Cinderella without Her Prince: Further Education Colleges in England

Overview & Synopsis

In the expansion and increasingly vocational orientation of English education, Further Education (FE) colleges have played special roles (as have community colleges in the US). FE colleges are conventionally described as the Cinderella of British education--the overlooked beauty who comes to widespread attention because of her courtship by the prince. Certainly FE colleges are overlooked, in the sense that they receive much less attention than do universities, and also in the sense that there has been relatively little research and writing about them. But it is unclear who the prince might be, and policies over the past decade have not done much to raise these institutions from relative obscurity. FE colleges developed from adult education and training, part-time and voluntary, provided in fragmented and ad hoc ways. These providers, including many mechanics' institutes, aggregated into technical colleges providing day-release training for apprentices and employed individuals. In the late 1960s these were transformed into FE colleges with a broader array of academic, vocational, and pre-vocational offerings--like the broad array of offerings in community colleges.