised around apparently distinctive placement types that had emerged from earlier studies. Using the constant comparative method, the team identified a series of categories to distinguish the way each type of work-based learning positioned students in a particular type of labour market transition. Findings: Evidence emerged of divergence in England's "further education" system, across mainly male "technical" routes, young people on vocational courses preparing them for routine, low-skilled, precarious employment, and an area of greater uncertainty preparing young people for digital routes linked to the "new economy". Key dimensions of difference included study locations, discourses of occupational status, types of valued learning content, approaches to socialisation, sources of expertise and processes of credentialisation. In each case, learning at work served to position students for a particular type of labour market transition, which we characterise as technical elite formation, welfare VET and new economy precarity. Conclusion: Approaches to workplace learning in England already reflect social distinctions but entail the possibility of reinforcing these, supporting a more hierarchical pattern of labour market transition. Whilst the upper strata of VET shift their purpose to support the formation of new "technical elites", others face the possibility of further marginalisation. Such new inequalities could become central to a further fragmented society in a post-Brexit, post-COVID-19 Britain. Other European states facing challenges of globalisation and the transition to services are also likely to experience pressures for VET stratification, although they may seek less divisive solutions.

Purpose: This paper aims to report on a project re-imagining of a Level 1 English-model broad vocational curriculum for low-attaining youth. The project, funded by Rothschild, has sought to develop a knowledge rich and engaging curriculum, which is more consistent with notions of social justice than contemporary low-level vocational curricula. Design/methodology/approach: The project utilised a participatory, action-research model of curriculum development informed by a theoretical framework drawing on concepts of social justice. Findings: The findings suggest that a broad, project-based curriculum, supported with a wide range of extra-curricular activities (enrichment) is effective in supporting secure and sustainable transitions into further education and/or meaningful employment for low attaining young people. Originality/value: This paper extends understandings about curricula approaches in low-level vocational education. There is a paucity of research into the curriculum at the lowest mainstream levels. Students engaging with education at that level are similarly under-researched. This paper seeks to fill that gap.

The paper addresses the impact of COVID-19 on vocational education and training, seeking to discern the outline of possible directions for its future development within the debates about VET responses to the pandemic. The discussion is set in its socio-economic context, considering debates that engage with the social relations of care and neo-liberalism. The paper analyses discourses that have developed around VET across the world during the pandemic, illustrating both possible continuities and ruptures that may emerge in this field, as the health crisis becomes overshadowed in public policy by the prioritisation of economic recovery and social restoration. The paper concludes that, alongside the possibility of a narrowing of VET to its most prosaic aims and practices, the health crisis could also lead to a re-conceptualisation that develops its radical and emancipatory possibilities in both the global south and north.

This paper explores notions of professionalism amongst vocational teachers in the United Kingdom and Australia, through an analysis of voluntarism/regulatory frameworks and professional body frameworks. In terms of empirical evidence, the paper reports on data drawn from a documentary analysis of government policy documents, standards for the education of teachers, and regulatory frameworks in both countries. It is located within a broad range of literature exploring contemporary concepts of professionalism amongst vocational teachers. Documentary analysis implies that whilst there is an expectation and assumption that vocational teachers are, and should be, professional, this is not necessarily translated through initial teacher training requirements, some of which fail to address concepts of professionalism at all. Further, it offers evidence to suggest that where notions of professionalism are addressed, the concept is described in largely reductive and utilitarian terms, and that this is the case in both countries. The paper considers the implications of this for teachers, students, and wider practice within the sector, arguing that meaningful understandings of the notion of professional, which are effectively applied in practice, are fundamental to broader understandings of key issues in further education, such as those associated with in/equalities and in/exclusion in education contexts. The paper concludes that such understandings are unlikely to be drawn from utilitarian, Competency Based Training (CBT) based teacher-training programmes.

The paper places youth transitions and vocational education and training (VET) within the global policy context in which economic competiveness is hegemonic. It compares research from the 1970s/80s, which explored young peoples' lived experiences of VET and youth training schemes with contemporary work on similar themes. It argues that there are continuities and discontinuities in the conditions that young people face in their transitions to waged labour. Continuities can be seen in constructions of working class youth, but also by the way in which policy views the economy as characterised by upskilling. This is called into question when set against the existence of significant numbers of low-waged, low-skilled jobs in the English economy. There are also discontinuities that are the result of changes in class and employment structures. As a result, precariousness has become ubiquitous, with this existing in tandem with labour that is surplus to the requirements of capital. The paper reconsiders youth transitions and re-evaluates the notion of serendipity, suggesting these concepts need to be rethought and reworked in current conditions.

