ABSTRACT
In May 1982, the Department of Education and Science published a proposal to introduce a new 17+ qualification called the Certificate of Pre-Vocational Education. General National Vocational Qualifications will provide a broad foundation within a vocational area from which students can progress to National Vocational Qualifications in particular occupations or to higher levels of education. The immediate response from the ‘traditional’ school examination boards to the inappropriateness of the existing programmes for the new clientele was the introduction of the pilot Certificate in Extended Education in 1972, based on an ‘academic’ interpretation of the new students’ needs. On the one hand, the 1991 White Paper appears to be advocating a system whereby students have access to a combination of academic and vocational qualifications and can move easily between them. On the other, it seems to be designing separate systems of qualifications that have little common ground between them.
