National Vocational Educational and Training Essay

National Vocational Educational and Training - Essay Example NVET seeks to reconcile the educational training needs f the individual, the employer and the economy in such a way as to increase the competitiveness f organisations and British Industry as a whole, while at the same time ensuring that individuals can develop in ways that will enable them to lead meaningful and satisfying lives. Harrison, R. (1992).cited in Walton, J. (1999) p75. Methods f training and educating employees had been in existence in some form or other since medieval times. In certain industries such as engineering and printing apprenticeships had long been established. Although the education act f 1944 required employers to release young employees to attend 'further education and liberal studies' classes in 'county colleges', it wasn't until the nineteen sixties that national training and learning initiatives came into existence. Reid et al. (2004)Up to this point many organisations were still rigid in structure and ruled by bureaucracy as fathered by Weber, (1947) and followed the principles f Taylor (from Morgan.1997) where workers were deskilled for efficiency and hierarchic managers held a position f superiority and knowledge held by them was never shared as this knowledge was power. The middle years f the twentieth century saw theories from Maslow (1943) who defined a 'hierarchy f needs' for individuals in the work place and McGregor (1960 ) who contrasted management styles and categorised them into 'X and Y' theories, X being akin to Taylor's scientific management principles and his Y theory proposing that managers understood that workers wanted to contribute to the organisations objectives. Work now involved tasks being challenging and meaningful for the worker and the term 'job enrichment ' now existed as stated by Herzber,g et al. (1959). The later part f the century was subject to relentless change. Kolb, (1974, 1984) introduced a theory that managers should be naturally learned 'by experience' and described a four stage sequential process for learning at work without a teacher or trainer. In industry new products and processes emerged, especially regarding information technology and the advent f the internet. Organisations grew in stature and now had mission statements, corporate objectives and medium term plans which would include personnel issues. This era saw organisations introduce systems which were open to their environment and socio-technical systems, Trist (1981) a theory that proposed that a key task for managers was to understand changing relationships between people, tasks, technology and structure. Consultation now existed with the workforce and participation became respectable. Government agencies such as the 'Manpower Services Commission' the 'Training Services Agency' and Youth Training Schemes all