Little work on the significance and implications of decision-making has been undertaken since that led by Hodkinson in the 1990s, and the experiences of young people on vocational programmes and their reasons for undertaking them remain under-theorised and poorly understood. Drawing on two narratives from a study exploring young people's motivations for undertaking vocational programmes, this article explores the relationship between their positioning in fields and career decision-making. The article argues that social positioning is significant in its relationship to decision-making, to the way in which young people perceive and construct their careers and to the influence of serendipity on their transitions. Drawing on a range of international studies, the article explores the implications of these findings in terms of young people's future engagement with the global labour market, giving consideration to (dissonant) perceptions of vocational education and training as contributing to economic growth whilst addressing issues of social exclusion and promoting social justice.

This article explores tensions between the policies and practice of inclusion and the lived experiences of disabled young people in education. Drawing on the narratives of two young men who participated in a small pilot study, it utilises theoretical concepts related to disability, structure and agency, and power and control, as it explores the ways in which inclusion can create subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) forms of exclusion. Focusing on the young men's experiences of further and higher education, it is argued that inclusive practices and policies, however well intentioned, can create new and subtle forms of marginalisation through the structures and discourse intended to address exclusion. I conclude by questioning whether, in a diverse and disparate society, in which all our lives are defined by the extent to which we are more or less equal than others, inclusion can ever be anything other than an illusory concept.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to draw on concepts of "female masculinity" to interrogate how hegemonic gendering discourses, forms and performances are inscribed in neoliberal narratives of competency in higher education in the Western Hemisphere. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on individual examples, the authors consider how these narratives are omnipresent in the sector, and systematically act to exclude those who do not conform. In doing so, the authors draw extensively on bodies of literature exploring gender/identity, and neo-liberalism. In particular, the paper draws on the work of Halberstam (1998, 2011), and of Drake (2015). Findings: There are comparatively few women in senior positions in Higher Education and the authors argue that as gendering institutions they reproduce hegemonic gendering discourses. The authors find that hegemonic gendering discourses are instrumental in maintaining and privileging specific forms and perceptions of masculinity and femininity as inscribed within and reproduced by perceptions of professional competency. Originality/value: This paper examines neo-liberal practices from a more nuanced perspective than some traditional polarised critiques which regard gender as a binary. In doing so, it contributes to debates on masculinity, but more importantly, opens discussions about the implications of gendering discourses for the role of the few women in senior positions in higher education institutions globally.

Debate about the benefits and problems with competency-based training (CBT) has not paid sufficient attention to the fact that the model satisfies a unique, contemporary demand for cross-occupational curriculum. The adoption of CBT in the UK and Australia, along with at least some of its problems, can be understood in terms of this demand. We argue that a key problem with CBT is that as a cross-occupational curriculum model it impacts too strongly on the way particular occupations are known and represented. Following this line of argument, we propose that more effective models will be those that are "epistemically neutral" and thus responsive to the inherent knowledge and practice structures of occupations. We explore the "threshold concepts" approach as an alternative that can claim to be sensitive to occupational structures. We indicate ways it contrasts with CBT but also note some difficulties with the approach for vocational education.

The experiences of five female lecturers working in higher education in the UK are explored as they engage in the search for a feminised critical space as a refuge from the masculinised culture of performativity in which they feel constrained and devalued. Email exchanges were used as a form of narrative enquiry that provided opportunity and space to negotiate identities and make meaning from experiences. The exchanges provided a critical space, characterised by trust, honesty and care for the self and for each other, that enabled a sharing of authentic voices and a reaffirming of identities that were made vulnerable through the exposing of the self as an emotional, politicised subject. Drawing on existing theoretical understandings of critical feminised spaces enabled us to create a pedagogical framework for work with students in further developing caring and co-caring communities of practice that are not alternative to, but are outside the performativity landscape of education.

This paper explores young people's perceptions of vocational education and training (VET) in England. It draws on interview and focus-group data from a funded project. Parallel studies were carried out in The Netherlands, South Africa and England. This study reports on the English project. It found that serendipity, contingent events and influence of significant others are most influential in choice of vocational programme and that young peoples' understandings of possible career paths vary in sophistication, differentiated by age, programme level and subject area. Perceived attractiveness of VET was closely associated with societal perception of their programmes (which the young people considered to be negative). The paper considers the implications of these findings in the context of recent major policy initiatives in England. It concludes that, while some recent policy initiatives, such as the introduction of University Technical Colleges may be successful in raising the esteem of some forms of elite and specialized VET, broad vocational programmes at lower levels, and short courses associated with "employability" and "re-engagement", will continue to be held in lower esteem and to confer little educational advantage on those young people, largely drawn from working-class backgrounds, who pursue them.

