Core Skills: a critical examination

Abstract

’Core skills [1] are central to education and training’ is'the bullish first line of the City and Guilds (1993, p. 4) pamphlet on Core skills for GNVQs. Indeed, at the beginning of the 1990s core skills seemed to be the panacea for post‐16 education But what are core skills and what are we trying to achieve with them? This paper traces the brief history of core skills. It sets out the various core skills schemes that have emerged over recent years. It analyses developments in terms of theoretical underpinnings and scrutinises the various frameworks for implicit values in its search for a suitable definition. It finds that core skills reside in the training and vocational branch of education and have led to important and positive changes in the way we view skills. It also argues that core skills have not been subjected to sufficient critical evaluation. They are narrow in their outlook and the GNVQ framework in particular is a retrograde one which may not best serve the interests of industry or society.