Abstract

In this talk Dr Hayward will question the concepts of employability and skills that are central to much recent education and training policy in the UK. In so doing he will argue that this policy discourse has produced qualifications that do not, indeed cannot, assess the sorts of skills supposedly valued by employers as enhancing employability, and which have resulted in mass experimentation with the lives of young people with remarkably little if any benefit for those being assessed. The costs of developing and taking such qualifications outweigh the benefits of acquiring them. The alternative is to take a much broader view of the idea of qualification that takes account of the type of labour market young people will be entering and the social realities that they will face.