The 1990s have seen a burgeoning international, national and local literature on the significance of part-time work for those in full-time education. In this article, we trace the development of different strands of research in this area over the last decade. In common with other writers, we attribute the increased interest in the phenomenon of part-time work among full-time learners to changes in the youth labour market allied to rising levels of post-16 participation. Using evidence from three recent studies, we suggest that the scale and intensity of participation in part-time work amongst full-time 16-19 year olds appears to have increased significantly towards the end of the 1990s and that a growing commitment to part-time work is become the norm for learners in full-time 16-19 courses. Our research suggests, however, that learners in advanced level courses have related study and paid work in different ways and we develop a number of learner typologies to reflect this. In the final section we explore how the 'Qualifying for Success' qualification reforms (often referred to as 'Curriculum 2000'), which seek to expand study programmes for advanced level 16-19 year olds, might affect the relationship between earning and learning. We conclude by identifying a number of issues around earning and learning that we feel deserve further research and public debate. 2 RESEARCH ON EARNING AND LEARNING IN THE 1990s: FROM OBSERVATIONS OF CHANGE TO AN IMPORTANT POLICY ISSUE The changing nature of the youth labour market and post-16 participation over the last two decades provide the context for the growth of part-time work for 16-19 year olds involved in fulltime education in the UK. However, research during this period has tended to focus either on the lengthening of transitions between school and full-time work or the growth of full-time post-16 participation: research into the role of part-time work has remained relatively underdeveloped. During the early 1990s, however, this began to change and there was a steadily growing body of research in this area. Nevertheless, it was not until the late 1990s that the issue of part-time work among full-time learners in schools and colleges emerged as significant for education practitioners and began to appear in the national press. The largest body of national and international literature on earning and learning has concentrated on child labour, youth exploitation, pay and conditions (e.g. work by Pond and Searle 1991, Hobbs and McKechnie 1997 and O'Donnell and White 1998). In the UK this followed more than a decade of deregulation of the economy and labour relations by successive Conservative governments. At the same time, research focusing on the consequences of the expansion of the service sector, increased labour market flexibility and the spread of casualisation also began to look at the issue of part-time youth labour with concerns about labour substitutionism (e.g. Dex and McCulloch 1995 and Hakim 1996). By the mid-1990s, a number of studies began to focus more specificall...

As part of the international debate about new forms of governance and moves towards decentralization and devolution, this article discusses the increasing interest in the concept of 'localism' in the UK, marked recently by the publication of the UK Coalition Government's 'Localism Bill'. A distinction is made between three versions -'centrally managed', 'laissez-faire' and 'democratic' localism. The article draws on two research projects funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and one by the Nuffield Foundation, as well as sources by specialists in local government, political analysts and educationalists. It explores the broad features of the three versions of localism and their implications for upper secondary education and lifelong learning. The article concludes by examining the strengths and limitations of the first two models and suggests that the third has the potential to offer a more equitable way forward.

The drive to 'unify' post-compulsory education and training systems is one of the most important current developments in education policy. However the concept of 'unification' lacks clarity, is not widely recognised, and is pursued through different measures in different countries. In this paper we propose a conceptual framework with which to analyse the different meanings of and debates about unification. Using England and Scotland as examples, we show how the framework may be used to analyse existing systems, reform strategies, and processes and pressures for change. The framework is exploratory and will need to be tested and developed in relation to a wider variety of education systems.

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