Prepares young people for work and makes education meet the needs of economy.
Functionalists and the New Right see this in a beneficial way, as helping to boost the economy.Marxists tend to view vocational education larley as a second-rate education for those from working-class backgrounds, concerned with producing passive and conformist workers to support a profit-making capitalist society , while the middle class enjoy a more academic education leading to well-paid positions of power and influence society.
1 of 4
The main focus of vocational education in contempo
improving the quality of the basic skills of the workforce, and in particular those of young people aged 14 to 18. In recent years this has become more important because of high levels of unemployment among young people with around 16 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds unemployed in 2014.
ending the status division between academic and vocational qualifications so that practical, technical and vocational education is integrated with academic learning (such as in AS and A levels and university degrees) so they all have more value in the labour market.
2 of 4
Criticisms of vocational education
Work experience is often seen by school students as boring and repetitive, involving little development of their skills and having little to do with their future ambitions. Post-school training schemes are often similarly criticized for providing little development of skills for being used as a source of cheap labour by employers and for not leading to 'proper' jobs at the end of the training.
Vocational education and qualifications are often seen as having lower status than more traditional academic subjects and courses. Vocational qualifications are in general less likely to lead to university entry and are more likely to lead to lower-status, lower-paid jobs as adults. Parent, teachers and students themselves therefore often see vocational qualifications as an inferior or second-rate option compared to more traditional academic subjects and courses.
3 of 4
Birdwell et al (2011)
Suggested that secondary schools in England and Wales routinely neglect pupils with vocational aspirations and focus on brighter children destined to go on to higher education. Schools failed to help teenagers prepare for the world of work, offering them little careers advice or help in finding jobs that would suit them. The report found that many of the vocational qualifications that young people are encouraged to do aim for turn out to be worthless that work-related training was found to be of low quality and that schools undervalued the importance of part-time work, after-schooling clubs and volunteering in building up young people's skills and experience.
Comments
No comments have yet been made