Regime Change: Education to Work Transitions in England, 1980s–2020s

Abstract

This paper argues the case for viewing a country's transition regime as a totality in which different career steps and routes assign significance and value to one another. Following the destruction of major sections of Britain's transition regime in the 1970s and 1980s, the paper explains how the regime has subsequently been reconstructed following the 1988 Education Reform Act, replacing the vocational education and training schemes of the 1980s with government-supported apprenticeships, almost uninterrupted employment growth since 1992, and the financialization of the corporate economy alongside uncapped expansion of higher education. England's current transition regime keeps rates of youth unemployment and NEET below the European Union averages and delivers the fastest transitions in Europe. However, the reconstructed regime also locks-in features that may well become long-term problems, namely an expensive higher education system which leaves graduates with debts that many do not expect to repay in full, and substantial low wage, low skill, low productivity sectors in the economy and workforce.

How Europe’s Former Communist States Have Added More Variety without Extending the Range of Variation in the Continent’s Education-to-Work Transitions

“…These issues are addressed using the transition regime concept. A regime is a system of inter-connected parts that assign value and meaning to each other (see Raffe, 2014;Roberts, 2020;Walter, 2006). The "parts" are types and levels of education, training, and subsequent employment.…”

Integrating Young People into the Workforce: England’s Twenty-First Century Solutions

“…Co-researchers from different countries have found themselves encountering educational institutions and qualifications not only with unfamiliar titles but playing roles in young people's transitions with no direct counterparts in other researchers' home countries. This was the context in which researchers began to conceptualise 'transition regimes' in which each part acquired significance only from its relationship with other parts of the regime (discussed fully in Roberts, 2020) [3]. Each step that a young person could take acquired value and significance from the typically preceding and subsequent positions.…”

Dealignment: Class in Britain and Class in British Sociology Since 1945

“…However, for others it has become a career-long position as less-qualified beginners have found that former routes upwards have been broken [71][72][73][74][75]. The least qualified school-leavers have become distinctly tail-end, around 20 percent of the age groups who leave education without any qualifications that will assist in their searches for work [76]. This 'tail' is drawn mainly from Britain's least advantaged, poorest families.…”