Pathways to Education - Essay Example

Running Head: Pathways to Education Pathways to Education 1There are two things about man's future of which I think we can be certain. One is that things will not come out all right in the end if we just sit by and let them happen. The other is that things will most probably turn out well for man if he conscientiously works at the task of making them do so. (Montagu, 1961, p.27) The foundation for dynamic working life in both individual and social terms is a country's educational and training system. That system characteristically holds largely and composites' subsystem for policymaking, financing, re-sourcing and operating schools, training centers, colleges and higher education organizations in both the public and private sectors. The workforce sets off large and diverse; in one way or another, practically the whole society is connected with several form of institutionalized education. Education generally has been colored by the improved consideration that has been given to its financial and its wider social efficacy. However of particular interest is distinguishing movement of ideas, strategies and practices which has appeared during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Recognized variously as the new vocational grounding for working life, evolution from school to work or basically as vocational or technical education and training, this association has, in Britain and numerous other countries, been the basis of considerable and often controversial innovations in educational structures, content, methods and funding. "A main challenge is to recognize the education system, and it has engendered a growing volume of investigation and research, public policy plans, action in both the public and private areas of education, training and employment and sharp divisions amongst supporters and opponents" (Skilbeck, 1990). Pathways from education to working life are a generally defined vocationalisation that has been a common thread which runs across the education and, the employment policies of all country, whatever its level of growth, political system or geological location. The human capital theory in some form or other certainly long had extensive support across political and ideological boundaries: among them Adam Smith and Karl Marx theories are universal. The idea of education and training for creative work has played for long a considerable part in the Central European countries as it has worked in other parts of the world. Given the inevitability and the widely declared aim of reforming their economies, it is to be estimated that the development of education and training in these countries will keep a very strong vocational flavor, although on somewhat diverse ideological grounds. Today in typical industrialized countries education and training are fundamental to any programme of structural modification for the very obvious, reason that it is upon the educated and trained capability of the actors the people that the capability to redistribute and to put on from its benefits depends (Lauglo and Lillis, 1988; O'Dell, 1988). Bruce Raup and his co-workers long ago put it; 'the development of practical intelligence' is coming to be renowned as a main policy goal (Raup et al, 1943). In this respect, we have certainly pierced a new era. Whether conservative, full-time, paid employment for all or virtually all youth and young adults will persist to be conveyed by the advanced economies is a debatable point. It does not, though, vitiate the claims being made for ever higher levels of education and training, with grounding for work as one of the primary policy objectives. This new 'education era' is characterized not simply by a recognition of the need for what the OECD Ministers of Education referred to as "an excellence of education and training for all" (OECD, 1992a, 1992b 1992c). Comparability and precision of credentialed knowledge and skills across national limitations assume greater significance than ever before in the new Europe (Commission of the European Communities, 1991a, 1991b; Bertrand, 1992); globally extend transferability of technology, of industrial and commercial organizations and the moves to set up 'rules of the game' in international markets and trade are among the factors that are leading to a reassessment of the vocational content and structures of education. Moves toward shared acknowledgment of qualifications all through Europe are bringing added pressure for both breadth and a reformation of vocational qualifications in Britain. The age of self-directed national systems of vocational education and the assistant qualifications and certification processes however sufficiently been in their own terms has passed. While these suggestions may be received acquiesce in principle, "their practical consequences are far from clear" (Gewirtz, S., Ball, S.J., & Bowe, R. 1995). Smith-Hughes Act (1917)committed the United States to vocational education in schools; it of course did not eradicate the need for companies to distress themselves with the training of new employees. Even if skill training intimately followed company requirements, the requirement would always linger for orienting the new worker to definite company procedures and practices. In fact, the vocational schools never took over skill training to the degree that companies could elude their own programs. "Depending upon the accessible labor supply and their individual needs, businesses developed training programs involving on-the-job training (OJT) instruction as well as classroom training" (Gillborn, D. & Youdell, D., 2000). Training on the job might follow set sequences and employ a variety of teaching aids. New employees might be given written orientation materials in the form of manuals and programmed training. As formal courses have been intended in some instances, there is an inclination toward greater dependence on OJT and "hands on" experience. Reay (2001) conducted a survey where he reported thirty percent of the companies relating new employees in courses (Reay, D. 2001). The most extremely developed programs of initial training are possibly the apprenticeship programs, both of these formally registered and funded through the Bureau of Apprenticeship Training of the U.S. Department of Labor in the United States and those run by companies on their own. Throughout industrialization in the United States, as in Europe, apprenticeships became less widespread. By the turn of the century the number of apprentices began escalating, although it fell once again all through the Depression. The apprenticeship had developed out of the medieval craft system and was stoutly backed by the craft unions. They saw it as a way of evading the evils of child labor while adjusting the supply of labor that might come into competition with their journeymen's membership. The numbers increased significantly after World War II, then decreased, and have lately been on the rise. The number of registered apprentices, 269,000, in 1970, however, symbolizes a small portion of the total school-leaving population. Apprentices concentrated in the building trades, metalworking, and printing industries. "In an attempt to avoid the limitations of the Bureau of Apprenticeship Training, numerous companies have introduced their own apprenticeship training, but the exact numbers are indefinite" (Reay, D. & Ball, S.J. 1997). In current years the need for more training on the job has led to a transformed interest in apprenticeship. Though, because of numerous restrictions, it seems improbable that business and labor will agree on further expansion. A similar trend has already been noted in Sweden and the United Kingdom. A progression of efforts has been made to attain greater revelation for the world of business in the school system. A current surveys conduct by Teese & Polesel (2003) reported that more than eighty percent of all firms have several programs of student work experience(in which country). Other programs entail teaching or counseling students, student tours and visits, and giving materials and programs for teachers. But the trend toward work experience, comprising cooperative education, work-study, part-time and temporary jobs, and a special summer program assures to have a major impact on the role of business in the instructive process. Though, in Germany the "Duales System," established in 1897 and underlining both practical training on site and hypothetical training in school, has endured and prospered. In 1971, 68 percent of all working people born in 1918 or later had completed an apprenticeship. From amongst those who had completed specialized training or higher education, fifty percent had accomplished apprenticeships. These days it is the apprenticeship system that places secondary school leavers, normally at age 15, upon graduation from the lower secondary school. "It is acknowledged as a fundamental part of German preparatory life, lacking the stigma attached to apprenticeships in the United Kingdom and France" (Teese, R. & Polesel, J. 2003). Conceivably the most conspicuous aspect of the Duales System is its recognition as a reasonable path for young people to follow. Companies, view the apprenticeship system as costly but useful for recruiting individuals into the ranks of skilled labor and beyond. Individuals who complete apprenticeships might continue in school for technical extents or go back into a university track. Indeed, in times of strong demand for labor, companies have aimed to the frequency with which their subservient skilled workers choose to practice educational options, comparatively than continuing on directly with the company. Given the considerable speculation that top companies make in these positions is understandable. The German apprenticeship system, similar systems to Austria and Switzerland, is a structure of on-the-job training for school leavers that widened from the medieval apprenticeship system but has attained a distinct character. While its form is similar to apprenticeship systems in the United States and France, its range makes it distinguish. The United Kingdom has endeavored to imitate the system, but it has not attained the breadth of the German system. Its key is a collective approach, which more or fewer guarantees to all school leavers from the hauptscliule, with a certificate, a placement in on-the-job training, which is based upon a prescribed apprenticeship indenture between the individual and the employer. Once an individual settles on to enter a particular field, a vocational counselor working under the Bundesanstalt fur Arbeit ( Federal Employment) Institute recommends definite placements in companies or schools. As the program is intended at those adapting with a general certificate, school leavers not accomplishing this qualification might find an apprenticeship, as may be students with higher qualifications. The Duales System, then, has consequences in a unique orientation underlining OJT for those in the 15-18-year category. Distant from those young who go on in school intending