Abstract
Changes in vocational education and training in the 1980s required the Local Education Authorities' maintained Colleges of Further Education to become much more responsive to the requirements of government funded training programmes and to the employer-led system of National Vocational Qualifications [NVQs]. In a competitive environment Colleges would need to change their organisational structures to achieve the flexibility necessary for a rapid response to the new market in the provision of vocational education and training. This case study examines a College of Further Education which had radically altered its traditional hierarchical organisational structure in order to become a "Responsive College" as advocated by the government and industrialists in the 1980s and 1990s. The thesis focuses upon the issues of "teaching", "learning" and "quality", particularly the management and perception of these, within an institution which, despite rhetoric, was unable to innovate rapidly in a changing environment. This lack of change resulted from the application within the College of the Further Education Unit's [F.E.U's] "personal growth" model of staff development; the "indulgency" accorded to the staff by the management; and the "flattened" organisational structure which made planning and implementing whole scale institutional change impossible. The anarchic organisational culture which resulted from the above made curriculum development an individualistic rather than holistic issue. The thesis also argues that real change in V.E.T. provision depends upon altering national perceptions of the status of academic and vocational education; and upon ensuring that employers invest in the training of their employees. The thesis concludes that "responsiveness" "change" and "innovation" represent different levels of intellectual commitment to curriculum development. "Responsiveness" is a noisy rhetoric which may in reality ignore "strange chatteries" from agencies which themselves may be engaged in illusory alteration rather than radical innovation.