September 23, 2013

Hard Labour: Young people moving into work in difficult times

Martin Allen October 2015

Another Great Training Robbery or a Real Alternative for Young People?

(Rewritten and updated November 2016)

Download a-great-training-robbery

Other material on apprenticeships

**Download August 2016 Apprenticeships in England Impoverished but laddered ICERES paper**

Patrick McGurk & Martin Allen Apprenticeships-in-England

Download September 2015 YMCA Journal article

Apprenticeships. New Opportunities for Young People, or Another Great Training Robbery?

Download October 2015 FORUM Journal article

Mr Cameron’s Million Apprenticeships

View July 2014 Guardian feature ‘Dead end Apprenticeships…..’

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jul/10/apprenticeships-failing-View ‘Dead end’ apprenticeships are failing to help young people find lasting workyouth-unemployment-skills#start-of-comments

Education Beyond the Coalition. Reclaiming the Agenda

Edited by Martin Allen and Patrick Ainley

ISBN 978-0-9575538-2-8 182 pp £6.99. Published Oct 2013

Download individual chapters

John Yandell Pedagogy Clare Kelly Primary

Valerie Coultas English Martin Allen Gove and Exams

Robin Simmons FE Patrick Ainley Universities

Richard Hatcher LEAs Ken Jones How to Respond

Order hard copy at

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Education-Beyond-the-Coalition/dp/095755382X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402933849&sr=1-1&keywords=education+beyond+the+coalition

Education in Europe: the Politics of Austerity.

Edited by Ken Jones. 146 pp

ISBN 978-0-9575538-3-5

Articles on France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Europe.

Hard copy currently not available

Free download Education in Europe

Across Europe, governments have cut educational spending and remodelled education systems. Some of this has been done in the name of austerity. Much of the rest is an attempt to ‘economise’ education, introducing private sector interests, market competition and business-inspired management regimes.

Governments in these ways try to replace one educational order – which allowed a space for critical education and a measure of egalitarianism – with another. It is a project that has in many countries been obstructed or explicitly resisted. This book is about the conflicts that have arisen in the process. Its chapters cover Italy, Spain, France and Greece – countries where high levels of youth unemployment and precarity exacerbate the tensions that have grown up around education’s restructuring. An introductory chapter sets English education in this wider European context, and a final chapter relates education to the segmented and sharply polarised labour markets of Europe.

Contributors – Rosa Cañadell, Guy Dreux, Nico Hirtt, Rosalind Innes, Ken Jones, Anna Traianou.

The Great Reversal

Martin Allen and Patrick Ainley

ISBN 978-0-9575538-0-4 128 pp Published February 2013

Read Review http://radicaled.wordpress.com/a-review-of-the-great-reversal/

Currently not available as hardcopy To Download click here Great Reversal

The Great Reversal develops, expands and updates arguments made by the authors in two previous books…..The central argument is that the current strategy is to demolish what remains of the social democratic state education system established in the decades after the end of World War Two, and to do this as quickly as possible……compelling evidence is presented to illustrate that, rather than the lacking the skills, qualifications and abilities necessary for work, nowadays most young people are overqualified and underemployed. The authors are quite clear in their position: it is misguided economic policy rather than the education system that has let young people down………..

The Great Reversal is an engaging, incisive and affordable book. Those involved in providing education and training, advice and guidance, or welfare and support services for young people should read it. Trainee teachers, youth workers or careers advisers should also get a copy. Not only will it help students understand and critique what is going on round them, it will also enable them to argue for more just and meaningful alternatives.