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Selling Out Education

National Qualifications Frameworks and the Neglect of Knowledge

  • Book
  • © 2014

Overview

  • Written by experts, Gives a modern approach, Comprehensive in Scope

Part of the book series: The Knowledge Economy and Education (KNOW)

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

Selling Out Education argues that basing education policy on qualifications and learning outcomes—dramatized by the phenomenal expansion of qualifications frameworks—is misguided. Qualifications frameworks are intended to make education more responsive to the needs of economies and societies by improving how qualifications and credentials are used in labour markets. But using learning outcomes as the starting point of education programmes neglects the core purpose of education: giving people access to bodies of knowledge they would not otherwise have. Furthermore, instead of creating demand for skilled workers through industrial and economic policy, qualifications frameworks are premised on the flawed idea that a supply of skilled workers leads to industrial and economic development. And skilled workers are to be supplied not by encouraging governments to focus attention on creating, improving, and supporting education institutions, but by suggesting that governments take a quality-assurance role. As a result, in poor countries where provision is weak to start with, qualifications have been created and institutions established to monitor providers without increasing or improving education provision. The weaknesses of many current policy approaches make clear, Allais argues, that education is inherently a collective good, and that the acquisition of bodies of knowledge provide the basis for its integrity and intelligibility.

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Stephanie Allais

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Selling Out Education

  • Book Subtitle: National Qualifications Frameworks and the Neglect of Knowledge

  • Authors: Stephanie Allais

  • Series Title: The Knowledge Economy and Education

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-578-6

  • Publisher: SensePublishers Rotterdam

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Education (R0)

  • Copyright Information: SensePublishers-Rotterdam, The Netherlands 2014

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-6209-578-6Published: 07 August 2014

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXVIII, 274

  • Topics: Education, general

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