Policy, politics and education: the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative

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Abstract
The TVEI, launched in November 1982, has been shaped by a number of long‐term developments in British education, politics and society. It is the latest manifestation of a widely and often expressed concern, but belongs more precisely to a conservative tradition in education policy given new strength by its immediate political context. A symbol of Conservative policy in education, training and employment, it has become a scene of conflict over the nature of British society. Since its inception it has been consolidated as a policy by addressing wider anxieties and problems shared by different interests but keeping favour with its patrons and original sponors. Opposition to the TVEI has similarly arisen from a variety of areas but has found a natural focus in an alternative source of policy, the Labour Party. The utilitarian rhetoric and objectives that accompanied the launch of the initiative seem to have been undermined by the process of consolidation, although the TVEI itself has been successfully established, and may yet give way to a revival of more liberal notions of ‘secondary technical education’.

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