Introduction

For at least two decades, UK policy makers have insisted that national economic competitiveness and social well-being depends upon a suitably skilled, flexible and motivated workforce (see Mansfield, 2000). At the same time, it is increasingly apparent that the term ‘skill’ has a much broader application today compared to 30 years ago, when it tended to be equated mainly with the physical dexterity and technical ‘know-how’ of the manual craft worker (Rainbird, 1997; Keep and Mayhew, 1999; Payne, 2000). The reports of the National Skills Task Force (NSTF) reveal that ‘skills talk’ now incorporates a whole new language of ‘generic skills’, ‘reasoning skills’, ‘work process management skills’ as well as “personal values and attitudes such as motivation, discipline, judgement, leadership and initiative” (NSTF, 1998, p 15). Today, technical or occupational skills are only the tip of a veritable skills iceberg comprising what, on closer inspection, would appear to be a vast array of personal characteristics, attitudes, dispositions, values and behaviours (see Hyland, 1999).

Of course, British employers have always been interested in the prospective behaviour and attitude of those they recruit, and have a long-established reputation for blaming the education system for failing to produce the kind of young people needed for industrial success (Aldcroft, 1992). One can go back at least as far as the 1906 government investigation into Higher Elementary Schools and discover that: