Flexibility, quality and competitiveness are all hallelujah words in current debate about national economic per formance. The achievement of more flexibility or higher quality or greater competitiveness, it is said, will help the UK become a more successful economy. At the same time increased...

Flexibility, quality and competitiveness are all hallelujah words in current debate about national economic per formance. The achievement of more flexibility or higher quality or greater competitiveness, it is said, will help the UK become a more successful economy. At the same time increased...

This article examines two inter-related issues. First, the tendency for UK skills policies to act as a substitute for other social and economic measures. Second, the problem of current conceptualisations of skills policy creating narrowly-drawn, technicist interventions that are frequently...