This article discusses the benefits of telehealth in providing services for individuals with Long COVID. The authors commend a previous analysis of available services in Australia but note that telehealth was not included as a model of care for Long COVID. They highlight that telehealth can provide equitable access to healthcare for those with physical disabilities or geographical limitations, and it has been successfully demonstrated in various settings. The authors emphasize the importance of consumer engagement and empowerment in designing care models and argue that telehealth should be embedded in systemic strategies to enhance care for Long COVID. [Extracted from the article]

This paper discusses practical and methodological issues arising from a case study exploring the hopes, aspirations and learning identities of three groups of students undertaking low-level broad vocational programmes in two English general further education colleges. Working within a social justice theoretical framework the paper outlines the participative approach which was adopted as part of the research process from the initial development of interview questions to the early data analysis. It explores the advantages and limitations of the approach in the context of the broader methodology and the social justice theoretical framework arguing that, despite the intention to collaborate with the participants, the ultimate control over the study was vested in the researcher, raising questions around the nature and extent of empowerment through the medium of research. The paper draws two key conclusions. In social justice terms, the young people's contribution was limited by their lack of previous experience of any type of research and, to some extent, by difficulty with the written word. Despite this, the participative approach was effective in demonstrating value and respect for the young participants and provided an opportunity for them to make their voices heard from beyond the model of disadvantage and disengagement in which government policy seeks to confine them. Further, in purely methodological terms, the approach provided insights which could not have been obtained by "researching on", suggesting that it provides a useful means of exploring the lives and identities of marginalised youth.

This paper discusses the findings of a small-scale qualitative study exploring the aspirations and learning identities of three groups of Level 1 students in two English further education (FE) colleges. Emerging identities are explored in the context of classed and gendered dispositions and the educational positioning of the young people. Empirical sections show that the young people's lifestyle aspirations have a heavy celebrity influence and that their occupational aspirations have an unreal, dreamlike quality associated with a lack of awareness of the trajectories they would need to follow to achieve their ambitions. Further, the paper argues that whilst the young people are developing identities in which learning, leisure, work and domesticity are synonymous, leisure identities assume the greatest importance to them. The paper concludes that this aspect of their young lives is significant since it provides an "escape" from the mundane drudgery of a low-value vocational programme and the inevitability of a future engaged in low-paid, low-skilled work.

This article considers the implications of current government education policy for those learners within the English post-compulsory sector undertaking General National Vocational Qualification (GNVQ) Foundation (level 1) programmes. It argues that within the current policy context, a lower value is placed on young people working towards certain credentials than on others and that this value is determined by the potential economic value of the qualification. Therefore, those young people undertaking Foundation (level 1) programmes are perceived to be of less value than those undertaking more mainstream programmes at level 2 and above. In doing this, current education policy is effectively creating an invisible cohort of young people whose needs are not understood and who, constrained by social, cultural, class and educational barriers, are likely to form the underclass within the 40/30/30 society described by Hutton (1995). Finally, this article raises questions about how some of these issues might be effectively addressed and calls for a wider debate on these issues as one means of finding a greater level of esteem for the young people undertaking learning programmes at level 1.

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-923X.2009.02058.x Byline: MEG RUSSELL (1), PHILLIP COWLEY (2), PETER RIDDELL (3), JUSTIN FISHER (4), LIZ ATKINS (5), JENNY WATSON (6), ELIZABETH FRAZER (7), COLIN HAY (8) Author Affiliation: (1)Reader in British and Comparative Politics at University College London, Deputy Director of the Constitution Unit and a member of the Political Quarterly editorial board. (2)Professor of Parliamentary Government at the University of Nottingham. (3)Chief Political Commentator of The Times for three days a week and a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Government for two days a week, as well as chairman of the Hansard Society. (4)Professor of Political Science and Director of the Magna Carta Institute at Brunei University. (5)Director of Public Policy at NCVO (The National Council for Voluntary Organisations). (6)Has been chair of the Electoral Commission since January 2009 and is a board member of the Audit Commission. She was formerly Chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission. (7)Lecturer in Politics, University of Oxford and Fellow of New College Oxford. (8)Professor of Political Analysis at the University of Sheffield.