for higher education and the small percentage that focus vocational schools, all secondary school leavers in Germany enter this OJT program. The organized wide system is quite diverse from the informal and chaotic system in the United States and other countries used for stirring secondary school leavers into the world of work. This encouraging system focuses accountability for job counseling in the public employment service and places most young people in OJT placements in firms. More or less two-thirds of the apprenticeships are advertised, whereas one-third is still filled by word of mouth. The three-year apprenticeship is cautiously regulated by an apprenticeship contract, which is administered by the local chamber of commerce and industry and monitored by the trade union (Thompson, P. 2002). In addition, the individual should attend vocational school as a minimum one day per week. At the ending of the apprenticeship the trainee is normally offered a full-time position. A large percentage of the trainees remain and statistics designate that three years after completion of the apprenticeship around fifty percent of the apprentices are still with the firms that initially hired them (Thompson, P. 2002). The Duales System characterizes a unique blend of government, employer, and trade union collaboration. But the central accountability rests with the individual firm. It is a real example of inspiration in managing the evolution from school to work and offering the structured contact with the adult world that other industrialized countries seek but have such a hard time comprehending. If Germany has developed a highly organized system for training young people and serving in their conversion to the world of work that is centered on the individual firm, the Japanese have developed a system that is the firm. Devoid of the existence of special categories of apprenticeship or government or connection oversight, Japanese companies have come to recognize the accountability for training young people within their firms. Japanese companies have wide-ranging OJT programs for orienting and training young workers. These programs are elements of a larger system that supports private companies to hire workers at a young age and provides a diversity of training opportunities as part of a lifetime employment system. A key constituent in understanding the character of Japanese companies to hire young workers and invest in their training is the abruptly graduated system of seniority wages. The salaries of young workers are low, since it is estimated that they do not have great needs. As they mature, marry, and have children their salaries increase, largely on the foundation of time of service. Length of service is the single greatest determinant of compensation, with differentials amongst education minimal groups, during the initial period of employment particularly. However, the commitment to training entry-level workers is apparent. The larger companies much favor to hire individuals with extensive education in exalted schools and universities and then provide detailed skills training. Indeed, this commitment to internal training has destabilized much of the support for vocational education within the Japanese educational system. The better students favor to compete for the limited openings in exalted institutions, and the companies seem to reciprocate by employing them. As above ninety percent of all junior high school graduates go on to senior high school, Japanese companies no longer send talent scouts to rural areas in expedition of "golden eggs," the junior high school graduates who would be brought openly into the company. But their youth's orientation has lingered. They favor to hire younger workers, who are believed to be more flexible and economical. This approach is in stark contrast to that of American companies, which are progressively more inclined to hire workers who are in their middle twenties and considered more established and mature. This attitude, certainly, imitates the larger economic system and labor market. It also means that the period of wavering that characterizes American youth throughout their late teens and early twenties are reinstated by a period of general constancy and training within the company. The consequence is the effectual utilization of young workers and the concern of both ties to the company and the social system for those school leavers not attending college. Thus, two conclusions are probable from the monotonous record of linking the private sector in the United States in escalating OJT efforts. One is that development in this direction is unattainable; the other is that the emphasis has been wrong. As many specialists hold to the former view, facts pointing to the more expectant alternative have been cited. The successes that have been attained in developing private sector training placements in the United States and abroad propose that options are open to governments that desire to contribute to the employment of youth. The procedure of involving private businesses in manpower approaches has been totally simplified. Businesses are solicited to bring new individuals into their work place, create jobs for them, and consider hiring them enduringly without any long-range commitment from the government that the plan will persist and that the venture of company resources will lead to a prolific relationship. The commotion to organizations, predominantly the larger ones, of hiring trainees, is redoubtable. Yet the large organizations are the