We, out of time, are not here

By indirection, and untimely, to be sure...

Published in April 2002, Future education: learning the future. Scenarios and Strategies in Europe, by Fons van Wieringen, Burkart Sellin and Ghislaine Schmidt, develops scenarios and strategies for vocational education and training (VET) in Europe. It contains four scenarios for the United Kingdom:

Crisis Looms and the Big Players step in;
Ad hoc Response to Global Pressure;
The free-market approach to competitiveness on course; and
A Social Partnership Approach to Competitiveness Develops.

In this report, vocational education and training are situated in three specific contexts, each with four main descriptors, as follows:

Economic dimension: Restructuring, growth, competition, privatisation;
Social-labour dimension: Flexibility/mobility, work/training patterns, inequalities, organisation of labour;
Training dimension: General skills, in company training, willingness to invest, lifelong learning.

So far, so logical, in a taxonomic way.