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The present Labour Government is committed to "the era of learning through life". However, as the Kennedy Report (1997) into Widening Participation in Further Education argues, education is still an exclusion zone for an important minority of the population including women. If present policy, as set out in The Learning Age (DfEE, 1998a) is to work, further education colleges have an important role to play, becoming the vehicle for moving people "from unemployment through training to employment" (Smith, 1997:4). The present study initially sought to establish the nature of this role by exploring the impact of the current political climate on lifelong learning and the way in which local education authorities have interpreted the policy directives in this area. A detailed Institution Focused Study of one Local Education Authority and one Further Education College revealed a possible mismatch between provision and the needs of the population targeted under the lifelong learning initiative. It concluded that the initiative is likely to present a considerable challenge for institutions which, because of market forces, are increasingly viewing their client population in terms of funding units and academic output (Jarvis, 1998:220). The study subsequently adapted an action research approach to explore possible ways of meeting the lifelong learning challenge in the case of one group of female adults making a return to further education. A variety of data collection methods, including questionnaires, focus group techniques and reflective journals were employed throughout the two action cycles to record, in detail, the effects of the actions taken on students, lecturers, policy and practice. These provide the basis for an account of the characteristics of provision that could justifiably be described as a lifelong learning opportunity for adult females returning to education. The study concludes that an action research approach has the capacity for positively affecting lecturers' experience of teaching and the students' experience of learning within a further education environment.

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The demands upon the social care workforce in the UK are only likely to increase over the next decades. The social care sector is heavily reliant on NVQs and this is regulated through the Care Standards Act (2000). It is thus important that these qualifications appropriately support staff development. The purpose of the research was to explore this in one social care organisation (Homecare) through researching staff perspectives on factors that inhibited or supported learning through NVQs and to examine the Homecare/Centre delivery of NVQs and workplace learning with this in mind. The research is broadly qualitative in design and draws on the principles of narrative research combined with analysis focused on key themes (interpersonal, personal and organisational factors). The research found that an understanding of the key concepts of workplace learning is relevant to the delivery of NVQs and can help these qualifications be implemented successfully as a part of a more holistic approach to teaching, learning and the assessment of competence in the workplace. The research identified that the organisation had a particular approach that strategically integrated assessment both at organisational and practice level. Additionally the research identified areas within the NVQ process, where integrated assessment proved of benefit to practice through professional level development of skills and knowledge, values and reflective learning and confidence. From this eight key elements of an enhanced model of NVQ delivery were identified that constitute the contribution to practice. The contribution to theory lies in linking the literatures of NVQs, competence and workplace learning and the suggestion that previous understanding of NVQs as behaviourist and atomistic is not as important as the approach to assessment adopted by organisations. The research has relevance to any social care organisation but also to wider audiences where NVQs are used as it adds to understanding of workplace learning through a depth of practitioner-researcher understanding of specific qualifications in a specific context.

Yes / In 1997 the Management Charter Initiative (MCI) officially launched the new Management NVQs (National Vocational Qualifications), benchmarks which attempted to describe the work performed by British managers. This article is a review of those qualifications. It remembers some of the main problems associated with the original Management NVQs and, drawing on some of the best theoretical and empirical accounts of managerial work, argues that the new qualifications have failed to live up to the MCI¿s original promise, to assist the development and training of managers.