Employability in the College Sector: A Comparative Study of England and South Africa Simon McGrath, Seamus Needham, Joy Papier and Volker Wedekind with Harvinder Attwal, Marius Calitz and Trish van der Merwe

Purpose Improve understandings of employability in a threefold manner: practically through the experiences and challenges of FE(T) colleges; theoretically within the discipline of education; and comparatively by looking at contexts and experiences in England and South Africa.

Methodology Funding to build partnerships Selected ‘beacon’ Colleges to examine above average practice Institutional visits supported by Prior and subsequent data gathering Interviews, focus groups Site visits Seminars

Employability Literature Commonly seen as a new notion of the past 25 years (but cf. Beveridge 1909) 3 part story 1. Decline of manufacturing and rise of services 2. Rise of Neoliberalism and fall of the welfare state 3. Discourse of lifelong learning and the boundaryless career

Dominant Account of Employability Personalised account of employability as the individual’s ability to gain and maintain a job and to obtain a new one as circumstances dictate Educational providers must reshape their curriculum and pedagogy in order to focus more sharply on the knowledge, skills and attitudes that will promote their learners’ employability

Lenses on Employability Staff Employers Policy Institution Students

Internalisation of individualised discourse Focus on skills and attitudes Little recognition of the structural features of the employment landscape

Staff Access Epistemological access Disciplinary knowledge Craft knowledge Trade knowledge Relational access Social networks Bridging and bonding capital

Staff Modelling behaviour employer expectations e.g., punctuality, dress codes, OHS Morale

Institutions

The employable college Going beyond the ordinary Specialisation and beacon status Negotiating boundaries Institutions

Colleges as spaces combining theory and practice disposition building Simulating work experience The data problem Institutions

Specific versus general skills Fragile relationships Employers

Funding opportunities and constraints The ambitions and limitations of joined-up policy Regional and national resources Curriculum reform N for Nostalgia Policy

1.Individual employability is important but insufficient 2.Educational institutions are key to employability 3.FET colleges are making progress here and need supporting 4.Need to remember the social capital dimension of employability Key Lessons

5. The vocational dimension to teaching and learning shouldn’t be forgotten 6. Importance of striving to be an employable college 7. Centrality of leadership in this 8. More work needed on college- employer relations Key Lessons