one whose resources rationalize the founding of a formal training program. They should be convinced that the investment in such a program will convey a suitable return. It most definitely will not unless a long-range program is developed to amalgamate the trainees into the company efficiently. Though government policy has had an apparent appeal and appearance as if it were opening its doors to private association in job programs, indeed it has been both naive and indifferent. Nor has it made astonishing efforts to entail business in planning for policy implementation at the local level. Yet the private industry councils, possibly the largest step in this direction, have left much to be preferred. The intervening fact of private sector taking part in the United States is that it occurred despite CETA(Construction Education and Training Authority). The absolute failure of CETA to gain the self-confidence of the private sector led in large part to the replacement of the Jobs Training Partnership Act of 1982. Despite the improved influence of PICs(Private Industry Councils) in the new legislation, it does not proposition a programmatic solution. All indication suggests that no major breaches in concerning the private sector in training programs are impending. In trying to examine the success of the Duales System in Germany and the inner training system in Japan, the keenness of companies to become dynamically involved in recruiting and training youth is the single most inspiring feature. As individual companies in the United Kingdom and the United States have extremely thriving training programs for secondary school graduates, the extent and scope of the German and Japanese systems are distinctive. Two features play critical roles: historical circumstance; and the formation of incentives to the company. In both Germany and Japan corporate accountability for the improvement of human resources has progressed over a comparatively long period of time. The German observance to the apprenticeship system is based upon a medieval system that was reinforced and changed all through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Japanese system of inner training developed at the turn of the century in responds to the need for specialized training formed by the new industrialization. Both of these systems were supported in the period between the wars. Then, the end of Second World War presented both countries with decisive shortages of trained personnel, which required a systematic and effectual means for training new skilled workers. The apprenticeship system in Germany and the internal training system in Japan became the means for emergent skilled personnel in a period of labor shortage. These linkages between corporate demand for skilled personnel and labor market shortages are mainly relevant in investigating the failures of other industrialized countries to widen OJT programs for youth. Consistently these efforts have been accumulated in times of labor abundance, when the predicament of youth employment has become a politically volatile issue. Throughout such times little incentive subsists for a company to keep in human resource development. The company is more fascinated in measures to lessen existing personnel, and what needs exist can be met in the labor market. As these government efforts to support corporate investment in human resources development transpires at the worst probable time from the corporate point of view, even large subsidies do not make these programs striking. The second decisive element in the German and Japanese systems is the financial incentive to hire the young. In both systems young workers get only a part of the wages of regular workers. In Germany these consequences from the official designation of an apprentice as a trainee and in Japan from the preeminence wage system. Particularly in Germany, the high cost of training trainees in the larger companies is a considerable burden and without the youth's discrepancy might well be considered too valuable. As the trade unions in the United States and the United Kingdom have fought such a wage differential, the unions in both Germany and Japan recognize this difference, though at times controversy has developed. Lately this concern of compensation for young workers has been heaved in both Sweden and the United Kingdom, where employers and unions have collaborated in establishing new programs of OJT. In December 1981, the Swedish Employers' Confederation (SAF) and the major union groups reached conformity on a program to give jobs for 16 and 17 year olds with a stipend of 85 Swedish kroner a day, with the government compensating the companies at 75 Swedish kroner a day. Additionally the employer paid social security and other charges. In eighties, the Youth Task Group Report, with extending of the Confederation of British Industries and the Trades Union Congress, the local educational authorities, and the Manpower Services Commission, anticipated a program of full-year trainee ships building upon the program of Work Experiences on Employers Premises for 16 and 17 year olds. Cooperation was accomplished to persist stipends at the levels of the preceding year with a slight upgrading, while also escalating the quality of the training. The government gives grants to companies to swathe the stipends, and additional monies to promote the training efforts. As the chronological basis of the German and Japanese systems and the inducement structures for hiring the young are critical, a third element of the German