Running Faster to Stay in the Same Place? The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Government Policy for Workplace Learning in Britain

Recent policy debates have emphasised the significance of workplace learning to the vision of the ‘learning society’ and the ‘knowledge-based economy’. Whereas these terms trip relatively easily off the tongue, identifying what they mean in terms of a vision of the economy and society is more problematic. We are indebted to Lloyd and Payne (2002) not only for their reflections on the vision of the high skill society, but also for their reference to Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’. The starting point for this paper is the idea that workplace learning ought to be central to any vision of the economy and society which is based on skills and knowledge (cf. Rainbird, 2000). The objective is to examine three major arenas of UK government policy which, it could be assumed, might exemplify the way these connections are made in one form or another. These are policy interventions which are intended to have a direct impact on training and workforce competence, on the one hand, and interventions which affect it indirectly, on the other. The example we have chosen of the former is the development of occupational standards in the care sector. These have been developed and introduced as a means of securing a competent and qualified workforce in a sector which until recently has not been effectively regulated. Our example of the latter is public sector reform in health and local government, where the stated aim of policy is to improve the quality of public services. Following the logic of the argument that the quality of goods and services is linked to the skills and qualifications of the workforce, we might assume that this would involve investment in the training and development of public sector workers