Unifying Academic and Vocational Learning: the state of the debate in England and Scotland

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Abstract
This article illustrates the potential of ‘home international’ comparisons as a tool for analysing the education systems of the UK. Current policies for post‐compulsory education in Scotland and England seek to unify academic and vocational learning, but follow very different strategies. In Scotland the Higher Still reforms will bring academic and vocational education together in a unified system at 16‐plus; in England the Dearing Review proposes to retain a three‐track system based on A Levels, GNVQs and NVQs, but suggests measures to link them within a more unified framework. The paper compares the contexts of the ‘unification’ debate in the two countries, and describes how policies and debates have developed since the 1970s. The different histories of the unification debate in Scotland and England are reflected not only in different current policies but also in different concepts of a unified system. In England this concept is more political, radical and ambitious, but it focuses more on a critique of existing arrangements than on the design of a unified system or the process of implementing it. In Scotland the concept of unified system is more consensual, more fully specified and closer to implementation, but it is less visionary and may have less power to challenge conservative assumptions and practices.