@Bynner2012

(2012) - John Bynner

Journal: British Journal of Educational Studies
Link:: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00071005.2011.650943
DOI:: 10.1080/00071005.2011.650943
Links::
Tags:: #paper #NCDS #Unemployment #school-to-work #Transition
Cite Key:: [@Bynner2012]

Abstract

From the ‘sexual behaviour of young people’ in the 1960s to ‘youth and the great recession’ in the 2000s a steady current running through my educational research career has been ‘youth’. This is not so much because I wanted to stay in it, which a part of all of us wants to do, but because youth stands out as the interface between the generations: the means by which society renews or tears up the intergenerational contract with the next generation to supply a fulfilling adult life.

Notes

“youth stands out as the interface between the generations: the means by which society renews or tears up the intergenerational contract with the next generation to supply a fulfilling adult life” (Bynner, 2012, p. 39)

“The collapse of unskilled employment and the youth labour market in the early 1980s did not happen overnight but was the outcome of industrial and economic processes that had been going on since the Second World War. There were three main contributing factors (Ashton and Bynner, 2011; Ashton and Green, 1996). (1) The demise of heavy industry and the inefficiency of manufacturing faced with competition from the Far East. (2) The collapse of traditional networks based on family and community connections – ‘like father like son, like mother like daughter’ – that had supplied employment for young people in the past. (3) The technological transformation of modes of production, accompanied by the decline in unskilled work and the growth of service industry.” (Bynner, 2012, p. 40)

“The additional cap on job opportunities for young people was the worldwide economic recession that dominated the early 1980s, to be followed by another at the beginning of the 1990s” (Bynner, 2012, p. 40)

“he New Training Initiative (DES, 1981) was intended to sweep away inadequate means of preparation for work, including ‘timeserving’ apprenticeships lasting up to five years or more, in favour of the national Youth Training Scheme (YTS) launched in 1983.” (Bynner, 2012, p. 41)

“Rather than getting a job as they had hoped to do by leaving school, YTS offering a training allowance at half the average youth wage and often led nowhere. This was because the scheme – seen as a substitute for a ‘proper job’– and the accreditation arising from it had little credibility with employers or young people and their families. The stigma attached to participation in the scheme extended to other options, ‘Shit jobs, Govvy schemes or on the dole’ as one famous paper described them.” (Bynner, 2012, p. 41)

“NVQ also began to take on a more educational veneer with the advent in 2001 of the ‘General National Vocational Qualification (GNVQ)’ to be available in school sixth forms and colleges.” (Bynner, 2012, p. 41)

“In 1995, when the economy had recovered, the final step was to go full circle back to establish what was now to be the ‘Modern Apprenticeship (MA)’ targeted, as Gillian Shepherd, Minister at the time said, at our ‘most able young people’.” (Bynner, 2012, p. 41)

“Despite a general trend towards more staying on in education through the 1980s and 1990s arising from the lack of jobs and the introduction of the GCSE, by the time of the first 16–19 Initiative survey (1987), half of the age cohort was still leaving education at the minimum age to find a job. And most were rejecting, at the first opportunity, any training scheme in which they found themselves – ‘slave labour’ as half the sample described it (Bynner, 1991).” (Bynner, 2012, p. 43)

“Birth cohort studies are, by their very nature, multidisciplinary and holistic in the sense that the developing individual moves through a series of domains or spheres of life including education, family, community and the workplace and leisure. These are experienced differently as the individual gets older and in response to societal (social, economic and political) change. Activity in any one domain can at times be in harmony or in conflict with activity in another.” (Bynner, 2012, p. 45)

“Development through adolescence can be viewed as a process of reconciling these ‘focal conflicts’ to achieve stable identity in adult life in which occupation becomes a central part (Coleman and Hendry, 1990).” (Bynner, 2012, p. 45)

“Such ‘scarring’ effects signal poor employability attributes to potential employers, constituting a continuing obstacle to establishing an occupational career (Arulampalam et al., 2001)” (Bynner, 2012, p. 45)