Vocation calling

I was at a lunch this week to talk about the state of further education, in view of the Government’s plans to extend the school leaving age. It was generally agreed that further education and training are in a bit of a mess. “Does Gordon Brown actually know what vocational skills are?” someone asked. Who knows? But his Government could start showing that they understand the problem they need to tackle in non-academic terms by using the right language. 

“Vocational” is the extraordinary term that has slipped into the vocabulary of politicians and educationalists to mean what we used to call practical, manual, technical skills. (That was before the expectation that no political phrase or department name is complete without a little tug on the heartstrings, usually with words like ‘children and families’ or ‘innovation’ instead of ‘education’.)  But does anyone know what vocational actually means? Vocational is simply a motivation for pursuing something.