and Japanese system shows up. Both of these systems employ young workers into companies in the usual course of events. The companies in an extremely direct sense contend with the educational systems for human resources. Actually, in the Japanese case the vivid rise in schooling has given to the enduring scarcity of young labor. On the contrary, the efforts of the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and Sweden to extend private sector programs have almost perpetually centered on helping the disadvantaged, the school dropout, or the jobless. Companies are inquired in the name of social conscience to assist with the placement of a group of individuals already labeled as failures by the educational system. Is it any wonder that companies in these countries defy involvement in programs that ask them to recognize social responsibility for the least desirable workers Certainly the configuration of private enterprise does not support social work in a business setting. As limited success has been attaining in France, using subsidies, and in the United Kingdom, where the government has paid remuneration, these opportunities are normally instant. Likewise, in New York City the privately based New York Partnership has effectively launched a summer jobs program for lacking youth. But if countries seek to extend company-based OJT for large numbers of school leavers, they cannot be estimated to center on the disadvantaged. What is desired is a broad-based program to put up school leavers who decide to go through the world of business directly relatively than pursuing advanced education. This element of optimistically orienting a program for school leavers cannot be overstated. The contrast in the approaches in Germany and France toward apprentices is conspicuous. In Germany, apprentices are esteemed for their qualification attained through three and a half year of laborious training. In France, apprentices are viewed disapprovingly as those who could be not persistent their studies. A precondition to a successful program for school leavers is self-esteem and recognition of this path as legitimate and reputable. The business community cannot be anticipated to be an instrument for coping with social misfits. Nor, by the way, are those labeled as social misfits probable to be thriving in business or other situations. The value of OJT is increasingly renowned despite the dangers of the stringencies of established apprenticeship programs. Sweden gives a fascinating case study of a country that eradicated an extensive apprenticeship system and now seeks to initiate a greater accent on OJT. Conclusion There has been a resurrection of interest in the world's industrialized countries in the occupational dimension of education. This has not been restricted to specified vocational training or groundwork courses, to professional vocational institutions or to work-based programmes, but comprises a reappraisal of the nature and function of basic education at the school level. Countries facing main economic challenges to redistribute, to re energizes, to attain greater competitive strength, of which Britain is some distinguished examples have turned to education and training as instruments of social and economic reform. The degree to which education is vocationalised becomes a new determination of economic and social performance. Most countries' practices rapid change due to scientific and technological development, demography, industrial reorganizations and interchange social forces, are confronted to rethink their strategies for education. Vocationalism emerges large among these strategies of variation and social learning, as a momentous element in the quest for structural adjustment, enhanced quality and enhanced competitiveness. The demands made of schools are more abundant, the criticisms' sharper and the challenge greater to carry out in accordance with socioeconomic objectives, as a consequence of these pressures. There are dangers and risks in the pervasiveness of instrumentalist and utilitarian strategies. Approved the pressure resultant from technological transformation, economic globalization and the anticipation of electorates, appropriate responses through education and training are not self-evidently an issue of practical, pertinent, significant skills. Reference: Montagu, A. (1961) Man in Process. New York. Mentor Books. Skilbeck, M. (1990) Curriculum Reform: An Overview of Trends. Paris. OECD. O'Dell, F. (1988) 'Recent Soviet vocationalisation policies' in Lauglo, J. and Lillis, K. (eds) Vocationalising Education: An International Perspective. Oxford. Pergamon Press. Raup, R.B., Axtelle, G.E., Benne, K.D. and Smith, B.O. (1943) The Improvement ofPractical Intelligence. New York. Harper. OECD (1992a) '1991-1992 Annual Review: France'. Economic and Development Review Committee. Paris. OECD. Mimeo. OECD (1992b) Education at a Glance. OECD indicators. Paris. OECD/CERI. OECD (1992c) High-quality Education and Training for All. Paris. OECD. Commission of the European Communities (1991a) Employment in Europe-1991. Directorate-General Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs. Luxembourg. CEC. Commission of the European Communities (1991b) Vocational Training in the European Community in the 1990s. Commission Memorandum. Brussels. CEC. Bertrand, O. (1992) 'Assessment, certification and recognition of occupational skills and competences: comparability and recognition of qualifications: European experiences'. 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