Regime Change: Education to Work Transitions in England, 1980s–2020s

Roberts, Ken

Abstract This paper argues the case for viewing a country’s transition regime as a totality in which different career steps and routes assign significance and value to one another. Following the destruction of major sections of Britain’s transition regime in the 1970s and 1980s, the paper explains how the regime has subsequently been reconstructed following the 1988 Education Reform Act, replacing the vocational education and training schemes of the 1980s with government-supported apprenticeships, almost uninterrupted employment growth since 1992, and the financialization of the corporate economy alongside uncapped expansion of higher education. England’s current transition regime keeps rates of youth unemployment and NEET below the European Union averages and delivers the fastest transitions in Europe. However, the reconstructed regime also locks-in features that may well become long-term problems, namely an expensive higher education system which leaves graduates with debts that many do not expect to repay in full, and substantial low wage, low skill, low productivity sectors in the economy and workforce.