This paper 1 notes the apparent ineffectiveness of the critical response to competence-based education and training (CBET) and suggests that this results from a failure to correctly isolate CBET's unique, identifying features. It is argued that the prevailing tendency to identify CBET with competence' is fundamentally mistaken and that the competence approach is more properly characterised in terms of its philosophically naõÈ ve methodological strategy. It is suggested that this strategy is based upon untenable assumptions relating to the semantic status of statements of outcome and the epistemological and ontological constructs to which such statements are intended to correspond.

This paper identifies the key assumptions underpinning current arrangements in vocational education and training (VET) in the UK. These assumptions, and the idea of vocational capability they denote, are rejected in favour of a more coherent conception—a conception centred not on the traditional dichotomy of ‘knowing how‐knowing that’ but on what I refer to as the ‘constitutive understandings’ from which both practical and theoretical capabilities can be seen to derive. It is argued that an account of vocational capability in these terms suggests a far richer conception of vocational preparation than current arrangements are able to admit.

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For accurate communication of the outcomes of competence and attainment, a precision in the use of language in such statements will need to be established, approaching that of a science. The overall model stands or falls on how effectively we can state competence and attainment.