Social policy and institutional autonomy in further education

Once again the colleges of further education and their staffs face the prospect of having to respond to fresh government plans for the reorganisation and reform of industrial training and youth opportunities. That, at any rate, is how it seems at the time of writing. (1) One may be forgiven for a sense of déjà vu. This is hardly the first time that a ‘fresh start’ in this area has been announced. Previous schemes, however, have run into difficulties for two reasons. Either the new measures, even if they have reached the statute book, have turned out to be window dressing and have never been implemented; or new structures have actually been set up only to encounter the resistance of deep-seated forces in British economic and political life. Nevertheless, things could be different this time. As Mark Jackson of the ‘Times Educational Supplement’ has observed, there is a general and unusual agreement among interested parties: ‘that now is the right time to act and a greater readiness than for many years to try out new approaches’. (2)