In this article, the author sets out something of the vision in the Government consultation paper, "Delivering World Class Skills in a Demand-led System," and looks at how this is likely to play out for adult learners. The contention of Leitch is that there is a supply-led system in education and training. The Government has planned…

Reviews the prospects of success of the latest efforts to reform Britain's national examination system. (DM)

Discusses the recent panic in Great Britain concerning university applications and enrollments. (PG)

British educational policy has increasingly been driven by the concern that higher education should serve the needs of the economy more effectively. Close scrutiny of a recently published government report suggests not that Britain needs more graduates to prosper but that the country first needs to prosper before it can use the graduates it…

Author discusses how far the recent panic about university applications was justified. (Editor)

Press cuttings, official publications, and press releases are reviewed in this annual survey of British higher education. This article is complemented by an analytical study by Charles Carter in the same journal. (Editor/LBH)

Britain and Japan are shown to be two pioneers of industrialism who took different roads to power and wealth. Each society imbues an institution with its own values and meaning--the Japanese with the spirit of participative self-fulfillment, the British with acquisitive individualism with concern for one's neighbor. (MLW)

The Rate Support Grant in England is described with focus on the way it is allocated and its consequences for education and for democracy. (Editor/LBH)

Attempts to predict the number of British students likely to seek places in higher education in the future are briefly described and their methods of prediction analyzed. It is argued that future numbers cannot be predicted reliably since there has been no identifiable regular pattern from which to make a prediction. (Author/LBH)

The levying of taxes for nonelementary education was first legalized in Great Britain under the Technical Instruction Act of 1889. The act's impact on the successful establishment of evening classes and vocational training in the Wallasey Borough of Cheshire during the years following the act's passage is described in this article. (PGD)

Great Britain's General National Vocational Qualification (GNVQ) is an innovative further education program that is empowering students and outstripping enrollment projections. In 1992-93, GNVQ was piloted in five vocational areas: business, health and social care, leisure and tourism, art and design, and manufacturing. Under GNVQ, assessment by…

The purposes of universities as defined in the U.S. and France are considered in the context of the profound changes in western industrialized societies in recent decades. Focus is on the relationship between the way moral, material, and technological changes are handled and the maintenance of free inquiry. (Author/LBH)

Contends that Great Britain's educational backwardness is now becoming a severe handicap in a world with global economic competition. States that contemporary underinvestment in education is the primary cause of the shortage of educated citizens and concludes that current efforts characterized by government cooperation with private enterprise will…

The effects of the changing economic and social environment of universities are examined. It is suggested that the next decade will be one of increasing competition between universities and between them and the non-university sector of higher education. Universities will become more market-oriented and more responsive to consumer-students. (LBH)