Education and industry: taking two steps back and reflecting

This article focuses on a range of macro-level issues that frame debates about industry/education interaction in the UK. It explores a number of features that underpin the structure of the debate, including the declining ‘Britishness’ of much of British business and the emergence of business as a for-profit provider of learning. It then reviews both the improvements that have taken place in the supply of skills and in the volume and quality of industry/education liaison, and also attempts by some to perpetuate a deficit model of education’s contribution to meeting skill needs. It argues that the fundamental redefinition of the nature and causes of the UK’s ‘skills problem’ that is currently under way has profound implications for how thinking about industry/education interaction may develop.