Pathways to Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Pathways to Education - Essay Example 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