Sociological Perspectives Applied to Work

• When analysing markets, a range of assumptions are made about the rationality of economic agents involved in the transactions
• The Wealth of Nations was written

  1776
• Vocational Education


  Teaching people the specific knowledge and skills to prepare them for a particular career
• Types of Vocational Education


  • On the job training - such as with apprenticeships
  • Courses focused on a particular career in a college (typically 16-19)
• The New Right introduced Vocational Education


  1980s
• Reasons the New Right introduced Vocational Education


  • To combat high levels of unemployment
  • To prepare young people for a range of new jobs emerging with new technologies
  • To make them more competitive in a globalising economy
• Vocational policies introduced by the New Right


  • National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs)
  • Youth Training Scheme (YTS)
• NVQs


  Involved building a portfolio of evidence to prove you had the specific skills necessary for a job
• YTS


  On the job training, in which trainees received a small wage, funded by the government
• NVQs were seen by many as an inferior qualification to the more academic 'A' level subjects
• Much on the job training was of a low quality because it wasn't very well regulated - some trainees were basically just glorified tea boys
• The New Deal for young people was set up by New Labour


  1998
• The New Deal for young people


  Provided some kind of guaranteed training for any 18-24 year old who had been unemployed for more than 6 months
• By March 2003 almost 1 million people had started the New Deal, and 40% of them had moved on to full-time unsubsidised jobs
• The Modern Apprenticeships scheme was introduced by New Labour

  2002
• Modern Apprenticeships


  Involve on the job training in sectors ranging from tourism to engineering, with trainees paid a small wage
• Some early modern apprenticeships were criticised for being exploitative - some companies simply hired workers to a 6 week training course and then sacked them and rehired more trainees as a means of getting cheap labour
• Overall, apprenticeships have been a huge success and there are now hundreds of thousands of people who do them in any one year
• Vocational A levels


  The most commonly recognised type is the BTEC, which are 'designed as specialist work-related qualifications and are available in a range of sectors like business, engineering and ICT'
• While the purpose of Vocational A levels was to try and eradicate the traditional vocational-academic divide, it was mostly working class children who went down the vocational route, while middle class children did A levels, which many middle class parents regard as the only 'proper qualifications'
• From a broadly Marxist analysis, Vocational Education simply reinforces the class divide
• A recent survey of 2000 people has revealed that half of working class people still believed they encountered a "class ceiling" when trying to progress up the career ladder
• The survey was commissioned by conservative MP Justine Greening and conducted across a range of industries and regions
• Key findings of the research


  • 50% believe those without strong regional accents found it easier to progress in their workplace
  • 25% said having a regional accent had held them back at work; this figure rose to almost half in London
  • Only a third of people said their boss was from a working class background
  • Working class representation in leadership roles are as low as 17%
• Greening has set up the Social Mobility Pledge to encourage employers to adopt open recruitment policies such as name-blind or "contextual" recruitment, and offering apprenticeships to people from disadvantaged backgrounds