Outline and assess the view that vocational education simply trains workers for exploitation. [50]

The idea that vocational education allows workers to be exploited is a view held by Marxism. Vocational education is that which gets an individual ready for the workplace, either through a course directly complimenting a skill, like hairdressing, or that which has a broader area of learning. Whilst functionalism sees a great system underlying vocational education, Marxists have a more cynical view of the idea. Vocational education will inevitably have an effect on the economy- hopefully for the better, but Marxists would deny the benefits as overall wealthy, insisting education is a tool in capitalist societies, which control and pacify …show more content…

The New Labour government did defend its intentions to stop making people so reliant on welfare packages like incapacity benefit. It’s solely for the purpose of getting people into work, and not for the cause of that workplace paying sub-sufficient wages. However the voice of opposition says that the compulsory implementation of this would restore power at the top, and especially with voluntary sector placements, cheap labour would indeed be used to some effect for a long period of time, saving some businesses potentially thousands on each person every six months.
Another grievance was put forward by De Waal (2008), who has argued that vocational GCSEs, which are accessible through local colleges and NVQs, are not relevant- they lack the teaching of valuable skills- only to raise the achievement of those less academically endowed to pass the government’s expectations of five A*-Cs at GCSE, as these course have been disproportionate weighting in which the qualification can stand for five GCSEs. It also comes to mind that age 14, an individual won’t be thinking terribly hard about their future ambitions- or at least more realistic ones- 14 is too young to allocate them a place, when there are fears that it could reproduce the effects of the tripartite in which superficial role allocation would be used. Hoelscher’s (2008) findings may give direction to some justification of the idea since